The more things change,…

…the more they change.

The goals I mentioned back at the beginning of April?  Well, they are officially habits now. 

The mornings workouts?  I haven’t blown off a single one in 7 weeks.  That means on weekdays, I get up at 5 or 5:15 and get movin’ (weekend, I sleep in to a luxurious 6:30 am!).  No snooze buttons, no resetting the alarm when I wake up at 4 and realize I only get one more hour of sleep — nope.  None of that.  I’m ridiculously proud of myself for making this change; I promised myself I would do it and I followed through.  It’s often too easy for me to break promises to myself (with the excuse of, “Well, who am I hurting?”), but I’m trying to honor those promises now with the same focus I would honor promises to anyone else.  I should give myself the same respect I would another person, right? 

And it feels pretty good.

My food choices have become less processed, more nutrient-dense, less sugar-tastic and carb-errific.  I’m eating lots more vegetables and my breakfasts have serious protein now, and all around I’m feeling really good. 

As for my weight, well, I don’t actually know what I weigh right now.  I last weighed 3 weeks ago.  I’m taking a scale break because I’m focused on lifting heavier weights this month, and I don’t want to feel upset by the scale shifting around.  My clothes are fitting well and I like how my body looks right now, so the scale can’t offer me any information I really need. 

And lastly, I honored one last promise.  I have some screwy body issues that I’ve sort of been ignoring in the hopes they would fix themselves.  They haven’t.  So, I finally made a doctor’s appointment and have started rounds of testing to figure out what’s going on.  I can’t take care of my health in some ways and then completely ignore other ways, right?   

So, I made goals and I achieved them.  Sure, they were small, but really, isn’t every big goal just a lot of little goals all headed in the same direction? 

So, the more small goals I check off, the closer I get to my big goal of a life of balance, wellness, and happiness. 

And some days, I think that life is already here.

A discovery.

After just a few days of eating yummy good food and no refined carbs/added sugars/processed junk, I have learned something really important that Isabel touched on in the comments of my last post, and it’s this:

The natural sweetness in good, whole food really stands out when you stop tricking your tastebuds with the manufactured stuff.

For example:  for my evening snack the last two days, I’ve eaten a 1/4 cup of ricotta mixed with 1/4 cup of pumpkin and some cinnamon, and seriously?  It’s like pumpkin pudding!  It’s actually sweet, which stuns me because neither of those foods have ever before escaped my adding of maple syrup or honey or, well, a pie crust. 

It’s tasty, satisfying (in that I’m not hungry again five minutes later), and it’s good for my body, too.

What more can a girl ask for?

The second one.

Yesterday I posted about Goal One, which I actually started focusing on this past Sunday. Therefore, this is actually my third day of eating better and I have to say: the results far surpass my expectations.

I’m not really missing sweets like I thought I would, and just a couple of days away from sugar has made naturally-sweet foods even more scrumptious. I had a banana today that tasted like candy, and I can only assume that’s because I haven’t been eating any actual candy. It was awesome.

My energy level feel a lot more balanced, too. Perhaps best of all, I’m not famished every couple of hours. I get hungry, sure, but I don’t feel light-headed or rage-filled — just hungry. I’m sure the lack of meal-time anger will only serve to improve my close relationships, no?

Goal Two is also underway: morning exercise! I’m a post-work exerciser and always have been*. It’s a habit at this point, and one that is incredibly consistent. But secretly I’ve always wished I was a morning exerciser. Why? Because I’d much rather give up the mostly worthless hour before work than the glorious hour after work.

Now that spring is here, it’s especially bothersome to have to come home and get a workout done when I’d much rather sit on the back porch and play fetch with Big Dog. Except for running, I don’t much love exercising out-of-doors, so I’m not likely to just take my workout out into the sunshine (just mentioning that so no one feels like they have to point out an obvious solution!).  Instead I hole up in my workout room, improving my physical health, but not so much my mental health.

So, the logical thing is to get up before work and do my thing. I’ve done it successfully for two straight days (which beats previous records by, well, two days), and coming home from work has been way more fun. Yesterday, I worked a crossword and had a real conversation with my husband; today I did some laundry and harassed my dogs. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Anyway, two goals thus far and both of them feel delightfully self-loving and not at all punitive or rules-y.

I can’t wait to see how Goal Three goes!

*Full disclosure: when I was at the height of my overexercising, I worked out both before work and after, but as that was driven by compulsion and not an attempt at improving the quality of my life, I’m not counting it as a “normal” thing for me.

Spring-cleaning.

So, last entry, I mentioned that I had some health goals I would be working toward in the next few months, and the first one I’m developing a plan for is, not surprisingly, food-related.

 

Most of The Crazy revolves around eating, so this seems like a logical place to start.

