So where do we go from here?
Ugh. I am so fed up. Sick and tired of weight and life. Well, they so often go together, don't they?
I have now gained 15 pounds - more than a stone - back. That's a third of my weight loss gone. I am starting to question what kind of motivation I really need to do this.
I have heard American Olympic competitors get $1 million from the government for a gold medal. Perhaps it's an urban myth, I don't know. But what I do know is that if someone came to me and said, 'Aha! Rachel! If you lose those 47lb in the next six months, I will give you the cool sum of one meeeeeeeellion dollars', I would be off the couch and onto the treadmill faster than you could say 'Run, b1tch, run!'.
Anyone want to offer? 
No matter what psychological problems I have around food, and goodness knows there are a lot of them, the fact remains that if someone offered me cold, hard cash to lose my weight, I would do it. So there is a question of motivation there, as well as ability.
You know what my so-called best friend said to me this weekend? She said, 'Look, Rachel, you need to be realistic here. You have to accept you are probably always going to be overweight. It's not that bad. Everyone has a vice. We need them to help us through. Some people drink, smoke, shop, gamble, whatever. Your vice is food.
Look at your mum. She has yo-yoed all her life - and not just a little. No, she has gained and lost huge amounts of weight. You grew up with those habits. You grew up eating about twice the amount you should be, you grew up learning food = happiness, you grew up learning food was all-or-nothing.
So food was destined to be your vice. It is always going to be. It's not that bad. Plenty of people are overweight, and happy. You just have to reset your standards. Make the rest of your life good, and accept you can't control what you eat.'
Seriously, what do you say to a 'friend' like that?
Sod off, probably.
But the problem is, I can't do that. Because the person saying all those things? Me.
My little inner voice. The one that is supposed to be on my side. Is it right? Is it really trying to help me? I don't know.
I am sitting here picturing that future. And, sure, it would probably be OK. The trouble is, I don't want it. I want to give being slim another shot. And I know it is complicated, I know weight and the rest of my life are intricately tangled together - and, frankly, are in a mess - I know my perfectionistic nature gets in my way, and I know the more I want to lose weight, the more I eat.
I know I have tried every way of dieting, tried not dieting, tried a year and a half of therapy. I know I have extremely advanced binge eating disorder. I know, statistically, I don't have a chance in hell of losing weight and keeping it off.
I know when I say 'I am going to do this' it means nothing. I know I am about the most unmotivated I have ever been.
But there are also a few other things I know.
I know the way I eat is a recipe for sickness. I know it makes me completely and utterly miserable.
I know the more off track I go, the harder it is for my husband to stick to his own health plan. Not to mention the effect it might have on his career. What will clients think of a personal trainer who couldn't even get his wife in shape?
Basically, I know I just plain do not want to be one of the 95 per cent of people who regain all their weight. I mean, wow, just the thought of all that work I did on my thoughts and habits being for nothing at all.
I know I am never going to be perfect. But it would give me a big boost to say 'Look, I set a goal, and I struggled, but I reached it - because I wanted to, so I refused to give up'.
I know I cannot with any confidence say what the outcome of this will be. I know I probably shouldn't start another diet plan, because they never work. But I cannot go without a diet plan at the moment. So I am just going back to the only thing that has worked for me up till now:
2000 cals per day, making up any calories I go over by the next day. No bingeing even if I accidentally overeat. No starving myself because it is 'essential' I lose the weight I have regained before seeing any of my friends.
No sugar, alcohol or caffeine.
Half an hour of moderate exercise every day. Maybe I'll train for an event.
If tempted to overeat, I have to wait 1 hour and then rethink.
No more 'one more day won't count'.
And most importantly -
Get back into therapy and stay there.
Keep working on separating my eating from the rest of my life - whether I feel 'successful' in one shouldn't have a major affect on the other
Will I stick to it? I don't know. I expect I will for the first few days. Then I forget, you see, how overeating makes me feel, and I only see the good side. The so-called good side, anyway. Because really, the only good thing about it is that I can stop worrying for a while - the way I see it - because the worst already happened. Which isn't a good side at all.
So it is back to trusting myself to make the best decision for me, at the time - which for me is always 'do not overeat'. Because it never makes things better - only much, much worse.
I need to sort my life out, too, particularly financially. If I want to do some of the things I want to do, I need a new job and I need it soon, and I need to curtail my spending. Who knows if I will do this or not? There won't be any major problems if I don't. Just more mediocrity, I guess.
Sorry for the depressing post, friends!
Rach xxx 
LOL at wondering if I have a son. He's 14, so I've had PLENTY of time to get my body back in shape. It actually should be in a whole lot better shape with all of that time. Thanks for the compliment. Made me smile. 
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