Healthy Holidays!

 

The holdays are coming, and with them the cataclysm that we like to call holiday eating, or way over eating in my case.

This picture was posted on facebook by my sweet friend Amanda, and it's a wonderful reminder that you don't need to pack in calories (and pounds) or forget about nutrition to have a festive season.

So has everybody started shopping yet?  I actually have, which is odd for me - I'm usually one of those last minute, OHNOIT'SDECEMBER! types...

(Reposted from "Skinny Crockpot" and "Putting on a Party" via Facebook)

Don’t Touch It, Its Evil!

Offices really are a veritable cornucopia of blog fodder.  It’s like a little microcosm civilization for me to analyze and research on a daily basis.

This week generated further adventures involving my small talk disability:

“You’re eating pizza.”

And also…

“You’re in here by yourself.”

Both of these examples happened while I was, in fact, alone in the lunchroom eating a slice of homemade pizza and reading a book.  Both times my instinct dictated that I respond to these comments with, “I know.”  I consider the fact that I stifled this response and merely smiled in both cases to be progress.

Today when I entered the lunchroom it was stuffed full of treats from Dunkin Donuts.  I don’t personally find their donuts to be very tasty (they’re a bit dry) so I didn’t have much trouble ignoring them.

However, as I sat there eating my corn masa enchilada with salsa verde and Spanish whole grain rice, no less than three people came in, gasped in horror over the donuts and cursed whoever had brought them in for us.  All the while they were either being examined or in some cases eaten they were proclaimed to be: “bad”, “evil”, etc.

It occurred to me that food is not good or bad really, it’s all just fuel.  Some fuel is more efficient than others and what foods are the most efficient for the particular biomechanical device that is your body will vary slightly from person to person.  My husband, for example, can run very efficiently on cheese steak with no apparent ill effects while I cannot.

I imagine it’s a bit like being different types of cars that run better on varying octane gasoline.

My point is the whole time you’re making a HUGE deal over a treat you want and calling it bad bad bad, you’re simply reinforcing the idea that you shouldn’t and couldn’t have it while thinking about it constantly.

You’re creating an obsession.

You’re setting yourself up to eventually gorge on the aforementioned treat when you can no longer stand the torture of denying yourself the thing you’ve decided you want so badly but can’t have because it’s eeeevvillle…

Stop it.

When you consider a food that you know is inefficient fuel, think about it briefly and whether or not you really want it or if the sight is just causing a momentary sugar / fat / salt craving.  Ask yourself if you’re even really hungry right now, chances are you’re not and the moment the fuel is out of sight you’ll stop thinking about it anyway.

And if you decide that you really do want a donut?  Eat it.  Move on.  Life’s too short.

I really want a donut plushie.

Well Now

The company where I work gives us a break on our health insurance costs if we sign up for their health assistance program which is run by a company called Well Now.  Being of the frugal sort, I signed up.

They came to the office, drew blood, measured blood pressure, height, weight and then gave us a school type grade on our fitness level.  Despite all my scores coming back within their proper range for a female of my age and height – I scored a “C” based solely on my weight, it was enough to drag me down that far.

Both I and my personal physician thought this was a little unfair, but that’s beside the point.

One of the benefits of the program we receive is a by-monthly meeting with our own personal healthcare consultant.

The first one they assigned to me quit.  I swear I wasn’t trying to scare her away, but about five minutes into our conversation both she and I realized she knew about a tenth as much about nutrition as I did.  The next month a new lady called and said the first one had quit the company.

And yes, I feel a little guilty for it.

At any rate the second lady is a very nice woman named Deborah who is both more knowledgeable and has some health street cred since she has lost and kept off a little over 80 pounds herself.

A few things about our conversation today were interesting…

One thing she praised me for was the fact that I have quit following any of the prefabricated American “diets” any longer.  She and I were both in agreement that over my lifetime of restrictions and rules, I’ve probably caused most of my weight gain in trying and failing at them repeatedly.  This is not a new belief to me, but I was pleased that she shared my idea that a “diet” should simply refer to what you eat, not what you’re paying someone to tell you not to eat.

She also acknowledges that my understanding of nutrition is way above and beyond that of the average bear – and in her opinion I have everything going for me to be able to achieve my goals.  She also said it’s all right if my goal is just to like the way I look more, but for long term health purposes less weight on the skeleton would also be beneficial.

So what did she want me to do?

She advocates little changes.

A good example would be giving up sugared soda.  That’s not a valid one for me because I’ve never drank sugared soda to begin with, but you get the idea.  She asked me to come up with some of these little changes I could put into practice right now, and see what happens between now and the next time I talk to her.

I admit, my motivation has been at an all time low recently.  Two years into health blogging and I have zero weight loss to show for it.  My skin is pretty and my cholesterol is good – but looking into a mirror and seeing pictures of myself is still just as painful as ever.

Another thing Deborah strongly suggested is loving my body right now.  Ted is going to love this one too because he’s long insisted that the obstacle between me and my goals is the fact that I kind of hate myself a bit.  My response to this is that it’s kind of like telling a single person: “oh just stop looking for a partner, and then you’ll find one!”  How the crap am I supposed to stop wanting it?

At any rate, I promised her I’d come up with a few things, some regarding mental health and some physical.  Here they are:

1)      No snack meals.  Sometimes when I get home from work and I’m eating alone because nobody else is around, I’ll just eat snacks until I’m full rather than prepare a proper meal for myself.  They’re never healthy, contain too many calories and almost always make me feel like crap.  I’m cutting this grazing behavior out.

2)      No abusing of me.  At least, not out loud (I can’t help what goes through my head sometimes).  Remember to thank God daily for a body that can do whatever I want it to because it’s not paralyzed, sick, weak or missing anything.  I should be very, very grateful for that.  Every day.

3)      No liquid calories.  I already don’t drink soda but I do put sugar in my coffee and tea and sometimes I have milk.  All of those need to go.  And before anybody jumps down my throat about the milk may I remind you that it’s baby food – I’m an adult animal, I do NOT need it.

4)      Write every day.  I’ve been slacking off on this and it really does effect my mental health and productivity profoundly.  Doesn’t have to be a blog post but I’ve got to get SOMETHING out of my head and into print daily so my skills don’t atrophy.  I’ve found myself staring at fiction pieces lately with a low, dull tone droning through my head instead of flowing words – and that’s not good.

That’s it for now.  Somewhere I’ve gotta find my lost motivation and I’m hoping this helps.

MJ

It didn’t really hit me when Michael Jackson died.  It washed over me, registering with a vague sense of sadness and no shock whatsoever.  It even took me a long time to figure out why.

I finally realized it’s because I’d already finished mourning for him over a decade before he died.

He was one of my first crushes ever.  In recent years people would look at me like I was crazy when I said I used to be obsessed with him, but that’s because they’re forgetting the boy I fell in love with when I was twelve.  This boy:

The boy with the ready smile and bright eyes.  The playful clown, the dreamer, the dancer, the absolutely incomparably brilliant artist.

The man who would earn, loose and give away a fortune to others over the course of his lifetime, desperately trying to heal the world when he couldn’t heal himself.

And no, I don’t believe that he ever hurt anyone.  I don’t think he could.  I do think he never grew up, was never able to, and never became able to cope with the world.  He never had normal.  How exactly can someone be expected to relate the same way everyone else does when they never for one second got to live like anybody else?

Over time he turned into something that was painful for me to look at.  I don’t know if it was a physical or mental malady that caused it – I don’t really care, I just couldn’t bear to see him anymore and I missed the boy I loved as a child.  I never, ever stopped listening to him though.  I never will.