I laugh in the face of pain! HAHAHAHA!
Oct. 27th, 2005 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threadwalkerWell, first I grimace, then I scrunch my eyes, and then I laugh internally because when I laugh out loud, my stomach muscles hurt from the crunches I did on Monday. They (and the rest of me) actually hurt quite a lot and I am surprised at my discomfort because 3 weeks ago I was fine with my work out and on Monday I was specifically NOT pushing it. Ah, well. With pain comes motivation and proof that more exercise is needed. I assure you, however, there is laughter and it’s not all pain-driven hysteria.
Wednesday Night has become my “Focus on Health Night”. I used to weigh myself on Wednesdays, but I’m too scale-shy right now. Detailed Diet: Why diet, a review of my diet, my theory of the diet tests and mocking of Carrots (Warning: this is pretty boring stuff – this is really for me and a few others I commiserate with):
Last night I first examined my diet, which I've been deliberately recording since Monday. Three days isn’t a lot of time, but I just want to take a read on how I’m doing. I had some surprising results because I was expecting that my Net Carbs would fall within one of the four Atkins phase ranges, but they blew all the Atkins scale utterly. On the other hand, my Weight-Watcher points had naturally decreased over the last few days and this was without orienting my eating in that direction. I was even eating at the bottom end of my point range yesterday.
After getting Frick and Frack to bed last night I sat down and reviewed my eating habits since Monday. My self-exam of eating habits was sparked by trying to put on a pair of jeans that used to be comfortable and now they are not Bleck! The brownie, ice cream, cookie diet doesn’t seem to be covered anywhere or approved by anyone except the makers of refined sugar and those people who keep slyly shifting the physical sizes of women’s clothing upwards. Since I don’t want to buy more clothes (or make more costumes) AND I want to be a good role model for my kids, I’ve decided it’s time to get back on the healthy-eating band wagon and change my life style. And I hate the way I look right now. Sigh. I’m just so lazy and impulsive about food, I hate to use valuable energy to even contemplate this stuff. I want the magic wand …
Enough whinging. Since there are no easy solutions for me, time to make a lifestyle change.
My theory is that if I spend a few weeks trying to eat well and I record this with details on nutrition, a review should show me what non-brownie based lifestyle I’m naturally comfortable with. This will kind of be like recording all the data for a test and then taking all the tests at once to see which one I can pass. My “tests” are Atkins and Weight Watchers because I have tons of literature for each, so I don’t need to buy anything. And if it turns out I need to tweak my eating habits a bit, hopefully it’s only minor tweaking On the other hand, if, despite trying to be healthy, I fall off everyone’s scale, professional counseling will probably be necessary AFTER I stop stomping around in frustration and eat a cheesecake.
Last night I was totally surprised by what my three-day review showed me. I really thought my eating habits were more Atkins aligned because I have been avoiding white flour and white sugar (per standing doctor’s request). However, I’m not anywhere near any of the 4 Atkins phases and it’s because I’m snacking on raw carrots and supping on various vegetable soups, especially the totally yummy butternut squash soup that Safeway sells. I hadn’t been reading labels since our house if FULL of soup, but I was still surprised at how out of bounds I was. I was just as surprised to find that I’ve been eating within my Weight Watchers range because I was positive I’d blown that out of the water. In fact, I was eating at the upper end of the scale on Monday and it slid down to the lower end of my points range yesterday. How unexpected. What does it all mean? I’m not sure. My internal engine is still “digesting” this information and I have another week and a half to see what I do.
