Lolli1986's Blog

Today I won a few small battles, and some good things happened.

Scale-battle

I 'lost' some weight with being unable to eat much during wisdom-tooth removal sickness.  Now I am 'gaining' it back.  Because of this, it has been hard to tell if I'm actually losing or not.  I presume the effect of throwing up from codeine and eating soup for my teeth and taking antibiotics all had a sum effect of a 'cleanse/purge/fast' and my weight 'loss' was from that.

 I have been exercising again for almost a week now, and measured myself in hopes of seeing some change.   I lost a centimetre off my waist, 2cm off my belly (lol, I measure at one of my surgical scars - they are good for something), none off my hips (lol, I am a pear~) and 1cm off mid thighs (but none off top of the thighs, again, pear).

This makes me happy. :D

 Also, my fat is all jiggly - this is a good sign, even if I am more cellulitic... o_O

Anxiety-battle

Quite a few of my fitness pals are also mental-health pals. This is great because it's not a common thing for people to talk about in day to day life, so there's not a lot of support or understanding.  I am very open about it at work, but it's hard, you know?

Something that seems to fuel anxiety in me is my tendency toward very repetetive thinking.

Today, I attended a seminar given by a climate skeptic.  I research impacts of climate change, so I obviously had a lot of grounds to disagree with him.  Eventually, someone made a comment that was ridiculous enough that I spoke up in front of the whole lecture theatre to say that I could not understand where they were coming from because it was illogical and had not been my experience.  Unfortunately, I said it in a much more fumbly way, but whatever, I am young so I am allowed to fumble in that scenario!  More unfortunately, the scientist giving the seminar twisted what I said and confused me.  I felt quite embarrassed by this situation, of course, because I had not been able to collect my thoughts well enough to counter him.

 I found myself repetetively running over the scenario in my mind while I was driving... my victory was that I actually REALSIED I was doing this, realised I was not going to change the situation or any future situations through repeatedly going over it, and that it was actually a thought I was quite happy to 'let float down the stream'.  

My psychologist taught me that when we repeat words we can become disassociated from the moment, and from the reality of the thought itself.  She made me picture an orange, made me imagine the texture of the skin, feel the bumps on my fingertips, taste it as i bite, smell it, etc.  She got me to think this way for 30 seconds.  Then she told me to say the word orange for 30 seconds.  Very soon it was just some abstract sound with no meaning.  Focussing on it, and repeating it didn't actually help me to understand or experience the orange any better.

 It was the same for this situation.  So I said orange a few times and stopped thinking about it. :D

I win.

Binge-battle

 I binge on chocolate when agitated/depressed/stressed like I felt this afternoon.  But I did not buy any chocolate.  Instead I bought some phone credit, no chocolate, drove home and ate a banana.  Chocolate has been a bad habit for the past 8 years, and at this point eating it in excess will certainly hinder my weight loss efforts.  It also just destabilises my glucose levels and makes me tired.  I want to stop this behaviour.  There are a few other behaviours that I do in the same situations that I am also trying to stop.  I think they facilitate my 'focus' on whatever the issue may be in an 'orange orange orange' way, because they are repetetive and destructive actions, and I am aware of their destructive nature.

One day of success in these areas is still a big success at the moment.  I might engage in the behaviour once or twice a week still, but it's the days that I don't do it that count at the moment.

:D 

okay!  I'm pretty happy with today!  

I'm proud of 5 things:

1) a full hour of exercise.

2) my first day back cooking after getting teeth out.

3) 30 mins of moderate exercise.

4) exercise in the morning!  

5) no chocolate binge...

oh and 6 is an achievement and result of all this goodness, an NSV if you will:

6) I could push around a trolly, push it up a ramp, and carry 4 bags of groceries up the stairs.  Not kidding, I'm crying about that alone right now.  Haven't been able to do that for so long. 

EDIT:  oh and I just remembered!  I fully completed 3 three of 30 day shred.  I also increased my weights for some of the strength from 0.5kg to 1kg.  The only real modification I had to make today was to only do the leg part of the bicycle crunches.  You have no idea what that means to me to be able to do that alone!  (well, some of you do, and I'm so glad you're here doing this with me!)

:D 

*please excuse the poor writing.  I'm still a bit loopy from wisdom teeth extraction.

When eating out I have learned to remind myself that the wastage has occurred once the food hit the plate.  

 I'll explain...

I used to clear the plate; I felt obliged to eat everything I had paid for.  I had worked for that money, paid for that food, and how dare I not eat it all when there are starving kids in Africa?  NO.  This mindset is a lie.  

The wastage happened when it hit my plate.  

The only thing alleviated when I eat everything on the plate is my guilt.  It's like, if I eat it all then how can I consider it waste, even if I ate enough to power a large horse.  I'm storing it up in happy little fat cells for later, right?  Unfortunately, right.  This energy store on my body is not needed.  It's a complete waste.  It wastes my time in that I have to do a lot of extra otherwise-unnecessary running.  It also makes the running harder. It would be useful if I were about to face a food-scarce apocalypse, or a major disease (I actually do keep some fat for this very reason), or travel through India, but none of these things are about to eventuate.

 These days I accept my wastage guilt and eat only what I need - and I learn from my guilt and order something different next time.  I only eat the food if I am going to do something useful with it - turn it into MUSCLE that will make me stronger and faster and generally better at everything.