I still believe…

I admit, I have a hard time with this.  Anthropomorphizing, giving human emotions and drives to inanimate things is something I think most of us do whether we know it or not.  Your computer or car doesn’t hate you, your dog might love you but not the same way your child does, etc.  I think we all do this with food a lot as well, I know I do.  The cake your co-workers brought in is not actually staring you down, saying, “eat me eat me.”  If it is, you have other problems.

If I allow myself to think this way, that food somehow speaks to me or has emotions, its like giving up, admitting I don’t have control.  I find this to be the most frustrating part of weight loss.

I am in control.  I did this to myself.  I ate too much, didn’t exercise enough and gained weight.

It would be easy to try and shift the blame somehow, certainly it would be more comfortable for my self-esteem.  In the long run however, I think it would be destructive.  If I’m going to live a long healthy life at a healthy weight, I need to be in control of that weight.  I need to be in control of what I put in my mouth and make logical rational decisions about it.  Shifting blame shifts the power to make those choices away from me, and that power is necessary for me to lose weight.

There are definitely foods I like that aren’t good choices.  I need to be able to make a reasoned choice about them though.  I can’t go to McDonald’s because I’ve had a bad day and french fries will make me feel better.  French fries are food, they don’t have that ability.  They taste good certainly, but in the long run they resolve none of the things that caused me to have a bad day and in fact, after I eat them, will most likely cause me to wince a little, because while I could have budgeted throughout the week for a treat, I didn’t. In eating them, I’ve made my bad day worse.

This idea is certainly the hardest thing for me to deal with, especially when I’m surrounded by people who don’t get it, who don’t have this problem.  The idea of the last piece of cake being “lonely”, or eating the last piece of pizza because it will go bad.  Let it go bad.  Throw it away and pour coffee grounds on it.

Sticking to a diet journal is helpful.  If I didn’t plan it out and write it down, it doesn’t go in my mouth.  I make substitutions sometimes, the fish instead of the chicken, but am trying really hard not to do things like have eat something completely different from what I have written down.

I’m tired of food controlling me and my choices.  Its time it take them back.  Its just food.  I have the power over it.

The scale is my enemy, so like the other people and things I dislike, I’m going to try avoiding it.  Weighing myself everyday is making me obsessive in a bad way, especially since its not moving away from 175.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that it reads 175 and the only thing I intend to change right now is the getting on the scale more than once a week.  I’m going to try and use the food scale more and really make an effort to journal so that I know what I’m putting in my mouth!

I hit my step goal of 10000 today.  I’m going to do the biggest loser cardio workout (the “easy” one), and I walked 5000 of those steps this morning at 6 am.

I’ve been reading about how to get through a plateau, and it has led me to contemplate joining a gym.  I would go back to the personal trainer that I love who helped me get on this path, but he’s simply too expensive.  A gym would be fraction of that.  There is one located halfway between my home and work, a NYSC (well in this case NJSC).  I’m still on the fence though.  Maybe once the snow is on the ground and going outside to walk isn’t an option.

I took my awesome dress back.  Sometimes its sucks being fiscally responsible.  As lovely as it was, and as lovely as I felt in it, I feel better about having 130$ taken off my credit card bill.

In good news, I hit my step goal of 10000 and did the Turbo sculpt video.  Yeah me!  My arms are killing me because I jumped from 2 pound weight (sometimes three if wore my 1 pound wrist weights) to 5 pounds.  Holy cow did I sweat.  Ten minutes in I realized I should have taken my makeup off as I smeared it all around my eyes wiping sweat off!

I’m starting to be able to see muscle definition in my arms.  There is still a generous layer of fat, but I can feel my tricep and when I pull open doors I’m fascinated to see the line of muscle down my forearm.  Its a good feeling!

I’m happy with how I did food wise today.  The banana republic happens to be located next to a Chipotle, so I ended up with a vegetarian rice bowl for dinner (with guacamole).  I still feel pretty good about it.  I didn’t eat all the rice, its mostly vegetables and the protein from the beans will be helpful.

I’m exhausted.  Don’t quite know what from (besides the exercise).  I’ve been waking up at 5, then sleeping until my alarm at 6.  Maybe its time to go to bed earlier and get up at 5 like my body apparently wants to…

So I’m taking a weekly free yoga class at the public library.  Its 80% people who are significantly older than I am.  Who are so much better at it than I am.  Downward facing dog is so freaking hard!  The instructor is always saying in her super calm soothing voice, now if you’re holding your breath or breathing hard or clenching your teeth, relax the pose.  When am I not doing one of those things?  Yoga is freaking hard!  It is fun though.  The relaxtion at the end of the session is really nice.  I’m not the kind of person who has ever been able to fall asleep in public places.  I never slept in the library while studying in college, on buses, trains, etc, so me being practically asleep in the community room of the library because its so relaxing is kind of amazing.  Or a testament to just how tired I am.

