Ready Pac Lafayette (my favorite bagged lettuce)
grape tomatoes
Mini Babybel, cut up in about a dozen pieces
dried, sweetened cranberries
Sunkist Almond Accents, Butter Toffee Glazed
Newman’s Own Lighten Up Honey Mustard Dressing

I made this salad up in my head in the store today, wanting something new. I’ve eaten it three times since then. Yum times infinity.

Project Fit Not Skinny is in intermission while I get my life and my issues together.

My weight is steady in the neighborhood of 218, seven pounds over my lowest. But my anxiety, compulsive (crazy) thoughts, and insecurities have all taken a major fall in the last two months.

Maybe I can only work on one thing successfully at a time. If so, I’m sorry that right now it just can’t be this.

See you soon.

I tried on pants from the Junior’s department last week that fit, and I didn’t even buy them because I didn’t have to buy them. Gone are the days where only one, maybe two things went onto my body.

I have a new job where I burn a lot of calories but work a big chunk of time where I don’t get to eat. I’ve found myself eating larger breakfasts and faster lunches than before. When I eat because I’m starving, I eat so much more (and often via the microwave.)

But life is good when you’re fitting into clothes you can pay for yourself.

Even if I feel totally fat.

I’d like your help in advancing a sister site to Fit Not Skinny.

If you suffer from (or used to suffer from) panic disorder, panic attacks, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety or social phobia, and are willing to share your story, your progress, and/or your methods of coping, please email me and tell me about yourself at story@fitnotskinny.com.

Oatmeal applesauce muffins, originally uploaded by fitnotskinny.

1 cup old fashioned oats (5-minute oats)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup applesauce
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 egg
1/2 cup raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 400. Spray muffin tin or line with paper cups.

Combine oats, sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and raisins. In a separate bowl combine applesauce, oil, egg, and vanilla. Add to dry mixture, stirring just until moistened. Divide evenly among 12 cups.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until tester comes out clean.

Info: 163 calories, 23g carbohydrates, 2.5g protein, 7g fat, 1g fiber.
For me: 1 starch, 1 fruit

These would be so good with dried cranberries instead of raisins and added walnuts. I’ll do that next.

I admit I’ve been counting calories, not portions of food like I should be. Instead of making sure I eat a certain number of each kind of food each day, I’ve been trading a good-fat serving or fruit for things like Skinny Cow sandwiches and rice cakes with peanut butter. Could be worse.

Also, gone are the days where I could get in a gallon+ of water easily. Maybe it’s the cold weather? I’m struggling with getting in even two quarts. I know it affects me.

I am making a take on Gillian McKeith’s lentil stew on the stove right now. I’ve decided I will prove to myself that I can live the next 40 days on plan, even without weighing myself. I turn 25 this year and I want to cross that mark under 200lbs. 199 marks my move into the “overweight” category from “obese.”

Well, I had a granola bar in the car but it was that or like totally pass out.

And my jogger/rebounder/trampoline arrived today! It’s pretty hilarious.

I weighed 213.6 in my jeans this morning (I forgot to weigh myself before I got dressed, and I was almost out the door.) I should take the hint and stop having suddenly-fat-again nightmares.

I know. WHAT?

I think this is my first day on plan since, I don’t know, Halloween? November sometime?

I’m so bored with cheating–even part-time. I was feeling super sluggish and tired. Besides that there are no chocolate chip cookies in the house anymore, so what’s the point?

That means, for this year, if I count my lowest weight (which will not change by the time it’s officially 2008), I have lost around 47 pounds this year. Less than a pound a week on average. Eww to that.

I have 50 more pounds to lose, or ideally more (my goal weight is 159–only five pounds less than the highest safe weight for my height) and sometimes I have no idea how I am ever going to do it.

Just recently, almost overnight, my favorite jeans–so much my favorite that I own two pairs in the exact same size and shade–began to show my underwear when I bent over or sat because they are falling from being too big. I could be a 14 if I tried harder, if I wanted it more.

Last weekend, my neighbor on one side called me by my mother’s name when he waived hello from a distance, and today my neighbor on the other side had a conversation in front of me with my mother as if I wasn’t even there. In his southern accent, he said to her, commenting on my size, “Look what she done did,” really, really embarrassing me. When I walked away, he yelled for my attention and said, “If I wasn’t so old, I’d ask to put a ring on your finger.”

Weird.

Sometimes it feels like I’m still standing at the bottom of a mountain. It’s just smaller. But so am I.