The Amazing Shrinking Woman

I have been banned from exercising, which is sorta why I stopped blogging…again, sigh. I was in a car accident right before my bday and Christmas and got some oh-so-wonderful neck and back injuries from it which has caused my doctor and my physio to say I’m not allowed to do anything more strenuous then walking…oh, and the limit to the walking is that I have to go slowly and for short distances. Laaaaame! 😛

I HATE it! I can’t believe I became that person that misses going to the gym but, I am totally that person. 😦

I tried to compensate for the restriction in my exercising by cutting way way way back on what I am eating…which led to me going for days with maaaaaybe a proper meal being eaten over the span of every two days or so and then caving on like day 5 and eating pretty much anything I could get my hands on, effectively screwing over my weight loss efforts. *rolls eyes* I just kept thinking “stop eating! for the love of carrots stop eating you have no way to burn it off!!!” so I scared myself in to not eating, or barely eating, and then I’d be so hungry for so many days I’d eat waaaaaay too much and then feel horrible about myself because I over ate a meal. Guess I can’t start wondering where my metabolism is since I just knocked it on its head and it is now slumped unconscious to the side of my body. *groan*

But! My physio said I could go snowshoeing as long as I stayed to the path…which yeah, ok, kinda makes it lame snowshoeing cause who wants to stay to a path? But hey, I’ll take what I can get…and surprisingly, even sticking to the path I got a good workout and had fun! 🙂 I went with some of my friends from dragon boating and I felt like such a lard ass! Usually I have good cardio and am decently good at endurance but over a month of no exercising has killed killed killed that! I am so bitter about that! I worked hard to get to a level of cardio I could feel proud about and now that is gone…I sure hope it doesn’t take as long to get back as it took to get in the first place…

The craziest thing happened after the snowshoeing though, something I had forgot about, I felt…brace for it!…good about myself…craaaaaaazy times over here! 😉

Since I haven’t been able to exercise I have been feeling like I am getting fatter everyday, and I’ve been feeling really down about myself, my stupid ass solution to feeling down was to eat badly. I got in this rut of “who cares, I can’t exercise anyways, I’m disgusting and fat, just keep eating, what does it matter…” fairly blah uninteresting thoughts (hence the no blogging about them). After snowshoeing though I was all “yup, worked up a sweat, burned calories, had fun, wanna do it again” and all of that turned in to feeling good about how I spent that day…a feeling I haven’t had in quite a while. I guess, without my really noticing it, things had pretty much gone to shit over here. Stuff bringing me down that I can’t control, and then also me bringing me farther down by not giving my body the proper fuel. So, instead of eating healthy normal portions of healthy normal foods and at least keeping the chemicals that pump out of my brain nice an steady I was eating junk that gave me sugar highs and lows, made me feel heavy and lazy and slow and once the high wore off from eating them I had the double whammy of feeling bad about my actions and feeling bad because of what the food was doing in my system…talk about a wicked bad cycle!

So there I was, after snowshoeing, headed home and I had to detour to the grocery store because I needed milk for tea lol Oh me and my tea! 😛 I decided to make an investment, an investment in myself and I bought groceries, real groceries, real foods that aren’t processed, in boxes, filled with extra sugar and salt and who knows what. I bought fruit, veggies, milk (hey, a girl still needs her tea! lol), yogurt (the healthy kind) chicken and then even more veggies lol I haven’t had a proper grocery shopping trip since before I moved in to this apartment (which fyi, was Nov 1/12), rather pathetic when you think about it!

I used to cook everyday, I always cooked my dinner, and my lunch was (when I was working) cooked by me the night before and later (when I was laid off) cooked by me the day of…breakfast was usually fruit with a side of fruit and maybe some yogurt or before I cut back on processed foods I would have a measured out portion of cereal with a measured portion of skim milk on it. There were healthy snacks thrown in there too by the way. I had a plan back then, a plan I followed, I maintained, I lived with. Sure there were some concession to my social life (I was that person who snuck fresh fruit in to the movie theatre and would grab a 6″ subway sandwich instead of getting sushi with my friends) but somehow I was able to look at the big picture, see that the small sacrifice now would be worth my greater happiness later. What happened to that? *raised eyebrow* Where did that go? Somewhere along the way I stopped being proud that I had lost over 30lbs in a healthy maintainable way and all I started focusing on was the amount of weight I had left to lose. The more I focused on that last 15lbs the bigger it seemed, the bigger I seemed in the mirror, the harder it became to accomplish, the farther away that end goal was. Eating stopped being about eating tasty healthy foods that were good for me and became about restricting and punishing myself for eating at all. I don’t like the outlook I have on food anymore, I don’t like that I see it as an enemy, something to hate, something to feel negatively about every time I eat (whether I eat healthy or unhealthy). This isn’t a battle I can win, I will always need to eat, it’s not exactly a substance I can quit. But now I have to learn how to come to terms with food, how to get back on a healthy level with it and remember that when I eat healthy meals consistently and exercise consistently (once allowed that is) I will feel better about myself, I might even start to feel confident again…after all, I have lost over 30lbs, which compared to where some people are in their weight loss journey doesn’t sound that impressive, but I can’t compete with them anymore, I can only look at myself, just do better then yesterday, push that little bit farther when working out, eat a little bit healthier, cut out a bit more of the crap food that I don’t really need, find my balance again. I had it before, now it’s time to get it back.

So now that I am stocked up on healthy foods my new goal is to cook more this week then I eat out or not eat…does that make sense? I want to make my meals more often than not and they need to be healthy, balanced meals. No more having ten baby carrots and calling it dinner after having no breakfast and a small bowl of cereal for lunch…my plate will have a protein, a veggie and well, ok, a protein and a vegg…I don’t eat rice or pasta or potatoes (unless they are a treat!) cause I cut waaaaay down on grains etc but a protein and a veg for lunch and dinner plus a real breakfast of maybe some yogurt and fruit (or something like that), that is my goal, to have that more often then not this week. I already know that a couple of the days will be hard to manage just cause I have a crazy schedule this week but that is where pre-planning comes in to play right?

Huh, this post became way more serious then intended, I was just gonna yap about how good I felt after snowboarding and how that inspired me to get healthy food in the supermarket, didn’t mean to go all woe-is-me I’m all down about myself on ya…I’ll be cheerful again next time…most likely! lol 😉

Tags: balanced meals, confidence, exercise, fat, goal, not eating, protein