Forgive me blogger, for i have sinned

It's been two weeks since my last post.

Frustration. Desire. Anguish. Longing. Blogger, I do believe I have looked upon baked goods with lust in my heart. Or at least in my taste buds.

I realize the weight of my commitment to abstain from wheaty goodness, and to the extent of my power, I have kept that word. I say "get behind me, cookie" where once I would have stuffed the other cheek. Still I cannot help but feel that perhaps I am being punished for my persistent (though waning) foodielust... why else would I still be in a plateau? Oh the wrongs of this cruel world.

As penance for my woeful ways, I vow to repeat to myself 100 times "it's just food. it's not love."

And should there be a kindness, however so undeserved, perhaps tomorrow, the day of the fool, I shall arise to have met my sub-160 goal. And now I commence to fast.

so far, a wheat free day!

I'm giving it a shot--newfound determination to be healthy and aware of what goes into my body. Right now it's optimum zen oatmeal and HOT DAMN it's good. *siiiiiiiiiiigh* luxuriously delicious. And all the more so as I'm tempted by the huge plate of strawberries sitting there next to it (well, the plate is huge, and the strawberries... some of them are indeed of gigantic proportions, but there isn't an exorbitant amount of them or anything)

this morning I had a swig of pomegranate acai juice and some raisins, a banana, (a sliver of teahouse scone that probably DID have wheat in it, despite what miss andrea says, so I may have to go back on that whole wheat-free day thing), some strawberry yogurt, and a couple of wheat-free, fat-free, sugar-free, taste-FULL raspberry fig bars. Mmm :)

That's all for now, other than feeling fabulous, wanting to snuggle into warm quilts and read books, the usual. Alas, work, but fun work, and also, strawberries! Yar!

I suck. I rule. I'm nobody's fool.

Yeah so like um it's been one of those weeks... totally slam-o-rama with work and more work and after work workout and hectic frenzy whatever I'm just a lazyass and I can't excuse it. Poo.

So last week (in writing, not in calendar) was the success of short term goals... very cool, and I set another one for last week. This time it was activity-related: run every day this week. And I did (well once or twice I ellipticized, but there was running, both inside and out), culminating in this morning's St. Patty's Day Dash (3.5 miles through downtown Seattle, post-rain, sun just coming out, very chilly, lots of green... good times, and a barely sub-33 minute finish!)

So, goal is a good thing, however I think the number-related goal may be a bit more the IT thing. This past week, despite the cardio effort, did not produce desired weight loss. It produced less-desired weight gain, at some points up to 4 lbs (at least 2 of which came back off, but which puts me still on the wrong side of 160... or to be more positive, a bit more "upscale" than I was hoping).

So here's my goal for the rest of the month, seeing as how we're more than halfway to April Fool's: be solidly in the 150s by the end of March. How solidly will I'm sure be directly impacted by my own self-control, or lack thereof. Mindfulness. It is key to realizing what I put into my body. And combined with awareness of a) how much mr. dooferhoofer rules and b) how much cookie is too much cookie, may lead to success somewhere in the 157 range. Maybe less. I'm good with less, and this still means 5 lbs in the next 2 weeks. Seems doable.

(Also, honey, I loves you and your eternal awesomeness!)

So. there it be. This month is definitely one of growth, though much of that also on a spiritual level, and that's grand. For the coming week, I work at mindfulness, exercise and rest, study of yoga and the economics of foreign currency, writing creative blasts, and not stuffing myself.

I'm thinking of giving up wheat. I've already started phasing out meat over the last couple weeks and feel better for it... and coffee will be going too.

Holy Beard! I think I just saw Peter Grant on the tele. TTFN.

HooAH!

Fabulous morning! Fabulous day!
Friday morning and I made the weigh-in goal for the week. 1-6-0! Just 25 to go for goal!

And slowly my will is getting stronger. I am able to distract myself from food. Most of the time :)

This morning had a fabulous fresh mango with probiotic vanilla yogurt and a sprinkle of blueberry granola (which I duly dribbled from bowl onto the front of my white shirt in a gesture gone awry), had a handful of wasabi peas and a ginger kombucha for lunch, and a couple Power bars in between.

