A real workout

Today I did the first "real" workout I've done in a long time. I did my run (and messed up and ran an extra 3-minute block instead of a 90-sec one... oh well, it felt good!) and then I popped over to my friend Sue's garage where my weights now live. I had forgotten how absolutely crappy that weight set is, but oh well... it will have to suffice. They're heavy things I can lift, if not exactly comfortably.

I did my pushups there too - bumped down to column 1 of the hundredpushups program, but it doesn't matter, I'll get there in the end. I alternated sets of pushups with weights - squats, then deadlifts, then shoulder presses, bicep curls, and chest presses until I realized they were just backwards pushups and probably redundant by that point. And I did lots of nice stretching plus my back exercises, which I have been neglected. I felt all lovely and loose and floppy afterwards.

So... tomorrow is a rest day, then Thursday is a pushup day and Friday is the start of week 4 of the running program, which involves 5-minute blocks of running, yikes! I guess I can manage it.

Food is still no problem, and I am finding myself far less hungry as time goes by. It's noon, and I'm not starving for lunch like I used to be on an oatmeal breakfast.

progress

I'm more than halfway through week 3 of the Couch to 5K running program and it's going really well. I am SO SO SO thankful for my orthotics - *all* my running foot pain is completely gone and I don't even think about my feet when I'm running. Today the last leg was kinda hurty but in a good way - it made me think "oh, hello leg muscles, welcome back and you have 2 more minutes of running to put up with, enjoy!"

I took my weight set over to my friend's garage and will start doing quick weight routines there - since there is a mat, and space - three times a week.

I am just heading into week 3 of the hundred pushups program. I've been here before and I know week 3 gets HARD but I will do it, I will I will I will.

And still - no problem laying off the starch & sugar. I feel really good and really energetic.

I don't think I've lost any more weight though... I'm pretty sure I will need to step up my activity level, or go super-low-carb for 2 weeks to kick-start some weight loss... we will see, right now I am just enjoying being active and feeling good.

me + starch = bad

Today at lunch I was in pantry-cleanout mode and decided to heat up an ancient can of Caribbean-style black beans for Rowan and me. They didn't have any sugar in them and I figured that they're high enough in fibre to cushion the starch from my brain.

Um, no. I DID throw in some leftover pork, and I ate mine with gobs of sour cream for extra fat (and, indeed, 1/2 a small bowl was enough to make me feel full). But 20 minutes later I found myself at the fridge with my hand reaching towards my crunchy turnip sticks. I was able to stop myself and realize that I was still full from lunch and had NO reason to eat them, but it was a bit scary - I didn't even think about it until the turnip sticks were in my hand. And yes, it was just turnip sticks, which are not about to make anyone fat - but I'm sure if there HAD been chips or something around, my little paws would have been heading for them.

Also, I feel kind of bleh this afternoon and couldn't even convince myself to ride Bikey over to Cook St. Village. That's really not cool.

So no more beans, for now... they were delicious, but fortunately Rowan really liked them (she actually ate nearly twice as much as me! but she hardly ate any breakfast) so she can have the rest for lunch tomorrow.

feeling good

It's been almost a week since my big mind-shift and I've had no problem avoiding sugars and starches. The only real challenge was a party last night where almost everything was sugary and/or starchy, but I'd had a good dinner and I didn't really want any of it. I did, however, find it difficult to socialize because everyone was clustered around the food and it *was* hard to keep looking at it.

So, Hallowe'en is over, and I didn't even come close to slipping up. Woo!

I feel really good, actually, more physically than mentally. I am still adjusting to the thoughts that this mode of eating is permanent. On one hand, I really believe that it's a much healthier way to eat - but I will miss bread, especially. Not only its taste, but its versatility and ease of use. I suppose I will get over it eventually, and maybe in 5 or 10 years I'll see if I CAN eat just little bits - but to be honest, I'm a little scared of that so I'll just cross that bridge when I come to it.

I've also been doing the hundredpushups.com program and the Couch to 5K running program. Both are going well, and it's a time investment I can manage. Running is SO much more comfortable with my new orthotics, I am kicking myself for not getting them sooner!

Overall I feel less bloated and yucky, and yesterday I weighed myself and I'm down to 161.5. My clothes are more comfortable already.

So - so far, so good!

so far so good

I made it through Survivor night without eating any cupcakes. Or really wanting to, even though they came from the good place, not the yucky vegan place. (Vegan cupcakes are a stupid idea. Vegans ought to be eating only the very freshest and best greenery, nuts and seeds, and vast vast amounts of them, to have any hope of even approaching decent health. Cupcakes are the LAST thing they need.)

Tomorrow will be a bigger challenge - Hallowe'en! Then another hallowe'en party on Saturday - but at least I've been requested to make paté for that. I was supposed to make pumpkin tarts for the party tomorrow but my pumpkin turned out to be not a pie pumpkin. I think it was either a mutant freak or mislabeled... but it was just not good, so I shall make mince tarts instead, seasonality be damned, and use up some of the lovely green-tomato mincemeat I have in the pantry.

self-discovery, thanks to CBC

It's been a while since I posted. I've been in total denial mode - the "oh, I'll get back on that exercise thing on Monday" kind of denial. But I wanted to post about a recent self-realization in hopes that it really starts to permeate my being (at the risk of sounding a bit hippy-dippy).

