Brad: how's the gym treating you lately?
me: I'm taking a week off, the knees are acting up again
Brad: ah, ok.
me: but in answer, other than the knees, the gym is treating me well. I'm working really hard, and feel good about it
Brad: great.
me: that said, my food addictions are not treating me well, and sabotaging all the hard work in the gym
Brad: are you still going to OA?
me: no. I need to get back to it.
Brad: Just remember how happy you were with your results. :)
me: i know. I just don't want to go back there and have to admit that I failed again
me: not that they'll judge me or they won't still love me, it's just a pride thing
Brad: so don't say "I'm a failure" Say, I lapsed, but I want to get back to it.
Brad: It's rare that anyone can quit any addition/habit cold turkey. The key is to not step back farther than you step forward.
me: :)
me: you're an amazing friend, you know that?
Brad: Nawwww.
Brad: I know I'm not trying to lose weight, but I've got things that I have to work on too. If I don't run, I don't have the energy to be a good dad. If I eat bad food a couple of days in a row, my skin tells me to stop it.
Brad: But the brain HAS to win. It's 5:15am, warm in bed, cool outside, and I have to SCREAAAAM inside my head to put my feet on the floor, put my clothes and shoes on. I even walk slow to the end of the driveway so I can prolong having to run.
Brad: and now, that I'm sitting here at 2:20pm, I have energy and I am in good spirits. When I"m not in shape, I'm tired, grumpy, and unmotivated.
Brad: Ok, the "me" song is over. Just wanted to pass that along.
me: :)
me: yeah, I feel that way about the gym [not wanting to do it but feeling good after]

My food has been a mess. I haven't been to a meeting in weeks. Last time I went to the doctor I had gained weight, and I don't think I can attribute it to gaining muscle mass, but it might be. I'm so lucky to have supportive friends, both in Program and not. I got this in an email months and months ago and I keep it where I can see it during the day:

"And the deal is this; You're awesome the way you are. You're loved. You're accepted. AS YOU ARE. But for your best, for your health, for you... you have to do this (or, more accurately, you have to surrender this. Let God do in you what you could never do for yourself.)"

I need to surrender this. I'm really bad at surrendering things.

*sigh*

Yikes, it's been 6 weeks since I posted here. It seems like a lot, and also nothing much has happened since my last post. Going to the gym trailed off again after the times I posted about. So, I hired a trainer, which essentially forces me to go, because there is someone waiting for me, that I have to pay even if I don't show up. But I find I look forward to those appointments now, even though I end up dripping and sore by the end. There's a separate post on that in the works.

I've lost 4.5 pounds in the last two weeks, which, while awesome, is not what I hoped for. Friends are reassuring in that it is progress, but I dropped 24 pounds in 2.5 weeks once (and despite how that looks, it wasn't really that unhealthy, given the fact that I was not starving myself and the size that I was to begin with. In my head I know that I am working hard and that I am building muscle in addition to losing fat, but I really want to see the numbers dropping and my feelings on that are not really listening to what my brain is trying to tell me.

Food is really good some days and not as good on other days, but I have managed to keep away from fast food and junk food, so that is good. the "not as good" days pretty much just means I'm eating more refined carbs than I'd like, or not eating the amount of protein I should be, things like that. But it's all a process, and I knew it wouldn't be easy. I've just got to stick with it and not let myself get discouraged.

I've spent a fair number of days not feeling good about my recovery. I was sick for about a week, and gave myself license to eat whatever sounded good, because when you're sick those things tend to be few. But I also allowed myself to wallow in some hurt feelings and soothe them with the wrong things. But I'm back on track and feeling good about it. I missed my meeting this morning due to an early morning call from a good friend back East, which makes two weeks I've missed since I was sick last week. I kinda miss it.

The other thing I feel good about is the gym. I skipped a week of going because I was a human snot factory and couldn't really breathe in general, I wasn't about to go about panting on an exercise machine. But on Monday I was seized by an intense desire to go get some quality sweat time in on the elliptical machine at the gym. I used to hate the elliptical... wtf happened to me? I didn't go Monday because I had some things to do after work, but I went Tuesday and it felt really good. I'm going to attempt to go tomorrow morning early early, but I'm not so good with the getting out of bed so we'll see how it goes. I'm definitely going on Saturday though. I'm excited that I'm actually *wanting* to go to the gym. I didn't think that'd ever happen.

(I just posted this to my other blog, but since it has to do with food I felt like putting it here too.)