 

Goal one is to clean up my diet*: decrease the consumption of carbohydrates/sugar/processed stuff, make more room for vegetables and lean proteins, and work out a way of eating that is maintainable and focused on what I can have instead of what I can’t.  I don’t believe I can change my life in a positive way by focusing on deprivation, so I’m insistent that any changes I make be good for both body and mind.

 

It’s a little scary, considering a different way of eating because…well…this way of eating is why I’m no longer almost 200 pounds, you know?  But this way of eating is now leaving me feeling rundown and prone to headaches and fatigue; I’ve been paying attention to what I eat long enough to see clear correlations between my food choices and my body’s response.  There’s too much sugar, too much processed stuff, too many carbs that don’t add real nutrition.  And eating those nutritionally-deficient foods leaves me standing in the kitchen at 8 PM every night just wanting to eat, eat, eat, and mostly cookies and dry cereal by the handful.  

 

The current foundation of my diet is granola, pitas, oatmeal, crackers, and raisin toast.  These aren’t bad foods, but I’m eating them to the exclusion of a lot of other good foods.  I think it’s worth tweaking to see if eating more good fats, lean proteins, fruits, and vegetables makes me feel better and stronger than my current grain-based diet. 

 

In truth, I focused on calories for so long that I’ve trapped myself into some bad eating habits. I’m scared of most food and rarely eat out because I can’t control the numbers – even though I’m technically not a dieter any more, the anxiety about food prepared by others continues to grip me pretty tightly. 

 

I’m hopeful that focusing on eating whole, unprocessed, as-close-to-natural-state-as-possible foods will make me calmer around food – real food is good for me, period.  The numbers don’t matter so much when you’re eating good, real food – well, or at least they shouldn’t. 

 

So, goal one: Eat better! Namely, I’m going to choose unprocessed over processed, proteins and veggies over carbs, and above all else, eat less sugar. 

 

Up next: Goal two!

 

*diet = way of eating

Coming clean.

I’m going to talk about something today that I’d rather not.   I have this habit that has hung around since my very early dieting days.  I don’t talk about it.  I’d love to pretend I’ve tried to shake it, but I really  haven’t.  I’ve noticed it, acknowledged it, wondered why I still engage it; I just haven’t tried to address it in any meaningful way.   That habit?    The “cheat” day.   Gah.  I know.  A “cheat” day implies one is still dieting, right?  It means that there’s some kind of deprivation, either real or perceived, going on that one needs a day off from.  At least, that’s what it always meant for me.    I’d be really “good” during the weekend and then relax abandon the rules on Saturday – literally eat whatever I wanted, be it junk or sweets or alcohol. And honestly, sometimes I’d eat what I didn’t want, just because I “could.”    Even though I quit officially dieting ages ago, I still engage in this behavior.  I wake up almost every Sunday morning feeling miserable: overfull and annoyed with myself that I ate so much and with such disregard for my body or my actual hunger.    I’ve tried not to look at this behavior too closely because I’m ashamed of it.  It doesn’t fit with my idea of myself as a reformed dieter; it makes me feel out of control and frustrated that I’m still engaging in such a disordered eating pattern.   I’d like to say I know why I’m still doing this; I don’t.    I’d like to say I’m going to stop; I’m not sure I will.   But I can say this: I want to normalize this behavior.  I want to figure out the cause(s) and work on fixing them because spending every Sunday morning in a foul mood because of how I ate the day before?  Unacceptable.  I mean, one day every week?? That’s, like, 15% of my life I’m wasting (and 50% of my weekends!) being angry with myself.  That’s not good for my spirit *or* my health.   I’ve got a few health goals I’m going to be working on in the next couple of months and I’m making breaking this habit a priority.  I’ve committed to myself to examining the behavior and, if I can’t fix the cause, I at least hope to come up with strategies to work around it.   It may take a while, but being honest about it has to be the first step.

A Reminder.

Dear Megan,

Just because you read an article this afternoon that says you should eat virtually no grains doesn’t mean you should actually do as it says. 

Even if it offers very convincing, remotely-science-y arguments.

Remember, your body is not a generic model off an assembly line.  It is not like any other body.  Give it what it asks for and what makes it feel good, and don’t get caught up in outside rules.

Oh, and your shoulders looked really good in that shirt today. 

Love, Megan.

Where credit is due.

When I was sprinkling ground flaxseed on my oatmeal this morning, I had a sudden and delightful moment of clarity.  It was like I took a giant step back from that moment and saw instead a series of moments, all the little choices and decisions and tweaks and improvements I’ve made in how I care for myself over the last 7.5 years.  I’ve take so many baby steps that at the time seemed insignificant – I hadn’t stopped to acknowledge that they’ve added up to miles.

