Since my last post, I’ve upped my diet pill regime just a tiny bit. Basically, if I followed the dosage directions, I am allowed to take up to 6 pills per day (2 at a time). However, I started at a half pill only twice a day, which is a fraction of the dosage.

I’m very sensitive to stimulants (well, except coffee, since I drink it every day, unless I go over 3 cups). Anyway, I’ve now upped my diet pill dosage to 3/4 of a pill in the morning with 3/4 cup of coffee, then 1/2 pill in the afternoon. The ones I take don’t have caffeine in them, so I decided it was OK to mix them after all.

I have to say this is working OK so far. Today was the first day that I upped my regime, and to be honest, I got the same type of frenetic, almost unstable energy that I got while I was deep in ketosis on the Kimkins diet. It’s really hard to explain - I feel like I have a ton of energy, but my brain is working overtime. I think of a million things I have to do, then start each task one after another before finishing one of them. The energy is incredible and I have to admit I love it.

Does that make sense? Probably not. But I’m enjoying the extra energy and appetite suppression. I’m not taking quite enough of the diet pill to completely suppress my appetite. However, it’s definitely making me eat less. I can only take several bites of a meal before feeling like I don’t want any more.

So I make sure what I DO eat is healthy. Plus I’m still taking vitamins.

We shall see what the results will be… I don’t think I’ll be increasing my diet pill dosage again anytime soon. “Frenetic energy” is one thing. “Wired” is another… I can’t stand the feeling of my brain being super-wired. Not too long ago, I accidentally mixed too much caffeine with green tea capsules. Well, it wasn’t pretty… I was driving along the highway and almost had an anxiety attack. Actually, I think I did have one. I felt like my brain was about to fly off without my body. And NOT in a good way.

I haven’t taken a diet pill since the day I posted about them (Monday). The reason for that is quite simple - I don’t want to mix my diet pills with caffeine for obvious reasons, and lately I’ve been getting my coffee too late in the day to then take a diet pill on top of it. Plus, I refuse to take the diet pills after 4pm because the side effects is inability to get to sleep. (I have enough trouble with that, believe you me!)

So as has happened before, as soon as I started complaining that I can’t lose weight to save my life, I suddenly lose more. This morning, I was able to fit into a pair of pants that were too tight on me ONLY LAST WEEK. So I am losing something, only it isn’t scale weight. I stepped on the scale this morning and it IS STILL THE SAME.

But I refuse to get upset, because frankly, I’d rather fit in smaller pants than lose scale weight, if it came down to it. Which obviously it is. One of my favorite BCBG hoodies, which used to be form-fitting, is now LOOSE. Seriously loose. I can’t understand it at all. Why won’t the scale move? Am I retaining extra water? It can’t be muscle because I’ve relaxed with the workouts. (After all, my elliptical machine is back in Tulsa, OK, and I’m here in Nashua, NH with only a stationary bike).

I just don’t understand it, at all. Oh well.

So, moving on… as I mentioned in a previous post, my car is in the shop getting its transmission rebuilt. So I’ve been renting a 2008 Chevy Malibu with Massachusetts plates since Saturday. I hated the car at first, but it has grown on me. The newer cars are really something… they have so many bells and whistles. Now I want a new car! But tomorrow morning I have to go pay $2400 to pick up my 2002 Honda Civic with its rebuilt tranny. Hmm… where is the justice in that? (In case you haven’t read my previous posts, my 2002 Civic has over 156,000 miles on it because I drove it all around the country the past six months, which is why the transmission pretty much gave out on it last week).

So onto non-weight related stuff… I found out yesterday that I’m not allowed to wear my contact lenses for an entire month! I went to the eye doctor yesterday afternoon because of a slight mishap that occurred over the weekend. (I didn’t mention it here - I basically was walking up my friend’s steep, icy, pitch black driveway and literally WALKED INTO A TREE BRANCH, which poked me in the damn eye). So I made an appt. yesterday to make sure my eye was OK since it seemed a bit irritated.

Well, the (extremely hot) eye doctor told me in no uncertain terms that I am NOT to wear my contacts for a month until I see him again. Apparently both of my eyes are irritated, slightly swollen, dry and just NOT good. I’ve been wearing contact lenses for 13 years, and apparently it has taken its toll.

