Grrrl on a swing

The last month has brought no change at all with my weight, or rather, my weight range. The weight pendulum ist swinging back and forth in an amplitude of roundabout six pounds between highest and lowest points, meaning that every time I hope that I get closer to breaking the downwards barrier, I find myself face to face with sudden regains which bring me back to where I started from.
It doesn´t help that we have to visit DMiL at least once a month, which always means too little sleep and too many carbs on that weekend, both of  which seem to bring my weight back up further than just the calorie count of what I ate would make me expect.
It seems to get ever more difficult to shed those gains again. As if something were draining my body´s ability to recondense itself.
The problem I have with that is that every time I see such a regain on the scale, I keep remembering the sneers of my relatives, as in "you´ll NEVER get rid of that weight, you fat, worthless SLOB". I heard that a couple of times too often, and the scars it left on my self-esteem are not healing as well as I would wish. Nor is the impulse disappearing to do what I used to do back then, namely, stuff my face until I didn´t feel the hurt as badly any more.
The difference is that I recognize the impulse now, and most of the time, manage to not act on it. But that takes strength, too. As does the eternal vigilance I´m forced to when I see that even a single day´s slipup, even a single day when I don´t watch every bite I eat, means facing a four-pound gain the next morning and that it takes, by now, four to five days of strict dieting to get that off again.
Before anybody asks- I did not even eat four pounds extra of anything on that day, so the gain must be mostly water, that much I know.
I´m going to do an experiment with myself as a guinea pig this week. Namely, I´ll try to consume a lot more water than I did during the last weeks. If it´s water retention that makes my weight fluctuate so much, perhaps flushing out whatever substances inside my body make it hold on to too much water might help.
At least it will give me the illusion of doing something that makes me more likely to succeed. Before I throw in the towel for good and retire to the vicinity of the fridge.


Julia