Then after a cardio session on the elliptical, grilled up some shrimps (mmm shrimps!) and brocollini and rice pilaf (not grilled, just irradiated), and now just kickin it, relaxing, feeling floaty and somewhat meditative.

Looking forward to a weekend of chilling and blissing and blossoming, and a fun week of work and volunteering and tree-planting and st. patty dashing to come! And a new goal I'm sure... I like this deal!

I think I dreamed I posted... I didn't

Gah! it has done it to me again. I think it is this... I always highlight everything with a little shift+up arrow action, and somehow that tells blogger to delete everything and autosave the blankness. Blogger and I appear to have some communication issues and I think we need to resolve this now.

Dear Blogger, this may be hard to hear, but I need to tell you how your behavior of late is impacting me. I want us to continue to work together, and I'm prepared to modify my behavior. Let's take a moment to talk about where we're coming from and why we do what we do. I don't think you intend to hurt me, to deny my voice, to erase my words, especially as how these words, any words, give you purpose and meaning. I certainly don't mean to hurt you either, though I'm sure my random button mashing is causing you some kind of grief-slash-short-circuit that's just altogether too much for you to deal with. Let's make this agreement. I'll stop hyper-arrowing around you, and you stop deleting my posts. I know we can make it work.

So last night, lots of sweaty (albeit non-Bikram... i bring my own heat) yoga, running this morning, a dinner of prunes and rice cakes and a breakfast of optimum zen and my last cup of office coffee (not that it's bad coffee, just that I want to explore other beverage options and I don't think java is the bean for me for a while).

This morning I was delighted to see that I'm just 1/2 a pound from my weekly goal! 160.5! It's getting there :) Now to power through what my horoscope (and my intuition beforehand) portends to be a strange and interesting day (quite possibly full of dinosaurs). I am intrigued.

Damn.

yup, just gone. Autosave lied and was instead my undoing. Now I can really weep and gnash. ARGH.

Well, to sum up, I'm feeling pretty great about a few things from today.
1) I have a goal that's within spitting distance. Goals you can spit on are definitely more reachable than goals you cannot spit on, even if you are a measly spitter. The idea that you can see something and it's within your grasp makes it that much more doable. It's not a big deal. It's like oh yeah whatever 2 pounds blah blah, pass me that screwdriver.
2) Awareness comes sometimes from just packing snacks, knowing caloric content, and trading out as needed to accomodate unexpected snack opportunities (and by snacks I mean everything from morning oatmeal to apples and fig bars to soup for lunch to crackers and yogurt). And no, today didn't introduce all of those things to mouth, but many were key players in staving off the advances of Jelly Beans and EvilCake 2.0, which has continued to lurk about work. Rice cakes to the rescue (and gum, lots of gum).
3) Cardio is fun, albeit largely involves spacing out watching TV while attempting to suffocate myself with my own sweat. I like it. So much that I didn't want to eat dinner afterward, just keep marinating. Alas, I freed myself from the clutches of the fleece hoodie and have been perspiring at a closer-to-human level since. And I had prunes. Mmmm prunes.

Now time for tea and a book (unless I accidentally delete again, in which case I shall inflict some kind of self-torture, like tumbtacks to the thumbnails, or watching Jeff Foxworthy do anything on TV). So far so good...

Fie on you, lack of undo

So here I had crafted this illustrious post (and it was so good that I laughed, cried, and laughed again, then sighed, fell asleep, dreamed about it, and woke up in a pile of puppies), and by some FREAK of scrolling nature, it somehow evaporated from the screen before I could commit it to cyber memory. Gah! I almost want to say nothing now. NOTHING! It seems so redundant.

Anyway, yada yada, this whole thing about incremental goals working and feeling like I could achieve something doable... *sigh*

Let me see if I can find it. Salvage some of my brain dump. (Of course if I DO find it, now I am obligated to make it wiser, funnier, more heart-wrenching than it would have been on its own merits...)

Setting Incremental Goals

Before I get into this, I just want to say a few things: One, it has come to my attention that the best way to get frowning looks as you put something into your mouth (unless it's an obviously gross entity that belongs nowhere near a sane person's mouth, like mayonnaise) is to slouch around in a clingy white tee shirt. The posture does one no favors, and white is nothing if not unforgiving. I think white is a chub-magnet. All lipids in the area are forcibly pulled to the surface just so they can peek through to the outside world courtesy of the shirt that may as well be a magnifying glass.

