Put Down the Straw and Step Away from the Milkshake

There are simply places I shouldn’t be permitted to enter. I thought I could come up with a top ten list, but surprisingly the magic number is five:

Steak and Shake
Dairy Queen
Olive Garden (or any other place with endless garlic bread and pasta)
Skyline Chili
Most pizza places (unless, I’m on my AAA game)

There you have it.

I’m contemplating whether or not I should develop a Most Wanted sign to post next to the hostess stations at all these restaurants. Add a buy one, get one coupon, and it might illicit the need for a restraining order.

What I contemplate this morning is just how much did that free turtle sundae milkshake really cost me?

Even after the first gulp, which was really after I slurped down the whipped cream and cherry, I knew it was too sweet. I asked Lyle if he wanted some. No. No? OK, Melissa. Buckle down. You can do this.

On the way home, I wondered why I had never perfected the art of puking.

As a kid, I remember trying to make myself throw up after stuffing my emotions so far down I could plaster the perfect-one smile back on my face. Food was always my drug of choice in the sometimes tumultuous alcoholic home.

The purging part eluded me. I just couldn’t quite figure out how to get the job done. Thankfully, Google was light years away, and I was too embarrassed to ask for assistance from one of the much-too-skinny girls at my school who I knew managed it quite well.

After I lost weight and marched my happy ass into my mental mechanic, I found the missing ingredient in a book she recommended about eating disorders. I realize the lack of this information as a child likely saved my life, but I occasionally I toy with the notion before smacking myself in the head and moving on.

Last night was not as bad as it could have been. After an unexpected indulgence, I’ve been known to ring the bell for the real binge to begin. I could have also eaten the triple steakburger – we had a coupon for it as well. I limited myself to the shake and some of Lyle’s cheese fries, but in my defense, I didn’t eat many fries (too soggy). I also skipped the self flagellation when we returned home and simply got ready for today and then turned in early because I felt so crappy. Is it perverse to be glad the shake made me sick?

I’m disappointed in my actions because I’d finally de-toxed from my previous sugar indiscretion, and now I will spend the next three days jonesing for the white stuff again.

It pisses me off. I know better. With knowledge comes power, right? I’ve been at this gig for 10 years. It shouldn’t be so fucking difficult, but maybe, just maybe I’m the biggest obstacle.

I don’t think there’s some big dark secret I’m trying to stuff down today; however, I find myself in a new set of circumstances and the systems I had in place no longer work. Here’s to devising a new plan. Excuse me if I toast with a little sparkling water; I’ve had enough milkshakes for one day.

Batter Up

I’m not sure how last week unraveled, but I’m recovering from a carb tryst.

My batting average tanked with a business trip to Cleveland, which included an Indians game – in the Indians suite, no less. Beer, hot dogs, subs, cookies, you name it; all there within too-easy-of-reach. It was a pretty cool way to watch a baseball game, but my eating habits mirrored the performance of the home team ending their winning streak, and I left feeling bloated and jittery and more disappointed with myself than with the Indians.

Traveling over the weekend didn’t help matters much, but today I got back to business and concentrated on healthy foods, packed with protein, wishing there was a way to outlaw over-processed shit that I like to dump down my pie hole.

This morning I managed to skip donuts at a special event and cookies in the office and dove into a bowl of fat-free cottage cheese and fruit for breakfast at my desk. Woo hoo, not nearly as interesting, but I felt no compunction to start my week full of errors that I wasn’t prepared to calculate.

Midday Pilates and a salad for lunch kept the momentum going. Tonight, I dumped my stuff at the front door and quickly made some eggs scrambled with a bunch of veggies before I could talk myself into a tortellini binge.

So, this week I’m looking to improve my batting average. Exercise and food journaling will hopefully get me to home plate.

Greek Omelet

1-2 tsp. olive oil
Spinach
4-5 mushrooms
3 egg whites
1 whole egg
1-2 oz FF Feta
4 chopped cherry tomatoes
Chives
Salt and pepper to taste
Greek seasoning

I came home tonight starving so I knew I needed something quick and easy for dinner that was packed full of protein.

I’m extremely blessed that I have spinach already in my garden that somehow made it through the winter, which provided just what I needed to make a yummilicious omelet. My chives are already thriving so I tossed in some of those, too.

