One month

Tomorrow will be one month from my first weigh-in of the year--January 1, so now it's time to stop and think about how I've done. I'll report on the official weigh-in tomorrow, but for now I can say that I haven't been "perfect" at anything I set out to do. I haven't worked out 6 days every week, I haven't kept all unhealthy foods from my lips, and I haven't even always limited my portions. I also haven't done all the things from the Beck Diet for Life book. But ya know, I really think I'm doing okay. I am exercising, I am eating less, I am eating healthier, and I am losing some weight.

I still haven't found a diet buddy, but I think I could if I would just ask. Part of me hates having anyone know that I'm "dieting" though. I hate that whole diet culture. Or maybe I hate the stereotype of fat or self-absorbed women who are always trying to be thinner because that's what they're supposed to do. Like it's a mark of womanhood to be on a diet. I'd much rather call it "eating healthy." I just all-around have an aversion to telling people what my plans for life are--what I want to accomplish or what I am attempting. A safety-net against the day of failure, maybe. An inability to allow others permission to see or acknowledge that yes I am one of those fat people who needs to lose weight. Or even a not-so-fat person who is obsessed with such a shallow thing as weight and appearance. So, okay, maybe I need to deal with the fact that it matters so much to me what people think or might think or could think. Live out loud, isn't that what I tell myself? Narrate my world--speak back into it. Walk in the light, don't hide in the corner. Easier said than done, for me at least.

But I'm getting there. I am moving forward, making progress. Sing with me now: "Put one foot in front of the other....."

I've still got it...or at least some of it.

Not having run much from October through January, I was afraid I'd be back where I started so long ago--barely able to run a mile. Tonight I ran 1.5 miles, though. Yay! Actually I ran more than that (maybe 2.5 miles of a 4.75 mile workout) but the longest non-stopping-to-walk stretch was 1.5 miles. It wasn't too tough and I know I could have gone on longer by slowing down. I was pretty slow already, between 5.4 and 6.0 mph. I'm not too worried about fast right now. Even though my heart rate was up there in the 160's, it didn't feel like a big exertion. I might be kind of sore tomorrow, but it sure feels good to know that I'm not totally starting over and that it might not be as hard as I think to get back to running 10K.

Yay me.

I feel like I'm on a little bit of a roll here the last couple of days. I'm definitely not doing everything perfectly, but I am exercising and I am keeping myself from eating everything I want to eat. Calories are ranging in the 1600-1900's and I'm okay with that. My workouts aren't the hour I'd like, but some days 45 minutes is all the time I have. So somehow my regular life and my getting-healthier life are peacefully coexisting.

Dreamin' big.

I'm afraid to dream big. What I really want is a smokin' hot bod (or at least smokin' enough that I could wear a two-piece swimsuit) so that my hubby and I could go on a beach vacation for our 25th anniversary. Sure, we could still go on a beach vacation even if I didn't have a bikini bod, but I sure would like the bikini bod. And the verve to enjoy it with my hubby. But that seems way too big and impossible. And too expensive. It would cost a lot, in terms of time and commitment. I'd have to work at it single-mindedly, and I don't have the margin for that. Yeah, yeah, all sorts of reasons why it's not a realistic goal, but does that mean it can't be a dream? And can't dreams find their way into my daily decisions?

Likewise I'm afraid to set 150 as a goal when that's really my goal. If it set it and don't get there, I'll be disappointed. I'll be a failure. So I'll set an easier goal. Better yet, I'll leave it all so nebulous and safe that I convince myself it's not really all that important--that a few slipups here and there, a few concessions to my inner fat girl won't really hurt anything because it all doesn't really matter that much anyway since I'm just sort of seeing where I end up. Like I want to lose weight and get fit as a result of a little bit of effort and a lot of magic. It's time to embrace the HARD. Do the hard things.

Dang, it's hard to eat right.

