Fitness Update - Jan 14 - Strange Days

It’s Monday morning again in time to admit that I am, well,... I think I have the opposite of whatever people have when they look in the mirror and they think they are fat when really they are skinny, I know there is a name for it something like “body dysmorphic disorder” whatever it is, I have the opposite.  I go to the gym and I work out and I feel strong and confident and then I look in the mirror and I realize I’m not.  My best angle these days is definitely a full frontal shot. When I turn to the side reality hits and it’s kind of depressing. Not depressing enough, I guess, to stop me from buying a breakfast sandwich combo this morning.

It’s strange, as I sit here and think about what to say, how many things tie in to our eating habits. It’s never a simple matter of eating less, because our relationship with food is quite complex. We have to eat to survive, but that is probably the last reason we do so. Sure, when we get hungry we eat, but food, food is a scapegoat, a memory trigger, a way to rebel, a way to satisfy, a way to find comfort.

Food allows us to relive memories when we make, hot cocoa with cinnamon rolls on a chilly winter night, or when I cut up a steak and share and I flashback to a restaurant caught in college and realize afresh that I should never have let her go. It’s strange, how powerful sense memories are and I wonder why our brains are wired that way, to tie us so strongly to the past.

If you want me to think about LW, buy me a hot dog and a really good root beer.

KS would be a steak and the beer she bought on her own because I never bought her alcohol.

AJ is a burger at the student union building and AB would be any kind of fast food on the way to the mountains.

Potato cheese soup from Marie calendars will bring my mom’s apparition into the room, while two hot dogs from Wienerschnitzel puts me right on the hood of my friend’s car as we watch the cruisers go by on State Street. I can remember so many meals with important women, how they ordered, what they did, the joy I felt in their company and the longing I feel as I remember them now.

This is a bad time to be writing, I had an orgasm this morning with my wife, a simple hands job before getting out of bed, and a few things were said that put an unpleasant spin on things and I think the post-climax letdown and the odd conversation has put me in a strangely reminiscent mood. To top it off, the trees outside my window are finally losing the last of their fall colors as the wind blows through and it sets a sad tableau. It’s all just self-pity and overly sentimental musings before I get to work, but it plays into the words I choose in the soundtrack that is playing in my head.

So eating… You can’t live without it, can’t stop thinking about it. 

My wife and I had a conversation about diet. One of the things the complicates my mental approach to weight loss is that my wife is now going “to join in” we both use lose it.comand, while I am glad she is trying to get in shape (she really has done a good job of exercising more lately and she barely eats as it is, so I’m not sure how much weight she will lose) I dread her involvement. When she wants to do something with me that usually means she wants to control the agenda, and when it comes to my fitness and eating, I have no patience with her.

Eating is such a personal thing, and goes along with mood and rebellion and loneliness and memory and enjoyment  and, well,  it goes with everything. Our relationship with food is quite illogical. All we need to do is eat enough to stay alive, get some vitamins, and be healthy. Instead we use it as a proxy in battles with our past, with ourselves, and with those around us. When she tries to control what I eat, usually by side comments and loaded questions, it feels as if she is trying to control me. Which she is. And I don’t like that.

It is time to go. I started this post early this morning but I have had a wonderfully productive day. The project plan I am working on has gone through a major revision and I was able to send it off for review. Meetings were held, tempers were soothed, crisis avoided, and documents turned in.

Found here:  http://blondewithbuttonnose.tumblr.com/page/2

I wonder what I should say on some of these Monday posts. I have lacked discipline these past two weeks in my eating. As always, it is my time at the gym that is my salvation. I was down almost 1.5 pounds and then up 2 pounds and now I am back to being down .4 pounds. That is not progress, that is just statistical variation.

I feel as if my discipline is returning. I feel as if I am ready to begin, but then I will look in my hand and see that I have picked up three chocolates from the bowl in the training center. I eat for the wrong reasons and until I get those reasons under control I will have a hard time.

Until then, until I can get my head around the process, I will struggle, but struggle I will, and I will continue. I will not give up, neither should you.