Monday, May 2, 2016

Not quite like dancing…

Growth-is-an-erratic-forward-movement-two-steps-forward-one-step-back.

I’ve mentioned it here before - I feel like my choices have become a series of 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Maybe that’s life - you sometimes win and you sometimes lose. But in this “game” it’s not CHANCE, it’s CHOICE. And while I make good choices at times, I then sabotage it.

This weekend Marc and I were out of the area and we wanted to to get something to eat while we were waiting on Marc’s new bike getting adjusted at the bike shop. Fat Jen screamed “FIND A PONDEROSA, FIND A CHINESE BUFFET, EAT ALL THE FOODZ!!!!” But we settled on Ruby Tuesday’s.

I ordered water with lemon to drink - good job! Then I ordered the salad bar - oh yeah good job again! I went up and covered my plate with veggies - fresh lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, broccoli, mushrooms - oh, you are so on a role, Jen!! No fattening salad dressing - you go girl! On my second trip I once again avoided the heavy salads, like the pasta salad and potato salad - I did have some cottage cheese - not a bad choice! And then? I proceeded to eat my body weight in croutons and sunflower seeds.

Sigh. Fucked it up, didn’t you, Jen?

In my recent attempts to change the way I think about things, I’ve realize that I have certain demands - part of this involves my food obsessions, but part of it is just my OCD and general inflexibility. If you have kids, I think that it is probably very important to establish routine more days than not - but Marc and I don’t have kids and we have the luxury of “winging it”. But I have gotten it into my head that we have to eat dinner between 6:45-7:00PM every night -period. There is no real reason that we have to - other than that it has become my rule.

So Saturday we went to the memorial service I talked about. It was emotional - to hear her sister - my best friend for most of my life - talk about seeing her shortly before her death - when she couldn’t really talk - and trying to say everything she wanted to knowing that this was likely the last time she would see her alive??? I can’t imagine and I hope I never have to be in that position.

We got home late afternoon and both Marc and I were sad and also hyped up so we took a quick bike ride and then Marc asked if I wanted to take the dogs to a local trail he had been wanting to explore. It was late but still quite warm and we headed out. I wasn’t hungry, but had a lot of anxiety that we weren’t going to eat “on time”. It was so ridiculous and I recognized the absurdity of it intellectually, but not emotionally. We did have dinner that night - around 8PM and - GASP - the world did not spin off its axis because of this!! Who knew?

In good news - stepping forward (no pun intended)- my foot is on the mend. There is still some pain, but it is getting slowly better. Yesterday morning it was cold and rainy, so I decided to try running some on the treadmill. I ran slow and was able to get 8 miles in for the most part pain free. Yay, right? Having accomplished that, and having burned a whole 625 ish calories, I felt entitled to make some healthy no bake sugar free cookies from a recipe I’ve been wanting to try. Yes, the cookies were made with healthy ingredients - oats, peanut butter, honey, coconut oil and dark cocoa powder. To my surprise they were delicious. But healthy ingredients DOES NOT mean that it is okay to eat a shit-ton of them, does it?? Oh, yeah - healthy foods have calories too, don’t they??

As you guys know, making the right choice - it’s not as simple as black and white. It’s not simple and it’s not easy.

So I don’t think that I can declare victory this weekend. But I don’t know that I’ve failed either. That’s what living in shades of grey is all about. That challenge for me is both the physical as well as the mental.

How about you guys? Am I the only one with the inflexible “rules” that serve no real purpose?

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