Today is a five.

On a scale of one to 10, 10 being all is right with the world, and one being I’m so depressed I can’t get out of bed, today is a five.

Today I feel fat. I ate at restaurants all weekend, my clothes are tight and I feel bad about the way I look. This morning, I put on my spanx-type undergarments and tried on a pair of pants that felt way too tight. I felt humiliated and defeated just looking in the mirror. I swore to myself that today I would start anew.

About a month ago, a week before I was supposed to go to Hawaii, I did something I haven’t done in a long time. I bought a box of Slim Fast. It was a moment of weakness, and I was so ashamed of those cans that I hid them in my trunk, poured them over ice in a travel mug, and drank them in the car on my way to work, hiding the empty cans in the trunk again on arrival.

I drank them every morning that week for breakfast. I don’t think it made any difference, and I managed to get through my vacation with only a few body freakouts. (Considering the prevalence of tank tops and swimsuits, this was a pretty major accomplishment.)

Then, last week, feeling fat, wanting a quick fix, I stumbled on an ad for Slim Quick pills in my Whole Living magazine. I don’t know if it was the magazine context or what, but I bought them. Again, I hid it from my husband—because I was ashamed, not because he would say anything. I put some of the pills into an empty pepto bismol bottle that I could carry inconspicuously in my bag to work. I only took them for two days. Then my in-laws arrived and my weekend went all to hell.

So today, feeling depressed and fat, I swore I would have that last Slim Fast can for lunch. And nothing else. But by 10am, I realized that was a foolish thing to do. I’m sliding back into old habits.

When I was in college, I lost 40 pounds by using Slim Fast. I was the thinnest I have ever been in my adult life. And as soon as I stopped drinking the shakes, the weight started creeping back on. Then, I spent the next eight years yo-yo dieting, going on and off, gaining and losing the same 15 pounds over and over again. I never saw that lowest weight again.

A year ago, I swore I would not go on another diet. I realized that diets were as much an emotional crutch for me as the food was. In that year, more weight has gradually crept on. I am now dangerously (in my mind) near my highest known weight.

In the last month, I have slid back to the very beginning of this journey, forgetting—or willfully ignoring—all I’ve learned. I know it was because I’m feeling vulnerable, unhappy, and completely confused as to where I go from here. I’ve tried dieting; I’ve tried not dieting. Neither has gotten me where I want to be physically or mentally.

So, two weeks from now, I am going to see a therapist. This, too, is fraught with emotional landmines for me. In college, I saw a college therapist, and after about six weeks, she very kindly told me I was fine and that she needed my time slot for people who needed her more than I did. Three years later, in California, I went to a psychiatrist who seemed incredibly uninterested in me, who prescribed me the book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” to read, and who made me feel like there was nothing wrong with me and she was just happily taking my money. I didn’t like her, I didn’t trust her, and I didn’t have the cajones to quit or find somebody better.

I mentioned to both of these women that I worried about my weight, but I don’t think I ever really explained what I meant by that, and they never asked. I’ve been reluctant to see someone and talk about this elephant in my living room for a long time. I worry that I am crazy, that I have an undiagnosed eating disorder, that I am a lot sicker than I know. On the flip side, I worry that I am overreacting, that I am just lazy and unmotivated, that there truly IS nothing wrong with me except a lack of willpower and too much fondness for food.

Don’t ask me how I can think both of those things at once. It’s a complicated place, my head.

But in two weeks, I’m going to take the plunge. I’m going to walk into this new lady’s office and lay it all out there. MY ISSUES: LET ME SHOW YOU THEM. I’m going to take in an email I sent to a close friend on a day that was a one. Maybe I will take this in.

I’m going to say to her, “I want to feel better. I want to live differently. Please help me figure out how to do that.”