slow dancing in a burning room

went out dancing last night with my friends. I like a boy and he likes me. we have this cute little week-old romance going, and it's been a really interesting cross-cultural experience.

anyway. wanted to write something because I don't feel like I can say these things to anyone in real life. last night when we were dancing my head just started spinning with the most awful thoughts. almost in time with the music I repeated in my head you are worthless you are ugly you are stupid you are terrible you are nothing. I was giving into myself, almost making myself cry, but at the same time having an internal argument: I need to stop thinking like this and enjoy the night. this boy won't like me anymore if I act like such a downer. I'm being crazy. I need to stop this and pay attention to being happy with him. when we left the dance floor we sat outside and I blabbered in english about how horrible I felt, only telling him the truth because I knew he couldn't understand me.

I guess drunk me gets sad. 

a little ramble

133 this morning, or at least I think so. The scale in this house looks so old and unreliable. Plus, it's in kilos so I have to do a conversion and this makes the results seem less real somehow. Like if it's kilos it somehow doesn't count.

My weight was pushing 150 when I left the states two months ago, this is the easiest and maybe the fastest I've ever gone between my two normal weight extremes, 150 and 130. I'm always bouncing back and forth between this twenty pound range in my periods of dieting and binging. In Colombia I eat high fat foods and so much starch, but I'm losing still. typical day:
b: cafe con leche and some sort of cracker or cookie-type thing
l: fried or ground beef or pork, white rice, lettuce and tomato salad, fried plantains, and juice
d: fried plantains or fried dough called "arepa"(which I usually purge)

I don't usually snack, but when I do it's usually popcorn or crackers, more plantains, chocolate, fruit, or baked goods if we have them. There's not a ton of veggies in my diet, but there is a ton of fresh fruit and I take a daily multivitamin.

This is a complete 180 from the rest of my life's eating habits. Since I was about 8 I've been a total emotional binge eater. I started dieting when I started getting fat in elementary school, simple things like skipping meals or desserts, which then always backfired and triggered a binge. The cycles got more intense in high school when I got better at fasting and dieting, and better at finding and hiding binge foods. I used to steal foods from the cupboards in my house and go to the store with my little saved money and then go find a safe private area to eat as much as I could as fast as I could. Needless to say, I was a very fat and ugly child/teen. I lost weight and felt better for the first time when I joined the track team in 9th grade, but I always put the weight back on in the off season. I lost weight effectively again when I was home from college for the summer. But when I started to gain again back at school, I taught myself to purge and wandered into the world of bulimia.

I feel better bulimic than I did as a just a simple binge eater. At least it's a tiny bit more glamourous and a lot less shameful. It's disgusting and terrible yes, but the cliche is true, I feel so much more powerful when I can get rid of the food I don't want inside me anymore. And I felt special and important when I started going to outpatient eating disorders treatment for about a month. The actual therapy was shit, but I felt vindicated by it. Like my problem was more real than just something in my head.

Converting into kilos

After I got home from work this morning (I work in the morning and the afternoon, but I come home for lunch) my host mother was standing in her bedroom on the little scale she has. She then demanded that I step on it so she could know my weight. I only wish I could effectively communicate to her how uncomfortable this makes me feel. But I don't speak Spanish well enough, so I had to do what she wanted. 63 kilos. She remarked that I'm only 4 kilos heavier than her granddaughter.

The weird thing is that Colombians think being a little bit fat is a good thing, it's not attractive or desirable to be super skinny. They like girls with big boobs, a slim waist, and a very big butt. Well I go the big butt, but the waist I'll have to work on and the boobs are a lost cause.

I was a little happy about learning that I'm now 63 kilos. That's somewhere around 138 pounds, which means I'm only 2 pounds away from my healthy weight benchmark. 136 is a magic number for me, it puts my BMI at 24.9, just under the line for being overweight. My lowest weight ever was 129, and that only lasted for about two weeks, so anything in the 130's is a good place for me. My body just always wants me to swing back up to the high 140's, and I hate being that weight. 

Hopefully if I just keep this up, monitoring my portion sizes and avoiding food after 6pm, I can keep losing. Ideally I should be exercising as well, but it's too damn hot here and the gym is really far from my home. I do squats and crunches and leg lifts and stuff like that in my room, but I really can't do any decent cardio besides jumping jacks.

I joined an online forum/message board since I don't seem to have any readers here anymore and can't find too many blogs that I enjoy reading. All my old favorites seem to have disappeared. The forum is called MyProAna.com and my name there is flowergirl8461. Follow me if you like!

Besos de Colombia! xx

Paradise

A few pictures from my weekend, 24 hours in paradise.

My friend on the beach

me on the porch of my cabana

Now, as you know, I am living in Cartagena Colombia. I love the city but sometimes I need to escape it for a little while. A friend and I packed our backpacks and took two busses and a mototaxi to Playa Blanca, the most beautiful beach within an hour of the city. I wish I had photos from the moto to show you, it was the most fabulous ride. It had just finished raining when we made it to the last town before we crossed the bridge onto the island, so we were lucky with the weather. But then once we had crossed the bridge, all the water on the road was coming up as steam. Driving through the mist, tropical plants on all sides, it was a magical start to our adventure. When we finally got the beach I wanted to cry with happiness. The water was perfect clear blue! Immediately I was in love with this place.

