I’m feeling really fat and horrible today. I don’t know why exactly. I mean, I think I can guess that it has to do with the fact that I have my period and this happens every month to a certain degree. On the other hand it could have to do with the fact that the clothes I wore yesterday were kind of shapeless and slightly too big for me and they made me feel like a blob. It could also have to do with the clothes I’m wearing today which are just a tiny bit too tight, which makes me feel like a slightly different kind of blob. The most obvious culprit is the weigh-in on Wednesday that put me at 161 pounds.

Horror. (Yes, my tongue is in my cheek.)

I have perspective on this, I really do. At almost any point in the past five years I would have been thrilled to step on the scale and see 161 pounds. I went back and looked at my weight log from the time that I was working on losing weight last summer. This day last year I weighed just about 164.5 pounds and I felt great. I was so happy about my progress. 164.5 pounds felt like liberation.

But today 161 pounds feels like a plunge into the pit of despair.

I know it shouldn’t, but it does.

One of my best friends lives in Singapore. I see her once or twice a year when she comes to the States for work. I saw her last September. I saw her yesterday. She looked so thin. It made me feel hugely fat. The last time I saw her I weighed 157.5 pounds, 3.5 less than I do today. Not enough for her (or anyone else for that matter) to notice. Never the less…

I feel discouraged today. I recognize it’s for no good reason. There isn’t actually anything to be discouraged about. I’ve gone back through my archives and I can see that while my weight stayed in the 152.5-154.5 range for about three months last fall, from October 15th-January 15th (roughly) I only got below 157.5 because I was sick as a dog for a couple of weeks and ate basically nothing for close to a week. While I may have an eating disorder that clouds my brain I still realize that being sick is not a sustainable model for weight loss!

For today I’m really having a hard time being happy with where I am on the scale and in my clothes. I’m looking ahead to my birthday, which is coming up in less than a month, and I’m wondering how I’m going to feel about what the scale says since my birthday will coincide with a weigh-in day. I went back and looked that up in my archives too and I see that last year on the day after my birthday I weighed in at 161.5 pounds. The rational part of my brain is telling me that I should be happy with this. But I’m not.

Seeing 152.5 on the scale last fall is haunting me. I really want to be back there. I really wanted to have my weight be in the 145-149 range. I’ve been trying to accept the fact that I’ve landed 10 pounds heavier than I’d ideally like. I’m tried from the beginning to be realistic with my weight loss goals. I’ve been trying for the past few months to be happy where my maintenance has put me. I’m trying to love myself. I’m trying to accept my journey.

Today, it’s just hard.