I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Thursday afternoon. I don't want to be here (at work). This is not entirely uncommon but it's worse today than usual. I want to take a nap or make some coffee or just sit on my balcony admiring my blooming hydrangea(sp?) and feeling the cool breeze caress my face...anything but sit here in my office watching the world go by and responding to emails. I don't want to count things or calculate things or create presentations or any of it. Not this afternoon. If I were not the founder of the World-Famous (ha!) Ten Percent Challenge, I'd be downstairs perusing the delights of the vending machine in the cafeteria. For better or worse, that option is not available to me because junk food no longer interests me (double ha!), and I just don't know what to do when I'm feeling disaffected and am stuck in the office. I'm choosing to grumble to myself internally and contemplate escaping early without telling anyone. Grumble, moan, whine, kick.
It also appears that my photo hosting service is hosed up because this site looks horrible and I can't log in to their site to check the status of my account. Grr. This is not helping my mood.
On a positive note, I went out and walked last night for the first time since I got back from Colorado, and it felt really good. I'll be doing 35 mintues, 24 seconds tonight and tomorrow night and then it increases to 39 minutes on Saturday. I was amazed at how far I walked last night, as it was the first time I'd walked over 35 minutes on my usual route. I'm really pretty proud of myself, considering that I was having a tough time committing to 20 minutes just over six weeks ago. I know that it's way too early to declare any kind of victory over my slothful nature, but methinks it's a very good sign.
I really need to find more interesting things to write about because I'm boring myself now. Ugh.
Tuesday evening. I'm fed up. I know, this isn't necessarily anything new, but I'm definitely not feeling the love for this whole journey to health thing today. I don't want to think about it, I don't want to do it (although I am), and I don't want to write about it (although, of course, I will). I'm afraid it's all part of some insidious plot that my subconscious has cooked up to get me to go off course, although it could just be that the bloom is off of the proverbial rose for me. Panic not, dear readers, I'm not even thinking about slacking on the TPC (which, by the way, I'm only 0.8 pounds away from achieving - woohoo), I'm just really getting fed up with the way that my emotions keep fighting what my body and the logical part of my brain know I need to do.
So, for some added motivation, I just received an email informing me that my 20 year high school reunion (no freakin' way it's been that long...no freakin' way!) will be next June. For my 10 year reunion, I was at my highest weight ever (262) and was shunned by most of my classmates, many of whom didn't recognize me from school because of how puffy my face was and how charmingly large my body had become. I know that this is like the most petty thing ever, but I just don't want to be "the fat girl" at the reunion again. It's not about impressing anyone or trying to look hot or anything like that (as though I could anyway!), it's just about feeling comfortable in my skin so that I can actually sit and chat with old friends without wondering what they're thinking about me. Yes, I shouldn't care what a bunch of phonies that I haven't talked to in 20 years (oh my God, it can't possibly be that long!) think about me but, call me vain and shallow, I do.
In one of those little ironies of life, just as I'm entering one of my cranky phases of this little exercise (pardon the pun), I went to pick up my healthy meals last night only to find that there was nothing there for me to pick up. The way it works is that the service prepares the meals that I've ordered and then drops them off at a yogurt shop not too far from my house, where I then go to pick them up on Mondays and Fridays. This means that the actual store that I go to is only the middle man, so they couldn't do anything about my missing meals. I am very proud to say that I didn't take this as permission to go on a fast food bender for the rest of the week but, rather, headed off to the supermarket (grumbling all the way, mind you) to put together some semblance of healthy meals for the next three days (until I can pick up my next set of meals on Friday). I got several cans of soup, sandwich fixings, a lovely salmon filet, Filet Mignon, bagels, light cream cheese, light Laughing Cow cheese wedges, fruit, and milk (I haven't had a latte in so long that I've nearly forgotten how delightful they taste!). Much of this isn't "diet" fare, but, as I've said before, I'm not on a diet, so that's just fine. I'm sticking with the "stop eating when you're satisfied" philosophy and hoping for the best until Friday.
Want to know something odd? I just put my hands up to my neck to warm them (it's like 30 degrees - seriously - in my office this week) and felt these hard things sticking out which felt strange and unfamiliar. Know what they were? My collarbone! I think I must have cleared some of the fat layer away from that area because I don't remember them being so prominently under my skin. I may never get rid of the giant mound of stomach I am blessed with, but I can see my collarbone and that's progress.
Monday afternoon. Yes, it's me - the wandering vacationeer - back from my journeys. Many adventures were had, lots of relaxation, too, and now I'm here again and much the better for having gone.
I won't bore you with endless tales of the drives or hikes or other sightseeing-type activities, but I will say that I love the central western part of Colorado a lot and would love to visit there again, especially in the winter so that I can see all of those beautiful mountains covered in snow.
As I said I would, I didn't toss the TPS out on its ear for the week I was gone. I walked on the treadmill for an average of 33 minutes on seven of the eight days I was gone and also managed a few hikes in the heat, so that was a good thing. For my eating, I simply stuck to the principle that I should stop eating when my body was satisfied and not ever get uncomfortably full. At first, I still clung stubbornly to the idea that I "couldn't have" certain foods because they weren't on my diet. Then I remembered that I'm not on a diet and decided to be brave and order things that I really wanted. Do you remember what french fries taste like? How about cherry cobbler? I do because I had some of both of them while I was gone. I also had chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes one night but only enough to make me satisfied - no binges, no frenzied, mindless eating of "forbidden" foods. I was a little stressed out sometimes, thinking about what I was doing to my carefully crafted, meticulously structured (some might call it anal) plan, but I did it anyway.
I'm glad to tell you that Geneen Roth is right - you can trust your body and, if you really pay attention and don't let yourself zone out or try to cram every morsel of food into your body at once because you just know that you'll never get to have it again, you will lose weight. How do I know this? Because, over the last week, eating chicken fried steak, french fries, full fattening omelettes, cherry and berry cobbler, steak, and salads without the dressing on the side, I managed to lose 3.6 pounds. Yes, you read that correctly and yes, I did double check the number on the scale this morning. Stunned would be an understatement when used to describe how I felt as I beheld the results of my completely spontaneous, absolutely no restraint in what I ate eating for a week. (In case you're interested, I published links to several of Geneen's books in my entries from June 27th and 28th.) I will be picking up my healthy gourmet meals tonight after work, but it's really heartening to realize that I really can do this for the rest of my life and that I won't really eat the entire world if I allow myself to eat anything that my heart desires. Who knew?
