Still Life with Ambivalence

I've had a drink (or two) daily since resigning, again, not to drink on weekdays. A little harm reduction strategy that's vexing me, it seems. As I write this, I'm anticipating the Bulleit rye on the rocks I ordered from the bar. I'm attempting to be gentle, neutral to myself about this, rather than using it as an excuse to lash myself. One or two drinks in an evening is not a grievous offense to my own physical health, after all.

It is definitely something I want to get ahold of, though. It's frustrating, and anxiogenic, to set an intention for myself and feel the compulsion to break it. To feel, and then to gratify, the compulsion. It's the same exact feeling when I stay on Facebook past the time I intend to log off, or put off a task I intend to do. There is a very natural, it seems, feeling of anxiety, shame, and dread in not following my intention, in violating my sense of what's best and most healthful for myself. The gratification of the urge is momentarily pleasurable, sometimes even glorious, but it's eventually replaced by an even greater sense of anxiety and shame, and, then, by whatever consequences follow, like deprivation of sleep, or acidy stomach in the case of alcohol or coffee.

I'm sure this has all been written about before, but it's good to articulate the patterns to myself. I'm successfully feeling neutral and curious while writing this, which is really good.

Obsolesced?

I wonder if I've run the course of personal blogging. Microblogging on Facebook and managing my music blog have subsumed much of my focus and energy for broadcasting my thoughts to the world; but less obviously (or more) my life over the last year, at least, has been in enough private tumult so as to intimidate me from sharing the details in this forum. This is the piece of my experience that warrants more exploration, rather than less, and I hope that I can gather the courage to share some of it with you here at TLab. I don't wanna let the blog go, if possible. I need to nudge myself gently to write here more.

Sigh

I ate everything in sight last night. What was in sight, you ask?

- steak
- fried potatoes
- fresh strawberry pie
- cheese cake. Need I go on?

My bike is in the shop. Once I have it back, I'm gonna ride that thing like there's no tomorrow. I'm thinking there might be no way to change permanently the way I eat. But I can always incorporate more physical activity into my life. We'll see how this fares.

Ambivalent about Ambivalence

It's been about, well, pretty much exactly, a year since I started this blog (among the proliferation of blogs I feel somehow compelled to maintain). I've only written about 20 entries, though, and I'm wondering if I'll continue to be vigilant and brave enough to keep this one up. I'm toying with the idea of re-posting my AFG entries over at Toothpick Labeling and just making the weight/health issue part of the umbrella of that main blog. There's a way in which it feels kind of compartmentalized over here by its lonesome, and I fear that my physical health is already over-compartmentalized in reality; it doesn't serve me to virtually wall it off as well. On the other hand, giving the subject of my weight, the state of my diet and exercise, and the emotional issues all tied up therein, its own forum, free from the clutter of other obsessions (relationships, trivial nonsense, the daily grind, et al) may be only proper for allowing myself the space to explore the space I take up.

All this to say, I haven't written anything here since Thanksgiving, and now it's fucking March, 2009, and I weigh about 6-7 pounds more than I did this time last year when I started this thing and declared that I wanted to lose a bit of weight. What has happened in the last year?

- I started this blog, in an effort to become more mindful about this topic in my life.

- I joined a gym and got into a fairly regular exercise regimen for, say, about three months. Guess what: the last time I went to the gym and the last time I blogged here were roughly the same day, marked by the annual turkey feast of gluttony.

- I've been biking way less than I was, when compared with my biking of two to three years ago. This mostly owes to the changes in my daily schedule that were brought on by being in grad school, and then my internship starting, and then my grad program transferring to a very un-bike-friendly location, and then three out of the last six months being both unemployed (read: unmotivated and depressed) and kind of soggy outside. And, oh, my bike broke and I went about a month to two months without one.

- my patellofemoral syndrome is really acting up lately, and my whole body feels out of whack. (In addition my my left knee, I'm feeling chronic dull discomfort in my left hip, lower back aches, neck stiffness, and occasional tingling in my right shoulder/arm which seem to be related to the back and neck tightness.) All these physical ills would improve with more exercise, even if I don't lose any weight.

- Less work = less money, which means I can't go to a chiropractor for the above issues.

- Less money theoretically should mean an upturn toward healthier eating, since Astrid and I have been cooking at home more. And we got gifted six months of the organic box delivery, so we've had a load of fresh veggies in the house, too. The other piece of this is that Astrid went vegetarian in July, so we've been cooking way less meat in the house, though I still do when I'm on my own for some meals. I don't know if the net impact of all this is that I'm eating better or not. The jury's still out.

