How fug is this ticker?




But that ticker shows that I’ve lost two pounds this past week, even though it was my birthday and Chris was here over the weekend—two events that I ordinarily would consider reason enough to pig out. I didn’t. Hence the two pounds.

59 total pounds lost; 25 of which were this year. I’m definitely at a point where it feels easy. This comes and goes, depending on my mood, hormones, and stress levels.

Anyway, I have some big news that I can hopefully update with later.

I’m finally back on track with the weight loss, and I’m down 2.5 pounds. I knew that having a weekend alone would produce good results.

So that’s 57 pounds lost since my highest weight, and 23 since restarting the diet earlier this year.

(I’m a little bored with the pies, although you can barely see the snail here. Oh, well.)

Since I last updated, I spent ten days with my aunt and Grandma, who came to visit me in Prague. They stayed in my apartment with me and also traveled to Vienna for three days so that they could see the city and meet Chris.

Chris has given up drinking and has not had a touch of alcohol in…a month? Longer? He seems to be largely the same person but maybe a bit more patient and less wild. And he’s readier to move forward in our relationship. He is now ready for me to move to Vienna. Separate apartments, still, but he used to be nervous at the thought of me doing that in a year. A year from now, I expect that he’ll be ready to live together. We spent three consecutive weekends together and he’s realized in that time that I don’t require as much attention as he thought I did and that it’s very easy to hang out with me. Perhaps I put too much emphasis in our early months on doing things together when we were together, and now he realizes that I don’t actually require that. I can play around on my computer while he plays on his, and I’m happy to call that a Saturday afternoon.

Things with Chris may not be moving quite as fast as I would like but I know they’re moving in the right direction. He’s ready for me to be in Vienna, and I can’t be there for another 9 months or more. The more is dependent on job prospects for a non-German speaker. I’m going to ask him in the coming weeks if he can help me to procure a copy of Rosetta Stone.

David had to move out of his beautiful apartment at the end of June. He is now renting a room in a shared flat and wants to leave Prague in a couple of months. He’s looking into places like Macau and the United Arab Emirates. I told him that if he goes some place exotic, I’d love to visit him. I have no idea what has become of his wishes to go to the United States, but I could tell that he was really sizing me up on Sunday when I was at his apartment for the last time. He was trying to determine how much weight I’ve lost, which hasn’t been much at all. I’ve been stuck at my current spot for a few weeks because my focus shifted away from dieting to entertaining family and I hope to get back on track in the next couple of weeks.

[Edit at 2:57 to add: I think David still wants to go to the US but he's weighing his options. And also weighing me. He asked me when I plan to leave Prague and I said I didn't know.]

I put up pictures on Facebook from my family’s visit and he sent me a message to say that I looked “really good” and “well done” but I think I look thinner in them than I am and he was probably disappointed when he saw me on Sunday. Also, he was sharing photos with me of his trip to the US but we also looked through pictures from a party he threw in December (a party that I mentioned before in this blog because I was NOT invited), and he said multiple times that it was such a great party and an amazing party, and it was just sort of weird that he was sharing that with me instead of brushing it under the rug.

I will miss him when he leaves, and I will likely stay in touch but I feel properly detached from him right now. I guess that I feel whole right now, so I don’t need his approval. I feel good, loved by my family and friends, and by Chris. I am happy with my job, happy with my apartment and my little spot in the world. Things are good.

And now a few photos:

This was in the gardens of a palace in Vienna. It’s my new Facebook profile picture:



A little blurry, with my aunt:



Me again (I’m also showing off how much weight I’ve lost, even if these are completely deceptive):



Chris:



Me with my Grandma in Prague:



See, I look less thin:



And that’s enough. I hope I don’t anger the gods by not putting this behind a cut.

My therapist was much more communicative when I met with him this morning. Normally he sits glassy-eyed, staring off into space and occasionally scrawling on his notepad. Today we had something resembling a conversation, and he tossed out the word “abuse” to describe the ways that both Chris and David treat me.

I’m not sure that I agree with that assessment, but still it was interesting.

What I told him that brought him to this conclusion (well, less a conclusion than a rumination) was that Chris said about a week ago that we don’t have a future together because I’m not doing enough to stimulate him creatively and intellectually. And while that sounds like he dumped me, he said he was not dumping me and that he’d give me another chance to fulfill him (or whatever) and also to behave.

Everyone I’ve talked to about this has said it’s time to dump him and move on—even my mom, who met my news that Chris wanted an open relationship with the motherly advice to appease him and wait for things to get better.

But I can’t dump him, because I love him (there are plenty of good things, really) but also because I do not think that I can do any better. It’s not that I don’t think I deserve better; it’s that I don’t think I can get better. (Chris at his best is everything I could ever want, by the way, but Chris at his worst is emotional abuse, if I can borrow a phrase from my therapist, and I think I can.)

I need to work on my self esteem before I can dump him. I asked my therapist how I can improve my self esteem and admitted that it felt like such a stupid question to ask but I really don’t know. He couldn’t answer because my time was up.

David’s abuse is similar, but it focuses on my body. By telling me that I have to lose weight to be with him, he’s making demands and showing that he will probably continue to do so.

I saw him Tuesday night. He isn’t satisfied with the pace of my weight loss, and we had a talk where he tried to motivate me by saying that losing weight would be good for my career, because if I go for an interview and I’m as qualified as another candidate, it’ll always be the more attractive person who gets hired.

