Remind me not to skip a workout......................the next time I mention trying on new clothes. I seem to have a drawerful of tops with promise, stretchy big looking frocks with give. I've got an important work day tomorrow and I want to be comfortable and I want to look cute, well I at least want to be comfortable and don't want to have to suck my gut in everytime I have to get up to do something........I just don't have a realistic sense of my enormous girth, an ex-boss once described me "behemoth" as a way of introducing me to her superiors. I was stunned when I read it, obviously not meant for me to see it. I have been numb and maybe I am waking slowly but now as I see how my arms are dimpled like a chubby baby, I really want to be numb again. So I had a tortilla with a slice of fresh avocado and then I had a slice of whole grain bread with a slice of cheap baloney. Fresh from a session of trying to figure out what to wear to work tomorrow I take myself straight to the fridge - like Frankenstein curious about the light of the fire, who gets frightened and singed nonetheless.

I buy the tops at TJ Maxx, price reduced, with optimism and joy and I don't try them on instead I enjoy catching up with the lady whose job it is to count the number of items you wish to take into the dressing room. I watch her unpack the new merchandise she's usually dealt the lingerie. I let the clothes pile up for the night before I might have to wear them and then I am stunned to see how they fit. I check my reflection as best I can in the bathroom mirror, no full lengths for me to see. It's enough to observe the material tugging at my belly and stretching over my butt and I don't linger over my reflection before I go for another and move on. Sometimes I don't even have to check in the mirror, I can tell almost as soon as I pull it over my head.

I am filled with disappointment and a half a baloney sandwich and an avocado taco and I am trying to feel it and not be numb or satisfied that things can't change and that this way of coping is just not working.

I have to up the cardio and return a few things.