As a side note, I'm working very hard at being a person who can take help and/or criticism well. Currently, I take it about like I take a stick in the eye. Lots of rage, squealing, and tears. Well, okay, I take it a little better than that... more like a stick in the rear. I may or may not respond favorably, depending on my mood.

The second thing is this: I read the other day a report involving an "upscale" plus-size store, which struck me with inspirational mojo as a great attitude readjustment... "It's not overweight, it's upscale!" Today is mostly "samescale" for me, which is good. My fluctuations of late keep me bouncing between 162 and 164, but this morning was the low end of that, and I've got in mind a way to get myself amped up for the week: setting a goal for the end of it!

Today's goal was pretty simple: Don't eat cake. And that was before I even knew how many times that would come up today (2 various in-my-face times with 2 separate cakes, and I think there was a third one in the work fridge still from last week). Mission accomplished! I brought my own smart snacks and chewed gum like I was trying to MacGyver a wet suit out of a case of Dentyne.

I'm thinking I can have a small number goal for the week to keep me on my toes (mostly running and twirling and other feats of feets): so I'll say it. I will be at 160 (or less) by the end of the week. that's my goal and I'm stickin to it! I mean, even despite hormonal bloating, it's only two pounds... let's melt those clingy white shirt loving bastards out of the scene for good!

Monday Is a Fun Day

I feel compelled to write mid-day to make up for my missing yet another day... Of course it's no longer mid-day, but it's been full of making good choices, so that's something. First up this morning, wherein I snacked on half a protein bar before staff meeting and only had fruit (no bagel, no cream cheese, no weigh!), then narrowly escaped having yet more cake thrust upon me (it was a really cute cake, yet I was really not tempted) and staving off my longing with a Clif bar. And knowing I'd be hanging out in meeting rooms and cafeterias all day, I opted to relieve my sweet tooth by bringing along my own low fat vegan snack option and an apple.

I'm feeling pretty swell! Perhaps I should enact a no-snacks-past-8pm rule or something like that... Want to run. Was Born to Run! Yarly.

Wow Slackin Already!

Though to be fair, I went consecutive days there longer than I have on pretty much any initiative to date, with the exception of not dying. Got slammed busy at work (and no, I didn't use that as an excuse to eat cake and not say so, and yes, the thought did cross my mind, and okay I might have put my finger to the frosting ...guilt face... but that was mostly for the satisfaction of knowing that I touched things that other people were eating hahahahahah)--not even time to Wii it this week. I even had to cut out the Leap Day afternoon of volunteering to accommodate last minute schedule changes and all kinds of important-ish meetings. *le sigh*

So today is a new day. A March day. March as in forward as in spring has sprung and the grass is riz. Though yesterday's gorgeousness melted beneath pelting rain and interminable drizzle, today everything looks a bit more right in the world (as viewed from MyWindow(TM)), albeit cloudy and grey. Today is yoga day! And probably other stuff day too. So far that's been "more work" day and "floss my teeth" day and "empty the kitchen sink and play with the garbage disposal" day. And wow does my elbow hurt! (Not from the garbage disposal, however, in case you were worried).

Conversation yesterday with Sparkles and the Rose-a-ma-toes veered toward thoughts on emotional relationships with food, and admiration for a co-worker whose apparent general dismissal of food as something not to be bothered with has inspired us in some ways to be more aware. Granted, there's also a gluten allergy at play there, so perhaps acceptance of food falls out of the realm of our interactions... I'm not a hater, but I do understand the need for self-control (understanding and having being two different things, but definitely working their way to the same place) and awareness--what am I putting in me for fuel and how does it affect me physically, mentally, emotionally. Of course after that chat, I decided to forego most of my intended lunch and be satisfied with a filling fruity drink instead. (No, it wasn't margarita Friday or anything--I'm through with the boozin).

Well back to the workin for a bit... Maybe there will be food later. Or maybe I'll fast. Or slow. Or sleep some more.