I'm too

SEXY FAT for my jeans. And my nice clothes. And most of my underwear. (Isn't that a pleasant mental image? You're welcome.)

I'm not in bad shape. I do work out (intermittently). I can climb 3 flights of stairs at a rapid pace while holding a conversation and carrying a heavy bag. I'm still reasonably flexible, and my upper arms are nicely taught, thank you. But I'm overweight, significantly so. 15-25 lbs. on my small-boned frame. My knees are giving out, my entire body feels like when you stick a hot dog in the microwave and it splits along the sides. I'm about to split along the sides.

How did this happen? I was doing so well on South Beach, and then....

Girlchild moved in. I am not blaming her, just using her as an utterly lame excuse. As a Mother, I wanted to provide her Favorite Foods in the house, to express my happiness that I wasn't paying for her to live in Tallahassee she was Home with her Mother again. Yeah, that's the reason! So useless, yet ever-so-damn-tasty, empty calorie crapfoods and bad carbs crept back into the house. Okay, so I bought them and carried them in, but play along with me here, pretend they crept. And then in August I changed jobs and they feed me at least once a week and sometimes twice, and these are not Dainty Salad People. And our office is being remodeled and we were without ice and almost without water for a while, so I wasn't drinking my water as I usually do.

Those are my lameass excuses, and I'm sticking with them. And then we can add the Menopausal Weight Gain Fairy, who apparently decided it was time to whack me upside the head with her flab-by-four. It's not just that I'm wider, I could live with the extra poundage if it was solid, but only my upper arms have retained their toned-ness, and I figure they are gonna give up any day now. I appear to be turning into a liquid in places that used to be solid. My fat clothes are getting tight.

But this is a crisis, people. I have social events on the horizon, no idea what I will wear, and I'll be goddamned if I'll go buy fat clothes. So I'm going to try something I haven't done since I was a teenager - really, really follow a diet to the letter. It's South Beach Phase 1 this time, really, not the half-assed version I did and still lost weight. Thanksgiving dinner I will eat the normal stuff. Otherwise, it's going to be lean (and mean, probably very very mean) around here until I can zip my jeans without anything squishing out over the waistband.

In the separated at birth department, I give you Crazy Aunt Purl's ass-piphany. I swear, we're cousins or something, she sounds SO much like me and my cousins it's uncanny. I'll be watching to see if Dr. Weil works his magic. Me, I'll go back to Dr. Agatston. I know he's right, I just ignore him.