 

Quick example of little changes over the years:

Dr Pepper for breakfast à instant oatmeal à regular oatmeal with brown sugar à steel-cut oats with pumpkin puree and flaxseed

 

And another:

Never exercising à exercising 3x/week for 30 minutes à increasing to 5 workouts/week à working out 6x/week for an hour or more at a time

 

It was, dare I say, a lovely epiphany.

 

The truth is, I’m kind of hard on myself.  I rarely give myself credit for all the daily healthy things I do and instead see all the things I’m not doing (i.e., eating broccoli, doing more stretching, eating less sugar).  I’ve set a really high bar to clear and beat myself up a wee bit when I don’t quite get over it.  But the reality is, the bar is high because I’ve cleared so many of the lower ones. 

 

My life is completely different than it was when I weighed 190+ pounds.   Completely.  And there was no single grand gesture.  Instead, I changed my life  just by being persistent, by working a little bit harder every day, by learning more and doing better whenever I could.

 

So even those areas I see as still needing improvement? Well, it seems if I just trust myself and keep working toward them, eventually, I’ll accomplish those, too.   

 

And maybe, just maybe, I can resolve to celebrate the distance I’ve traveled even as I keep moving down the road.  

Not quite square one.

Really, this post?  Totally belongs over at the old blog.  Because, well, I’m just going to say it: it’s a bit of a rerun.

I started a food journal a few weeks ago, complete with careful tallying of calories.  I retired it last week.  Doesn’t it seem like I’ve been here before?

I’m trying to be nice to myself about this relapse.  I’m comparing it to the usual cycle of giving up a bad habit.  Food journals are apparently my cigarettes.   I quit, start, quit again – and, alas, there is no patch that helps.

I’m going to blame it on the very generic “stress”: the economy, the fact that there is a freakin’ weight loss competition going on at work, the fact that last summer’s pants are too big and small amounts of weight loss make me crave large amounts. 

But you know?  It gets easier each time.  This food journal survived three weeks.  Not three months or three years, but three weeks.  That’s so much better than in the past.  And the actual undereating only lasted a week – when the dizziness and tunnel-vision started again, I upped my calories immediately. 

So, once again, I’m back to feeding myself with compassion and attention, and not according to what some magazine says I should be eating.  I think the urge to diet is something I will always fight a little bit, but you know?  Every time I stop myself from engaging in those behaviors, I win another battle.  String enough of those together, and I may eventually win the war.

At home.

So, I went on a little vacation for 10 days and I ate crazy, wonderful, sugary, exciting, new-to-me foods.  It was awesome.

Of course, the piles o’ sodium included in those foods made me swell up like a toad, but it was a small price to pay. It was a good time.

I’ve come out the other side of Thanksgiving and the vacation about 4 pounds heavier than I went in. I’d dipped down into the 130s before leaving, but am now back in the 140s and honestly?

I don’t really care.

That number simply holds no sway over me any longer.

Now that I’m home again, I’m back to my usual foods and my deeply-missed workouts, and I’m fairly certain my body will figure out whether or not those four pounds are here to stay without my worrying about it.

The fact is, I just feel fantastic when I’m eating well and exercising hard, and that matters so much more to me than three digits on a scale, you know?  Even though I loved eating all that crazy stuff, coming home feels like…well, coming home — to my health, my wellness, my happy life. 

I think that might be better than any vacation.

Oh, and an update on the ladies at work: they kept up their daily walks at work even though I wasn’t there to join them. I think it’s officially a habit now. I’m so proud!

 

Thoughts on Pie.

There’s half of a pumpkin pie in my refrigerator. 

I hadn’t even thought about it today until I reached into the fridge for some yogurt* for my lunch and there it was.

Hey, the day after Thanksgiving, I’m sure lots of fridges contain leftovers that fall well outside the usual food choices of the fridge-owners, right?  Generally speaking, pie doesn’t live in my fridge.  But it’s there today.

And what’s significant for me? 

I really don’t care.

I love pie, y’all.  Love it.  Pumpkin pie makes my heart pitter-patter.  But I had pie yesterday (twice, actually), and it was awesome and I’m just kind of…done.  I don’t want anymore.

Back in the disordered eating days, that pie would have been driving me crazy; I would have been thinking about it, longing for it, slicing off tiny piece after tiny piece, telling myself each one would be my last.

So to find myself here, on the day after Thanksgiving, alone with pie, and to realize I don’t want it? 

That must mean it’s not forbidden to me anymore; I’m just as happy not eating it today as I was happy to have it yesterday.

These little moments are still magical for me, the way they show up to remind me that I have healed so much around food. 

I guess it’s just another thing for which to be thankful, huh?

*I think I’m obsessed with yogurt mixed with banana and a smidge of honey and peanut butter, and topped with some Quaker Oat Squares.  It’s pretty much the only thing I want to eat these days – I’m sure I’ll have scurvy before the new year.