Like Pinocchio…

Saturday was Marc’s birthday. We had plans all set up for the weekend, but Mother Nature decided to interrupt those plans. We had planned to spend Sunday on a bike tour through Syracuse. But when we saw it was going to be rainy, 45 degrees and 20 MPH winds, we scrapped that idea!

I felt bad for Marc because he was not happy at all to be turning a year older and just wanted something to distract himself. So I tried to be unlike myself and just go with the flow - turn over all decision making to him and just do whatever he wanted for the whole weekend.

I had planned to run Saturday morning, and thought I would be on the treadmill as the forecast was predicting rain starting early. But when Saturday morning arrived and the cold front hadn’t moved in yet, Marc decided he wanted to go for a walk.

Sounds simple, right? Not in my fucked up head! I had planned to run and deviation from plans is incredibly stessful for me. But I went with it and we walked with the dogs on a local trail. Then it was to decide what to do for the afternoon.

I imagine for most people, that’s a pretty easy call. But we spent far too long debating if we wanted to eat out or not - knowing that if we did we would eat too much, but also wanting to do something for Marc’s birthday. Marc finally decided and we headed out to lunch. As we sat in the restaurant, with lots of other people, I saw that they appeared to be just enjoying themselves. I thought that I must be the only one there who wanted to “cheat” - to eat whatever I wanted - without debating about whether I had burned enough calories that morning - without wondering what exercise I would have to do later to “make up” for what I was about to eat.

I continue to try to change the way I think and live like a “real live person”. I want to eat healthy and nutritious foods more days than not but then have days when I eat like shit and say that this is okay. Because it is okay once in a while, right?

I got my run in yesterday instead - 10 miles on the treadmill, which helped me beat myself up a little less for Saturday’s choices - and don’t get me wrong - I KNOW that they are choices. We got the baby chicks - who don’t look so baby like anymore - out of our basement and into the chicken coop. I began making a list of the seeds that I am going to buy for the garden this year and the thought of fresh veggies out the garden sounds pretty great. Despite this weekend’s “blip” spring is here and in some ways, it does feel like there is a “freshness” in the air.

I *think* that I am making progress in becoming “Jen” instead of “Jen the formerly obese woman who lost a ton of weight and worries every day about gaining it back”. But it is a slow journey.

I often joke when I am running urine tests on clients that this is the stuff they don’t teach you when you’re earning your Master’s. They don’t tell you about staring at someone when they pee to make sure it is really their pee going in the cup. They don’t tell you about putting on gloves and testing the urine and making sure you don’t spill it on yourself.

Well they don’t tell you about the after effects in “weight loss school”, either. When you see the TV advertisements of “I lost 54 pounds using [insert diet plan here] and I feel FANTASTIC!!!” It just ain’t that simple - at least for me it’s not.