|
|
September 2nd, 2010 by Denise
When I was in college my roommate and I decided to take advantage of the free sessions in the gym and try yoga. It was crowded in there and there were two guys who wouldn’t stop cracking jokes. They were hilarious, yes, but I was under the impression that yoga should be calming and relaxing. Instead, we were made more self-conscious by the loud whispers of “Dude, you can see up everyone’s shirt!”
You totally could, but it was super distracting. I didn’t feel any different after the session, or even the next day. I mean, my body felt no different. Probably because I was too focused on whether or not I looked like a fool.
Last night Jason went to the movies with a friend so I had the house to myself for a little while. I took advantage of our Netflix account and added a variety of fitness videos: ab workouts, pilates, and yoga. I tried the yoga video last night before bed.
It’s called Crunch: Candlelight Yoga and I chose it based on the reviews alone. I am not naturally flexible and have zero previous yoga experience.
It was great. The instructor’s voice was soothing and she guided me through the moves flawlessly; at one point I didn’t even realize I had my eyes closed yet was transitioning through a move. She’s really thorough without being pushy, and the constant reminders to breathe were very helpful. Modifications to poses were provided if one proved too challenging.
I did it for about half an hour. Jason came home and found me sitting in the middle of our living room with my legs all crazy and promptly asked me what the hell I was doing. I told him he messed up my chi and needed to stop invading my space with all of his questions, but really I think he was just jealous of me because I was so serene and bendy. I did not finish the entire routine because he came home and hey! Someone to talk to! but I slept very soundly last night. I attribute it to the yoga, mostly. I felt so relaxed afterwards.
The morning after: Holy shit. I hurt everywhere. My arms are sore, the backs of my legs, from my ankle to my ass, are sore. My side abs are killing me and my back feels like it needs a massage. I’m sore in the best way possible, like I just spent a half hour lifting weights instead of on my living room rug. Maybe doing more yoga will stretch me out again.
September 1st, 2010 by Denise
When we bought our plane tickets to Florida in January it felt like September would never ever get here. Ever. I like instant gratification. If I am going to spend $600 on a trip, I want to take it immediately. Except Florida is cold in January (I promise) and it wouldn’t have been very exciting, nor would I be getting more and more amped to leave as the months ticked away. The anticipation! It’s killing me! I want to be there and see my brother and mother and father and friends and lay on the beach and eat my weight in crab and have absolutely no prior commitments.
Soon enough.
Until then, I still have a life to live. I still have to make healthful choices and have some self-discipline. I never attributed that to myself, the self-discipline thing. My roommates would study for exams and my brother would work out every day and I… well. I didn’t do any of that, not as steadfastly as others. I did things as they came, chalking up my lack of preparation to inability to put forth the effort required to make myself do anything. It’s been within the past four or five months that I realized that self-discipline isn’t easy; it’s a habit formed by making the best choice at the time every time a choice is to be made. Should I go running or not? Should I make spaghetti for dinner? Are there better options?
Part of me is just the teeniest bit upset that I did not work harder at losing weight six months ago. The bigger part of me, the more logical and thoughtful part, realizes that at least I’m doing something now. Change requires effort, and losing weight requires a lot of effort. It would be easier to eat a bowl of cereal or a bagel for breakfast. Instead, I scramble up some egg whites. Those donuts in the break room are tempting as all hell, but instead I snack on my almonds and pretend they are jelly-filled because donuts are not good for anyone. Fried dough filled with sugar. Delicious, but not conducive to a healthful lifestyle. The taste is fleeting. The consequences are not.
That has become my new little mantra, by the way. It’s what I tell myself whenever I’m faced with a temptation. “Taste is fleeting. Consequences are not.” Over the course of the past two weeks, there were three birthdays in our office. Cookies, cake, brownies, chips and salsa… all things I could not eat. Instead of sitting in my chair wishing I could stuff my face with brownies, I had a bite of one. A tiny fork full of brownie. It was a good amount. It quenched my longing for it but it did not wreck my day, nor did I feel guilty afterward.
I have gone on diets before that I approach with the best of intentions. I am gung-ho about not eating shit and consuming lots of salad and drinking only water. About two weeks into it, I am off the wagon. Denying myself anything only made me crave it more, and all of the sudden I find myself eating raw cookie dough and washing it down with Pepsi because OH MY GOD it’s delicious and I haven’t had it in SO LONG.
This time is not like last time, or the time before that. This time I moderate what I eat, but if I want something, I eat it. It’s just… I have a sweet tooth, guys. I could eat three cupcakes with absolutely no problem. And then a cookie. Or two. And maybe some cheesecake. But the whole “everything in moderation” tactic is working well. If I want a cookie, then I eat it. And you should, too. Life is too short to not eat cookies, but you should have enough self-worth to not eat three in a row. Taste is fleeting. Remember that.