Somewhere deep inside, I still think I HAVE to eat sweets if they are around, and I have to keep eating them until they are gone. Maybe it goes back to being a kid and never getting the good stuff like candy and chips, so at the rare times when we did have it, I'd hoard and gorge. Saving up for inevitable famine. Protecting myself from starvation. Trust sure is hard to learn, but that's what I'm working on this year--trusting that if God is faithful to give me enough in this moment, just maybe he's faithful to give me enough in the next moment, too.

On another topic, I had a great walk this morning. It was in the twenties, and I figured I'd freeze, but it really wasn't bad. I can make three circuits of the neighborhood in 60 minutes if I pump it up. Average heart rate is probably around 145-150 for the duration, and I think the distance is between 4.5 and 5 miles. All winter so far I've been avoiding outdoor walks, so I'm glad to find it really is helpful to get outside in the fresh air and it helps my motivation to realize I'm not stuck with the treadmill all the time.

And now I'm sitting here in sweaty clothes shivering. Time to get in the nice warm shower.

Today is the day!

Two weeks down, two pounds down. Not impressive, but at least I'm heading in the right direction. I told myself I wasn't going to load up my shelves with diet books this year (Years ago I optimistically bought a book called something like "The Last Makeover" that assured me I wouldn't ever buy any more diet books--yeah right.) because I need to DO instead of READ. I know there's no reason I can't do both except for the fact that I DON'T do both--I read instead of do, so if I'm only going to do one, this year I'm choosing to do. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I must confess that I just got off Amazon where I ordered two books--The Beck Diet for Life and The New Rules of Lifting for Women--but these are books that I've tested out by checking them out numerous times from the library and I know they'll actually be helpful if I use them. I'm planning to not buy any more at least for six months.

But, all that said, I was in B&N the other day, not buying any diet books, but I saw that an author I enjoyed has a new book out. I was tempted--but I resisted. I didn't buy it--I sat down in the children's area and skimmed it instead. :D I gleaned something important from it, and that was "TODAY is the only day that matters." Looking at what I've done in the past and what I plan to do in the future can get my eyes off of what I need to do today. If I've got all sorts of great plans on paper or in my head and yet TODAY I eat crap and sit on my butt, I am not moving forward in the right direction. I have to choose health today. If I'm not doing anything today to live a healthy life, I'm not living a healthy life. Today doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to contain something consistent with what I say my priorities are. Otherwise I'm living in a fantasy land.

So now it's 4:00. I'm hitting the danger zone of the day. I already ate a bowl of popcorn, and I'm still hungry. I'll give it a few minutes to settle, but there are chocolate chip cookies calling my name. I know I don't have that many calories to play with, though, That's another thing. I wanted to calculate my daily requirement of calories & crunch all the numbers because I think it would help me to check out whether the science actually is accurate--the whole eat 500 calories less per day, exercise 500 calories off to lose 2 lbs. I believe more in magic, so maybe I should test out the anti-magic and get real. But I'm out of time for the moment and this long weekend is flying by way too fast.

Getting back on track

It's been a whole week since I've written here. It's probably not a coincidence that it was just about a week ago that things started going to pot. I did great up until Friday, but then I started having all sorts of "reasons" why I couldn't walk or cook or eat deliberately. We went to Harvard, so I HAD to get Little Caesar's. We had Little Caesar's sitting on the counter, so I HAD to eat it. I was worn out from work, so I HAD to read. I was reading so I HAD to eat. The one HAD TO that's legit is that I did have to devote a lot of time to making Aaron's costume and prepping for school. But did those things have to be emergencies that cancelled out everything else?

That's how I excuse myself from taking responsibility--I let things pile up until they become urgent, then I let everything else go to pot while I deal with the emergency. The reward must be in getting to do what I really want to do (go to pot) while having an "out." But then I feel crappy and guilty, so the reward isn't much of a reward. Life really is better when I have margin--space to move, options, responsibility, freedom from the tyranny of the urgent. "Just Do It" is a motto I need to hear over and over again.