Anyway, I was at his apartment that night and he hadn’t been home from work yet so he didn’t manage to hide something that was sitting out and that I identified almost immediately: seduction community literature aka pickup artist bullshit. Yes, the same kind of crap that Chris believes could potentially be David’s mantra as well. We had a small argument about it, and then he said something about how he wasn’t feeling that great and maybe tonight wasn’t such a good night, and I said, “Are you kicking me out?” He said no, but that was pretty much the end of the discussion.

Most likely surprised that I didn’t contact him yesterday, he emailed me in the evening to say he’d had a nice time and hopes we hang out again soon. This is our standard thing, and it usually comes from me and very rarely from him (usually he responds to my mail saying that he had a good time too). I haven’t responded.

Chris is coming this weekend, and a couple of college friends will show up on Saturday. My aunt and grandma will be here on Wednesday and will meet Chris next weekend. He has not missed an opportunity to point out that they’re Christians and even called them evangelicals (“I don’t usually hang out with American evangelicals”) and even though I’m pretty anti-religion, it’s really getting on my nerves.

In all fairness, I do think that Chris and David are not all bad. Actually, they have many wonderful qualities, but they have their flaws too. So do I. And it’s because I’m flawed that I put up with them—I figure that it takes a lot to tolerate me so I’m willing to tolerate someone else. Does that mean I’m being abused? I don’t know. Do I abuse Chris by being so whiny and needy? Perhaps. I really don’t know.

(And I feel as though I once again need to define my relationships with these two men because maybe it's confusing, so: Chris is my long distance boyfriend who lives in Vienna. We've been together for almost 9 months. I've known David for nearly a year. He is not my boyfriend, but we were seeing each other last summer. He would date me if I were thin, and I can't help having strong feelings for him because he is gorgeous and charming and funny. There.)

I didn't lose any weight this week, and, no, I'm not pleased. But I made three bad food decisions, missed the hash, and didn't get any other exercise, so it's no surprise.

I'll do better, and so forth. It does help to motivate me, and it was nice to eat some tasty, tasty things. I needed that.

Had I done everything right and I didn't lose anything, then I might panic, but that isn't the case, so I'm fine. I just need to make sure that I get back on track, which is a bit of a challenge because Chris is going to be here for four days, and I eat worse when I'm with him. Plus he's not as keen to get exercise, although I could probably convince him to walk through a park in the nice weather. And every greasy spoon I take him to serves salads, so it's not fair of me to use him as an excuse. I have to learn to deal with the temptations.

Expect a change next week.

I lost another two pounds this week, which means I passed the halfway point to my short-term goal of 40 pounds. I’m not losing this weight phenomenally fast but Leon definitely had a point—this is the fastest I’ve ever lost before.

Anyway, that makes 20.5 since I restarted my diet this year, and a total of 54.5 since my highest weight. If I can keep this up, I’ll reach my goal by the middle of August.




In other news, I cried on the train back to Prague yesterday. Not a lot, but a few tears. I was feeling sorry for myself. I definitely don’t feel as depressed today as I did yesterday. Or, it’s less a feeling of despair as of resigned understanding. I feel really fatally flawed, and my response to that is generally apathetic.

I think I would benefit from a few evenings alone, watching episodes of Weeds and 30 Rock that I’ve downloaded, sipping zero calorie beverages, and sleeping 12 hours after skipping dinner. (And no I don’t normally skip dinner, but eating my way through depression isn’t a good idea either.)

At the moment, I’m trying to figure out what I can eat for lunch and coming up blank.

I'm in Vienna for a few more hours. A couple of Chris' friends should be here in an hour.

It's been a good weekend. I've sort of been going back and forth between Chris and David in my head, which is terrible, I suppose, but I do have a choice to make. I care about both of them a lot, but both have also done unimaginably shitty things to me.

And I wonder if neither is a good fit.

As far as David is concerned, perhaps I've gotten everything I wanted. I was so infatuated with him (ok, I still am), and I wanted him to return some of those feelings. He finally asked me to be his girlfriend a couple of months ago, even if it was contingent on my losing weight. And he asked me to move back to the States with him.

Whenever I was fantasizing about him seeing my value, these were the ways that I mostly thought he could show me: finally wanting to date me and moving with him (this fantasy emerged when he first told me he wanted to apply for that program in Canada).

So, reasonably, there is nothing else for me to get from him. I mean, I really like him and enjoy his company. I know everyone who reads this probably thinks he's a dick, but he's a funny, sweet, enjoyable person to be around.

Still, it can only go downhill. His longest relationship was five months, and I know he dumped some girl because she was taller than him and another because she was a smoker who goes to bed early. Ok, in his mind, these were parts of larger pictures in which he couldn't imagine spending his life with these women. They were flawed, and he's 34 now so he's got to be selective. But I find it hard to believe that a thin version of me is going to be satisfactory to him. I am all sorts of crazy, and he somehow has known me for a year and not figured that out yet.

As for Chris, he's told me that he's very open to living together in a year and that he'd consider children in two. I sort of wish he wouldn't have said the latter part but I guess it means they're not entirely off the table.

I'm so comfortable with him, and he makes me feel so loved. He knows all about how crazy I am, and he loves me anyway. He knows I don't cook or keep a tidy apartment, and he doesn't care.

But he's also so insanely unpredictable, and that doesn't mesh well with my brand of crazy. He gets me so anxious...

I started seeing my current therapist months ago and one of the issues I wanted to discuss was the way I handle relationships. I have made them the most important thing in my life, and I don't know why. I have been with Chris for eight months but have allowed David to stay on the periphery almost the entire time, and I don't know why. When things are going well in my relationship, I create problems, and I don't know why. I'm incapable of figuring out if these guys are total douchebags who I should ditch or if they're decent...and I don't know why.