August 29th, 2010 by Denise
Dear Self;
August was fun, right? Your friends came to see you and you walked around downtown Ashland and then went rafting and made delicious homemade dinners for them instead of going out to eat.
Give yourself a pat on the back. You lost 8 pounds in August. A majority of that had to do with the fact that you cut down your carbohydrate consumption and
WHAT THE FUCK.
One of my coworkers just put down graham crackers in front of me.
“Here,” she said. “I’m a grandma. I feed people now. Have some graham crackers.”
Good one, Universe, you giant asshole. Here I am, patting my own back for being so diligent about weight loss and then AS I AM TYPING IT someone sets down goddamned GRAHAM CRACKERS in front of me?
I will not be bested, you wiley minx.
*Ahem*
Self, you are awesome. You just threw those graham crackers in the garbage can. Then you poured water in the garbage can to make the crackers soggy and disgusting. Way to go, Self. Except you crushed them in your hand before throwing them away and now you’re sniffing your hand like a moron. Stop doing that. You will not derail your progress for a fucking graham cracker. You know who eats graham crackers? Children. You are not child. You are an adult. You are married! You have a job! Growns ups have jobs! Seriously, quit smelling your hand.
So. You cut down your carb consumption and your processed food consumption. You eat vegetables now. Last night you had fajitas without the burrito and you enjoyed the yellow and green and orange bell peppers! They were delicious and satisfying. Topped with marinated chicken, a sprinkling of cheese, and a small dollop of sour cream, you thought “This is the best dinner in the world.” While you haven’t had all of the dinners in the world, you thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely make it again. Peppers! Who woulda thunk it.
You haven’t been very diligent about exercising, though. In fact, since your friends got here on the 16th, you haven’t gone one time. Rafting? You went rafting? Okay, that counts. You did express superior rafting abilities, that much is true. But how about in September you try a little harder, okay? I only say this because I love you.
And I do love you. This past month has been a month of reflective growth and the ability to see not only what you have to do in order to be more healthful, but WHY you have to do it. So hey, that’s good.
Love,
Self
August 28th, 2010 by Denise
Last night I went to Katie’s for some catch up. Usually we see each other over coffee on Wednesdays. Usually, that is, until she went and made herself a productive member of society by getting a job and ruining my life. We saw each other once a week for, like, five hours and talked about everything and had loads of fun. Then, like I said, she got a job. So no more fun for me.
But! Her husband went out of town this weekend and mine was doing work-related activities, so we decided to reconvene and catch up. It had been a solid two weeks since we’d seen each other and I missed her. I vented to her a lot about weight-related things and we kept each other accountable a little bit. Mostly we gossiped, but occasionally we’d talk about Deep and Meaningful Things.
So I was going to see Katie. And typically, though we usually met for coffee, the times we met at night had wine involved. But I’m on a no-sugar, low-carb sort of thing and wine does not meet any of those stipulations. But Katie’s all “Do you want some wine?” and I’m like “Does a bear shit in the woods?” Because of course I did. I wanted wine. And though my diet limited the number of carbs I was allowed to intake, I wasn’t so consumed with it that I would miss out on something I genuinely wanted because OMGSUGARNO. I didn’t go overboard – I had less than a glass—but it was enough to feel like I wasn’t depriving myself. I patted myself on the back. “Good job, Self,” I thought smugly. “You can do anything! You are a champion!”
And then Katie said something about peach cobbler and that was all I could think about. Like, she mentioned it two hours before I even ate it and while we were watching TV my mind was full of thoughts pertaining to the cobblery goodness just sitting in her fridge.
Folks, I love peach cobbler. You can keep your cheesecake and mousse and pie; I will take the cobbler. It is the perfect desert. A slightly sweet, slightly doughy topping over warm peaches… There is nothing better on this entire planet.
I wanted some and so I had some. After the first bite I wanted to stick my entire face in it. It was delicious. A little party in my mouth. It was heavenly and I squee-ed in satisfaction. I squee-ed many times.
I ate it slowly and deliberately, and while I was eating it I noticed that I had a new appreciation for food and it all rested on the word “deliberate.” I have very often just shoveled food into my mouth because it tasted good rather than slowing down and savoring what I was eating. Instead of thinking of having another piece when mine was all gone, I felt satisfied. Just like I did after the wine.