So my weight dropped nicely in the first part of the week, but then at the end of the week I was back up to where I started. This is where I usually give up. After all, if I can't do it perfectly, I might as well not even try, right? NO! If I can't do it perfectly, I need some more practice so I can get better at it! Some is better than none. So I'm hanging in there with what I can do right now. I'm weighing every day, not writing down what I eat, mostly sitting down to eat, I did a walk video today, and I planned out some meals for the week.

Still no diet buddy. I might have to go out on a limb with that one and see if I can get a group of gals to do an exercise video together at church. Still hanging back on that one.

Because it's finals week, my work schedule is really light. I can't squander this extra time--gotta keep plugging away at needed tasks. Back to the sewing machine, then, to finish the last costume.

Making better choices about how I use my time

SNOW DAY! I got the call at 5 a.m. and happily snuggled under my five blankets thinking how nice it would be to have a whole day to catch up on things. Here it is almost noon and I still haven't done any of the things I need to catch up on. This is the story of my life. I am a horrible time-waster. Maybe such negativism expressed so negatively is not the happy clappy affirmation positive thinking recommended by self-help gurus, but it sure is the truth. I waste a lot of time doing nothing. It's not even stuff I like all that much. I mean, honestly, how many times do I need to check Facebook in a day?

I have a 45-minute window of time between when I drop the younger kids off at school and when I need to get in the shower to get ready for work. This is a usable chunk of time in which I could accomplish any of four extremely important things: a workout, my Bible/prayer/study time, housework, or schoolwork. Yesterday I decided to take "just a few minutes" to get on the computer, and before I knew it, I had to rush to even get my shower in. This brought home to me just how easily I can squander valuable resources of both time and energy. The mirror shows me this: I often make poor choices about how to use my time.

One reason for this is that in my perfectionism I build every task up into a major Big Deal that I think is going to need a whole day or hours upon hours of intense concentration to get the job done. That is how I like to work, giving total attention to one thing at a time and working at it till I'm done. I'm not a multi-tasker at heart. So I get caught up in all-of-nothing thinking and figure if I can't have all the time I want or think I need, that means I can't even start on the task. I feel at loose ends and free to putz around doing nothing. My motto needs to be: SOME IS BETTER THAN NONE. DO THE IMPORTANT THINGS.

Somewhere in there is the risk inherent in taking on "important things." If they are important, that means the cost of failure is high. If I fail at important things, what a loser I am. Not doing doesn't seem like failure. Somewhere in my head I seem to believe that if you don't ever get in the game, you can't be a loser. But this isn't about being a winner or loser, it's about gaining the benefit of the accomplished task. Staying out of the game panders to my fear of having someone see me fail spectacularly, but it doesn't get anything done that needs to be done. And neither does this navel-gazing! Time to get rolling. Bottom line is that I don't have to sit out on the sidelines twiddling my thumbs to keep from making a fool of myself by failing. I can make choices that lead to good things, and having those good things (health, tasks accomplished, freedom from kicking myself all the time for my procrastination, no panic at deadlines) is worth the little bit of pain it takes to fight inertia.

So here I go fighting inertia. I'm off!

Feeling the pinch

I've been wearing jeans all day to remind myself how fat I've gotten. Sweats cover over a multitude of sins, but I need to remember and confess and repent of those sins! Right about now I'm feeling the urge to undo a button. I'm looking forward to the day when my jeans don't hug me quite so tightly.

What I'm Working on This Week

In the book The Complete Beck Diet for Life, the author lists a bunch of success skills that she believes are essential to getting a handle on healthy living. I'm not going to slavishly accept the whole list or knock myself out to follow her program since mindless rule-following or "depend on the expert" thinking is not what I'm after here, but there are a couple of her ideas that I want to implement this week.

