It's been a quiet couple of days online for me, but it's been a hectic couple of days off the computer. Saturday was a day of appointments. My day started with a 9 AM dentist appointment and ended after 1 AM when we got home. As far as being healthy and eating healthy and all that? Saturday was an epic failure, but I'm a reasonable woman. I don't assume I'll be able to live on planet Earth and eat 100% healthy 100% of the time. I'm trying to eat 95% healthy 80+% of the time. Because no one can successfully cut out all sugar, dairy, wheat, and be successful at it when you're used to having some or all of those things on a daily basis. Reality. I'm trying to live in it. It sucks sometimes, but I'm coming to an understanding of sorts. Sunday was a bit better, though I didn't eat anything until around 1, then we had my nephew's birthday dinner at Sakura where my meal was somewhere in between the healthy and not. I had an order of gyoza, fried rice, and an all veg entree (OK, broccoli and carrots because I didn't want to be bothered to pick out the onions and I just wasn't feeling zucchini at the moment). I'd gone a week or so without having any soda, but Saturday's Halloween party buggered that up. ... kinda makes me feel like I'm confessing at an AA meeting about a relapse. I thrive in structure and the structure of a normal work week makes it easy to keep up with everything. Cooking dinner, packing lunches, taking vitamins. But weekends are usually chaos and everything falls apart for me then. I don't make time for me - for health, for rest, for pampering, no time for me. Partly it's because I know there is so much to do in the house, for the business, for the family, and I put me last. Always. Because I don't deserve my own time. I live in the service of others, and this is the reality I have created for myself. No time for my own life. The only time I'm not last on my list is when I'm sick, and that's only because I'm not physically capable of not being a sick blob on the couch - and then I still try anyway. Somehow my desire to get healthy is driven by this too, this putting me last thing. Because while I want to be healthy for me and I want to feel better emotionally, it's not just for me. It's so I can make the people around me happier. So I can be here for them longer. So I can work for them harder. Even my desire to make me better is perverted into a self-minimizing thing where everyone else is still more important than me. At some point, I hope that I'll realize it's OK for me to be important to myself. In the meantime, I'll keep working at eating healthy and getting this body of mine working better.
So when I talk about eating healthy, what is it I am doing exactly? I've broken down and paid for a Weight Watchers subscription so I can use their iPhone apps. Their point system isn't overly complicated and it makes sense to me, and I find it easy to follow. Hopefully I'll go longer than 3 months - which is how long I stayed on WW last time. I quit last time because it was working and I feared success. I still need to pick apart this fear so I can get rid of it, but I don't feel like starting to poke this beast today. I'm not avoiding it, but I don't want it to turn into a ragey crying-fest like my last post did when I realized I was abusing myself emotionally. But back to what I'm doing for eating healthier ... I'm also trying to take the Paleo Diet rules into account as well which basically boil down to no grains, no dairy, no sugar, yes meat, yes veg, and yes fruit. I still lightly sweeten my tea. I'm still having grains occasionally. I've cut down a lot on the dairy, but it's not gone. The Paleo thing makes grocery shopping easy too. Just hit the produce section and the meat section and you're pretty much done. No shopping the isles staring at all the boxes of food-like products trying to figure out which one is going to be the most yummy. Sauces, herbs, and seasonings are my friends, and they're what's going to get me through what could potentially be a highly monotonous menu. Speaking of herbs and seasonings, a couple days ago I made a medley of roasted veg that knocked my socks off. I couldn't stop eating them! Me. The carnivore. Couldn't stop eating veg. It was parsnips, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, and a bit of left over polenta - all cubed up (about 6 cups), lightly coated in olive oil (2-3T), and then I added Savory Herb blend (2T*), Sandwich Sprinkle (1T*), Season-All (2tsp*), and a touch of pepper and garlic salt (*measurements are all estimates). Apparently making veg yummy to me means adding a lot of flavor to them. Who knew?
So when I talk about eating healthy, what is it I am doing exactly? I've broken down and paid for a Weight Watchers subscription so I can use their iPhone apps. Their point system isn't overly complicated and it makes sense to me, and I find it easy to follow. Hopefully I'll go longer than 3 months - which is how long I stayed on WW last time. I quit last time because it was working and I feared success. I still need to pick apart this fear so I can get rid of it, but I don't feel like starting to poke this beast today. I'm not avoiding it, but I don't want it to turn into a ragey crying-fest like my last post did when I realized I was abusing myself emotionally. But back to what I'm doing for eating healthier ... I'm also trying to take the Paleo Diet rules into account as well which basically boil down to no grains, no dairy, no sugar, yes meat, yes veg, and yes fruit. I still lightly sweeten my tea. I'm still having grains occasionally. I've cut down a lot on the dairy, but it's not gone. The Paleo thing makes grocery shopping easy too. Just hit the produce section and the meat section and you're pretty much done. No shopping the isles staring at all the boxes of food-like products trying to figure out which one is going to be the most yummy. Sauces, herbs, and seasonings are my friends, and they're what's going to get me through what could potentially be a highly monotonous menu. Speaking of herbs and seasonings, a couple days ago I made a medley of roasted veg that knocked my socks off. I couldn't stop eating them! Me. The carnivore. Couldn't stop eating veg. It was parsnips, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, and a bit of left over polenta - all cubed up (about 6 cups), lightly coated in olive oil (2-3T), and then I added Savory Herb blend (2T*), Sandwich Sprinkle (1T*), Season-All (2tsp*), and a touch of pepper and garlic salt (*measurements are all estimates). Apparently making veg yummy to me means adding a lot of flavor to them. Who knew?
Emotionally I'm doing OK. Not great, not horrible. I'm trying very hard not to beat myself up about how nutritionally bad the weekend was and remind myself that the occasional insane days are OK. Really actually OK. Nothing to get worked up about, nothing to berate myself about, nothing to throw in the towel about. And historically I throw in the towel. If I don't perform perfectly, I give up. But I don't feel like that's an option anymore. I do feel it sometimes though. I feel the hurt and the abuser coming out and starting to do what it always does, and it's so hard to stop that process. It's been in place since I was little, and that abuser wants me to fail. The abuser wants more fuel so it can continue to knock me down. But I'm now determined to learn how to tell that abuser to STFU. Awareness is the first step ... Knowing is half the battle. I'll keep an eye on the abuser so I can keep an eye on my emotional health. All of this feels an awful lot like I'd imagine an adult learning to walk for the first time. You know it's something you should be able to do, but for some reason you can't and it's hard because you never learned it when you were young. I just keep reminding myself that there is no such thing as perfection on this journey. It's going to be hard. I'm going to "mess up." I'm going to be lost. I'm going to succeed. I also need to keep reminding myself not to minimize my successes or to fear them. I guess my next big project is to try to figure out that fear of success. I'm not looking forward to it. I'm not looking forward to uncovering and rehashing some very painful events in my life because I'm almost certain that's what this fear is tied to.
P.S. Feel free to comment, discuss, and/or share your own stories. We all have them and this is a safe forum to share.
P.S. Feel free to comment, discuss, and/or share your own stories. We all have them and this is a safe forum to share.
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