A note on the carrots: I don’t like carrots and haven’t for some time. I’ve had a lifetime of carrots when I was “doing” WW for a few years. However, after seeing Wallace and Grommit with the kids a few weeks ago, I have this inexplicable craving for carrots and other “veg”. Go figure. I’m blowing through about a cup of carrots a day as snack food and I’m SICK of them. But I can’t stop. I have an open container of carrots on my desk and when I think it’s “brownie time”, I reach for a carrot. If I’m really hungry I eat it, but if I’m not really hungry, enough of my “I don’t like carrots” surfaces and I make my saving throw against the little orange bastards. They’re baby carrots, too, so I imagine them singing “it’s a small world” everytime I don’t eat them. Confused? Me too. It’s totally bizarre, so I’m just going with it. On the plus side, the kids are now eating carrots when I am, so, um, at least they are learning to eat carrots. That’s good, right? Danged carrots!
F, by the way, is totally supportive of me taking off at night to work out, dealing with my dietary habits and doing whatever it takes for me to feel comfortable about my health. In fact I shared my dietary results with him and he jumped in and offered to support me by eating on whichever plan I came up with as soon as he can eat food again. How cool is that? I warned him that most diets frown on breads, but there are other carb-a-liscoius foods we can eat; both Atkins and WW seem to fit wheat tortillas into their plans without angst. I had some snacks this week that were yummy and low carb/low cal/low fat and he wasn’t scared off. So this weekend we’re going to make notes on what we like to eat, what we don’t like to eat and I’m going to start pulling some recipes from my books and from on-line. I want to put together a binder of recipes for stuff that can be made quickly and nutritiously. We also agreed we’d start bringing lunches from home, but that means I need to plan the menus and make the lunches and snacks. This is totally cool with me. I think I’m going to see if I can make the kids part of the process of figuring out what mommy and daddy will have for lunch and build in them the concept of planning what you’re eating and not eating on impulse.
Exercise Update:
I posted Monday’s work out.
Tuesday I did my brisk 1-1/4 hr walk around Aquatic Park in the afternoon.
Last night, after reviewing my diet, I toddled off to the gym for quality time on the life cycle (and with Felix, the protagonist of “Armor”) followed by: Leg Press, Leg Ext, Crunches (yowwie!), bicep curls, hip ad, hip ab, and triceps. I’m pleased the right elbow/tricep is feeling better. I did the same weight that annoyed it on Monday and it didn’t bother me last night. Today I ache, but it’s a good ache.
I got home from the gym pretty late, but I decided I needed a long, hot bath with candle light and scented bath stuff. I haven’t done that in years and my walking partner does it everyday she gets home from work. I definitely think that I was motivated to do this because she keeps talking about it and it was GREAT! I was very relaxed when I was done. I told F that bubble baths might have to become part of my Wednesday Night Health Night, too. He laughed at me.
Somedays, I’m positive I don’t have enough of the girly gene. My sister got it in spades, so apparently my mom’s no-nonsense “knit sweater or turtle neck w/ slacks” way of dressing didn’t rub off on her like it did me. My closet is proof of my girly-inhibited state and, sadly, kind of resembles the stuff my mom wears with a few flashes of splash. (Ugh – I’ve grown up to dress like my mom, what kind of a fate is that? Everyone warns you that you might grow up and BE yoru parents. No one warns you that you might DRESS like one of your parents.) Bleck. But why do I care today? I am going out to dinner with the girls to El Morocco tonight and I had to pack a bag so I can change at work. Standing in my closet, I got all flummoxed about what to wear because most of my stuff is very summery or very sporty or drab heavy sweaters (a la mom). El Morocco is expensive enough to rate “nice”, so “jeans/sporty” (IMO) is out. It has floor/stool seating (no short skirts, no straight skirts), ME dancers, dim lights and great food. How do you dress for that from my closet? I have nothing in between for a casual dinner. In my flurry of indecision, I threw a few different (sleeveless summer) tops in my bag and a hand-woven shawl. I’ll play eeny-meeny-miney-mo when it comes time to change. Or I may just throw my hands up in the air and embrace the plain black of my work wardrobe, which looks remarkably like my moms (eek!): black slacks, black turtle neck, loafers, slate gray wool coat. (Sob! I dress like my mother!)