So it hasn't all been bad, it's just been a lot to handle emotionally in the last year, and eating too much is my big coping mechanism, so there you go. Hmm...that makes me think that keeping this blog alive for a while may yet help me, in that I can always shoot out a quick entry instead of grabbing the chips and salsa.

Anyway, guess I'll keep AFG around. There are a number of topics I'm tossing around for possible future entries; I just have to motivate myself. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading...if you're still out there!

Fried Food Frenzy

Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. Except that I'm not Catholic, and my father is dead, so I don't think he would mind that I've had chicken strips, french fries, and breaded, fried cauliflower today (eating this last delicacy as I type before you now.) Yes, all in one day. Maybe this has to do with my vegetarian girlfriend being out of town, thus I'm eating to alleviate my missing her, and eating decadent meaty things 'cause, really, I just can. It feels wonderful momentarily and then feels awful, physically, not long after such binges. I should really be asleep now, but this cauliflower is fucking tasty.

Does it exonerate me when you know that I breaded the cauliflower in matzo meal?

Update

Maybe I haven't been blogging because I haven't been making any "progress," and by progress, I mean I haven't been eating more healthfully overall and haven't lost any weight. Generally, I've been less down on myself about these things, so that is a mark of progress I can be reasonably happy about. I've also been going to the gym: not as much as I ultimately want to, but I have gotten there several times. I'm up to ten minutes on the elliptical and another 30 minutes on the recumbent bike, so that's a decent aerobic workout, compared to my first couple times.

I'm doing crunches on this really fun thing where you climb up on a tall doohickey, rest against a back rest while holding onto these handles, legs swinging free off the ground, and then do leg lifts to work out the lower abdominal muscles. I can do about ten of these at present. I like the idea of getting stronger in my core - I want to be able to move more gracefully, have better stamina, be able to get up from sitting on the floor without grunting and straining, for god's sake. My out-of-shapeness makes me feel older than I am, and that's just silly. I've got lots of life to explore through movement, and I want to make it easier for myself not to automatically resist things like biking or hiking long distances, dancing with Ms. Astrid, and having long sessions of fantastic fucking. Core muscles help immensely with all that.

The Week in Food: The good, the not so good, the awful

After re-committing to the Regimen, I had an excellent week. I ate steel-cut oats and flaxmeal most mornings, ate lots of fresh fruit and veggies, big healthy salads, didn't overeat at all clear through Friday. I walked a lot during the week, too, and felt my gait pick up pace.

Then the family dinner for my birthday in San Jose happened. And I'm a sucker for corned beef, as we all know. But even though I piled on too much of the fatty, ridiculously tender meat on Friday night, I didn't eat myself to the point of belly-aching overkill. I ate til I was satisfied, and then had one more piece of corned beef beyond that. Dear readers: a year or two ago, I'd have eaten three or four pieces beyond that, so we're making progress here, okay?

But unfortunately, Friday night's dinner turned into the gateway drug for a major backslide on the Regimen. When Saturday rolled around, I intended to eat sensibly again, but I had class all day in Alameda starting at 9:00am, and couldn't pry myself out of bed early enough to prepare for the day before meeting my carpool at 8:30. So instead of the oatmeal I would've normally made for breakfast, I ended up eating a chocolate croissant supplied by a well-meaning classmate. Then for lunch, I did okay, ordering a grilled chicken and rice salad bowl from a nearby burrito/wraps kinda strip mall food outlet.

But then happy hour arrived. When the carpool got back into the City, I got the mischievous yen for bloody marys, dragging E-dog and EDG to have cocktails with me at the Orbit Room (scroll way down to the March, 2008, reviews, and see my very own), and getting Astrid to meet up with us. The evening devolved from there into a gluttonous adventure of too many drinks of too many varieties of alcohol, and ordering in Chinese food, which is always pretty much the death knell on reasonable portions for me.

Which led me right into Sunday, a day supposed to be devoted to my thesis, which started on the doubly-wrong foot of leftover chou mein and pancakes made by the lovely Astrid (they were multi-grain, at least), followed by leftover hot and sour soup, then a thesis-related stress craving for a chocolate milkshake, fulfilled down the street at Burgermeister (mmmm...Mitchell's ice cream!), then DJ came over for Bad Movie Night and we ordered in from a pizza place that, god bless/damn them, also makes chicken strips. Sigh.