I tweeted when I got home, something about every diet needing a cheat meal. I think that’s true. I’m not out to deny myself things that give me pleasure, and eating certainly falls under that category. But a lot of what I was eating wasn’t good for me, and after a while it became habit to eat like shit, and because shit begats shit, I started feeling like shit, and then I didn’t care what I ate because my body was so used to processed crap that salad was tasteless and bland and I needed my chicken breaded and life sucked if it wasn’t. It was shitty.
Now it’s less shitty. I enjoy dessert because I eat it occasionally instead of every night. Moderation! Who knew it actually worked. And that’s what cheating is all about. I didn’t feel guilty afterwards. I felt renewed. Proud of myself.
Not shitty at all.
August 26th, 2010 by Denise
Exfoliant: a handful of sugar and a few drops of water is a great way to slough off dead or dull skin. Can also be used to clean hands covered in hard to clean substances, such as oil. I tried the exfoliant on my face this afternoon and now I have very soft skin. I’ve used it before and it hasn’t created any acne issues as I typically wash it off immediately.
Extend the life of flowers: I have used two crushed up aspirin in the vase water, but sugar can also extend the life of your flowers. Note to husband: please buy me flowers so I can try this.
August 26th, 2010 by Denise
Yesterday was my first full day on a low-carb diet. I did not eat poorly, I did not feel hungry, and I did not feel the need to powernap after dinner like I usually do with carb-laden meals.
I think there are some misconceptions with low-carb diets, the very first one being that low-carb means no carbohydrates ever. On Atkins (which is what I’m basing this off of since I’ve already read the book), you’re allowed 20 grams of carbs a day. They must come from vegetables and not anything that’s made from white flour or overly processed, which is what we’ve all been told for years. “Stay away from refined sugars and white bread.” Done and done.
Here is a sample menu so you don’t think I’m just eating steak with butter:
Morning: scrambled egg whites and some bacon
Snack: almonds
Lunch: cooked spinach (8 cups raw; about a cup cooked) and scallops
Snack: string cheese
Dinner: salad and a piece of steak (ha! We went to my mother-in-law’s for dinner last night which is why I ate steak. We usually eat chicken or fish. She also made potatoes, of which I had none.)
I also drink 64 ounces of water a day, as well as take a multivitamin.
So. The Atkins diet has a very strict two week regime that severely limits one’s intake of fruit (none! No fruit the first two weeks of Atkins!) and dairy. No carbohydrates outside of vegetables are recommended (no corn or potatoes). After the first two weeks, you slowly incorporate more carbohydrates into your diet and continue to lose weight (fruit, for instance, and maybe some brown rice. And potatoes – yum). When you read your desired weight, you add more carbohydrates (regular whole wheat bread, more rice, more fruit) and find a balance of carbohydrates that allows you to maintain your weight but not gain any back. At that phase, you’re essentially eating the way you should have been eating all along – not a lot of processed foods, and your diet still heavily relies on vegetables, protein, and fruit.
How it’s not like Atkins: I am not interested in sugar substitutes or weird recipes that kind of taste like food I can’t eat. For instance, there’s a very popular recipe for “French toast” that uses heavy cream and crushed up pork rinds. That is kind of disgusting, and if I am in want of French toast so badly that I consider crushing up dehydrated pig skin, then I’m going to have a piece of the real stuff. I will put Splenda in my tea but I will not cook with it. In fact, I will not be baking anything for my own consumption for quite some time.
I tried this last October for a few weeks until my husband had some medical issues. Then I promptly ate a burger from Carl’s Jr and washed it down with a heaping serving of french fries. Healthy, no? I am an emotional eater and was not equipped to deal with something like that so quickly. I didn’t have the necessary tools to cope with something as big as cancer without turning to food for comfort.
So this is low carb, take two: cancer free edition. Hopefully.
August 23rd, 2010 by Denise
I measure most significant events in my life by how much I weighed.
When I got married, I weighed 217 pounds.
When Michael Jackson died, I weighed 200 pounds.
A year after Michael Jackson died and I still weighed 200 pounds I felt like shit. I maintained that I was unhappy and would change but did not. I stagnated. I was in that in between phase, waiting for something big to hit me that would motivate me to lose weight. Then I thought about what that would take, and about how I know the risks associated with being overweight as well as the next guy. It shouldn’t take a doctor telling me I’m diabetic to give me the extra push any more than it should take a doctor telling me I have lung cancer to get me to quit smoking.
At that point it’s a little late. At that point it’s become a life or death decision, and even the best intentions might not get the intended result.
So.
I must chalk it up to not wanting it badly enough. It’s called a work out because it’s fucking work, and I do not want to work. No one wants to work. But a lifetime of NOT working has gotten me less than desirable results. What I want is to look at pictures of myself and not cringe. I want to be able to just buy clothes off the rack without trying them on in case they give me a muffin top or won’t fit over my arm bulge.