I had two eggs and a muffin for breakfast at about 10:30. I'm busily working away, and I just noticed that it is 4:07 and my turkey with sprouts on wheat that I bought an hour ago is still sitting on my desk wrapped in its paper. Do I even bother eating it at this point?

It's weird to look up and realize you have this blog thing that you haven't posted to in weeks. I need to work on that.

This year has been nothing short of amazing if you know me. There have been ups and downs, but overall I'm pretty happy. I joined a gym a couple of weeks ago, and I actually make myself go. Not only do I make myself go, I'm *motivated* to go. That's never happened before. Before I joined the gym I was getting up and walking two miles before work. Not every day, but a few times.

I'm working hard to get up the motivation to move my M-W-F gym trek to the mornings- that's slow going if I think about it but I've surprised myself. Yesterday was supposed to be my first "head to the gym at 6am" morning. Thanks to a random case of food poisoning (food allergy? no one else got sick) I was up til 3am Tuesday night. Nevertheless, when my my wakeup call came at 6 I told my friend I had been sick and wouldn't be getting up. But then I lay in bed really wanting to go. Ultimately I decided I was exhausted and didn't go, but the fact that I wanted to at 6 in the morning said something.

The fact that the trainer at the gym put me on an elliptical machine first thing and I continue to use it when I go to the gym boggles my mind. I hate the elliptical machine. I was in pain for days the first time I used one- probably due to using it improperly- but now I am determined to up my sweat time on the damn thing from 20 minutes to 30 minutes. I know I can do this. I know I need to do this. And I'm starting to believe that maybe I actually want/like to do it too.

(and adding to the progress in the last post, I can now remove two pairs of work pants without unbuttoning them. It's almost time for new pants!)

And this one will be short. Had a coupe of good moments the last couple of days I wanted to share. The best is probably that today I am wearing a pair of jeans that have been too small for 2 years. They're 2 sizes smaller than the jeans I've been wearing (which admittedly have been too big for a while).

Also, one of my coworkers has brought in a bunch of chocolate for the office, and I've had a really easy time just ignoring the fact that it's there. I've managed to not have sweets at all yet in 2007, with the exception of a few Hershey's kisses on New Year's Day. Last night I went to a Sharks event at Dave and Buster's, and my friends ordered a couple of fondue desserts to share. I had tried really hard to order a healthy-ish dinner- a house salad and philly steak rolls, which yes, were totally fried but at least not breaded and fried, and not at all greasy, and I wasn't all that tempted by the desserts. I mean, I was tempted, but it wasn't hard to resist. But this is how awesome my friends are- the fondue came with all kinds of sweet things of course, but there were strawberries and banana slices on the plate, and they saved the strawberries for me (they know I'm allergic to bananas or they probably would have saved me those too) so that I could finish my meal with something sweet without eating "sweets".

I do not need peanut M&Ms.... I do not need peanut M&Ms.... I do not need peanut M&Ms....

Can you tell what I'm craving right now? I just had a good healthy lunch and I'm not hungry, but something brought chocolate to my mind and that's now all I can think about. I haven't had sugar yet this year, and I'm doing really well with the refined starches too. Do I really want to blow that on something I don't really need to eat? No. But yes. But ultimately no. GRRRR.

I missed my Thursday morning meeting today. I had the evening from Hell last night and didn't get to sleep until after 1am. there was no way I was getting to a 7am meeting. My friend Charlie called me after to check in and tell me I was missed and that he hoped I was doing well.

Doing well. Hmmm... Last time I checked, I had lost 14 pounds. I'm pretty sure I've put a few of those back on. I've been pretty careful about what I eat during the workday, but my time outside of work has been so jam-packed lately that I've been letting myself make excuses. Fast food has slipped back in in the last few days as the only thing I have time for as I race from location to location. I need to knock that shit off, and I need to do it NOW. I was doing so well, and I need to not let the attitude of "it doesn't matter" creep back up. I hadn't had sugar in a month until yesterday. I was really proud of that. But sugar has crept back in too.

Addiction is a funny thing in that you feel like you're over it, so you let your guard slip a little, and BAM! I've had a few minor slips that I applied the phrase "imperfect abstinence" to- which is where you're following a food plan and working your program, but no one is perfect, we all slip, it doesn't mean you're not doing your best. But I've definitely broken my abstinence this week, and so the count begins again today, right now.