The irony is that I’m completely comfortable figuring out what’s appropriate for a costumed event, but I can’t get myself out of my own house dressed nicely.
Wednesday Night has become my “Focus on Health Night”. I used to weigh myself on Wednesdays, but I’m too scale-shy right now. Detailed Diet: Why diet, a review of my diet, my theory of the diet tests and mocking of Carrots (Warning: this is pretty boring stuff – this is really for me and a few others I commiserate with):
Last night I first examined my diet, which I've been deliberately recording since Monday. Three days isn’t a lot of time, but I just want to take a read on how I’m doing. I had some surprising results because I was expecting that my Net Carbs would fall within one of the four Atkins phase ranges, but they blew all the Atkins scale utterly. On the other hand, my Weight-Watcher points had naturally decreased over the last few days and this was without orienting my eating in that direction. I was even eating at the bottom end of my point range yesterday.
After getting Frick and Frack to bed last night I sat down and reviewed my eating habits since Monday. My self-exam of eating habits was sparked by trying to put on a pair of jeans that used to be comfortable and now they are not Bleck! The brownie, ice cream, cookie diet doesn’t seem to be covered anywhere or approved by anyone except the makers of refined sugar and those people who keep slyly shifting the physical sizes of women’s clothing upwards. Since I don’t want to buy more clothes (or make more costumes) AND I want to be a good role model for my kids, I’ve decided it’s time to get back on the healthy-eating band wagon and change my life style. And I hate the way I look right now. Sigh. I’m just so lazy and impulsive about food, I hate to use valuable energy to even contemplate this stuff. I want the magic wand …
Enough whinging. Since there are no easy solutions for me, time to make a lifestyle change.
My theory is that if I spend a few weeks trying to eat well and I record this with details on nutrition, a review should show me what non-brownie based lifestyle I’m naturally comfortable with. This will kind of be like recording all the data for a test and then taking all the tests at once to see which one I can pass. My “tests” are Atkins and Weight Watchers because I have tons of literature for each, so I don’t need to buy anything. And if it turns out I need to tweak my eating habits a bit, hopefully it’s only minor tweaking On the other hand, if, despite trying to be healthy, I fall off everyone’s scale, professional counseling will probably be necessary AFTER I stop stomping around in frustration and eat a cheesecake.
Last night I was totally surprised by what my three-day review showed me. I really thought my eating habits were more Atkins aligned because I have been avoiding white flour and white sugar (per standing doctor’s request). However, I’m not anywhere near any of the 4 Atkins phases and it’s because I’m snacking on raw carrots and supping on various vegetable soups, especially the totally yummy butternut squash soup that Safeway sells. I hadn’t been reading labels since our house if FULL of soup, but I was still surprised at how out of bounds I was. I was just as surprised to find that I’ve been eating within my Weight Watchers range because I was positive I’d blown that out of the water. In fact, I was eating at the upper end of the scale on Monday and it slid down to the lower end of my points range yesterday. How unexpected. What does it all mean? I’m not sure. My internal engine is still “digesting” this information and I have another week and a half to see what I do.
A note on the carrots: I don’t like carrots and haven’t for some time. I’ve had a lifetime of carrots when I was “doing” WW for a few years. However, after seeing Wallace and Grommit with the kids a few weeks ago, I have this inexplicable craving for carrots and other “veg”. Go figure. I’m blowing through about a cup of carrots a day as snack food and I’m SICK of them. But I can’t stop. I have an open container of carrots on my desk and when I think it’s “brownie time”, I reach for a carrot. If I’m really hungry I eat it, but if I’m not really hungry, enough of my “I don’t like carrots” surfaces and I make my saving throw against the little orange bastards. They’re baby carrots, too, so I imagine them singing “it’s a small world” everytime I don’t eat them. Confused? Me too. It’s totally bizarre, so I’m just going with it. On the plus side, the kids are now eating carrots when I am, so, um, at least they are learning to eat carrots. That’s good, right? Danged carrots!