I think it’s easy to get so consumed by the desire to be more healthful and thin that I completely lose sight of the fact that I’m not doing a flipping thing about it. Thinking about it clearly hasn’t worked. It’s easy to think about things and work through mental issues because sitting requires absolutely no physical exertion. Everyone thinks all the time. We never stop thinking. But it’s far more difficult, for some reason, to get off the couch and go for a walk while thinking. Mostly because all I can think about when I’m exercising is when I get to stop and when I get to sit down and drink some water and take a shower and watch TV; by the time it’s actually time for me to running, I am so exhausted from just thinking about it that I can’t do anything else except lay on the floor and take deep breaths.
I read in SELF magazine once that the way we think about exercise greatly influences whether or not we actually do it. For instance, instead of thinking “Will I go running today?” think “How far will I run today?” That way you’ve already crossed the mental hurdle that is psyching yourself up to get all hot and sweaty and have instead set a goal. It’s a more proactive approach.
Just a thought.
August 21st, 2010 by Denise
1) I am sick. Sinus infection, I think. I’ve had my fair share of them over the course of my life, and this feels just like every other sinus infection I’ve ever had. I’m at the point in the cycle where all I want to do is lay on the couch and watch Law and Order: SVU all day.
2) My friends came to visit me! One of them came from Florida and one of them came from North Carolina. We went rafting. We took a walk around a park. We ate good food and laughed and cried and had great heart-to-heart conversations. Now they’re gone and I’m a little sad, except I’m at that stage in the sickness where all I want to do is lay on the couch so I don’t have much energy for sadness. Perhaps the sickness is a manifestation of how sad I am about my friends leaving.
3) Despite eating lots of pizza and drinking lots of liquor, I’m on track for my little weight loss project. That makes me feel happy inside. That might be because I just ate my weight in chocolate covered preztels.
4) God, I’m tired. And I can’t really hear. And I’m gassy, so I’m sitting here trying to toot quietly but I’m not sure if they’re smelly because my nose is all stopped up and I’m not sure if they’re loud because my ears are stopped up and maybe the reason no one is coming in today is that there’s a memo going around that the Farty, Deaf Receptionist is there and you better just keep your kids at home.
5) But! In order to combat my sickness I have taken lots of medicine and lots of vitamin C. I always get scared taking too much medicine because I’m afraid my liver will shut down or something. This morning my husband was force feeding me antihistimines and decongestants and I got all paranoid my liver would rupture so I didn’t take the antihistimine because it’s not allergies and I got confused like maybe he wanted my living to explode because he’s tired of me and he’s all “You said you would take whatever I gave you!” and I said “I WOULD IF YOU WOULD MAKE SOME SENSE!” but what I meant was “Why are you trying to kill me?”
August 15th, 2010 by Denise
There are certain times in my life that I think about documenting things that have nothing to do with healthy living on this very blog, but I wonder if anyone would think less of me because my stories have nothing to do with eating well or exercising on a regular basis.
Like, okay. Last night my husband and I were sitting on the back porch (full disclosure: I was smoking a cigarette. See why I didn’t want to tell you this story? Because of the judgement. Not from you, though. From myself. The self-loathing is almost too much. Almost) and there was a storm rolling in.
Southern Oregon doesn’t get a whole lot of lightning so it’s kind of a big deal when it actually happens. And I’m from Florida and also scared to death of weather so I don’t get all tingly in my pants when I see hot death rays of Satan shooting from the clouds, waiting to kill unsuspecting golfers or whatever.
So anyway. We were sitting outside and he makes a comment about how it feels warm and moist outside, kind of like when we got stuck in Kansas in the middle of the GD tornado warning. Hey honey! Remember the most traumatic hour and a half of your life? This feels JUST LIKE THAT!
Which pissed me off. I hate the word “moist” and I do not like talking about tornados, and it’s not like I have no idea what the air feels like. I have skin, you know. And it’s not as if I’m not thinking of how to outwit, outlast, outplay a tornado should one ever appear as I’m driving or out running or just minding my own GD business whenever I see a darkish cloud in the sky.
I’m pretty scared of Weather In General, and tornados specifically. My husband knows this. He acts like he doesn’t think it’s hilarious, but I know a little part of him mentions tornados every once in a while just to fuck with me. Keeping the love alive and all.
We’re on the back porch talking about how warm and moist the air feels and about the imminent threat of a funnel cloud just waiting to pluck me up from my happy little camping chair and fling me about, and he says something about lightning, about how he watched some YouTube video that had captured a lightning strike and then slowed it way down and it looked like it was coming out of the ground. I said “I think it’s strange that scientists still don’t know where lightning comes from.”
