Posts Tagged ‘jeans’
Yeah, life’s a little crazy again. Hopefully things will settle down after this weekend and I can get into some type of blog routine. More for me than you.
Still chugging along on the P90X project. Even though I started two weeks ago and am a workout away from completing a two week cycle of workouts, I’m still doing it. That’s nothing short of a miracle. Not to mention my 39th birthday (and dinner out with friends) thrown in there for the fun of it. I really have gotten myself into a good mindset of working out as soon as I get home from school (or, more correctly, as soon as I get home, change clothes, log on to Facebook for a bit and then work out). I feel a difference and I see a little difference. I have much more energy–no real urge to nap after school like before (if you’re not a teacher and you laugh at that, come to school with me one day and see how much other people’s hyper kids wear you out–just try it). I feel I’m getting stronger even if I can’t do a pullup yet without a chair. There’s a little less muffin top froth on the capris. All in all, a good thing.
Now, to work on the eating thing. Did ok the first week, the honeymoon phase. I just don’t do well with lots of protein. I mean, the body loves the protein. Always slims me down, especially in the gut. It’s just a matter of finding protein I like. I can’t do eggs for breakfast. Never could. But I’m trying. And I really don’t dig chicken all that much unless it’s fried with 11 herbs and spices (the right herbs and spices), so I’m trying to find a handful of new protein sources I love as much as fish (I know, I’m not right) and cottage cheese to add to the variety. You think growing up on a farm I’d be more of a meat eater, but I have a harder time battling my donut tooth than I do my meat tooth.
So anyway, I’m hanging in there and being a good girl. Tomorrow is the last day of that for four days, though. Hub and I managed to wrangle a free cruise last year that we never got around to taking and Thursday night we ship off for three days in the Bahamas. I hadn’t planned to take a bathing suit (I only wear one in my back yard, protected on four sides by 10′ fences for the safety and vision protection of all involved) but he just informed me that we’ll be taking a parasailing excursion. Has he not heard me make fun of fat people parasailing before and now is subjecting me to this horror? For a fat girl, I can’t imagine a scarier moment than realizing you’re flying half-naked in a clear blue sky in a bathing suit giving those below the ability to look at you from underneath. The idea frightens me. I think I might just wear jeans.
In contemplating the many reasons for my diets (if you want to call them that) failing in the past, one of the biggest, IMHO (which is all that matters here on my blog) is the need, the necessity and the basic human compulsion to get results right away. By results, I don’t mean progress. I mean 60 pounds of excess weight gained over the course of 38 odd years being shed in nine days.
There’s something ingrained in the human mind–perhaps the result of genetic coding, perhaps with the advent of instant sea monkeys you can reconstitute as soon as you tear open the package–that makes us believe that if we do x for any extended period of time (and, by ‘extended period of time’, I mean longer than it takes a laptop to reboot), Y and Z will happen miraculously, instantaneously before our eyes. We can’t help it. We can’t fight it. Even if we say that we are patient, there are times we’re not. Even if we believe we’re in for the long hall, we still want a little bit o’that instant gratification we believe is our birthright.
It’s part of the reason I decided that my weight loss goal wasn’t even going to be met in this calendar year. When I went back and assessed (and obsessed) over why I haven’t lost and/or managed to keep off the weight before, that time factor came back to bite me in my very fleshy ass. It occurred to me that in setting my goals within a specific (read: short) time frame, I was unintentionally setting myself up for failure in one huge way–miss a target, give up on a goal. I’m an all-or-nothing thinker (something else I’m also working on this year) and to set a close (I even consider six months “close”) goal, I expected myself to have this absolutely 100% perfect start and continuation of my goals right out of the gate. I didn’t give myself any time whatsoever to adjust my bad habits into good ones. There was no room for experimenting, no room for really even reflecting. When I woke up in the morning, I had to work out. I could only eat salads. I must be in size 14s in two months. Those were ultimatums I gave myself for measuring progress but I didn’t give myself the tool–the mental adjustments and time–required to get there.
If I could have changed my behavior and habits that easily, don’t you think I would have?
I’m more about taking notice of the small things on this particular fat-burning journey. I’m enjoying taking my lunch to school in all my Ziplock containers. Finding fun in portion control. Feeling a sense of accomplishment by working out in 20 minute increments rather than a hunk of an hour. And observing the fact that my body is changing–ever so slightly–in the direction that I want.
Yesterday I had a day-long teacher’s meeting which equates to jeans and a sweatshirt. Normally I stuff myself into a pair of jeans and wear something long enough to hide the muffin top because, let’s face it, the only attractive muffin top is one with a pat of butter melting down the sides. Instead of the usual long sweater, at the suggestion of Stacy and Clinton, I chose something with a little bit of shape and a shorter hemline. (and because it was clean and because it was pink, but don’t tell Stacy. She’ll yell at me.) This seemed like a good choice until I’d been sitting for about two hours at the meeting and we got a potty break. I realized I’d not worn a belt–under normal circumstances, an activity to cause abject horror and blindness in anyone who witnessed a chunky girl in low-cut jeans (stupidest things invented, BTW. I only kept mine because I’m too cheap to throw them out) try to get herself and her muffin top back together incognito.
When I reached down to my waist line (as inconspicuously as a fat girl can fix her clothes) to fold up my waistband that had surely been flattened by my gut as usual, I was pleased to discover no rollover. The denim band holding my pants to my body had not been assaulted by my baby fat. (So what if the baby just turned 18?). My pants were still happy. I could stand up from the chair in my shorter fleece and jeans and not be petrified every eye was on my gut and my rearranging myself to get presentable again.
And that was just the kind of progress I needed. Sure, it’d be nice to fit into a size 10 for my sorority’s 20 year reunion on Saturday night, but I’ll take the little bits of progress I can find here and there. Besides, I’d have had to start in December to lose those 60 pounds by this weekend….