I have thought this weekend about how I never would've met Chris if David would've been willing to date me last summer. If David finally wants me, do I still reject him for being an asshole who didn't want me in the first place? Don't I still want him?

And Chris is like a misguided child with some of his stupid ideas about women and relationships, but I think he can grow up. I mean, he's 30 so it's a bit scary that he's not more mature but he's a smart guy who honestly loves me...

I'm repeating myself. I got on here because I wanted to write that I am depressed, which I am. I feel quite terrible today, but then I started going into these same topics that I've written about for months. Nothing is solved. I thought a therapist would help, but he mostly looks bored when I talk to him and rarely says anything.

It is unlikely that I will go back to the US. David eliminates himself from the picture when he takes off in the next few months. I guess. But that only solves the current dilemma and not the whole problem. And that depresses me.

David:



Me and Chris, this weekend (hard to choose just one photo):

David asked me to move to the US with him.

I saw him last night. It had been a month since the last time we met, and a lot has happened for him. (And for me, too. I lost 8.5 pounds since we last met and he said he could tell I’d lost a bit of weight, and we talked for a while about my diet. But mostly it was about him.) He spent something like 3 weeks in the US, where he had lived before moving to Prague last June. He had an amazing time on this trip, and even though he meant to come back after 10 days, he made up a story to tell his boss and extended his holidays by an extra 10 days.

He didn’t want to come back here, and he’s ready to leave. This is after he told me that he’d stay until the end of the year. I told him that was disappointing.

He asked, “What about you? Do you still want to stay in Prague until the end of the year?” And that’s when I did one of those half-truth things that comes so easily to me. I said that a week ago, I’d been thinking about leaving earlier. This is true. But it’s a half truth. I realistically can’t imagine leaving until the end of the year, even though I had a day of hating Prague last week.

And then we talked about different cities in the US that we’d like to live in, and there was this sort of unspoken idea floating around, where he’d say something like, “What about Atlanta? Would you be willing to live in Atlanta?” and it very much sounded like he was asking me to go with him, but he didn’t come out and say it.

And then we talked about the one-year program in Canada that was offered to him, and I said I’d never been to Canada, and he said now’s the time for me to go.

Much later in the conversation, then, he finally came out and said it: “If you go back to the US, I would like to go back with you.” He followed this up with something like, “What do you think?” and I said something like, “Yeah, let’s talk about it after you have your meeting with your boss,” because the terms of his staying in Prague are largely contingent on whether or not he can make the most of what has become a rather shitty situation at work.

I asked him what his visa situation would be like, knowing that the only reason he left the US in the first place was because his visa expired and he couldn’t get it renewed, so he talked about a couple of different options and then he said, “Or I could marry an American,” and he looked me straight in the eyes and smiled.

I told him what I know about the fiancé visa, and I can’t remember where the conversation went next, but it wasn’t soon after that we both had to go because it was late.

I am spending a three-day weekend in Vienna. David and I made plans to meet and talk again on Tuesday, but he realized that he has visitors (somewhat unconfirmed so he will let me know), and so he said it might have to be later in the week, but then I offered up Monday when I return from Vienna (which he had originally asked for after he knew I was going away for the weekend) and he said that sounded good, but he’d let me know for certain. Which is sort of annoying, but he just got back from three weeks in the US, today was his first day in the office, and his boss is forcing him to work an event tonight, so who knows what else he’ll have to do in the coming weeks?

But if we put everything together, David would like me to be his girlfriend when I lose some more weight and move to the US or Canada with him. And my computer is about to restart itself, plus I have a ton of things still left to do today, so I will just post this. I have trouble imagining going with him, but I haven't ruled it out yet.

EDITED at 5:33 PM: Obviously, my first choice would be to build a future with Chris, but I've been worrying a lot lately that we don't have the same vision for the future. Moving back to the US would have the benefit of being closer to my family, but I wish I could take Chris with me. I like David a lot, but I doubt we could live together as harmoniously as Chris and I could. Still, I am weighing the pros and cons here.

I lost 3.5 pounds this past week, so I’m back on track. That’s 18.5 pounds since I restarted my diet this year and a total of 52.5 pounds since my highest weight. I think this may be the lowest weight I’ve been at since packing on the pounds my junior year of high school.

This morning, I put on a pair of pants that I bought at Old Navy in August 2007. When I bought them, I didn’t try them on at the store because they were only $7, and I thought I knew my size but they were awfully tight so I never wore them. They fit perfectly now. And, of course, be aware that August 2007 was when I had lost 40-some pounds on my last diet. So I’ve passed my low from before.

I think I may put up some before and after photos (not so much an “after” as “in progress,” but still), and I’ll even do what no one ever does when they’re dieting: I’ll post flattering befores and unflattering afters, so that you can see that even at my best, I didn’t look nearly as good as I do now at my worst. Is that terrible of me to say? Whatever, it’s true. And if I did unflattering befores and flattering afters, you’d swear I lost 100 pounds. The difference is quite something.

David emailed me that he will be back in Prague on Thursday. I doubt I’ll see him before I take a three-day weekend in Vienna to be with Chris, but I’ll certainly see him when I’m back and I’m curious to know if he can tell how much I’ve lost. It’s only 8.5 pounds since he last saw me so probably not, but Chris has noticed a difference.