He pauses and thinks for a second and then says “I think it’s weird that no one knows how tornados form.”
I said “They do.”
He says “Yeah, but like… I think someone should invent something that will stop tornados. You know how there are planes that fly into hurricanes and deposit cold water to disperse it? Someone should shoot a missle into a tornado.”
I said “Okay. First of all, I have never heard of the hurricane thing. Second of all, what. the. hell.”
“What? It seems like a good idea. And the hurricane thing totally happens.”
“No. It doesn’t. And also shooting a missle into a tornado? Why?”
“Because the force of the bomb would stop the tornado so it wouldn’t hurt anyone or destroy anything.”
“You’re such an American. ‘Something could be a threat? Let’s blow that shit up!’”
“I know, right? But it would totally work.”
“A bomb. Into a tornado.”
“Right!”
“…”
“Not, like, an H bomb or anything. But a regular missle. And maybe it has a camera on it so when it gets to the center the missle people will know when to blow it up. Great idea, right?”
“I’m just going to sit here and let you think about that.”
Note:
It turns out that the plane-into-hurricane thing was actually attempted. You can read about it here if you are so inclined.
August 12th, 2010 by Denise
We’ve tried a variety of new things over here at HLP Headquarters, most notably summer squash fries which were so delicious that my husband, the french fry guy, actually said that he’d eat them in place of real french fries more often.
I consider that a win if there ever was one.
Alas, there are no pictures of the blessed event, no yummy-looking photographs to entice you, the reader, into making what I’ve eaten, and for that I am heartily apologetic. But please make them anyway as they were freaking delicious.
Oven Baked Summer Squash Fries
Adapted from about 2343 recipes I’ve seen on the internet
1 zucchini, sliced into one inch sticks (I cut the seeds off)
1 yellow squash, ditto
Two egg whites in a bowl, slightly scrambled
About 1 1/2 c bread crumbs (we used panko because that’s what we had, but regular breadcrumbs would likely provide more even coverage)
1 t garlic salt
A few shakes of dried oregano
Salt and pepper
One plastic bag big enough to hold the breadcrumbs, etc. plus a few sticks of squash
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Stick all of the ingredients except vegetables and egg whites in the plastic bag. Give it a good shake to mix everything up.
Dip veggies in egg whites a few at a time. Put them in the plastic bag and shake it around for a few seconds until the squash is evenly coated. Lay on a greased wire rack that you have placed on a baking sheet. Continue the process until you a) run out of room on the baking sheet or b) run out of vegetables.
Place in oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.
You’re welcome.
***
Project 52 in 52 is going well, if I may say so. No weight gained, but lost. I don’t know what I did to break my plateau of weighing the same number for a month straight, but it may have something to do with the mass amount of zucchini I’ve consumed over the course of the past two weeks. Two of the women I work with have gardens and their gardens have sprung forth an apocalyptic amount of zucchini. They bring it to work to share and I bring it home and we pat ourselves on the back for saving money while stuffing our faces with vegetables.
***
How To Eat Well At A Wedding:
1.) Have two glasses of white wine (the SHAME! as we all know that alcohol turns to sugar when it hits the blood stream, and sugar is bad, but oh well)
2.) Try to balance your wine glass on your dinner plate. Fail.
3.) Allow someone else to hold your plate because you only have two hands (one for wine+one for plate=not actually having any leftover with which to put actual food on the plate), bypassing the ziti (look at you, so diligent) and fill your plate high with salad (not Cesar, as that has dressing already on it, plus croutons and crazy amounts of cheese) so no one things you’re a fatass but instead maybe have a thyroid problem
4.) Feel full of pride as you select a small piece of lemon-butter chicken and only take one piece of (unbuttered) bread.
5.) Take 15 minutes to situate your chair at your designated name-tagged spot because the chair has pointy little legs that keep getting stuck in the grass
6.) When seated, realize that you forgot to request that your husband but actual dressing on your salad
7.) Eat it anyway because there are onions on it so it’s not like you’re just eating some lettuce, which you kind of are and also because getting up again is not an option and you’re a little afraid to be labeled a line cutter by the southern Oregon elite
8.) Go back for another piece of delicious chicken and some more salad after the line goes down
9.) Hang out with the smokers while the cake is getting passed around, because they’re pretty fun
Basically all you really need to accomplish Eating Well At A Wedding is to get kind of tipsy and not remember that you can actually put down your drink before getting in the dinner line. Everything else kind of stems from there.
Or you could be a normal person and have some semblance of self control. Whichever.
|
|