Who Knows.

Weight: 268

Lost: 13

Regained in the past 10 months: 30

Eight months had passed since Karlie's mother had died. She sat lone in her trailer and buried herself in yet another box of chocolate chip pumpkin cookies. She felt like she'd lost everything. Her world had not ceased to function but it had stopped making sense. If she had been asked a year ago what she would be doing in October she would not have said, “living my my parents old 32 foot trailer by myself single, alone, and in California.” She might have said starting graduate school again but she would not have came to the conclusion of doing it this way. She wanted to put the cookie down, she did. She felt like a third party bystander watching herself do something she knew she didn't want and knew she shouldn't do unable to stop it. She missed her weight loss. She missed her new body now slowly receding to her regaining weight. She missed he mother. She wanted to step outside of her body and transform into a different being and give herself a verbal beating, “You are going to die if you don't stop. You will not be health, you will not be living, you will not be the person you want and deserve to be.”

She thought back and remembered the girl ever so conscious that the doughnut cheapened her. That it was a cheap thing to fill the space, to fill the void, the emptiness in her life, and her heart. She missed Stewart. She knew no one wanted to know she missed him and she couldn't admit it to anyone. She'd jumped straight in Jakes arms and bed and had hoped she'd skip over missing him. But, the truth was that Jake wasn't what she thought, and she still felt like the man she thought would be the one had left her. She sat at the computer on the particularly hard days and flipped through the pictures of her hiking trip with Stewart the summer before it all came crashing down and two weeks before she found out her mother was dieing. She was happy then. She was happy and almost the weight she was at the end of junior high. She wanted her back.

She tried to call Stewart, but apparently the “I'll be friends and I'll still be here to support you,” only made it a few months and just long enough for him to bring his new girlfriend to her mothers memorial. She needed him anyway. She needed him to talk to her, to help her figure out where she went. She needed him to help tell her how to get through this thing with Jake without it blowing up in her face. It wasn't fair she thought. She was supposed to be getting married in a dress that her mom helped her pick up this fall, not starting over living in the family's old trailer, and wondering what the hell was the point. The only thing she found good in her life at this point was school and chocolate. Those were the joys in life. She was alone and sad. And the sadness was exhausting.

Week 45 cont.

Karlie wanted to curl up and cry. No, correction, she wanted to curl up with rocky road and cry. Filling out her transfer papers and giving notice with her current boss had really brought home reality. She hated that she was so upset. But once again she had finally made friends and was being forced to leave them. It always happened this way. She got comfortable, got to know people then let them get to know here and then the universe pulls the rug out.

"oops, Karlie's about to be happy," she said leaning in her work kitchen, "It's not fair."

What wasn't fair was the man she loved breaking her heart and kicking her out saying he'd miss her. Cheating and tossing her to the curb didn't allow him to miss her. And made it even more painful for him to say it. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to hurt him so that he'd feel a fraction of what she felt. But nothing phased him. No amount of non disclosure or flaunting her friendship with Jake got even the slightest reaction from him. It was like the last three years meant nothing to him, he didn't care.

Karlie moved in and out of optimism about her life. She wasn't sure whether to be excited about possibilities, overwhelmed by them, or to feel like she'd lost everything she wanted.

Week 45

Total loss: 39

To Go: 98

This Week: ???

Karlie couldn't remember when her life had been as much a mess as it was now. She'd been knocked down so many times in four months she was unsure how to get up again. She was so stressed out that despite her work place becoming a cornucopia of fried food and sweets, that she part took of every day, she was still looking pounds.

Her life suddenly amounted to very little. Her mother was dieing, her career no where, and now after three years Stewart called it quits on her. She felt lost and alone and was pouring her sorrow into ice cream sundae's.

She did not want to move back into her parents house, did not want to change store's, and did not want the fact that her relationship ended three months after purchasing a wedding dress to be real. But it was all happening. And the irony of packing her things into the box the wedding dress came in was so painful she couldn't even cry about it, she just started laughing.

The only silver linings to her situation was that she was going to get the spend Christmas with her parents and things were looking good for getting back together with her high school boyfriend. It was all rather confusing to her at the moment. It was a fast transition but that didn't make it wrong, did it?

She and Jake had always loved one another, eleven years of friendship had to mean something. And Karlie wondered if they'd underestimated that love this whole time. She couldn't wait to see him.

Thanks to the transfer of her job from one store to another that she didn't want to make she was fully committed to taking advantage of the situation and spending three weeks in California. She did have some blessings in her situations she supposed. Now if only she could put down the ice cream and get on the treadmill.

Week 37

Total loss: 32.6

To go: 104.4

This week: -4.8

Karlie leaned across the counter and looked at the three days of cooking alone she had ahead of her and hoped her back would give her a break. She'd worked out five days straight with her Wii Fit without trouble, ate freely and lost. So after being jazzed up she decided to get the Jillian Michaels game and really go for it. In the end she was frustrated and in pain.

But, despite the throbbing arthritis in her spine she was determined to keep going, only back to her usual Wii Fit routine. Thirteen minutes of rhythm boxing, and twenty minutes of jogging. It was all cardio. She knew her body could benefit from some strength training like the Wii yoga or circuit training on the Jillian game. The soreness deterred her from tackling it with the same gusto as cardio.

But maybe it would do some good to work out her frustrations. Her boss had scared the crap out of her and reprimanded her to boot. Told her if she had time to stand around then she'd cut her hours and she could do it at home. Karlie was so stunned she didn't know what to say. Even though she was burn cleaning her woks and company policy shays she can't leave the kitchen. Her choices were stand there or sit there.