So I’m stuck wearing my glasses for the next month straight! Which sucks. I can’t see as well with them. But I have gotten a lot of compliments on them. (Mostly from guys with eyeglass fetishes). They are the really cute, hip, small-framed type of glasses which I might add cost me well over $300. (I also paid extra so that they wouldn’t resemble coke-bottles, since I’m blind as a bat).

Too bad I can’t see for sh*t when I wear them!!!!! (Although the eye doctor said that within a week or two, I would be able to see better with them because my eyes would heal).

There is a lot going on in my life right now that I can’t even mention here, but suffice it is to say that I’ve been extremely busy. I’m planning on a trip into Boston (which is about 35 miles from here) sometime next week, which I’m looking forward to. Haven’t been there in a while. Plus I’ll get a lot of walking in while I’m there.

I’ll be honest here - I’m getting a little disillusioned here with losing weight. Stuff works for me, but it only works short term.

For instance, low carbing? Yeah, it’ll work for a while. Low calorie? Yeah, it’ll work for a week or two. Exercising like a fiend and eating light? Yeah, it’ll work (but I’ll also be sick for weeks). Exercising regularly and eating a bit less than normal? Doesn’t work at all for me.

And then it all stops. I’ve been conscious of every single morsel that has gone into my mouth in the past few months, and I’m not really losing weight anymore. Some days, my pants are looser than other days. Some days they aren’t. I’ve been averaging something like a 2 pound per month loss for the last two months. That is just unacceptable!

I mean, yes, overall, my pants ARE looser than they were a few weeks ago. But it’s not enough. The scale has remained at the same number for over a month now.

Eat six meals a day, people say? Doesn’t work. My blood sugar goes crazy for some reason when I do this. Plus, I cannot physically shove food in my mouth that many times a day! I’m just not hungry for it. Doesn’t that make sense?

Why won’t the weight loss continue steadily? It doesn’t matter if I eat 1200 calories, 600 calories or 1800 calories in one day. Nothing is really changing much, if at all.

I keep hearing all this advice. But none of it works for long.

I’m just fed up with this whole dieting thing. I’m on my last option here… and this better work. So…… I have decided to start taking a diet pill. Which one, I’m not going to reveal here. No, it’s not Hoodia or Alli. And it is NOT an illegal pill or substance. I’m being very careful, and and only taking 1/4th to 1/2 of the recommended dosage, but I’ve already noticed a dramatic reduction in appetite. Not that my appetite is enormous to begin with, but this pill makes a person not want to eat anything.

So yeah, it’s pathetic, I guess, to stoop so low to taking a diet pill, but I’m at my wit’s end here. For real. I don’t usually share the extent of my frustrations in this blog because I’m a pretty private person, but hey… I’m putting it out there now: I’m taking diet pills - just started yesterday. (Very carefully). And making sure to take vitamins EVERY SINGLE DAY and eat at least two servings of fruit and/or veggies per day.

We shall see…

Bad parties suck. You know the type - when everyone gets drunk and several fights and arguments break out.

Yeah, those parties. The ones where you waste your time standing around, wasting calories on alcohol. Where the same old thing happens and you wake up the next morning bloated because you drank too much alcohol. Where you didn’t really want to drink, but had to because it was stupid and boring and at least alcohol would pass the time.

I think I’m going to become a hermit from now on.

So anyway, a quick update on my diet strategy: I just don’t eat much. I wait until my stomach is concave with hunger before eating. I’ve been just too damn busy and stressed out to eat much lately.

Well today sucked. To begin with, I woke up feeling pretty crappy.

Let’s keep this short and sweet. I’ll boil it all down for you all:

1. My car’s transmission is shot. At 156,000 miles, my precious, beautiful 2002 Honda Civic EX needs transmission therapy. (Meaning, the tranny needs to be rebuilt).

2. The super-hot mechanic that I have a crush on, well, I won’t be seeing him anytime soon. After all, the only problem with my car is the transmission, and he (the shop he works at) doesn’t deal with those.

3. However, I did get to talk to him briefly on the phone today.

4. Contrary to what I posted a last night, Windows Vista does indeed suck. Badly. Super badly. I won’t get into details, but I’m very upset with it right now.

