For two days, now, I have had my eating completely under control. By "under control" I mean that I am not eating any unplanned snacks, I am not eating any junk food or sweets, and I am eating only planned meals and snacks that consist of healthy, whole foods. More than anything, this willingness to eat only what is good for me and to avoid dead foods is a mind set. It is all about definitively deciding that this is what I am going to do and then just doing it. It really isn't hard. It's not like it hurts or takes up a lot of time to not eat crap, but there's this crazy mental game that goes on inside my head that somehow justifies eating and drinking garbage that is not good for me. The trick is to turn off that mental signal.
It has taken me every bit of three weeks to get myself back on the mental band wagon after my week of carelessness. I wish I could recall exactly why, for that week after the triathlon, I decided to allow myself to be so careless. Somehow I justified eating and drinking crap, as if I deserved it as some sort of reward for achieving my goal of completing the triathlon. I acted like it was a treat or something. But I find that strange, when I really think about it. Why would I think of consuming things that are bad for me, essentially poisons, as a treat? Why would I treat my body, that worked so hard to complete that triathlon, so poorly? There is no good reason for it. None, that I can think of. I am kind of dumbfounded by it, now as I review the mental decision to allow myself to go to hell for a week. It just doesn't make any sense.
Almost three weeks ago I decided to stop eating crap (including alcohol) and to start working on getting into excellent physical condition so that I can complete the 2014 Jackson County triathlon in 3 hours and 15 minutes. Getting into excellent physical condition included making the decision to get to 140 pounds by year-end, without losing any muscle mass, so that I could improve my strength-to-weight ratio. I want to get faster and being lighter and stronger will get me faster. My ultimate, life-time goal is to win my age group. That is going to mean a lot of intense training for a long time. That is going to mean carrying no extra weight. Every pound must have a purpose, or there is no way I can win my age group, at least not until I am the last one standing!!
When I drew my chart, almost 3 weeks ago, I weighed 163 pounds. This was after gaining 8 pounds in one week of careless eating and drinking. Today I weighed 157.8 pounds. Progress, but not as much as I would like to see. I know I could have taken that 8 pounds off faster than this. After all, that was mostly water. But I have been struggling with food; more specifically, I have been struggling with sweets - mostly in the form of ice cream and candy. I am not eating wheat, so that has kept me away from cookies, cake, and other baked goods. Since I started my new chart I have increased my exercise. In fact, I feel myself thinking of what I am doing much more as "training" than "exercise," and that change in mind set helps me work much harder. I have a specific goal I want to achieve, and if I don't run a little further and a little faster each week, I am not going to reach my goal. It's not about plodding out 4 or 5 miles so I can chalk up the "calories out," it is about training to become a competitive athlete. The latter is a lot more fun.
But the food, man the food!! It's been hard. I have had sugar cravings to beat the band, I have let myself succumb to them, and I have beat myself up afterwards. Why?? I wish I knew. Finally, the day before yesterday, something clicked. I kept reviewing my food choices and I kept thinking about the fact that I was really just poisoning myself with this crap and I kept asking myself, "Why?" And, quite frankly, there was never a good answer. Everything I came up with was stupid. I'm tired. I'm stressed. I don't have time to cook. Yadda yadda yadda. It was just a litany of excuses for being lazy and irresponsible. When it comes down to it, of course I have time to take care of myself, I just have to make it a priority. There is a bonus. When I take care of myself, I am helping Jack take care of himself, too. When there is healthy food in the house to eat, we both eat better, we both feel better, and we both look better. That makes me happy, much happier than I am after eating a silly bowl of ice cream.
So, two days ago, on Tuesday morning, I said, "This is it. Stop being stupid about this and go back to what you know works." One of the motivators was my chart. I could see that by the end of this week I was going to be above my goal line if I didn't start getting serious about losing weight. That was unacceptable. And that was that. I've been fine. I've been more than fine. As I said at the beginning of this blog post, I have not done any unintentional eating for two days and, more importantly, I don't want to. I am so relieved and so happy that I have turned this mental corner.
Never again will I allow myself a multiple-day period of excessive eating and drinking. I believe I conditioned my body to eating crap again and all my body wanted after that week was a quick fix. Give me that sugar!! Give me sugar!!! GIVE ME SUGAR!!!! It was like my body (or perhaps it was just my brain) was screaming for it. It was so hard to say no. That week was a mistake that will not happen again. Maybe I needed that reminder of how easy it is to start poisoning myself again. Maybe I needed to go through this rather crappy few weeks in order to firmly convince myself that this is a lifestyle, with an emphasis on the word LIFE! I don't know why I did what I did, but I promise myself this, I will not do it again. I know what works for me, and that is clean living, day-in and day-out. There will be exceptions to this rule. There will be a celebration here and there. There will be moments of extreme stress or moments where I am nowhere near good food when it is time to eat and I won't eat perfectly. But I will not let those moments stretch into a whole day, or worse yet, multiple days. I'll allow a four hour (or so) window here and there for celebrations. I'll accept the fact that I might not always be able to make excellent food choices for every meal, but I will not allow myself back down the slippery path that I headed down 4 weeks ago. I like eating well. I like the way I feel, mentally and physically, when I make good food choices. I like being on solid footing. This is the way to live!!
No comments:
Post a Comment