I talked to Leon on Skype and he wondered if the reason I’m losing weight so much faster this time is because of the lure of David’s love. Actually, it isn’t. I’m pretty convinced at this point that he doesn’t get to have me, thin or fat. But I feel like I accepted a challenge from him and I want to show him that I can do it. I want to lose these 40 pounds this year, so that I don’t look like a total failure. Dieting is a lot easier to spoil when you keep it to yourself but once you proclaim your intentions, you want to prove that you can do it. All goals are that way, and David will see that I’ve got what it takes to follow through. Apparently, what’s motivating me isn’t really his love; it’s his respect and approval. Also, my own. Oh, and the thought that if I lose the weight, I will have no more excuses for why people don’t take to me and aren’t attracted to me and why life is hard. I’m taking away my own safety net.

No one will remember this but I wrote last summer about going on a lovely first date with a French guy named Renaud. We met one Saturday afternoon and had espresso and baguettes along with a nice conversation for a couple of hours, and then we parted with cheek kisses. He told me that we should meet up the following weekend and told me where and which day.

But before the weekend rolled around, he canceled on me, saying he had a friend in town. We exchanged a few emails and then he stopped responding, and so I stopped. He contacted me again a couple of weeks later and we emailed a few times and then that stopped.

Fast forward some 9-10 months and he writes to me out of the blue to say that he saw me on a tram and that I got off at the stop near my apartment (he named the stop; he doesn’t actually know where I live, although maybe he does now). He said he was in the other compartment of the tram so he couldn’t say hello.

And then the communication stopped again. Is this not weird as hell?

Speaking of Frenchmen, David has been in the US for about two weeks. He wrote to me yesterday saying that he was in no rush to come back to Prague (hmm?) but that he was looking forward to see me when he returns. I last saw him the day before I went to the Netherlands, so it’s been three weeks since I last saw him. I think it’s for the best. I’ve given more consideration to his weight loss proposal, and I sort of wonder who he thinks he is to make such demands of me.

Chris and I hit the eight-month mark this past week. I had a realization recently that we’re very much a couple in the sense that it would take a lot to break us up. We’re both committed to the idea of being together. We have lots of issues that need to be resolved but neither of us is going to throw our hands up and say we can’t deal with them; we’re going to work them out or at least try. Of course, I get frustrated easily, but I always come back because I love him.

As for our open relationship, I’m not really sure where we stand on it at the moment and I don’t want to bring it up for a while. Last Thursday, I thought I managed to get him to agree to close it, but he was resentful about it. He said I had “won the battle,” which isn’t sufficient for me. I want him to understand that it’s perfectly normal to expect fidelity and monogamy. I may not respect myself a lot but I respect myself enough that I will not share him with other women. He now knows that I would leave him if he attempted this. I said that maybe, somehow there exists a compromise that would make us both happy but I don’t know what that is. (In my head, I’m imagining the occasional one-night stand which sounds much better than the compromise he offered to me when he agreed to leave the “seduction community”—that he would have a handful of female friends who he would occasionally sleep with and hang out with but my response to that was, “How am I any different?” Supposedly I would have more priority than the others and he’d love me more. It sort of reminds me of Mormon polygamy, where the first wife has more status but, at the end of the day, you’re a woman sharing her husband. And that is not at all for me. It was this idea of his that prompted me to really push to close the relationship last week.)

We also had a very recent discussion about my moving to Vienna and he’s still terrified at the thought of me living in the same city as him. So I gave him something like an ultimatum today. I said that I plan to leave Prague in about a year. In 6-9 months, I will start planning for that move. I will first consider moving to Vienna. If he doesn’t think he could handle living in the same city as me after we have been together for over a year (and when I move, it’ll be well past a year and a half), then clearly the relationship has no future and I will move on. I will likely go to the UK or back to the US.

He’s going to be pretty upset when 6-9 months roll around and I actually go through with this. He probably thinks he can keep me in Prague for a while longer or get me to go to Bratislava, which is much closer to Vienna, but still far enough that we could only see each other on the weekends. Well, it’s not going to happen. I called his bluff twice in the past couple of months, and he chose me over pickup and me over fucking other women. I don’t know if he’ll choose the horror of having me live within 20-30 minutes of him over being alone, but if he can’t, I don’t want him either.

I am cutting out a boring introduction in which I explain why I haven't written lately. Who cares? I've been busy, and now I finally have the time to write about my trip to the Netherlands, which was amazing.

It was a hash weekend, and I have written about these before, but it’s basically an excuse for a bunch of zany people to get together and get drunk while doing running/walking trails and generally having a good time. I did one of these weekends before, and that’s how I met Dirk. That was the last time I did one: April 2006. It was ok. This time? I loved it.

We were in bungalows near the beach, and I went with Caroline. Leslie was supposed to go too and flew into Amsterdam with us, but she had a man waiting for her at the airport there. They’d been chatting on the internet and she ended up spending the weekend with him. She phoned me a few times during the weekend to check in and I told her to have a blast. I think she felt guilty for ditching the weekend we’d planned to have but I couldn’t blame her one bit. I’d have done the same, and I know she had a great time.

Anyway, here’s me and Caroline on the first day, on the beach:



Dirk was there too. We spent a fair amount of time together, but I managed to meet a bunch of new people too, which was nice.

My favorite was this fellow, who dressed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the costume party on Saturday night:



His name is Kev, and he’s a Brit who lives in Belgium. We’ve chatted a lot since I got back but don’t get the wrong idea: he is very happily married. And hilarious, which is part of what drew me to him.