I didn't realize it had been quite so long since I'd updated... Thanksgiving went well, though there was some (okay, a lot) of bitterness over the lack of pumpkin pie consumption. The days following weren't great, but I'm not calling it failure. A friend ended up in the hospital over the long weekend, and the night he was admitted I got home at midnight after spending 4ish hours in the ER and having not eaten in something like 13 hours. My brother in law fixed me a plate of food- open faced grilled cheese- and I ate it fairly robotically. I wasn't in a frame of mind to be thinking clearly about food choices. I did discover that night though that I had lost 7 pounds in 8 days.

I'm down 11 pounds now since November 16th. My food has consistently been within my food plan and I'm feeling good about my abstinence. Now that the food thing is getting easier, I need to start pushing myself harder in the exercise department and the pounds should keep melting away. On Nov. 16th I tried on a pair of brand new jeans that have been in my dresser drawer for 2 years. They're a size smaller than the ones that I'm currently wearing. I had about 2 inches to go before they'd button. I tried them on again yesterday, and I've got about another half inch to go. If I had tried hard enough, I know I could have gotten them on, but why force it, right? It'll happen.

I had a hiccup and a moment of triumph last night. I got tickets to the ballet of Edward Scissorhands at the last minute and there was a flurry trying to get to BART in time to ride it up to the Orpheum. My best friend went with me, and since she works 2 minutes from the BART station, she ran out and grabbed us some food. From Burger King. Which is strictly off limits on my food plan. I called a friend from program stressing out a little bit. It wasn't something I would have chosen, but there was no time for anything else, and there weren't really any other options in the situation. I decided that I'd eat my chicken sandwich and leave the fries, and that'd be a good way to keep things under control, so that's what I did.

After the show we decided it'd be a good idea to pick up a box of doughnuts at the Daly City Krispy Kreme to take home to her mother who had babysat her son on incredibly short notice. I stared into that case and almost bought doughnuts for myself. I almost ordered them twice, but managed to make it out of there with just a bottle of water and a carton of milk. But it was close. I still sort of can't believe I made it out of there without buying or eating any sugar. Something's working...

(Firefox's spellcheck doesn't flag "donuts" but does flag "doughnuts", which is the proper spelling. Sad.)

Most of my time since leaving work yesterday has been spent in a car. My awake time anyway...

I stopped strictly following H.O.W. yesterday, but I'm still watching some aspects of it more carefully than I ever did before. Dinner was Marie Callendar's. I always get the salad bar there anyway, but I used less dressing and didn't have croutons or bacon bits. It was really good even without those things.

Today was difficult, but I made it through and feel good about it. Breakfast was easy, eggs, bacon and toast. My breakfast came with hash browns, but I don't like those so they were easy to leave on the plate.

Due to a detour out to Crater Lake that we were hoping would be scenic, but instead was massively snowy, we skipped lunch. At about 4:00 I turned to Keegan and said "How far are we from a real town?" He said about an hour, and I was silent in response. I don't snack, so I didn't have anything in the car to eat. He brought a snack bag, but all I'd seen out of it were some sour candies and couple of fun size milky ways. I was considering breaking my food plan and asking for some candy because I was just that hungry, but before I could say anything he said he had some crackers and soft cheese for dipping if I wanted some of that. I said yes please, because I was fast approaching low blood sugar bitch mode, and I said as much to him. He knows me well and knows how I get, and neither of us wanted that, so while I think it wasn't something I would eat given a choice, the crackers and dip were way better than candy.

As I was opening the package of crackers, he said something that was music to my ears.

"I have an apple. Do you want that? It's Granny Smith."

Yay! I love Granny Smith apples, and that was something I could feel good about eating. I had a some crackers too, 4 of them, but hungry as I was I likely would have eaten half the package.

My sister made chicken and rice and broccoli for dinner. My brother in law served the plates, and he has a huge appetite (and the metabolism to go with it, he's tall and thin). He put a chicken breast on my plate and started scooping rice. "Just a small scoop please," I said, and he put a larger scoop than I would have taken on my plate, and I served myself some broccoli. Then I sat there and stared at my plate. According to my food plan, I could eat this whole plate of food. But I knew it was more than I needed, so I cut the chicken in half and only ate about half the rice. I also declined the bowl of bread several times.

I was raised in a clean-your-plate family. Actually, the rule was "take what you want, but eat what you take." If anyone gave me guff about the food left on my plate I was fully prepared to counter with the fact that I had not served myself. My brother in law did tease me about not liking it, but I just said thank you, it was very good, I'm just not going to finish it.

Now it is time for bed, it has been a long day, and tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Oy.