So I was listening to Quirks & Quarks this week, and they had on a psychologist who researches brain differences between overweight and normal weight people. She was looking at the pleasure-centre activation using food as a stimulus (chocolate milkshakes to be precise) and expecting to see that in overweight people there would be more activation in the pleasure area (cause if you like something, you do it more, right?) As it turns out, there was LESS activation. Overweight people, apparently, get LESS enjoyment out of food. Interestingly, addictions researchers see a similar effect with people whose addictions are progressing - the measurable pleasure of whatever it is they're imbibing in actually decreases over time, prompting the addict to need more.

This totally made sense to me. For me - I would hesitate to say that ALL overweight people have this problem. I can eat a meal and stop, but if I start snacking, ESPECIALLY when I don't really need to, I can't stop eating. I'll have a piece of toast or whatever and think "I don't need any more" and then go back and make another one. And then have some cookies. And then an apple, because I need to eat something healthy. And then another cookie. And then it's dinner time.

So I thought "huh. I think I'm a food addict." I've always tried to ignore that possibility, preferring instead to believe that there was nothing wrong with me that a little willpower wouldn't fix, knowing that I'd been able to lose weight in the past, conveniently ignoring the part where it all came back on the minute any extra stress entered my life. But I think I have to face the fact that there IS something wrong with my brain - leaving aside, for now, the question of from whence this defect came - and I CAN do something about it in the same way that alcoholics and drug addicts can.

Of course, I can't stop eating. But I can stop eating the foods that trigger out-of-control eating, which is anything starchy or sweet. A bit of internet research quickly showed that almost all the people who've beaten an eating addiction have done so by cutting out starchy-sweet things. I've known for a long time that these foods are not doing me any favours but now I have to realize that my brain is expecting a big bang-for-buck in terms of pleasure from these things and it's not getting it, so it wants me to eat more. Well, from now on, the old brain is going to have to make do with pleasures from cheese and veggies. Deal, brain. (I think the problem IS actually specific to starchy-sweet stuff, because we are evolutionarily built to load up on that sort of stuff whenever it's around - and the best way to make someone do something is to make it fun. Hence the link between starchy-sweet and pleasure. I think the researchers would have had entirely different results had they used cheese as the the stimulus.)

For the last 2 days I've eaten no starch or sugar. And I'm not missing it, surprisingly. The real test will be the Hallowe'en parties this weekend - if I can make it through those, I can make it through Christmas. The problem in the past has been that I always thought I could get back on the wagon easily enough. Now I know that's not true. If I eat one jellybean, I will eat more.

Also, I got orthotics and I've been jogging a couple times a week. It's not fun, but I'm doing it.

And in the interests of full disclosure, my current weight is 164 lbs.

ruminations on why I suck

Ok, so I've been thinking over the past few weeks when I have been eating lots (of crap and good stuff, about equally) and not exercising exactly why this is so.

First, I think I'm not really such a fan of myself when I go into "on the wagon" mode. I'm pretty hard-core and unforgiving, and if I slip up or go into a situation where I know I'll slip up (usually involving either alcohol and desserts or both - ie, your average summer dinner party/bbq) then I stress about it, eventually cave happily and then completely lose my motivation to not do the same thing the next day. There's no "slippery slope" for me, just a big ol' cliff.

Second, the whole concept of making time for exercise is not doing it for me right now. Part of it is that I really miss gym workouts, unfortunately. I vastly prefer weights to body-weight exercises. I like being able to spend an hour or two focusing on my body rather than 20-30 minutes with one ear on the child monitor, looking at all the laundry I haven't folded and the dishes I haven't done. (If the laundry and dishes have been done, you can be sure the exercising didn't happen.) I could get a drop-in pass thingy for the Y and go there, but I'm already taking off several nights a week for Madrona Farm fundraising meetings and girl nights at the pub, and frankly I don't want to give either of those up. Plus it's an extra expense that we don't need.

So... what to do. I think I really, really need to work on my eating habits and my relationship with food. I am a tad obsessed with food from a number of directions: taste, preparation of, nutrition, ecology, sustainability/political... it's my #1 thing. The problem is that it's also my #1 comfort, too. If I feel stressed, bored, scared, worried, whatever, the first thing I want to do is occupy my brain with a book or the internet and stuff my face with whatever food is handy. That's gotta stop. Also, I eat on the go too much, and that's just a bad habit.

Starting right now, I'm not going to eat at the computer, or while driving, walking or reading. If I want to eat, I eat - but nothing else (except chat. That's ok.) Eating on its own doesn't have the same comfort value for me as eating with an occupied brain, so I think this will help.

I'm also going to try to use Bikey more. I like Bikey, and Rowan will now consent to riding on Bikey at more than a walking pace so it's getting more practical to do shopping and stuff with Bikey. I need to get some paniers or possibly a light cargo trailer though, because if I get more than a couple things at the grocery store, my backpack squishes Rowan when we ride. And, there is a limit to how much I can stuff in the backpack anyway. Also, biking saves gas, so even when I'm feeling lazy, I can get over it by being averse to spending money on gas. It now costs nearly $60 to fill up a Honda Civic. Even though we get over 500km per tank, that's still a big chunk of change.

So, we'll see how this goes. Once I've got my eating habits under control and I'm getting a moderate amount of exercise, if the weight doesn't come off at least a little bit then I'll get my thyroid checked. But I think gluttony is more to blame than malfunctioning body parts.