Anyway, I think that a big reason why I enjoyed the weekend so much was because I received a lot of attention from men. Nothing happened, so, again I tell you not to get the wrong idea, but I think I was among the more attractive people there. When I told this to my therapist, I think he had trouble believing me. Fair enough. I’m no great beauty and this is Prague, where all the women are thin and gorgeous. But at this party weekend, most of the women were older and less likely to scrape on gobs of makeup to go on a hike. Plus, I arrived at Saturday’s costume party with my tits hanging out of my dress, so, any men who may not have noticed me the day before certainly did that night:



(It was also at the costume party that Dirk told me I was clearly the prettiest woman there but I wouldn’t go that far. I know that wasn’t the case but I was possibly the easiest to approach.)

And so the men flocked to me. Well, some of them. And it was mostly quite innocent.

At the after party of Saturday’s costume party, a couple dozen of us gathered in the living room of one of the bungalows and I plopped my chair down in front of a man who simply started massaging me (just my shoulders). Which was fantastic! And then another man decided that he, too, would massage me. And then another. And another.

And at least two men were trailing me like dogs. One asked me, at this after party, to come to his room (he gave me specific instructions) and surprise him. He said he’d have no problem kicking out his roommate. The following morning, he asked me if I had gotten laid, and I said no. He was really shocked how I could have so much male attention and not do anything. But I wasn’t interested (and I think I’ve almost managed to close my relationship again, so why would I muck that up?).

Anyway, what was so interesting about it all was that I had been talking to my therapist about how I think my life would be so much better if I were thin and beautiful. And then I felt like I got to experience it. Ok, still not thin but certainly attractive to many (who were drunk, but I didn’t mind). And what did I learn? I learned that I was right. Life is better when you’re attractive.

My therapist insisted that there was more to it—that the men were flocking to me for other reasons and so I humored him and I talked about this thing that Chris refers to as a “bitch shield,” which is that front that a lot of women put up to keep men they are uninterested in at bay. He has told me that I don’t have this, and he’s right. I am very approachable. I’m quiet, so I have to be approached--I rarely do the approaching. But men who buy me drinks in bars or hit on me on the street will get my attention and a smile.

And so I offered that some of these men at the hash are perhaps used to getting a bitch shield and they flocked to me because I didn’t have one. I offered friendliness. And the relatively small selection of people (120 or so over the course of three days) meant that it was likely that they’d all at least talk to me at one point.

It’s an idea. Whatever it was, I really enjoyed the attention. It was great.

It has been useful to my friendship with Dirk as well. He wants me to visit him in July. I doubt very much that it will happen but he at least had one of those very drunk moments where he told me what a gift I am in his life. I love those moments so much.

And I’ve made a great friend in Kev, who I hope to see at one of the next hash weekends I attend. Hopefully that’ll be some time this year, but it is an expensive hobby to travel around to different countries for these weekends, so we’ll just have to see. Besides, I think it was mostly luck that I happened to be one of the more attractive hashers in the Netherlands. The stars will probably never align like that again.

I feel rather sad today. It doesn’t help that I have no weight loss to report. I realize that this was coming, because I did post five straight weeks of losses but it’s still disappointing.

Fortunately, this does not yet mean that I will bury my face in a banana cream pie, possibly because I would be hard pressed to find a banana cream pie in Prague. No, I will go to the gym tonight. And I will watch what I’m eating a bit better. I may even crack open the book that David recommended. I still haven’t touched it, largely because I know what the idea of the diet is (eat whole grains and unprocessed foods) and I feel like I won’t learn anything new. That’s stupid, of course, but it is nonetheless the reason I haven’t bothered with it.

I also have been thinking about my problem with food. There was a doctor/dietitian on last week’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and he was talking about food addiction and describing how diets are only temporary fixes because we’re now programmed to crave foods that are unhealthy, and, basically, we need to be reprogrammed to fix the problem. Or something. I mean, this was a comedy show, so I didn’t get a lot of information but I obviously saw myself in what he described. I love food; I crave it. I actually watched Supersize Me and got hungry for McDonald’s; I think about food all the time. I really have a problem.

So, actually, perhaps I’ll look at David’s book, but it’s this dietitian’s book that I truly want to read. I know, it sounds like I’ve possibly been sold on a fad, but he wasn’t selling a diet. It’s not a book about how to fix a problem, as far as I could tell. It’s a book about the problem itself, and I’d just like to know more.

Going to the gym is helpful with this, because it enables me to eat a bit more of what I want, but still, the diet can’t solve everything. I cannot stop thinking about food. And I will myself to not eat and to eat better but every now and then, I find myself with that opportunity to scarf down something that no one should ever eat, and it fills me with warm, positive feelings.

Sigh. I’ll keep at it. Even if I have moments of weakness, if I don’t stop completely and keep exercising, I can still take off the next 25 pounds. It just may take a bit longer with my occasional self sabotage.

It's another busy week, so I hope to write an update this weekend or next week. I still would like to write about my trip to the Netherlands. I made a new friend there with whom I have communicated in some capacity (either texts, IMs, emails, or phone calls) every day since my return.

But, for now, it's just a diet update.

I'm at the 49 pound mark, which means that I'm very close to being the lightest of my adult life. It's a bit sad that I'm still overweight, but I'm proud of myself for making it through a three-day weekend with Chris and still losing weight this week.

I'm down 1.4 pounds or a total of 15 since I started dieting earlier this year.




More content coming as soon as I have time.