The good news is that I have DEFINITELY lost more weight. My pants are falling off my hips.

A few people emailed me and asked what happened on my latest road trip (from Tulsa, OK back to Nashua, NH) when I didn’t update TheSkinnyWebsite for almost 3 days. So here’s the story:

I left Tulsa, OK at about 2pm on Friday of last week. Sure, it was much later than I’d wanted to leave, but I am always late and behind with everything in my life. Nothing out of the ordinary. (Also, I was suffering from bad insomnia and couldn’t fall asleep until about 6am Friday morning! Then, I got up at like 9:30am. 2 1/2 hours of sleep).

So, I finally left at 2pm. I got to my first overnight stop - Terre Haute, IN - at about 11pm. It was too late to order room service, so I went to bed hungry. I had trouble sleeping that night, as the bed was way too hard for my liking. I probably got about 3 hours of sleep - if that.

The next morning (Saturday), I ordered a pancake breakfast and had about 1/6th of it. I wasn’t feeling very well, to be honest. I left at about 11am. I made it to Erie, PA that night at around 7pm. I found out that day - while driving - that a huge snowstorm was headed to New England the following night. Also, I realized that something was wrong with my laptop screen. It would only work if I angled it way down. As Saturday night went on, it got worse. I was exhausted and went to bed at around 9pm, after watching “Good Luck Chuck” on the hotels’ payperview channel. (For the record, the movie was extremely crude and stupid, but I like it anyway. I have terrible movie taste. :-P)

I woke up at about 2:30am, unable to get back to sleep. I figured hey - why not get up and just leave early? I had to beat a snowstorm home, after all. So I got up, showered, got dressed. Did a quick post on here. My laptop screen was not working right. Little did I know that by the time I arrived home, it wouldn’t be working AT ALL.

So I drove. I stopped for coffee, but I realized that I was extremely tired. TOO tired to drive safely. I was dozing off and disoriented. So I pulled over somewhere in upstate New York at a travel plaza and took a 10 minute time out. It wasn’t enough, but it was enough so that I wasn’t falling asleep behind the wheel. Honestly, I shouldn’t have been driving. It was unsafe. But I was very worried about getting home before the storm.

Somehow, I made it back to Nashua, NH by about 3:30pm on Sunday. Upon getting into my apartment in NH, I was so tired I could barely see. I brought in as much as my luggage as I could, then tried to hook up my computer to the internet. (It’s a major thing for me to be connected to the internet at all times of the day and night). Then I realized: the damn cable modem wasn’t working. So I called Comcast that night to try and fix the problem, but they said they needed to send a technician out no earlier than TUESDAY AFTERNOON. That was unacceptable to me, but I had no choice. Then I tried my laptop and realized that the screen problem had rendered the laptop useless. It (the screen) wouldn’t even turn on.

WTF? Seriously. WTF. Monday is one of the most high-trafficked days on my site. (TheSkinnyWebsite). I knew people would wonder what the heck was going on if I didn’t post.

Dammit! I was so tired that I didn’t know what to do. I ran to a nearby grocery store, grabbed some groceries (knowing a snowstorm was coming), came home, then literally fell into bed in a dead sleep at about 7pm.

I woke up a couple of times early on Monday. I looked outside, saw the snow, didn’t care. Heard the plows, didn’t care. I was sleep deprived and didn’t give a damn about anything except staying asleep as long as I could. (Sleep deprivation is seriously a horrible condition. If you’ve ever had the condition, you will understand. NOTHING matters except being asleep and comfy during that time). Finally at about 2pm on Monday I got up. It was still snowing and I had no desire to drive anywhere in that mess. So I didn’t.

So Monday passed. Then Tuesday hit, and I was forced to shovel my car out. (See a couple posts below this one). The cable guy finally arrived on Tuesday at 1:15pm, and I nearly kissed him in happiness. He took almost an hour to fix my problem, which turned out to be an “outside” problem. But I still am having problems, to be honest.

So, that’s the story. It was one of my most challenging road trips yet. I plan to stay here in NH for at least 2 1/2 months. I can’t handle another road trip anytime soon. And I love New Hampshire so much. It may seem like some small-town, boondocks type of place to some people, but it really isn’t. I can’t even explain why I love this place so much.