I sautéed the spinach and mushrooms in a teaspoon of olive oil while I whisked the eggs with the seasonings and the chives. I added a splash of water to add in the fluff factor.

Over low heat, I poured the eggs into the pan coated with a teaspoon of olive oil and covered the pan to allow the eggs to set. Once the egg mixture was dry and bubbly on top, I flipped them in the pan and added the spinach mixture and the feta, and covered the pan to let it melt.

Nutrition: 239 calories, 31 grams protein, 19.3 grams fat (14 from olive oil). I didn’t calculate the calories of the spinach, mushrooms or tomatoes, and you’re on your own for the side. I chose cantalope.

Thanks to my trainer and WW class for reminding me that I need to make my meals intereststing to keep the satisfaction strong.

Refreshed and Rejuvenated

I slept really well last night – no wakey, wakey. I seem to have latched onto this term that my trainer uses to describe my muscles, but believe me it has a completely different connotation today.

The lack of a bedtime snack may have something to do with the phenomena. Mostly, I tell myself that I MUST eat an evening snack to avoid deprivation, but we ate dinner around 7 p.m. so a snack seemed more than a bit goofy. Even as I made the conscious decision to skip it, I wondered if I would wake in the middle of the night so hungry I wouldn’t be able to gather the energy to make it to the bathroom for my clock-work trip to the toity. The other thing omitted yesterday was caffeine after 2 p.m.

What I did enjoy was a day of pretty balanced eating, except for the Sugardaddy’s brownie, but it is the supreme treat so I accounted for it and thoroughly enjoyed it going down. The sugar definitely fucked with my gut later, but I sincerely doubt that I will lodge that complaint anywhere in my mind to retrieve later when I’m tempted to dive into the sugar bowl again. The most I can hope for is moderation at this point.

Anyway, here’s what the food looked like yesterday:

Banana, 6 oz. FF Greek yogurt, ½ cup steel-cut oats

Handful of almonds on my way to the gym (Usually I count the portion out, but I lost track of time and had to run to get to my class.)

Big salad (mixed greens, boiled egg, radish, 1 tsp. flavored olive oil, seasoning) and FF cottage cheese

1 Sugardaddy’s Brownie (OK, one and a quarter)

Apple and green beans (homeward bound snack)

4 oz. grilled chicken, ½ c. whole wheat couscous, steamed spinach, kimchee.

Minus a few extra almonds and the brownie, I feel good about the food I consumed, and to eat a night time snack would have had absolutely nothing to do with hunger.

Did the lack of snacking and no caffeine have anything to do with the good night’s sleep? Am I going to need to test the hypothesis again this evening? Doh.

Where’s Your Towel?

It finally happened. I talked to someone as I stood naked in the locker room. I didn’t even keel over from embarrassment, and she didn’t laugh at any of my squishy stuff.

I know this may not sound like a big deal to some, and others may be wondering why the hell I think confronting this issue is so important, but somewhere deep within, I believe this process may help me move forward in my quest to resolve my body image. If I can learn to be comfortable in the locker room chatting with other women as we are in various stages of getting dressed, I will someday push further to accept me as me, squooshy parts and all.

Perhaps it comes from a warped notion of seeing movies where teenage boys slap each other across the ass with wet towels or parade around as if they were fully clothed, but I want a little bit of the confidence. OK, I feel no compunction toward whipping anyone else’s jiggly butt with a towel that I pick up at the counter every afternoon before I head into my workout, but I would like the locker room to seem like any other room I may enter throughout the course of the day. Is that too much to ask?

I may even have an ulterior motive. I also really want to talk to some of these women to see how they feel about their bodies, but it would seem too fucking weird for me to just blurt out my questions without being able to maintain any kind of eye contact. The fact that I was able to chit chat with someone today as I stood completely naked felt pretty damn good, even though I was so nervous I can barely remember what we discussed.

Remember the lady I told you about who was standing naked in front of the water cooler when I first joined the Y? I want to know if people like her were born completely and utterly comfortable in their own skin or if it is acquired. Was I screwed from birth or is it something I can aspire to. OK, maybe I don’t want to be just like the old lady with droopy boobs and a saggy ass standing for all to see while she quenches her thirst, but you get my point.

