I should see each time I feel like crap (aka now) and DON'T eat because of it (aka now) as a positive practice. I am a teacher at a school with very challenging kids and a musician, which means that my heart is on the line 24/7 with what I do, so I better get used to feeling kicked in the stomach and having to deal with it!
Tonight, for example, my band had a bad show, and I'm sitting here feeling very disappointed in myself. But most of what happened does NOT involve me--I did my best! All the things that make me feel bad about it--the incompetent sound guy, getting kicked off the stage early, not enough of a crowd, and a false start during the show, a jerky comment from my friend's boyfriend--were out of my control. I just feel silly that I got all dressed up for it, bought a new outfit and everything, which I never do, and it didn't even go that well.
But the bright side, if I were one of those people who looked on the bright side, would be that I have a new outfit!
So why eat over it, right?
Right.
Thanks for listening to me whine :-) The whole point of blogging is to get our feelings OUT rather than to eat over them, so this means a lot!
Drove out to the 'burbs where all my friends seem to be moving, and had lunch at the Whole Foods salad bar. You'd THINK with a name like "Whole Foods" you'd get healthy food nomatter what, but NO. I'm sure it was organic and all that, but I managed to get waayyyy too much food and paid waayyy too much for it. That's the problem with these salad bars; before you know it, you've piled on like 2 pounds of food that you then must pay for, calorie-wise AND money-wise.
I haven't been a wise enough eater for long enough to be good at chosing at the salad bar, so I'm not beating myself up too much. Plus, there were vegetables in there...somewhere...
And, ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to say that I made it through ANOTHER tough night last night. I wanted nothing more than to go out and get some additional food, but I did NOT. I went to sleep hungry, then, strangely but what always happened, I woke up feeling normal. Not starving, just normal. This is further evidence that what is getting to me at night is what they call on things like Oprah EMOTIONAL hunger.
This seems like quite a paradox, but one thing that sabatoges me about trying to lose weight is the fact that I AM overweight. When I'm eating whatever I want, when I feel bad about being fat, I...eat to feel better!
When I'm not eating whatever I want whenever I want--like now--I cannot eat to feel better about being fat. I can only hope that the day will come when I'm not...and that day seems so, so far away.
Not only a good country song, but also my situation! The night is the WORST when it comes to eating. For some reason, I guess because my body is used to it, I can't get to sleep unless I am very full. You know how you eat a big turkey dinner and fall asleep? That's how I like to feel.
But last night I did NOT feel like I had eaten a big turkey dinner. I had eaten a normal amount, so my poorly-adjusted stomach interpreted that as hungry. That was a rough night--I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. reading books, waiting for that "hungry" (but not really hungry) feeling to go away, but it didn't.
But I MADE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT. Meaning, I did not eat anything extra. And I woke up feeling great. Well, I felt great after I had my coffee, that is.
I used to watch Oprah (I LOVE Oprah) back when I had a TV (and I MISS TV, but alas I consider myself some sort of new-age yuppie, and so thought life without a TV was a life better fulfilled, which was the WRONG decision), and Oprah said that it takes your body FOUR DAYS to adjust to anything huge. And I find not eating fast food every day, and not eating a ton of food every day, a huge adjustment, and so I'm just chalking up the rough transition to that.
It won't be this tempting to break my diet every day, will it? WILL IT???
Look at me, I'm COOKING! You cooks out there are thinking, "wow big deal, I do that three times a day every day." Well I have not for the past few years.
Since I adore bullet points, here are my excuses:
My kitchen is a closet. Literally. More than one person cannot fit in it, the gas stove looks like it's from the 1950's and burns everything, and I have to store away my coffee pot after using it because there's not enough counter space.
Also, I live in a VERY old apartment building in the south, and I have cats so I can't spray for bugs with that strong stuff, so if I don't feel like washing all dishes and counter spaces immediately...well...I have no choice. I must. You all in my situation know exactly what I'm referring to. I wash down the entire kitchen with bleach-based cleaner every night and take out the trash every day, and to no avail :( I blame my neighbors, but what can I do? It makes me not want to use my kitchen at all, because the less I use it, the more spotless it is at all times!
During the year, when I get home from work and band practice, sometimes it's 9 o'clock. Cooking? No. Fast food or frozen dinners? Yes.
My utensils are all left over from an ex-boyfriend and are all approximately as old as my stove (see above).
How do you cook again? I forgot.
COOKING FOR ONE IS SO DEPRESSING!
So there are the excuses, put out there. And I shall conquer--or put up with, in the case of the state of my kitchen--each of them! I'll just keep it relatively simple like I have been for the past two days, keep scrubbing the ol' kitchen down to the best of my ability, and maybe budget for some new utensils next month. I'm already fantisizing about William-Sonoma.
And I can always call my mom--the best cook in the world--and bother her with silly questions like "um...how long do you bake a sweet potato?"