1. Weigh myself daily. This is one I'm kind of taking on faith since I don't have strong feelings about weigh-ins one way or the other. I've done it weekly, daily, twice weekly, monthly, you name it. And I don't see much difference in the effect either way. Her reason for daily weighing is to acknowledge the fact that weight fluctuates, the body has natural ups and downs, and weight is simply information one uses to determine a course of action, not a "grade" indicating success or failure. She wants to end the tyranny of Scale Caesar Disgustus, who strikes fear into every heart and can ruin a day with one little thumbs-down, and she wants to make sure there's no hiding from reality. I can buy that, so I'm weighing every day. Today my weight was 169.

2. Motivate myself daily. I lose steam quickly and need a boost. That's what this blog is all about. I found some blogs to read that look like they might be helpful, too, but I have to guard against going nutso and spending all my time reading or writing. I have a life besides this, and the inability to balance it is why I end up fat every Dec. 31st. I'm also prone to reading, writing, and thinking instead of DOING, so I have to be careful.

3. Get moving. Back to the treadmill for me. On decent days (does northern Illinois have them in January?) I'll walk outside. I'm starting with cardio and stretching. The goal is 6 days, 45 minutes each day.

4. Write down what I eat. I hate doing this, but everybody says it helps, so I'll do it.

5. Eat slowly while sitting down and enjoying every bite. This is the absolute killer. Virtually all my extra calories are consumed on my feet or while I'm doing something else like reading or being at the computer. I could feed small nations with what I scarf down in the kitchen. Half the pleasure of eating is the connection it has to other things. What's a movie without popcorn? What's a good book without m&m's? Sitting there doing nothing at a table is just boring and feels like a waste of time. Even when I was a kid, I never ate breakfast without reading the entire cereal box. This is going to be a major toughie, especially once I go back to work next week and will have to plan carefully to avoid eating on the run. But that's my commitment: eat slowly while sitting down.

The last one isn't a daily one. I just need to find a diet buddy. I'm too good at lying to myself and avoiding hard truths to go it successfully alone. I don't know who to ask, though. I'm not really a people person, so the choice is a big deal to me. But somebody is better than nobody, so I'm on the hunt for somebody and I'm gearing up my gumption to ask.

Onward!

I've Got Bigger Fish to Fry Here than Fat

I had thought my second post would be all about the changes I need to make in my eating. Turns out there are bigger, more important, more-necessary changes than that staring me in the face during these first dark hours of 2010. The fact of the matter is that I need to change a whole lot more than the way I eat. The way I think, and consequently the way I act, has proven itself woefully inadequate in ways that hurt not only me, but the people I so much want to love.

So, mirror, show me what you see. You see a woman grieving because someone she loves is hurting and she can’t help—in fact she makes the pain worse. You see an angry woman who does not understand her own anger. How can she get mad at people for hurting? Why does their need or weakness or stupidity bring out harshness and hardness and that pound, pound, pounding that she can’t stop even when she knows it’s driving them away? Why does her need to be heard trump their need to be loved? Why can’t she just listen instead of trying so hard to make it all right again? It’s an obsession with correction.

And what is the desire to lose weight or to change my ways if not an obsession with correction? I’m mad at what’s wrong, and I want to force it to be right. But I don’t want to be mad and I definitely don’t want to admit that I’m mad, so I cover it up with wit or sarcasm or intellectualism or superiority or indifference and I walk away. Only problem is that I take myself with me. I can’t walk away from me.

I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of pretending I’m not angry. I’m tired of hurting people by my anger. I’m tired of not knowing anything but anger. I’m tired of that tightness in my neck and between my eyebrows. When do I not feel something squeezing, clamping down in my head?

What’s the opposite of anger anyhow? Compassion? Empathy? Yes, I think so.

My first change of 2010, then, is this: I choose to put off anger and instead open my heart and mind to a spirit of compassion toward others and toward myself.



“When He saw the crowds, He felt compassion for them, because they were weary and worn out, like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36