Today, as part of my ongoing not-happy-with-my-life streak, I took a depression inventory and didn’t do so well.  It asked all kinds of fun questions, like how many times have I felt excited in the last two weeks?  And do I like myself?  Am I ashamed of myself?

(Huge heavy sigh)  I have to keep reminding myself that it isn’t as bad as all that.  I’m not happy, sure, but things could be a whole lot worse.  I had a tiny bump in pay today, for instance, which made me happy for all of an hour.  Now I can afford my phone bill!

But overall, despite the raise I am very grateful for, the afternoon was a suck-filled hollow of despair.

When I made it home this evening I decided I needed to think about strategy again and come up with a new-improved-plan!!!! to make everything work now and make me a happier person in the process.  Or as happy as possible, because face it, my set point is pretty low.

As part of the strategy session, I stepped on a scale for the first time since April.  I’ve been dreading the scale.  I’m fat, I eat pizza every week, I’m not healthy, I’ve broken my diet a million times, I ate chocolate today, I ate cheese crackers today, I hate myself.  I feel heavier every day, and when I looked in the mirror the fat on my belly was obviously hanging a good two inches lower than it was in the spring.  If I had to guess I’d think I weigh about 320 pounds.  More than I’ve weighed in ages.  All this depression isn’t helping weight loss.  I’m thinking all this, watching the scale fluctuate.  Up ten pounds, down twelve, up seven  . . . and it settled on 285.

I haven’t weighed this little since 2007.

I don’t know what to think.  I don’t know what I did right, because it feels like everything I’m doing is wrong.  I should be celebrating, but I don’t have it in me to make the jump from despair to triumph.  Instead, I’m stuck crying and trying to smile at the same time.  My face must have the most horrible grimace on it.

I don’t know where to go from here.  Somebody tell me what my next move is, please?

I’ve cooked from subscription boxes for several months, and I’ve enjoyed the experience, but it’s time to move on.

Subscription boxes helped me overcome my fear of new foods.  This fear was the Number One Reason for using subscription boxes, and I’ve been more successful than I thought possible when I started this endeavor.

The boxes also helped me make the jump from restaurants to home cooking by removing my personal Scylla and Charybdis, meal planning and shopping.  Removing those barriers moved me several steps closer to the kitchen, and I’m grateful to HomeChef and Plated for making that happen.

I’d like to continue using subscription boxes, but the meals are not budget-friendly.  I want to stress the meals are reasonably priced considering the services provided.  Each meal costs about what I’d pay for a meal at a chain restaurant in Texas.  The problem is that I can’t afford restaurant prices for six meals a week.

While I need to move away from subscription boxes, I don’t yet feel ready to control my own menu.  I still need support, which is why I’m moving to a meal planning service.

With a meal planning service, I get recipes and a shopping list.  I’ll have to go to the store, but I won’t have to decide what to eat.  (This is important because if left to my own devices I’d load the cart with popcorn and cupcakes.)

After researching several meal planning services, I settled on Mealime.com.  Mealime met my short list of requirements:

• Vegetarian (and pescatarian) meals.
• Tools to scale the recipes down to two servings.  (I’d still rather have ONE serving, but I’ll take what I can get.)
• An app with a shopping list.  Why should I waste my time copying everything to my phone, or messing with a printer?  Those are potential roadblocks.)
• A focus on meals that can be cooked quickly.
• An effort at zero-waste meals.  For example, if the service asks me to purchase a bunch of cilantro, one recipe may use half the bunch and another recipe will use the remainder.

I’m a little anxious.  I’m not sure I’ll like the meals, and I’m worried the app won’t meet my admittedly picky standards.  The alternative, however — complete mealtime freedom — is worse.  I’m not ready for that responsibility.

We’ll have to see how this goes.