When you're used to overeating, there's a probem when you start eating "regularly"--your body doesn't remember what that's supposed to feel like. So last night, I'd eaten my dinner, and my stomach said, umm, is this it? I wasn't HUNGRY per se, just not full to the (unhealthy) point I'm used to.
So, as the story goes, I panicked. And ate some more. And then a little more. Finally, I felt full in that overly-full way that I'm used to, but I had broken my eating plan by not eating one dinner, but basically THREE dinners.
Another day, another shot at it. Today I am eating ONE breakfast, ONE lunch, ONE dinner, and having ONE fabulous trip to the gym. Hopefully this will eventually lead me into the land of ONE hundred and something pounds.
I just have to get past the less-food-freak-out that will inevitably strike again. Now where's my coffee.
I recently saw the movie Food inc., a very powerful movie, and the thing that stuck with me is how removed I've become from the process of enjoying food. I THINK I enjoy food--clearly, since I have become so overweight in the past few years--but I don't enjoy it nearly as much as I used to when I ate normally. The movie pointed out that, as Americans, we are disconnected from our food--we spend less on it than ever before, always looking for the biggest discounts (yup, that's me!) but ultimately paying for the lower quality (hence my dissatisfaction when I eat the value-foods, hence my eating much more of it).
Yes, it would be nice to save money on food, but shouldn't I be spending more money on high-quality food at the grocery store and Farmer's market and less on going out to the bars on the weekends? Unfortunately (big sigh), I think the answer would have to be yes.
I've decided that this is what I want to go for. For me, diets bring anxiety. Diets, to me, mean predicting that I am going to be hungry and unhappy for the upcoming months. That, inevitably, leads to nothing else except FAILURE. What I will focus on instead is cooking, choosing quality food that makes me feel good about what I'm doing for myself AND the environment (if you've seen Food, Inc. you know what I'm talking about), and re-connecting my body with my mind.
The Plan:
Since I get VERY easily overwhelmed, I'm going to just start my cooking with dinner for now.
Breakfast, I love me some Carnation Instant Breakfast shake mix with a nice cold glass of milk, so I'll keep that how it is. I don't care what anybody says, that's pretty much all I can stomach in the morning, and it keeps me full til lunch.
Lunch as a teacher (when school starts) is a TERRIBLE experience. We have approximately 20 minutes, during which time I am expected to get ready for my next class, calm upset students, socialize, etc. I know I will get harrassed for this, but for NOW, I'm going to plan a Slim-Fast bar and some fresh produce. I KNOW it's bad, but it's something small and simple I can enjoy. In reality, if I tell myself that I'll cook on Sunday for the whole week for lunches, I WON'T, then I end up doing the vending machines.
Snacks=fruits, veggies, nuts,etc.
Eating out...as a single girl in the city, I cannot say I'll never eat out, because then I will ANYway. Let's say once a week, shall we?
Two refills of my water bottle a day, because I LOVE water, and it makes me feel great...when I actually make myself drink it.
There. I have summed up my entire plan in six bullet points. Funny, because diet books do their plan in 350-plus pages :) We'll see how well it'll work, but knowing myself, I need to do something that will work for ME. I have tried everyone else's diet and failed, so I might as well.
...because all I've had is coffee. (I just woke up. I'm lazy in the summer.)
I am really at a loss as to what to do here. I've had so many issues with dieting in the past, and weight loss in the past, and weight GAIN in the past, that it haunts me. The complicated rules of weight loss programs, to be honest, make me give up. Something simple is really all I can manage.
But if I don't stop running away SCARED, I'm never going to do anything at all! I'm 25 now, and it suddenly hit me that I'm no longer ABOUT to live my young adult life--I'm actually living it! NOW! And in some ways missing out on it, because I'm spending so much time feeling so self-conscious about my weight.
So I am repeating to myself: this is what I'm going to do today. Keep it simple.
Gym!
Healthy grocery shopping!
Haha it's sad that these two things are causing me so much stress, but if you haven't for-real-healthy-grocery shopped in longer than you care to admit, it's stressful!!
Wish me luck! Gym! Healthy grocery shopping! Say it with me now!
Losing weight is such a scary prospect, isn't it? You would think I would be the expert by now with all my experience, but no; each time I start again, I feel just as lost.
But I have decided to try again. Seriously try again. Because there's so much at stake here--I'm sick of sitting at home, WISHING I were thinner, but not doing anything about it. I'm thinking this blog will help. I love reading what others have to say, hearing about what they're going through along with me. I also know that writing in this will help keep me accountable.
Perhaps most importantly, all my friends are tired of hearing about my weight, so I'll make you all hear about it instead...haha.
I'm not going to lie; I'm scared. And being scared is what sabatoges me every time, so I'm just taking deep breaths and...
What I commit to for tomorrow:
Going to the gym
Going to the grocery store and buying some HEALTHY food
That's not too much to ask, right? I've always been on "diets," and they never work for me, so here's my "diet" this time around: exercise every day, and eat healthy. Sound good?