I am very busy at work and with everything else right now, but I wanted to write today because it’s my weigh-in day. I lost almost 3 and a half pounds this week, which means that I’m about to be the lowest weight I've been in my adult life. In other words, I'm 47.4 pounds lighter than my highest weight or 13.4 lighter since I restarted my diet this year.




I got a ton of exercise over the weekend in the Netherlands, so that accounts for some of this, but I’ve been good about food as well. Dirk said I looked really good, and he could tell I’d lost weight, so that was nice.

The weekend was absolutely amazing. I met some really cool people, particularly a British guy who I’m chatting with right now. We exchanged numbers and every possible contact detail and he called me yesterday so perhaps I have a nice new friend. I’ll write more about him and several other great people I met or caught up with and also share some photos. I’m just so damn busy with work and it’s the second four-day week in a row, which is great, but that means that Chris is coming here on Thursday evening so I need to cleeeeean and I have one less day to do it. Yikes.

I’m quite sick with a cold and it caused me to lose my appetite earlier in the week and sleep quite a lot. I dropped two pounds in a day. But I think I might gain some weight while I’m in the Netherlands this weekend. On the one hand, I should be getting a lot of exercise. On the other, the only meal that is described on our hash program is pizza, and I tend to eat a lot when I travel because I eat at every available opportunity. My whole schedule of eating (and sleeping and everything else) gets thrown off and I tend to eat whenever food is put in front of me, for fear that it will be a very long time before it happens again.

So, here’s a quick update on things in my life:

Work has been pretty busy, as we’re preparing for a conference and I’m also trying to help a bit to cover for a coworker who’s taking two weeks of vacation. But everything is going well, I think.

Things with Chris are excellent. We’re going to have a three-day weekend together next weekend. He’ll get here next Thursday, and I’m looking forward to spending time with him, although my apartment looks like a tornado hit it. I’ll have to deal with that when I get back from the Netherlands.

David pissed me off last week by never answering that email. He knew I was out of town this weekend, so he left me alone but tried to see me Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. I ignored him on Monday, sparred with him via text message on Tuesday, and nearly indulged him on Wednesday but I was too sick to want to go out plus I had my counseling appointment on Thursday morning. I apologized, but now I think he’s mad at me. Oops.

I’m going to the Netherlands with Leslie and Caroline. Dirk will be there. I haven’t seen him since August, and we haven’t been in very close contact in the past few months because he’s always traveling for work or I’m busy with Chris. I’m curious to see how that will go over. It’s a big party with 100 people attending, so I don’t even need to hang out with him but I’m looking forward to seeing him.

Diet and exercise are going well, but the whole catching-a-cold thing has sort of thrown it off. I can’t wait to be healthy again, and I hope I’m not wheezing and sneezing my way through The Hague. If I am, though, at least it’ll be an experience.

I only lost one pound this week, which is disappointing, but at least it’s a loss. I made a few poor food choices while I was with Chris in Vienna, although those choices mostly had to do with cost and convenience. I’m going to have to work that out.

Last week, I received the book by the French dietitian that David recommended but I have yet to look at it. I know, though, that the concept is based on avoiding processed foods. This is difficult for me, because almost everything I crave is processed, but I could give it a try. I’m going to go to a nearby BIO store later today to see if they have wholegrain pasta since my current craving is noodles and tomato sauce. Probably not going to find that in the French dietician’s book but perhaps Michel and I can compromise for tonight.

I went to the gym last night and also worked out with the personal trainer last Thursday. I was in pain all weekend from lunges and steps. I’m going to have to take it easy on the legs, especially before I go to the Netherlands on Friday. I’m going to be doing at least one long hiking trail while I’m there and I don’t want to show up barely able to walk.

Also, this past weekend with Chris was amazing. I think that maybe he’s just a bit lost about some of his ideas, but it’s very clear that he loves me very much. He was a sweetheart. I felt very in love and secure with him. My fears about the open relationship are almost all gone; it sort of seems shelved at the moment, and I wonder if I can get him back on my side. At any rate, it has briefly ceased to be a concern. I’m now back to fretting about not knowing German and wondering how I could ever move to Vienna.

I talked to my friend Mike Sunday evening, and he said that I shouldn't worry about moving to Vienna until I sort out my trust issues. He’s right. My German speaking skills aren't that important at the moment.

Still, I would not pass up a free copy of Rosetta Stone.

And look who’s a quarter of the way to her new goal!

I weighed myself this morning and I’m down another pound and a half, but I have to maintain that this weekend while I’m in Vienna in order to add it to my “pie” chart. (No, I could not resist the pun.)

I half-assedly broke up with Chris this morning about a sofa. Ok, not really about a sofa but about the fact that he’s going to move into a tiny one-room apartment and, while that’s good for him financially, it shows that it will take until May 2010 before he and I can cohabitate. I know, you’re all thinking, “Why would you want to live with him, Kate?” Well, I don’t want to now but I want the option of it. His current apartment is huge and would easily fit me. Now he’s moving into a new bachelor pad and asking me to help him pick out furniture for it, and it’s a very real indicator that we are so far from what I want. If not with him, then with someone.

This morning I spent an hour with my therapist discussing conventional beauty and how I think I’ll be more likely to attract a respectful mate when I am thin because I’ll see more value in myself. I think my therapist respects my opinions, which I like. John said that I pay a therapist to listen to me and give me the reaction that I want instead of confiding in a friend, which I think is a valid point, but when it comes to my thoughts on beauty and body image, I know that what I say can be compelling: I’ve spent almost 20 years of my life thinking about it.