She wondered if her manager or the store managers realized how much her job in the kitchen was hurry up and wait. In a work day Karlie probably had three hours of work to fit in an eight hour shift. That's not to say the shifts could be shorter. She still needed to be there the whole time to keep the hot case full. But, for four hours of her shift she searched for stuff to do.

At seven thirty she had and hour and a half of shift left and all that was left to do was mop. She wanted to go home and workout. She'd had fried rice and chicken stir-fry for lunch and a slice of coconut cake on her break. Plus her plan for chicken breast and Rice-a-Roni for dinner. She couldn't let soreness stop her from continuing on. She'd half logged every day. Breakfast and lunch made it on the log, dinner and sweets did not. She knew she should be more vigilant but as long as the working out kept the numbers falling she just didn't feel bad about it.

Week 37

Total Loss: 28

To go: 109

This week: +3.8

Karlie stared at the picture of a girl she didn't know on the back of her eyelids most of the night. She was furious and discouraged. Stewart meant well, she thought, but he didn't understand the thing about before and after shots. It's not encouraging if the person doesn't look like she could have been you or someone like you. Because, even if their before picture resembles something like you, if their after looks like freakin' Heidi Klum leaning on the hood of a fucking red convertible they fall into a very small demographic of people that perpetuate the lie. The lie that if you eat/diet just right and workout like mad you too can strut your stuff like Tyra.

It hadn't helped either that Stewart had oh so tactfully said he, "wouldn't say anything else about her 'cuz it would just up-set her." I.E. "I'm not gonna say it but we dated." The next two hours she spent clearing her whole kitchen of all her snacks crying in waves of sobs, "I just want to be pretty." She wished for it so much and she knew that she'll always be the broader built girl with wide hips and broad shoulders that was "cute."

In quiet exhaustion she'd managed to put the china case together in an average amount of time. She was hungry but every time she thought to eat she saw miss blond in her camo bikini. Which made her thing of her own goal bikini. The picture of it was on her visions board, Speedo, two piece, and camo. She wondered if she wasn't reaching for something unattainable.

She thought about Stewart and how he'd slept through the whole ordeal. He hadn't said one word to her when she got out of bed at 1 had and he said nothing that morning. She didn't know if she was more frustrated with him or the fact that she was starving and completely put off food. She speculated it was an equal split. His purpose was sound but his execution was not.

The fact that she'd gained the past week didn't help either. That was what really triggered her situation. She was having so much trouble keeping her tracker that she'd decided to just workout everyday or at least 4 times this week. Which was hen Stewart decided to bring up this girl saying she's, "been working out for four years and look." Karlie knew what she saw was an impossible thing for her and didn't like being compared to her.

She sipped her Coke Zero and tried to put on a happy all is fine face to pick him up in 10 minutes but couldn't muster it. She still just wanted to be pretty. Her hunger eased with each sip and she was pleased with the fact that there was no calorie intake. She knew how she was acting was totally against program but. eat less move more right? Though what she was doing was eating nothing and struggling to get through the day.

Week 36

Total Loss: 31.8

Left to go: 105.2

This Week: -1

Karlie was still in a certain amount of shock. After 3-5 weeks of eating whatever came to mind she had finally regained her control and taken it all back off plus one more pound. She had felt great as she rolled around in her mothers Mustang with the top down. Her tracker still showed Months of no items tracked and she knew if she'd just get back on that she'd do even better.

But even all of that paled in comparison to how she felt Sunday after a crazy weekend of wedding dress shopping. She wasn't engaged, she had no wedding date, and Stewart had a new version of an excuse for waiting. But, her mother's Pancreatic Cancer had thrown her into motion. She wanted to shop for dresses with her mom and that meant doing it now.

She'd made two appointments and had gone into the whole thing figuring she wouldn't buy anything. But that was a silly thing to thing. Low and behold on dress three she had it. She felt amazing and couldn't stop smiling. Then the smile just got bigger when the woman told her that she felt that and 18 would be too big and that knowing she was still tailoring her body they should order a 16. Karlie was beyond impressed with herself at that moment. It was only a year ago she'd worn a 26. It was one of the greatest validations she'd had yet.

Week 35

Loss: 26.2

This week: + 3.8

Karlie had taken a serious thought to making better friends with God. He clearly had something against her. In a matter of one week her existence had gone from, "how do I cope," to, "how do I survive." Both her and Stewart's car's were down, they had no money, her mom, and now most recently her grandmother went into the hospital. She knew the only other thing God could throw at them was something that would just push her over the edge.

He goal for the week was to track every day and come Monday she'd already failed. She was mad at herself and frustrated by falling into old coping patterns. Being up almost four pounds should have been a wake-up call but she felt no more in control or determined than the last few weeks. It was sad, something she wanted so badly and being rid of something that hindered her so much was not doing the trick anymore.

She especially wasn't looking forward to seeing her therapist again and tell her she feels completely out of control and attacked by the world at large. And if it were plausible she'd stay in bet with Dryers and Captain Morgan all day.

She and Stewart had finally made some progress. Talking about marriage and her going back to school. Things were more open, there was more team work. She wished she could have his relaxed way of looking at life. Wished she could just say it'll happen when it happens. But it wasn't her nature. She was a planner, she set goals and worked toward them, She liked deadlines, firm way of knowing when when had to have something done or ways of knowing she wasn't waiting for a working toward nothing.