We stayed at a tiny little hostel that was only a second-story cabana and a double bed with a mosquito net. For just one friend and me, it was perfect. There was no water and no electricity, but we were served sweet tinto in the morning and had the pleasant company of the owner, his son, a cat, 5 kittens, and a very large hermit crab. Rustic, but intensely beautiful and comfortable. We fell asleep to the sound of the ocean and woke up already on the beach ready for another day of sand and sun.

Hooky

Slept through class this morning (on purpose.) I woke up at 5:45 to get ready and then just got back in my bed, turned off the alarm and decided I wasn't going. Sorry, school. Partly I was just being lazy, partly I was avoiding my teacher who annoys me and make me uncomfortable. He's that creepy uncle type guy, not quite creepy enough to make complaining valid but enough to make you never want to be around him if you can help it.

So instead I watched TV on my laptop, made banana bread, and listened to the radio while I cleaned my room.

b: cafe con leche and dry bread
l: rice (un poco), patacones, beef and onions

Trying to plan a trip to Playa Blanca this weekend, I have three days off from school in a row and I want to take advantage and get out of the house for a little while, maybe see something interesting. Really missing home and friends right about now.

Useless

I'm a teacher now. A neurotic, self-conscious, under-skilled, over-educated kid who is for some reason entrusted with molding young minds. This was not a good idea.

The reason I signed up to do this program was to travel, and to escape from a life I didn't like back in the States. But, to my surprise and disappointment, I am still the same person I was, just in another country this time. I am still lazy and unable to complete any of the projects I dream up. The staff and students at this school must be so disgusted with me.

desayuno- cafe con leche y dos rebanadas de platanos amarillos
(breakfast- coffee with milk and two slices of yellow plantain)

Then I had one class for the morning, half of which was students doing a pointless worksheet. After the worksheet I had no idea what to do so I let them run wild. They gossiped and played on their cell phones and horsed around. I feel terrible wasting their time this way, but I'm paralyzed. I have no idea what to teach them or how to keep them interested. When I speak to them I am so nervous I am shaking. Really I shouldn't be nervous at all, I could be speaking in gibberish and it wouldn't make a difference, they can't understand anything but the most basic of English phrases. But still, with all their eyes on me like that, I lose my cool (as if I had it to begin with) and start to stutter and stumble over everything. I can't fucking do this.

Now lunch time. I made mango juice and my host mom is making lentils and rice. At least it's healthy, if a bit more caloric than what I should be eating. I'll try to write again later, dear reader. If you exist, which I'm pretty sure you don't.

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Later...

In my afternoon class the teacher asked me if I "had gotten heavier" since I arrived. Then later the same guy told me "Yes, see you tomorrow. And enjoy your dinner, but don't eat too much." FML. I know it's a Colombia thing, they don't have the same sensitivities about weight that Americans do. But still. Ouch.  (and for the record, I've actually lost weight since I arrived here in Cartagena.)

Back again

Yeah. I'm back. New blog name and everything. I couldn't even tell you how many different names this thing has had since I started writing it back in high school. Now it's important to me to stay anonymous, but I'm sure it would be quite easy for anyone who knew me to figure out who I am. A risk I guess I'm willing to take to have this community back again.

I'm living in Colombia now as an English teacher. I have another, real life website where I'm completely honest about my identity but lie in every post I write. I write that I love it, only talk about the positive things. It's all very professional, but I feel strangled by trying to look polished and happy. Reality is that I'm drowning. I hate learning Spanish. I'm so stressed about making friends and my image that I've reverted back to old habits, knowing at the same time that it's terrible for me and that if I commit with enough fervor I could actually get there this time.

The scale in my host mom's room told me today that I weigh 140 lbs. But it's a new scale so I don't know what to compare that to, plus it's old and yellowed and untrustworthy. At least it's told me I've lost weight, though. Before I left the US I was somewhere around 150, so that's a good ten pounds down in a month and a half.

Here my diet is mainly fried things, but I don't binge in the same way I used to which has got to be helping me lose a little bit. On the other hand, I've almost completely stopped exercising. Lost my fitbit on the second or third day in country, but I somehow don't care about that at all. I just know that I'm walking drastically less than I did in Boston and there's almost no use in tracking the two or three thousand steps I take everyday.

Everything I eat is made by my sweet host mom, she's an excellent chef. Patacones, arroz con coco, cerdo frito, yuca, I could go on and on. She serves me far too much, but I've started complaining loudly that I'm very fat so she will feed me a bit less. I hate talking about my body image out loud, it's so gauche, but in this case I'm using my words as a tool. Colombians are so different from Americans in this way. They very openly tell others "you look fat" or "you've gained weight." But at the same time, that's not necessarily a bad thing to them. Today my host sister told me twice that I have a big butt and she wishes she could have a butt like mine. I'd trade for her 110 pound body in an instant. But I'll get there, this is the year I can focus and get thin for the first time in my life.