I told Chris that I want to be able to date (and not just sleep with) other people in our open relationship. That is the band-aid on our gaping gash of a relationship. He doesn’t want this, but gave me a tentative yes so that I will visit him this weekend. Anything to make me happy enough to not leave him.

I don’t want to be cruel to him. It’s just so hard for me; I hate the current situation but I want to be with him, so I break up and then patch things back up immediately. I told both him and Caroline that I think I’m going through the same phase that I had with Fouad—after he cheated and before I could finally break up with him. I feel like the relationship is over but I’m not strong enough to end it.

The most important difference, though, is that, despite his flaws, Chris is someone I could spend my life with. We’re in love and our personalities and interests mesh well; we just have very different ideas of relationships. If that could be fixed or a compromise reached, the relationship could be saved. I just don’t know if that will happen.

David has not responded to my email. I was pretty annoyed about this earlier because I think it signifies that he and I haven’t come along as far as I thought we had. But it’s good for me, because it makes him appear less god-like, and I need that kind of reminder.

Ideally, then, I keep seeing my therapist, working out, dieting, and becoming a better, healthier person. And in a few months, maybe I can find someone who will love me for me. Or Chris and I will have patched up our relationship with more than band-aids. Or David will finally be as responsive as I’d like, but even I know that almost certainly can’t go well.

I know this is obvious to anyone who has read my blog in the last ten months, but I have feelings for David. Strong feelings. I have tried many times to explain these feelings, especially when his disregard for me is as obvious as my affection for him, but the best I can offer is that he is charming, sweet, handsome, smart, and charismatic. When I have his attention, I feel like the luckiest person in the world. He’s captivating.

If it’s necessary, I can contrast this with the way that Chris makes me feel, which is also, typically, wonderful. Chris makes me feel warm and protected and loved. He makes me feel secure, at home, and comfortable. But not too comfortable. Not the comfort that diminishes passion; the kind that makes me think I am so compatible with him that he could be in my life forever.

Two very different men, and I feel very strongly about both. Both have failed to treat me very well, though. Even David’s admission of interest in me came at the price of what? 40 pounds? 50 pounds? And that’s not pounds sterling. That’s hours at the gym and thinking lustfully about Kit Kats I can't have.

In regards to that, I thought about taking sayvandalay’s advice, losing all the weight, and then saying “Fuck you” to both men. It’s true that I tolerate being treated like shit because I think that my weight (and depression and many things about me) require tolerance of their own. Nobody’s perfect.

But my feelings for David right now are almost unbearably strong, especially for someone who isn’t reciprocating my feelings.

I saw him last night, and I had a nice time. He was actually much more affectionate than he has been in the past. There were noticeable changes in the way that he casually touched me and, when he received a text message and had to answer it, he actually showed me the message and explained why he had to write back at that moment. When he had a cigarette, he asked if I minded (that’s not new) and if I would like for him to quit (I told him that 2 cigarettes a day is hardly a concern).

But there were a couple of moments when he exhaled audibly or began to speak, and I somehow felt primed for him to say something magical about how much he likes (or more than likes) me. Obviously he didn’t, and today I’ve been feeling rather anxious, as though I have these leftover feelings from an entire evening of anticipation.

And so today I did something ballsy and asked him on a date. More than hanging out. A date, and I even wrote in my invitation that I’m not sure if I’m supposed to wait a couple of months before I ask him out. This was my reference to the weight-loss pact. I also wrote about a few other things and tried not to be too wordy.

He responded two minutes later to thank me for writing and to say that he’d have to respond to everything later, which I sort of thought seemed dismissive, but he never used to do that. He used to just wait hours (or days) to respond. But then again, that’s when we were corresponding via Facebook message. We now use email, so perhaps he ignored my Facebook messages until he had a chance to log in and this is his customary I’m-at-work response. So I guess I can’t make anything out of it.

[EDIT at 16:59: Also, there's no way he could've read my email in 2 minutes because it was too long and he's not a native English speaker so I think he has to look up some of my slang. So he must've just seen the email, maybe glanced at it to see that it wasn't something that required urgent consideration and then responded that he'd look at it later.]

But ever since he said he’d date me, he has been in my thoughts. Maybe if he rejects my proposal for a date until I’m thin enough to properly date, I will come back down to Earth. If he’s really interested in me, shouldn’t the promise of weight loss combined with notable progress be enough? Or do I have to squeeze into a size 8 first?

And if I seem unfaithful to Chris in this, I consider that I’m playing by the rules of the open relationship. I even asked him yesterday if it might be best to downgrade our relationship to friends (with benefits, possibly, because Lord knows he frets about getting laid!), so that I can search for someone who wants what I want. He made some analogy about chewing gum that, in retrospect, was really a brilliant way for him to take my most recent attempt to either force a change in our relationship or dump him and turn it into an opportunity for him to say, “Aww, Kate. You cause so many problems in our relationship. You’re lucky that I’m willing to give this another chance.” But, at the time, I wasn’t able to realize how manipulative it was because I was late to meet David.

Last night, Caroline and I worked out for 90 minutes with a personal trainer. It cost us each about $15, which isn’t too expensive for a one time event but is way too much to pay for a regular workout. Our goal was to have him establish a workout for us and train us on all of the weight machines and then we’d be more competent on our own.

…But the trainer convinced us to meet him again on Thursday, so we’ll have one more 90 minute session and then try to do his routine on our own and possibly meet with him again in a couple of months.

Of course, a part of me would kind of like to continue with the personal trainer.

1. It was fun. I’m not sure how to explain it but I had a really good time and the 90 minutes flew by.

2. It made me feel like I was actually making progress instead of fumbling through a workout and not really knowing what I was doing.

