My Tummy Hurts!

Oh, this Monday is not cool.  Not cool at all!  This very uncool Monday is the result of some very poor decision making over the weekend.  Very poor!  I blame it on Friday.  After work I had plans to come home and clean the house, throw in some laundry, make a nice dinner and then do something, a walk or the garden or something.  What actually happened was that my body was so exhausted from a full week of gym mornings that I laid down on one of the sofas in the front room and promptly fell asleep for 2 hours.  That pretty much threw me for the rest of the evening, I woke up feeling like crap.  I did end up making dinner and then we did actually go for a nice 4.5km walk after dinner but I just felt like I’d totally failed at my jobs on Friday night and that put me in a foul mood.

When we got home from our walk we had to bake a zillion potatoes for a BBQ on Saturday night and by 11pm, the house smelt SO GOOD of baked potato that we caved and cut one in half and had a potato snack in what was pretty close to the middle of the night.  Aaaand that set off a weekend of potato craving and satisfying said potato craving.  Not the worst thing to crave, I suppose, but potatoes stay with me for daaaaaaayyyyyssss and if you happen to want to add a bunch of alcohol, lack of water and a salty seafood stew, that would explain an inexplicable weight gain of 3.8 pounds in two days.  Ugh.  Extra “Ugh.” since I have a rather fitted dress that I have to wear on Thursday. 

38 potatoes, washed, poked and ready to roast.

The love affair is over! Jose makes me grouchy!

Yesterday in the morning Ray decided it was time for me to take our motorhome for a drive so that he could show me the finer points of driving an enormous vehicle down the road.  I tell you, it was like learning to drive a car all over again including but not limited to difficulty using the brakes and then running up on a sidewalk (which could have been very, VERY bad had all the stars not been perfectly aligned right then).  Following that little adventure Ray also decided that a little wind in the face might be a good thing for a Jose Cuervo & red wine hangover so we geared up and took both bikes out on a ride.  I’m not really too bad anymore, injury wise, for riding but I suck the big one as far as skill goes.  I’ve been riding for 4 years, this year we’ve put 300km on, last year was 8,000 and the two previous years were 30,000 kilometers (19,000 miles) each.  With Ray’s injury last year and mine this year (and the sucky weather) our riding really reduced and that really reduced my confidence.  Add a close call a couple years ago and then my car accident and I’m in poor conditioning for riding!  Ray’s in a similar boat, seat-time wise, but he’s been riding for soooo long that it’s a second nature to him.  When I watch him ride it’s like he is the bike and it’s seamless.  When I ride I know that I’m moreso sitting on a machine and trying to manipulate it into doing what I want.  Totally different.

For this week my goal is to drink a lot of water and eat a lot of veggies and stay the hell away from alcohol and sodium.  I’m evidentally not as good at processing alcohol as I once was and my descent into Jose Cuervo after a bottle of red wine has put me a little under the weather.  OK.  A lot under the weather.  6 feet under the weather??  I feel like crap and even my hair looks like it has a hangover!

Tonight after work my waxist comes over (Ray has a very small enormous crush on her) and then we’re going to run into the valley for some cheap(er) fuel.  I really would like us to get a walk while it’s not raining and the grass also needs to be cut.  It’ll be a busy day!  Tomorrow is early gym morning and I sure hope I am not still sweating Mexican Fire-Water out of my pores by tomorrow!

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Remission

I really love food.  I don’t think that’s ever going to change.  I’m a texture-eater and an emotional eater and I get ‘stuck’ on things and will make them and eat them endlessly until I never want to see another *whatever* again.  This can sometimes last for months.  It would probably last forever on certain things if I didn’t put a conscious stop to it (lindt chocolates, for instance).  I also have food anxiety regari

 

I doubt I will ever change.  Sure, my body no longer looks like someone who eats emotionally or to excess so it’s difficult to discuss it or write about it because lots of people assume that if you’ve gotten the weight off and kept it off for a long time (years, I mean), you must be cured of all your past bad habits and food perversions.  I’m not cured, I’m in remission.

 

I’ve always been a big proponent of working within your limitations.  I don’t mean not pushing yourself to improve, I just mean that after self reflection and maybe even a conscious effort to make a change, that there are things that we just need to accept are a part of who we are and do the best we can within those guidelines.  For me, as for many, many people, I can try to pretend that I’m not geared to comfort myself with food and I can resist that urge as long as possible but when the shit really starts to stink, I am who I am and I do what I do.  So I have to learn to be honest about my limitations and work within them in order to not go completely off the rails.

 

I’m not entirely sure how to do that yet….but I think a big part of it is making sure that I am satisfied with what I’m eating every day.  If I enjoy the recipes that I’m making which are healthy and flavourful and nutrient dense, I should be less likely to feel like I deserve to eat ‘delicious things’ because I’m feeling bad.  If the delicious things are all healthy and good anyway, in theory I should be able to emotionally eat them all I want when I’m feeling bad.  I don’t think anyone ever binged on hard boiled eggs, baked kale or carrot juice and even if they did, the benefits would outweigh the negative, right?

 

I’m sure some people would say that instead of working the occassional bout of emotional eating, texture-driven eating, rage-eating or any other sort of non-hunger based eating into my life, I should try to eliminate it altogether.  Fair enough.  But while a person is attempting to do that, shouldn’t they wisely have a plan in place for the interim?

 

I’m not saying that baked eggs and spinach curry is going to be the end all to my emotional needs when life goes really wrong……..I’m just guessing (hoping?) that I can derive enough comfort from healthier alternatives rather than going and buying $18 worth of Lindt balls and eating them all in one sitting.

 

In other news, I’m going to buy a Magic Bullet after work tonight……..I’m excited to try different versions of smoothied fruits and veggies.  Like apples blended with peanut butter and almond milk for instance.  Or spinach, banana and chocolate almond milk.  Or about a billion other versions of healthful and delicious!