I want to know if the women who bring their own towels do so because they want more coverage than the towels offered at the front desk or do these women want a softer towel or maybe they just can’t stand the idea of using a towel, which touched a million other hoo haas.

So, this morning I’m left with more questions than answers, but most of my days are filled this way. For now, I’m going to revel in the fact that I’m moving forward in my own perverse way. Cheers!

Beneath It All

The trainer I’m working with forwarded me a link to a log that chronicles a transformation challenge she began at the beginning of the New Year. Wow, I was amazed. I guess I just assumed that she was always as buff as she appears present day. It’s going to be harder to hate her now when she’s pushing me to what I think was 15 reps past my limit. She’s obviously put in the work herself.

There’s something about our sessions that I makes me want to do better for her than what I might push myself to do. Maybe it’s because to whine aloud would sound way too lame once the words hit the air. Instead, I just keep going and she seems supportive.

It does make me wonder about her story. I’ve known for a long time that everyone has a tale beneath what is taken out in public; all I have to do is look in the mirror to be reminded.

Sometimes I avoid the deep inward glance. It can be squirmy at times – a childhood when I learned more about life than what someone should know in a lifetime; holding children and waiting for them to die in my arms; losing 100 pounds. Strangers can’t see all those things on my face so why would I expect others to be all they appear on the surface?

It may be my warped version of “on the bright side,” but the really cool thing about evolution is what we take from all the shitty things we endure. Each of these difficult periods in my life made me a better human being.

It’s not to say that I would wish bad things on others, but the stupid-ass idiom of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, may hold more truth than what most of us like to believe.

I like to know people’s stories. I’ve always liked to know what’s beneath the surface. I used to ask my Gram all kinds of questions about her life, and she was one stoic woman, not willing to release many details. She would often ask why I wanted to know about such unpleasant things or tell me I was nosy. But to know about her and her story was to learn about me.

I’ve struggled my whole life with the lack of control that I would like to have over the minutia of my life. Mostly now, I get the fact there is far more outside my suffocating grasp. When embracing it all, the fun and scary parts may take me places even better than the one I find myself in today, which is pretty damn sweet.

So, what’s your story?

R-Rated Eating, Bye-Bye

I’m in a worry place. It’s what happens when I eat sugar. Worry and bitch, not the two most flattering things to embrace in one’s behavior.

I wasn’t crazy with food this weekend, but I chose to hang out with two-year-old Melissa, the demanding little toddler who wants and wants and wants and whines until she gets it.

Yes, I practiced portion control, but did I really need the PB&J (and cheese crackers) at 8:30 last night? The shrill little toddler apparently thought so. It was after all fresh-from-the-store white bread, the kind that sticks to the roof of your mouth when you take the first bite. She knows how much I love the stuff and how infrequently I allow myself to indulge. I’ve apparently put her to bed early on many nights to prevent her from seeing the R-rated eating.

The problem was not the PB&J or the crackers or the handful of jelly beans (OK two) or the candied almonds or even the glass of beer. Had any of these items been spread out through the week, I would have thought it was a fine way to build in little treats; however, it all plunked to the bottom of my gut in the same 24-hour period. Cramming it all into one day is like keeping a real toddler juiced up on energy drinks, M&Ms and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and not letting her sleep it off when the crash arrives. Set the tyrannical toddler loose to see the path of destruction.

The objective this week is time out – for both of us. Perhaps I need to introduce the little girl to the woman I am (and want to be). Maybe if they take some time together, they’ll discover there is room for both of them. I could use some fun-loving spontaneity and the ability to prioritize and implement a plan of action all in one vessel.

So, I’m acknowledging my little tantrum. I’m not going to stuff it down with more food, and this week I’m going to employ distraction and delayed gratification techniques to my bag of tricks, oh yea and some deep breathing.

What methods do you roll out to get back on track?

Poetry in a Pork Roast

I did myself no freaking favors yesterday by eating sugar, aka. a cookie nearly the size of my head and a chocolate milkshake. STUPID. I woke up grouchy and proceed straight to bitchy.

