Memories

I went tanning last night…..and burned my ass.  But that’s not really the point of this post.

I’m sure you’ve gotten “scent memories” whether it’s the smell of blooming lilacs that remind you of your gramma’s house or salty air that reminds you of summer vacations or the smell of cut trees that reminds you of Christmas?  Usually they’re “here and gone”, fleeting, those memories.  Last night though I had one go on for a couple of hours.  It was both wonderful and unnerving.  I bought new tanning lotion a couple of weeks ago and only got around to using it last night.  And, last night the standup tanners were occupied so I went into a lay-down bed.

The combination of that particular lotion and the laydown bed caused me to be instantly brought back to the first time I ever went tanning, 7 years ago, when I first started to uncover my true self from under the armour of fat and depression that I was living in.  I remembered being the person who making efforts that deserved celebrating with something blissful.  I remembered being the person who was falling in love (real, proper love) for the first time ever and I remember being scared & excited about it.  I remembered laying in that tanning bed 7 years ago wondering what my life would look like, wondering if I had the drive and determination to push on and see it through.  I remembered how, every day and especially when I was tanning, I was starting to really love my body for what it was right then and for what it was turning into.

I was reminded that evening when I was laying in my own bed afterwards, how for me, going tanning is one of those markers of being in a good place.  It’s a sign of having energy to spare and love for myself and that I’m doing the right things; the things that most respect me and where I am right then.  Maybe I’m not in the perfect body (the one I strive for, not the one I could never achieve) and maybe I’m carrying some extra weight right now….but for me tanning is a sign of ongoing success.  I don’t go tanning when I feel awful about myself, when I’m full of shame or depression.  I don’t go when I’ve been laying on the couch eating crap. It’s only something I do when all my ducks are in line….and the fact that I’m going now makes me really joyful.  It means that I’m starting to be successful in breaking new ground and in letting go of past hurts & resentments.  I’m forging brave new pathways and looking upon the future with a clear heart and mind.   It means that I am gaining back the passion for myself, the desire to care for myself because I am worth caring about.  I have some of that excitement again, the one I last felt 7 years ago; excitement in the everyday and curiosity surrounding the future.

I rode my bicycle to work this morning, here on the first day of spring.  It was 0C (32F) this morning and holy CRAP was it cold!  I had a frost beard when I got to work (all the teeny little peach fuzz hairs on my face had acquired tiny bits of condensation on the uphill and then it froze on the downhill!) and two hours later I still have a chill and am wrapped in three hoodies all zipped together to make a pseudo blanket, LOL!  Maybe a teeeeensy bit too cold for morning commuting….but should be SO nice on the way home tonight!

I have plans to bicycle commute tomorrow as well (that’ll make it three days this week!)…although I might consider wearing full length pants/leggings for the ride down in the AM….and then I think I’ll visit the gym on Saturday morning for some rowing and a steam, I never did get to steam last weekend.  I’m actually considering investing in a rowing machine for at home.  I would dearly LOVE to get 20 minutes of rowing in Every Day but I have a really hard time going to the gym just for 20 minutes….and I don’t really have time during the week while bicycle commuting/recovering, to get there for longer.  It’s around $1200 and is the same one they have at my gym (Concept 2, Model D).  I’m waffling about it and going to sit on the idea for a while and just wait…..the right answer will present itself, it always does.  If you have a rower at home, do you like it?  Do you think it’s worth the money and does it get used?  We also have a full weights set downstairs (plates, dumbells, lat machine, squat rack, ez bar & Olympic bar, yoga ball, balance plate, etc.) that is currently unused and I’m seriously debating adding the rower to the mix, cancelling my rather expensive gym membership and cleaning up and making proper use of the space and equipment.  Again though….I’ll just sit on that idea for now and see what happens.

Anyway, I’m off to try and find more hoodies to string together to add to my insulation since the air conditioner just kicked in and it’s only 19C (66F) in here.

Happy First Day of Spring!  (is it springy in your neck of the woods?  Or still cold and crappy?)

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Deficiency!

These last few days, especially the last three or four, have been ROUGH.  I’ve been feeling resentful and bitter and angry and jealous.  I’ve been a bitch and snarky and barky and generally a jerk to be around. Ray….well…..he’s one of those guys that is repelled by any emotion (his or other’s) that is not “fine”.  But…he’s been a grumpy bear these days also and I was chalking it up to my shitty attitude….not so.  Then this morning after a couple blogs and blog comments a few different thoughts that have been swirling around all came together.

