Angel Food (lowfat)

It’s funny, I’ve looked in the mirror the past couple days and thought, “Boy, I do look pretty.” There can be an amazing transformation in one’s face when there’s so much less stress in life… My greenish brown eyes are shining again, and I’m back to a peaches and cream, rather than slightly grayish, coloration in my face.

Flush with joy from ending the semester, I have let my dieting slip up a bit week. I don’t just mean that I have eaten too much (although I have); really, I’ve just not paid much attention to what I have eaten. So, now I want to spread the joy to my plate and eat tasty, healthy things. I’m visiting my boyfriend this weekend, a time that could be a minefield of unhealthy food. But, I’m going with my food notebook in hand as a motivating tool. Really, I don’t want to look back on Monday morning and see “biscuits and gravy” as one of my meals. Wouldn’t “sea bass en papillote” look, not to mention taste, so much better?

I survived finals week, although my diet has been waaaaack-y these past few days. I was so busy working on assignments yesterday that I forgot to eat until the evening. By 6pm I was starving. I’m proud to say that I ate fairly reasonably yesterday night, despite my utter lack of food for the day. And, I needed to be reasonable after eating two meals of Mexican food earlier this week. (My body paid dearly for those meals…)

 The most terrific news of the week is that I am finished with my finals! I am but one class away from graduating next semester, and the class I’m registering for should be a piece of cake. (Speaking of cake, I had a piece of Burnt Caramel Cake this afternoon. It was worth the calories, especially with a good cup of coffee.) I have not yet figured out just what I will do with my evenings free. I know I must return to the gym, but tonight I don’t want to do anything more strenuous than about half an hour of yoga.

To use an American Southernism I feel “all stoved up” from finals this week. My body could use a good stretching. Perhaps tonight I will dust off a yoga DVD and ease back into working out. I recognize that, despite losing pounds, I have lost pretty much all muscle tone this past semester. Now that my school commitments have abated, I want to come up with a do-able work out schedule. Yoga is the one exercise I truly love to do, and I do it well. (I have my eye on a regular Monday night yoga class.) But, I also need to strengthen my legs to help with an old knee injury, I’d like toned arms and abs, and I know that my heart needs cardio. How does a working person fit in all of these types of activities without them becoming her only hobbies? Also, how do I do all the exercises that my body needs without ending up exhausted and decrepit feeling? Just some questions to the blogging ether…

This morning I weighed 154.4. I’m down 1.6 lbs from my last weigh in a week ago. I did pretty well diet-wise this week, eating very healthily at the start of the week (homemade eggplant salad and a chickpea stew). The end of the week wasn’t the healthiest, but I watched my portions well. I’ve been busy so my blogs have taken a back seat. However, knowing that I’d be blogging my weight today kept me motivated throughout the week.

Finals week is upon me, stirring up lots of old issues. One of the reasons I dropped out of college when I was younger was that I was so plaqued with thoughts of failure. (Failure, for me, was anything less than an “A.”) I would procrastinate and procrastinate until I was overwhelmed by work. I often slept my way through finals week, telling myself I’d study in bed. But, I always just fell asleep. I’m not overwhelmed with exhaustion and depression as I was when I was younger, but it is taxing to still be fighting the old fears.  

I don’t mean to wallow. I realize how boring it is to read someone else’s wallowing blog entry. It’s just that I’ve been tired lately from trying so hard to maintain my 4.0 in school, to remain close with my boyfriend who lives in a different state, and to lose weight with everything else going on… I know this state of being is only temporary. My finals will be over tomorrow afternoon, and I will then be only one class away from graduating in May (13 years after finishing high school!).  Tomorrow night, I’ll be able to get to sleep at a decent hour and wake up for a regular day at work. Things I’ve been putting off as I worked on my final projects, like yoga, a job search, Christmas preparations, etc., will fill up my evenings. Soon enough, my wheels will stop spinning and I’ll start moving forward again.

My little streak of losing weight each week has come to an abrupt halt - the scales read 156.0 this morning. That’s a one pound gain for those of you who are counting. Oddly enough, I’m not beating myself up over this small gain, probably because I’m too busy beating myself up over other things. I had really good momentum going there for a while. I was kicking butt at school, was more focused at work, was losing weight, etc. , but I became absolutely mired down this past week. Was it fear, apathy, PMS that caused this slow down? Does the cause even matter, or should I just focus on a solution?

I’ve always had a problem with over-analyzing things (see my last blog post, if you must). “Doing” becomes difficult for me because I spend too much time fretting things over in my head. I have a deep, genuine desire to be a “do-er.” I’ve had this desire ever since I was a little kid. Yet, I let myself get overwhelmed with fear and worry to the point that I procratstinate or, at the worst times, totally avoid doing things. So, what am I putting off? I have a paper to write, a photography assignment to complete, and some weight to lose. When I put the words down in writing in front of me (instead of scirbbling them furiously in a planner), this to-do list seems utterly acheivable. I see how ridiculous I’m being. And, I realize how lucky I am that my to-do list isn’t something like, “avoid mortar shells, figure out where dinner is coming from, and find a nice sturdy newspaper to sleep under.”

I’ve got to remember not to be overwhelmed by the work I have to do. Instead, I want to be the kind of person who sees all the resources she has to work with.

Since this is a weight loss blog, not a paper-writing or photography blog, I’ll remind myself of the techniques I talked about in my November 19 post. This is what I’ll do this week to work on 21 lbs I want to see gone. And, I’ll do my very best to keep things in perspective and to keep moving forward.

Technique 1 - I’ll record what I eat

Technique 2 -  I’ll eat real meals and not snack.

Technique 3 - I’ll be kind to myself.