3. It’s a good investment. Is there a better thing to spend money on than my health?

4. It forces accountability. He would encourage me to push myself harder than I would on my own and to actually go to the gym when I wouldn’t want to because I’d have an appointment. Presumably, anyway.

But, after Thursday, I will move forward on my own. If I fail to progress, then I will try to schedule another appointment with him. And I’m so glad that Caroline did this with me because I’d never do it on my own.

And now, it’s pie time. I lost 1.5 pounds this week, which is 9 pounds since I restarted my diet this year and a total of 43 pounds since my high.

I was so tired on Friday that I just wanted to go home and go to bed, but Chris told me that he would be home and online, so I got online to chat and play World of Warcraft with him. Eventually he told me that he was going out to meet one of his friends, and this is when I finally tell you about that group he was a member of and that he’s rejoined as a part of opening up our relationship, and that I hate. Hate. HATE.

It has many names, but we generally refer to it as the seduction community or pick up. As in pick up artists. As in, those sleazy guys who make a hobby out of hitting on women in bars (or wherever) and sleeping with them and then tossing them aside. This was Chris’ hobby when I met him, although he initially only told me this in bits and pieces.

Basically, it’s an online community in which men arrange to meet in person and give each other tips on how to get laid. They also write these tips online, but they go out together in groups of two (or more) to aid each other and inhibit cock blocking. And then they write up “field reports”—detailed accounts of their evenings out, including what they did that resulted in them getting laid and what they did that failed.

Originally, Chris told me that he was something like “Hitch,”—a dating adviser, to sad-sack men. And then he admitted to being involved in a community of men whose goal is to get girlfriends, but their inexperience requires them to go out and hit on women and sleep with women before they’re acceptable enough for relationships. And then he admitted that most of these guys are really only looking to get laid—they may also want a girlfriend on the side (that would be my role, of course) but they are not seeking out monogamous relationships.

There are lots of techniques for picking up these women, and I’ve read a lot of them. The basic goal is to be able to engage a woman in conversation, so you have to have something clever to say. And then you have to touch her and make your sexual interest known. If this results in having sex, then you’re A MAN!

Chris gave up this lifestyle for me. He never intended to, but he was blindsided when I asked him if we’d be dating exclusively after he first came to Prague and I guess he was interested in me so he decided to try an exclusive, monogamous relationship. At that point, he left the community, maintaining a bit of contact with them until he phased it out entirely.

Unfortunately, he didn't replace the seduction community with any other hobby, save World of Warcraft, so he saw himself turn into a "sad, pathetic, beta man" (his words). He gained some weight and became sedentary. It took him months to finally admit to himself that this wasn't working, but rather than find a new hobby, he declared that he cannot be in a monogamous relationship and he must be a pickup artist. So he opened our relationship and headed back to the community.

The open relationship is bothersome on one level but it doesn’t upset me nearly as much as his return to the seduction community. I find it detestable and disgusting. And since I’ve become more focused on losing weight and buying David’s love, I’ve let this unsavory aspect of Chris fade into the background, but Friday’s conversation made it front and center. And I again told Chris that I wouldn’t tolerate it; if he had to do pickup, I would have to leave him.

This was probably around 11 PM, and I knew he was going out around 11:30, so I told him good night and intended to go to bed. He sent me two text messages. One said, “Please don’t leave me.” And then, “I can still be the best man that you will ever have.”

At around 3 AM, my phone rang. It was Chris, returning after a night out. He said that he needed to talk to me and asked that I get on Skype, so I did. He said that he didn’t want to lose me and that he would do anything to keep me. I told him that he knew what I wanted, but I was just waking up and tired so there wasn’t much that I could say, so we decided to talk again in the morning.

Which is when he told me that he would give up pick up, if we could still have an open relationship. But he said that he didn’t need pick up and that watching his friend try to pick up women last night was embarrassing and abhorrent. He also talked to one of his friends about it (the one with the teenage mistress) and he agreed that pick up is embarrassing.

So, Chris said he would leave the seduction community. But he said that he would still go out with women and flirt and work on his social skills and still try to pick up women to sleep with them.

And, to me, this doesn’t sound any different. It sounds like he’s telling me that he’s leaving the community just to keep me satisfied, but he won’t change any of his habits and his being in Vienna allows him to keep this secret from me. The difference between his proposal and my perception of his pick up artist lifestyle is that his attitude towards women will improve, and he won’t be such a dick. But even that’s not a certainty.

Also, I may have written about this before, but I think that one of the selling points for David to approach me for a relationship was the fact that I’m now in an open relationship with Chris. And I don’t mean that that now makes me fair game. I mean that he probably thinks that he could have the same arrangement.

That said, why would that be an improvement over the current situation? He can sleep with me now; he can sleep with other women; he doesn’t have any responsibility to me. But maybe he wants to spend his life with a woman who will allow him plenty of relationships on the side. Or, if he takes me as his girlfriend, he bumps Chris off and has top priority but still gets to keep everything as is.

Gosh, so many possibilities.

Anyway, I’m supposed to go to Vienna this weekend. I’m planning to take an early train on Saturday morning so that I don’t have to cut out of work early on Friday. And then I’m going to the Netherlands the following weekend.

I haven’t seen David in several days; his mom is visiting; he turned 34 on Thursday; and we last exchanged emails on that day.

I’m going to see a personal trainer tonight and went on a very long (and beautiful) hash trail yesterday. That’s most everything, I guess.