F, by the way, is totally supportive of me taking off at night to work out, dealing with my dietary habits and doing whatever it takes for me to feel comfortable about my health. In fact I shared my dietary results with him and he jumped in and offered to support me by eating on whichever plan I came up with as soon as he can eat food again. How cool is that? I warned him that most diets frown on breads, but there are other carb-a-liscoius foods we can eat; both Atkins and WW seem to fit wheat tortillas into their plans without angst. I had some snacks this week that were yummy and low carb/low cal/low fat and he wasn’t scared off. So this weekend we’re going to make notes on what we like to eat, what we don’t like to eat and I’m going to start pulling some recipes from my books and from on-line. I want to put together a binder of recipes for stuff that can be made quickly and nutritiously. We also agreed we’d start bringing lunches from home, but that means I need to plan the menus and make the lunches and snacks. This is totally cool with me. I think I’m going to see if I can make the kids part of the process of figuring out what mommy and daddy will have for lunch and build in them the concept of planning what you’re eating and not eating on impulse.
Exercise Update:
I posted Monday’s work out.
Tuesday I did my brisk 1-1/4 hr walk around Aquatic Park in the afternoon.
Last night, after reviewing my diet, I toddled off to the gym for quality time on the life cycle (and with Felix, the protagonist of “Armor”) followed by: Leg Press, Leg Ext, Crunches (yowwie!), bicep curls, hip ad, hip ab, and triceps. I’m pleased the right elbow/tricep is feeling better. I did the same weight that annoyed it on Monday and it didn’t bother me last night. Today I ache, but it’s a good ache.
I got home from the gym pretty late, but I decided I needed a long, hot bath with candle light and scented bath stuff. I haven’t done that in years and my walking partner does it everyday she gets home from work. I definitely think that I was motivated to do this because she keeps talking about it and it was GREAT! I was very relaxed when I was done. I told F that bubble baths might have to become part of my Wednesday Night Health Night, too. He laughed at me.
Somedays, I’m positive I don’t have enough of the girly gene. My sister got it in spades, so apparently my mom’s no-nonsense “knit sweater or turtle neck w/ slacks” way of dressing didn’t rub off on her like it did me. My closet is proof of my girly-inhibited state and, sadly, kind of resembles the stuff my mom wears with a few flashes of splash. (Ugh – I’ve grown up to dress like my mom, what kind of a fate is that? Everyone warns you that you might grow up and BE yoru parents. No one warns you that you might DRESS like one of your parents.) Bleck. But why do I care today? I am going out to dinner with the girls to El Morocco tonight and I had to pack a bag so I can change at work. Standing in my closet, I got all flummoxed about what to wear because most of my stuff is very summery or very sporty or drab heavy sweaters (a la mom). El Morocco is expensive enough to rate “nice”, so “jeans/sporty” (IMO) is out. It has floor/stool seating (no short skirts, no straight skirts), ME dancers, dim lights and great food. How do you dress for that from my closet? I have nothing in between for a casual dinner. In my flurry of indecision, I threw a few different (sleeveless summer) tops in my bag and a hand-woven shawl. I’ll play eeny-meeny-miney-mo when it comes time to change. Or I may just throw my hands up in the air and embrace the plain black of my work wardrobe, which looks remarkably like my moms (eek!): black slacks, black turtle neck, loafers, slate gray wool coat. (Sob! I dress like my mother!)
The irony is that I’m completely comfortable figuring out what’s appropriate for a costumed event, but I can’t get myself out of my own house dressed nicely.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 06:45 pm (UTC)And that's *such* a bummer, because it's probably my favorite diet too. :->
I just rejoined WW last Saturday, and today is the obligatory big challenge day -- they brought in Greek food for lunch. There's a huge tray of baklava yelling my name. *sob*
no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 07:03 pm (UTC)I would be lost if it weren't for the salad bar at work. Today's lunch is a healthy veggie salad, a hardboiled egg, and some indulgent Italian dressing. I have a lemon luna bar for a snack if I need one this afternoon. For tonight, I'm going to follow my SIL's advice: eat some protein before going out to dinner, and avoid binging at the restaurant.