This morning: oats and flax. Yum.

Progress Report #1

The numbers:
So it's been two months since I launched this site, and I still weigh exactly what I did when I started, 220 pounds.

The physical feeling behind the numbers:
I feel somewhat sluggish physically, haven't been riding my bike enough, and haven't been drinking enough water. This less than ideal physical state is counterbalanced somewhat by feeling emotionally uplifted by the end of the school term and other reasons you can read about at toothpicklabeling. So, all in all, my body and stress levels are feeling pretty decent.

The emotions behind the numbers:
On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being least concerned or stressed about my weight and 10 being red alert-level anxiety and self-flagellation, I'd say I'm holding steady at about 4. I'd still like to lose some weight for overall bodily functioning, health, and to increase my physical fitness/stamina/mobility. But I'm not too upset with myself right now. It's been a really stressful several months with the school situation, and my crazy schedule has contributed to a lot of difficulty, beyond my regular resistance and bad habits, to preparing healthy meals and getting on my bike. I think now that I'm acclimated to the new schedule, and Spring/Summer is upon us, it bodes well for being more active and planning meals better.

More updates like this one whenever the muse strikes.

xo
Bree

Sometimes I do; sometimes I don't

We did a check-in during class tonight, in which we were supposed to share something about self-care: where it's at for us right now, what we want to be mindful of for ourselves as we engage in our clinical work and return to classes after the ordeal we've been through (see the other blog if you don't know the ordeal to which I refer.) I talked about how I'm taking multi-vitamins and fish oil supplements now, which I'm truly happy about. But it was a veneer to mask the real thing I'm not doing to care for myself: I'm nowhere near where I want to be in terms of eating healthfully. That couple-week stretch of eating well has given way to the usual pattern of eating satisfying but non-nutritive crap and eating too much of it. Sigh. Then my amazing new teacher told us she recently joined Weight Watchers. I didn't have a negative reaction to this because, A., my teacher is fierce and serene in the best combination of those qualities, and even said she could facilitate WW meetings better than their group leaders, fat and all! and B., WW is actually the one diet plan in the whole universe of the $40 billion diet industry that doesn't turn my stomach, so to speak, because it's actually a way for people to learn how to eat balanced, healthy meals and change their eating habits. So anyway, this isn't an ad for WW, but it's just to say that, damn, I didn't use that opportunity to be "out" about my contemplation of losing weight and my struggle to eat healthier.

On the flip side, I was the only one in class who commuted by bike, and that's something I can be pretty proud of, even if I ate a can of Chicken and Stars soup upon arriving home. ;)

Bad Week with Food

The stress has let up somewhat, though I've got a lot of clinic work right now, and school starting up. So there's that. And the fact that I just ate a whole mini cheesecake, even though I wasn't hungry in the slightest. It looks like one serving, but it's really two, or maybe even three. Sigh. It was really fucking tasty, though. Like some of the best cheesecake ever, all velvety and lemony, with a bottom graham crust that tasted more like carmelized butter and sugar than a box of stale crackers.

I had some time to kill tonight before Dax's birthday celebration, so I ducked into a wifi café in Berkeley before heading to the pub, and there's a problem with me and cafés, see: I love 'em, but I don't drink coffee. So here I am with this gorgeous display of pastries and confections in a curved glass case in front of me, and these beautiful tiny cheesecakes staring up at me, needing a tummy to fill. Okay, you know it's bad when I start anthropomorphizing food. So, yeah, I bought it, I ate it, and now I feel really yucky. And now I'm on my way to drink beer on top of it.

I love my shrink

I've never blogged about my therapist before. I've mentioned being in therapy, but never anything specific about Mark, my dude. He is so light-hearted and takes my issues seriously but helps me create a relaxed, nonjudgmental space to contemplate them and start letting stuff go. Last week I went into therapy totally down on myself for how I've been eating lately. With everything going on with school, and the new bookkeeping job, I've been so fucking stressed out and eating everything in sight. I cried on the couch, feeling huge and awful and shitty. Mark basically told me to chill out and give myself some credit for coping with the stress. Since eating is one of my self-soothing strategies, it's not surprising that that's where I go when I'm freaked out. We talked about what I might do in the next week to stay grounded, and it totally calmed me down. I've been eating really healthfully all week, and feel bunches better. Just being reminded not to beat up on myself was really the key. Once I felt freer to cope by eating, and became more mindful of it and accepting of it, I wanted to do it less.