Archive for the ‘Mental Health’ Category
Are You A “New Year’s Resolution” Type Of Person?
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008Most retailers have Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season, but the health and fitness industry has New Year’s week and pretty much the rest of January as they celebrate a sharp increase in sales and memberships. Gotta love those impulse shoppers!!!
I’ve left a few gyms in my wake which had had the opportunity to laugh all the way to the bank, wad of cash in hand, knowing they just signed up another sucker who would lose interest in a month’s time.
Are you like me? You give yourself that big pep talk, and you take that long hard narcissistic self-pitying look at yourself as you wallow over your past failures, and you promise… and I mean you PROMISE that this time you’re gonna go through with it, you’re gonna stick with it, and you do all that visualization of what you picture yourself looking like in 6 months, 9 months, a year’s time. You even calculate the number of pounds you’re going to lose… “let’s see - if I lose even just 5 pounds a month - hmmm… wow, in 6 months I’ll be 30 pounds lighter!”
The problem is, you’ve gone through this before. How many times have you made and then failed to keep your New Year’s resolution to lose weight, get into shape, or improve your health? How many times have you squandered hundreds of dollars on gym memberships or fitness equipment just to let it go to waste? How many infomercial products have you sent away for? Sh*t! Do you know how many fitness gadgets, videos, and dvd’s I have laying around my house? I have a decent treadmill in my room which makes a great cat perch and clothes rack. I’m into the thousands of dollars now in wasted gym memberships and fad diet programs.
WHEN WILL IT END?!!!
Most yoyo diet folks seem to do their pilgrimage to diet/exercise hell around New Year’s. Personally, my calendar revolves around hockey season.
Right around February/March I do my empty promise pep talk and visualization crap, then in a desperate effort to get into shape (because I didn’t do sh*t all summer!) I get all Jane Fonda around Septemberish. Ok, I know… Jane Fonda is sooooo 1980. Am I really that old? Well, whatever! I get all gung ho “gotta get in shape for hockey” a month before the season gets into full swing, as though a few weeks on an exercise bike is really going to reverse the effects of years of sloth and fast food!
I just got the official email a couple days ago. Hockey season officially starts in 3 weeks. Yeah, THREE WEEKS! And though I did manage to lose 25 pounds since last season ended, I’ve gone into full anxiety mode once again.
Can anybody relate to this?
Setting Goals: A Reverse of Milestones
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
This is a picture of my big fat ass taken at a tournament in February ‘08. I weighed +/- 252 pounds at the time, though when I bought these hockey pants new in 1996, I weighed somewhere around 185. So the answer to your question is, “no, they’re not supposed to look that tight.”
I hit many milestones on my way to 254 pounds. Probably the most memorable was the 200 pound mark. I recall telling my best friend, “Please just shoot me and put me out of my misery if I ever get to 200 pounds.” Well, I lived, as you can plainly see by the fact that you’re reading this post.
At the time I made that statement, I was still captive to whatever it was that drove me to go on my first diet at 161 pounds. I hated everything about myself at the time, so it was easy to blame my misery on my weight. You know the story, “if I only weighed X number of pounds, I will finally be happy.” Isn’t that what every eating disorder self-abuser says? So after my Richard Simmons diet fiasco which left me at 198 pounds, I was two pounds away from what I perceived as the end of any self worth.
From that point, I did manage to exercise off a few pounds to get myself down to 177, but as life played out, it was all “up” hill from there.
So here’s a list of weight goal milestones I’d like to see as I descend back down the fat chick ladder:
Wanted To Feel Normal Again
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008Well, today I did it big time. I ate “normal”. What I mean by that is I ate how I would’ve eaten any other day of my life without giving much thought to it. And HOLY COW! While it could’ve been much worse (I’ve been known to really pack it in on occasion - especially when eating out with my husband) it was an eye opening “bad enough.”
I consumed an additional 1139 calories over my recommended daily amount, plus a whopping double dose of sodium to the tune of 4843mg. The sad part was that I didn’t really have to pig out to do it. I just ate foods that were on my daily consumable list before I started this eating plan. It’s no wonder I didn’t weigh 400 pounds!
If you look at what I ate today, it wasn’t like I was purposely going for any records here. I had a slice of leftover pizza for breakfast, and another for lunch, a 6″ Subway double meat sub for dinner, a small popcorn at the movies, and 2 donuts (my impulse item while stopping at the store for milk!) In between meals I had a Luna bar, and a whey protein shake. But add it all up, and make it a daily event…. and you can see how easy it would be to get up to the 254 pounds I was.
Well, I won’t lie and say I’m queasy and feel like crap, because I don’t. I’m so sick of all these health food organic new age tree huggers saying how wonderful they feel after eating a salad (with no dressing!) and gnawing on tree bark all day. The truth is, the food was wonderful, it was satisfying, and I enjoyed every bite of it except for the guilt. I can live on pizza everyday. It’s one of those foods I never get tired of… that and rollo dogs - you know, the hot dogs rolling on that thing at the 7-11? I LOVE those! Just plain on a squishy Wonderbread roll. Mmmmmm.
Oh well, it’s back to the grind and back to the gym tomorrow. I gotta pedal off that sodium that’s sure to settle on my ankles!
Eating For Comfort and Choosing A Plan
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008Oddly, it wasn’t until AFTER becoming obese on Richard Simmons Deal-A-Meal program that I truly began to eat for comfort. This survival mechanism more or less solidified my place on the obesity wall of fame. WTF? Heck, if I’m gonna be fat, I might as well derive what little pleasure there is in it, right?
I am convinced that every person’s dietary needs are different, as well as their metabolisms. This is why the diet industry is so dangerous. There’s this assumption that a person who is x-number of pounds overweight needs to go on y-diet plan. As I’d learned from some of my other diet failures, this cookie cutter mentality can have disastrous results (more…)
Scenes From Our Walk: Buffalo Blight
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
Heading towards civilization (away from downtown), we hit the Niagara Frontier Food Terminal and Clinton/Bailey Farmer’s Market. This pretty much is our local economy here in my neighborhood. As you can see, it’s kind of dead at the moment (about 6pm on a Thursday). The action around here starts around 3am as tractor trailers start backing into the loading docks. Across the street from where I have my arrow is a little diner that opens between 4 and 4:30am. The food terminal supplies many of the restaurants and small grocers in the Metro Buffalo area. The farmer’s market comes to life as local growers pull up and sell right out of the backs of their trucks first thing in the morning. It’s especially busy on Saturdays as they will sell until about 2pm. This is one of the last remaining signs of life in an area which has been nicknamed, “Ghost Town.” [you can click on image to view full size]