I had the tuna steak I’ve been craving for months for dinner tonight (w/ green salad, broccoli, half cup of brown rice and cup of sauce below).  I don’t understand why it was so difficult to find tuna steak in my neighborhood. I live in freaking central New Jersey!  Like 20 miles from the coast, where the fish are!  I miss Ohio so much sometimes.  Say what you will but at least the grocery is open past 10 pm on weeknight and the Target stays open past 930 on a Friday night.  Ugh.  Anyways, the fish guy gave me two for the price of one, which was nice, possibly because I was waving at him like I was trying to land a plane and finally they had to do the embarrassing announcement on the PA “A customer needs assistance in the fish department.” to finally get his attention.

So now I have tuna steak for tommorrow!

Tasty sauce for meats:  Four/five chopped cloves of garlic browned in a little ollve oil, add two teaspoons of capers, swirl then add two chopped tomatoes and one chopped red pepper, salt and pepper to taste.  Let it cook down, add water as necessary to keep it from drying out.  I like it chunky but you could put it through a blender to smooth it out.

I’ve been really tired.  My goal this week is to go to bed at 10 every weeknight so that getting up to work out isn’t quite so tortuous, or worse far too easy to skip.  Which I did today.  I marched ran in place and did squats in my room later in the day for two hours while I watched repeats of the Biggest Loser (I missed quite a few seasons along the way).  I was sweating and felt like my heart rate was up, but wow do my calf muscles hurt!  So it must have been doing something (hopefully something good).

Diet wise did okay.  Food scale is useful to keep portions equal.  I also ate practically two full heads of broccoli with my 8 oz of pasta and vegetables and my green salad.  I’m not sure I cooked the broccoli enough, I like it crisp but part of it were straight up crunchy!  The problem is probably that I just microwave it in a bowl and go.

Just finished making pasta bake.  Whole wheat pasta, lots of vegetables, low fat ricotta, spinach,  only place I fell down was using regular spicy Italian sausage.  In a perfect world I would have turkey sausage.  World isn’t perfect and neither am I.

I did buy a food scale today.  Trying to keep track of my portions.  I weighed out 8oz portions of the pasta bake to freeze.  8oz is a lot of food apparently, or at least it looks that way in the small containers.  I try to buy the smallest size possible so that my food looks like more.  I also eat off of the salad plates.  I tend to fill up empty space and even the small containers are three or four cups.  A serving of pasta is only 1 cup.  Sigh.  Its the sauce that’s my weakness though.

I’m really tired.  I know I have to get up tomorrow and do turbo sculpt.  I want to and I don’t want to all at the same time.  I bought bigger weights, stepping it up from 3 pound weights to 5 pounds.  Wish me luck.

Tomorrow is a new day.   Today had its highs and lows.  Highlight: the gorgeous size 12 Banana Republic dress I bought. Lowlight:  That I promptly then had two beer and two chicken fingers doused in buffalo sauce and blue cheese dressing.  Hopefully all the walking around downtown Philadelphia at least counterbalances that a little.

I never believed all those people who talked about endorphins and the post workout euphoria.  All I felt was sweaty and tired and sore.  Little by little though, I am beginning to understand what they are talking about it.  By no means does that mean that I go out of my way to workout or that if I thought I could get away with it I would skip it, but somewhere around 75% complete of my workout, I start to feel better.  I would say its nice, but its still more weird to me than anything.

Diet wise, I’m doing okay but I really have this craving for red meat.  I haven’t had it for months, but I would kill the cow myself right now if it meant I could have a steak.  I’m trying to distract myself with really flavorful spicy food - the second half of yesterday’s veggie rice bowl with some chicken baked with bean seasoning and garlic and crushed pepper, a salad dressed with vinegar and OO.  Hopefully that will confuse my taste buds.  I have to remember to take my vitamin so I get some more iron too I guess.

I admit it guacamole is my weakness.  I think I would be able to eat my own arm if it was slathered in that delicious green goop.  So today, while I gave in an to my need for food I did not cook myself, and got a vegetarian rice bowl from Coyote Moon for dinner, I did not get the guacamole because a taste isn’t enough, I want the party size wholy guacamole or nothing at all!  Ugh.

Also, I got home and discovered that my window mounted air conditioning unit has decided to start dripping directly onto my bed.  Awesome.  It would be so easy to use that as an excuse not to exercise.  I have after all spent the past forty mintues moving all the furniture in my room so that nothing is directly below the aircon, but then I’d find an excuse tomorrow and the day after.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love the Turbo Jam.   I admit I was originally skeptical about Chalene and whether or not I would be able to stand her but the videos really do make me sweat and I really don’t notice the time passing so much.  Its a nice change from some of the other workout videos I’ve tried where every minute seems like an hour.   I did the 20 minute Jam this morning.  I suppose I’m writing this as a form of procrastination since I’m going to do some other workout this afternoon.

I definitely struggle with feelings of failure, like I’m not doing everything I possibly can when I stumble and miss a repetition or when I only work out once a day instead of doing a little in the morning, and more a night.  Logically I know its crazy, but emotionally I feel like the instant I stop I’m suddenly going to ballon back up like a Willy Wonka character.  I find myself obsessing about what I’m eating.  I wonder if I’m making myself more unhealthy mentally by trying to make myself healthier physically.  It was supposed to be the other way around.  I suppose its better to be thin and not know what you want, than to be fat and not know what you want.   Tomorrow is a new day and new chance.