I feel like a broken record (or skipping CD, for those of you who are too young to remember): FRUSTRATED. Another week of working out pretty well, another week of absolutely no weight loss. Oh, I did have one morning where I was actually below 180, but I promptly popped right back up the next day. Ended the week at 181. So, basically, another wasted week.

I'm beyond frustrated. I've been basically stuck at this weight since March of LAST YEAR. That's right, March of 2006. I had one week last summer where I dipped down to my lightest weight, but pretty much other than that, I'm totally stagnant. I'm really starting to question if it's even worth continuing to try to lose weight. Heck, I've lost over 37 lbs since we started this back on Halloween of 2005, and really about 45 lbs from what I suspect was my heaviest weight. I should be happy with that, and proud of that, and to be completely honest it would be a lot easier if I'd just quit. I know how to stay at this weight; I've done it for over a year.

But I'm still so unhappy. I really wanted to get down to around 150 lbs. I really wanted to get below a size 10 (I'm not sure I'm even in a size 10 right now; I haven't bought any clothes in a while, and most of my pants right now are 12, although some of them seem a little loose but it might not be enough to get into 10s). But my summer is slowly creeping away, and I haven't made any progress at all. I mean, school got out on the 24th of May, and I was done with work on the 30th. It's now June 24, and I have absolutely nothing to show for the past four weeks. While watching shows like The Biggest Loser are very inspiring, they also piss me off, because I'm watching these people losing 10 and sometimes 20 lbs each week, over and over again, and I've lost nothing.

Obviously, consistent exercise and "watching what I eat" (right, watching it go from the plate to my mouth) isn't enough. I clearly need to make a modification regarding my diet. But this is where it gets very difficult. I am not good at cutting items out of my diet completely. Those tend to become the things that I snap and binge on. But I'm also not good at controlling my portion sizes. I've heard people recommend a variety of different things to control portion size, like using a particular plate that you fill up and you only eat what fits on the plate, or using a particular ladle or spoon to control the size of the portion, or getting one of those divided plates for picnics and filling the largest space with salad and the other spaces with whatever else you're eating. All of those sound like good ideas, but they aren't practical for eating anywhere other than home. So, you're gonna take your divided plate and your ladle to Outback Steakhouse and load up? Just doesn't seem realistic.

So, what can I do?

1. I can keep eating the same way and drastically increase my workouts. This works OK for the summer (although it will make it a little harder to get some stuff done at home because I'll be spending more time at the gym), but it won't work during the school year, when I have a limited amount of time I can be at the gym. This might be a good plan to lose the weight, but I'll need to come up with a different plan to keep it off.

2. I can try one of those portion-control methods, or at least come up with my own method. While this is obviously one that I really should do, I don't really know how to do it. I've never known how to control my portions, short of purchasing everything premade and prepackaged, like those 100-calorie packs of chips and cookies and the 100-calorie things of yogurt. How DO you control portions? How DO you stop yourself from loading up? I have no idea how to do this.

3. I can try to restrict my diet and cut some things out that I know I shouldn't be eating. I know breads are loaded with calories. I know pasta is packed with carbs. I know red meat is much fattier than chicken and fish. I know that desserts have sugar and fat in them. But I don't know how to live without them. That sounds incredibly stupid, and incredibly selfish; I have this crazy image of some little kid in Somalia looking at me like I'm completely insane as he slowly starves to death. But it has been proven that if you completely cut something out of your diet, that item is the one that will probably lead to your falling off the wagon at some point. Since I do have a binging personality, I'm afraid to cut things out completely.

4. I can keep working out and eating the same way I have been, but try a supplement like Lean System 7 or Stacker 2 or Hydroxycut. Again, this is one of those things that could work in the short-term, but it really doesn't have a realistic chance to work in the long-term. I don't tolerate things like ephedra very well (tried the old Metabolife long ago, and it made me super-twitchy), and I don't know that the other non-ephedra stimulants will work any better. I already take medication for high blood pressure, and I don't know what effect a supplement could have on that. And what happens when I stop taking it? Do I just gain the weight back?

Clearly, only two of these options are really viable. I can either dramatically increase my workouts, or I can try to figure out how to eat less. I know a lot of people out there keep food journals. If you do, how do you do it? Do you set yourself a calorie goal for the day, and figure out your calories as you go? Do you just track your eating habits and not actually count the calories, but perhaps track your weight loss and gain for each day, adjusting your eating to that? Or do you just write down everything you eat to shame yourself into eating less? I know CalorieKing.com is a good website to help track calories, but I don't know if calorie-counting is what I want to do. It takes a lot of time to figure out how many calories you are taking in (especially if you are making your own meals--either you measure everything or you just take a guess as to how much you are eating), and it requires you to stick to it. Do you have to carry your journal with you everywhere? Do you write everything down right away, or wait until later? There's just a lot to think about when you are doing a food journal.

Well, I've got a few things to think about. Whatever I'm going to do, I need to get started on it. I've already wasted about a month of my summer, and time is running out.