Let me take you back to mid of December for a moment, when Gracie (our boxer) started getting exceptionally irritating.  She would climb into our laps and put her face right in ours and howl.  She’d stand 5 feet away and bark at us for 20 minutes.  She’d get really bite-y when playing.  She refused to get out of the kitchen (which is a skill that we have trained her on, she knows not to cross the kitchen line) unless you pushed her out physically.  We just figured that she was lonely and bored.  Then, on New Year’s Day evening we went for dinner at Ray’s mom’s house and had the opportunity to feed her there.  In looking at her food and then looking at her, it occurred to me that perhaps we weren’t feeding her enough. Now….don’t panic, she’s not starving by ANY stretch…and she’s a big, meaty dog…..but she looked like maybe she wasn’t quite meaty enough anymore.  We fed her another small meal that night and then upped her food a bit (the vet had her on a diet for a few months previous to this) and she is once again a docile, calm, obedient and loving dog.  It took two days.

So back to the human part of the family.  When Tara cut her video and then wrote her post about not having enough carbs during Whole30 to stave off extra depression and anxiety, I foolishly told myself that “I’m not going a Whole30, that can’t be it”.   Over the evening I read Tara’s blog again and then took a step back (turning out to never be a bad move, that “step back”) and assessed what we’ve been eating and how it stacks up against what has been successful for me in the past.

I follow the feeding principle of Whole30 if not the rest of the criteria, eating a meal large enough to get you to the next, times 3.  Limit snacking to not at all or only when needed.  Limit fruit to “occasionally”.  It became clear to me immediately this morning that my awful attitude and inner feelings are because I’m not eating enough.  It also became clear to me that Ray’s bad mood is HIS own bad mood…probably because he’s not eating enough….because if I’m not then he’s not…he’s 6’0 and 220 and eating the same as I am.

So…..this morning I upped our breakfast, packed a bit more stew into our lunches and threw an apple in my bag. I also brought a jar of almond butter to work with me….because when I was MOST successful I used to eat AB out of the jar at work…..not that the AB made me successful….just that if I was doing it and enjoying it at my most successful….then I can certainly do it now as well, no harm!

This all wouldn’t be overy noteworthy….except that I have been a twisted woman these days and I do NOT like it.  I am not a jealous person, I have nothing to worry about and Deanna is not a blonde bimbo, she’s just a woman doing what she feels is right and having camaraderie with the likeminded people she works with….and that includes my husband.  Only…..Ray would eat a plate of grass clippings if you put it in front of him, he places NO value on food whatsoever.  He has lived with and through the last four years of me changing our diet (“diet” being the food we eat), talking about it all the time, sharing my research, teaching him what I’m learning.  And then a friendly woman at work starts talking about similar things……so ya, I can see him coming home and relating the conversations they have…..because it’s the stuff that we talk about.  My nutrition-deficient brain did NOT appreciate that in the manner in which it was meant.  Deanna (and her beliefs) are no threat to me, it’s just conversation.

When I started thinking about feeling under-appreciated I started assessing how things are different in the last few weeks than they have been previously.  Ya, they’re not.  Nothing has changed except my reaction to it.  Enter nutrition depleted brain again.

This all happened before I’d even gotten dressed this morning.  So….I figured it out thanks to Tara’s posts and Lana’s comment on my last blog.  And then, standing naked in front of the mirror, assessing my body while blowdrying my hair, I had this thought:  “Whatever, suck it up until May when you’ve met your weight loss goals, you don’t need any extra food, it’ll just slow you down.”.  So MEAN, that first thought!

I’ve been working hard to balance my life out and to think that I would notice this failing and not fix it would be absurd!  So I can either get a divorce or I can up our intake….more avocado/coconut milk/mayo/almond butter/coconut oil and more beets/carrots/potatoes/turnips/yams/squash.  Our protein intake is pretty good, I think we’re probably on our high end of the spectrum.

So thank you to Tara for her vid and post, thank you to Lana for her honest comment, thank you to the article I saw the other day that talked about BMR and calorie intake, thank you to Robb Wolf’s tweet that said “Don’t trust anyone or anything.  Experiment and see what works.”.  And thank you to myself for taking the time to honestly assess the situation and rank my mental health (and subsequently my relationship) higher than my desire to shed weight.