I am jealous of your ability to get to the gym. I do not get regular exercise, and it sucks.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 08:29 pm (UTC)I haven't been regular about the gym since Spring Collegium. I have bursts, but nothing sustained. I'm trying to develop a schedule I can live with and it's a big struggle because I'm fighting a sense of "when" to work out that I spent decades developing.
I hope I sustain.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 11:52 pm (UTC)Amen, sister
Date: 2005-10-27 08:47 pm (UTC)BWAHAHAHAHA!!! You and me both, babe. I wasted *all* of last weekend mall-crawling looking for something to wear to Dagmaer's wedding this weekend because there is *nothing* in my closet appropriate for the "daytime semi-formal" dress code requested on the invite. I live in my jeans and don't even own a mundane dress or skirt that fits me--I have some nice stuff that fit 20 pounds ago in the 90s, but it looks pretty dated. (I did manage to fill up a whole Goodwill bag looking for an outfit though, so that's good.)
I bought....drumroll, please....new undies. Yup, that's the sum total of what I could find that I liked. Looking around it looked like everything on offer was badly made of crappy fabric that cost a fortune. Ugg. I wondered who buys this junk, then went out into the mall and did some people-watching over lunch. Oh. There they were--the great American unwashed and badly dressed.
Fortunately Dagmaer caught me and a couple other girls bitching about this dilemma on LJ(!) and has given us dispensation to wear whatever we want, so I'm going with the blazer, sweater, and slacks option--sense a theme here?
I have to admit though, that staring at my wide-load butt in dressing room mirrors under crappy flourescent lights for 2 days has seriously renewed my resolve to get back on my diet.
Re: Amen, sister
Date: 2005-10-27 09:44 pm (UTC)All of it - from deciding what to wear, looking at the butt in spooky dressing rooms, to discoverying that the well-worn size Z jeans we own fit better than the size Z skirt/pants in the store. ... Phooey!!!!
I hate the pain of shopping and the other pain of spending. In my fantasy world, I go to the magic store that has everything I'm looking for and it all fits me - no store hopping or fruitless searching involved.
I have some shopping spots for myself that I found while shopping for the kids:
For semi-formal tops to go with my jeans and blazer, I've started shopping at Old Navy. Some of their stuff is cheaply made, but I've found some nice silk tank tops there.
Also (of all places) Burlington Coat factory has more than just coats. You have to dig, but I've found some splashy, sassy things there, too. I think there's one over at the Great Mall and we have one in Concord.
I found a great (black) silk skirt at The Gap in Las Vegas a year ago. (It was F's 40th and we were having dinner at the Eiffel Tower - I'd forgotten to pack anything suitable for myself). It's become my all-occasion semi-formal skirt that I pair with different tops. Problem is, it doesn't flare enough to let me sit comfortably at EM; I've tried before so I can't wear it there.
Re: Amen, sister
Date: 2005-10-27 09:57 pm (UTC)Re: Amen, sister
Date: 2005-10-27 11:54 pm (UTC)Re: Amen, sister
Date: 2005-10-28 12:38 am (UTC)My work wardrobe has a distressing tendency to look like my mother's if I let it. I hate the sweater/blazer/slacks thing, though, so I don't get totally stuck there.
So let's see, I skate over 5 hours a week. My legs have so little fat on them they throw off the body fat calipers measurement (yay!). I still can't find clothes that fit and look awful in the dressing room. I tried on all the skating dresses in my size (3 of them) at Capezio the other day. They all fit...poorly. The whole leotard with a skirt thing looks really hideous if the skirt doesn't cross the belly in exactly the right place. Maybe I should do something about losing the belly...