I ate a wholesome breakfast this morning – cream of wheat and skim milk. This afternoon we grilled a lean pork roast and munched on fresh spinach that had come up “volunteer” from last year’s garden. I topped it off with some strawberries. The entire meal tasted great and satisfied my rumblings.

To keep myself from perusing the snack cabinet, I threw together some hummus in the food processor. I like making hummus from scratch – so much less fat than store-bought varieties. I plan on taking it to work with me this week to dip my veggies in during the mid-morning-toddler snack time.

Even today’s healthy menu was not enough to get and keep me on track, but I knew exercise would also help. As soon as Russell finished cleaning the family room where my stationary bike taunted me, I hopped on and planned to stay there until I felt the urge to recite love poems to my family. I was afraid that I might have to stay there all day. I never did reach the point where I pined for poetry, but I guess it’s not really my gig anyway.

Yes, there was a crapfest last night, but I’m trying to look at the positive. I woke up this morning and recognized that I didn’t want to continue the trend and took the steps to ensure I didn’t endure a repeat performance.

How do you get back on track with food and exercise?

Naked in the Locker Room – Too Tired to Care

I’ve spent the last couple weeks trying to get my shit together and remember to just breathe. Fingers crossed, I think I’m back on a level surface again, and exercise may be to blame, uh credit.

I lost track of the times that I’ve blogged about the correlation of a piss-poor attitude to the lack of exercise. Admitting it once again irritates the hell out of me, but one of these days, I’ll remember how I used to embrace it and make a little headway forward.

Fingers crossed, I may be on the path. Out of the last two weeks, I’ve put in some fairly serious exercise every day except on each Saturday. I may have also found the key to being comfortable standing naked in the locker room – a personal trainer. Believe me; it has nothing to do with the fact I see dramatic results yet. I’m simply too fucking tired after our sessions to care who sees my saggy ass and boobs.

I even caught myself bending down sans grunders, which makes me shutter to visualize as I write, but it seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do when I was trying to muster up the energy to take off my socks after a 30-minute session with little Miss Buff Biceps.

Actually, the sessions with the trainer are going quite well. She is very cognizant of the issues I have concerning my knees and ankles, and I think the workouts with her will pay dividends to my overall stability, which will hopefully help prevent further injury. I also work a lot harder for her than I would at home on a stationary bike seven days a week. Heaven forbid I disappoint the women I met a week and a half ago. Whatever, it seems to work, and it’s kind of fun.

I say that now. Saturday if you would have asked me, I would have said I’d rather have the dentist drill a hole through the roof of my mouth into my brain to funnel out any gray matter left up there, which wouldn’t have been much given my diminished state.

Really, it’s much better now. I’m going twice a week, Wednesday and Friday. I’m a little sore from yesterday, but it’s manageable, and I was able to make it through her entire shtick, and I only longingly looked at the clock once.

So, the exercise is back on track, and the variety feels good. Pilates on Monday, elliptical on Tuesday/Thursday, trainer on Wednesday/Friday and stationary bike and resistance work on Sunday. Surely, I’ll see the desired payoff soon.

What does your fitness routine look like?

Controlled Chaos

Geez, what a crazy week. I’ve been crunching against deadlines, working late, coordinating teenage taxi schedules and trying to figure out when to fit in exercise. Most of my week has been energizing, challenging (in a good way) and fun, but I’m ready for a break.

I have managed to keep up on exercise, but I’ve had to sneak in some quick morning bouts with my stationary bike, which is as enticing as eating a congealed hunk of liver and onions left in the fridge for a week. I’ve totally missed yoga and Pilates at the Y this week and lead-like knots beneath the surface of my skin along my neck and shoulders are proof enough that I need to squeeze it in tomorrow. I didn’t realize how much relaxation I received from both those activities.

Tomorrow, I’m committed to a noon-time yoga class – I have to start the weekend in a good place. Food has been chanting at me as I whiz from place to place trying to remember that breathing is not optional. I’ve been able to ignore the noise and interference, well mostly, but I know from experience I have to be in a strong place for the weekend if I hope to make good food choices.

I wonder what it is about the weekend that I think I deserve to take a break from healthy eating. The week is seven days long. Shouldn’t my eating habits reflect that reality without question?

I think it may be about unwinding after a long week. How do you relax and kick back after an intense week?