Okay, so I just had a random string of thoughts and had to vent about it.
I am starting to realize I've had a LOT of excuses built up for myself to avoid addressing my health problems. It's like every day I notice a new one that has become outdated to me. Sometimes I will catch a fragment of someone else's conversations while out shopping, or I'll have a conversation with someone and they'll say an old excuse that I remember believing at one point to be factual. For example, back in my college years I remember having a conversation with someone about weight loss and a very common thing for me to say or hear was that when women lose weight, they lose it in their breasts first. I totally used this excuse in my own mind to give myself a tiny little excuse to not try and lose weight. I didn't want to lose the ladies, as I've become rather attached to them, so I can keep eating the way I'm eating - just less of it.
Eating less DID make a difference, just not a big one. It was the matter of resting around 250lbs versus being around 230lbs. If I let myself do whatever the hell I wanted because of stress/anxiety, I would binge like a mofo. I loved to eat an entire bag of chips. A whole pizza to myself. A bag of tater tots all for me. A half gallon of chocolate peanut butter ice cream... mmmm. Oh boy, those times were no good. I could feel myself getting sicker and didn't have any control over myself to stop. The food is impossibly good. Addictive even. But I wanted to lose weight so badly. So I kept trying. The first step I took in the right direction for a healthier lifestyle was eating less.
I am starting to realize I've had a LOT of excuses built up for myself to avoid addressing my health problems. It's like every day I notice a new one that has become outdated to me. Sometimes I will catch a fragment of someone else's conversations while out shopping, or I'll have a conversation with someone and they'll say an old excuse that I remember believing at one point to be factual. For example, back in my college years I remember having a conversation with someone about weight loss and a very common thing for me to say or hear was that when women lose weight, they lose it in their breasts first. I totally used this excuse in my own mind to give myself a tiny little excuse to not try and lose weight. I didn't want to lose the ladies, as I've become rather attached to them, so I can keep eating the way I'm eating - just less of it.
Eating less DID make a difference, just not a big one. It was the matter of resting around 250lbs versus being around 230lbs. If I let myself do whatever the hell I wanted because of stress/anxiety, I would binge like a mofo. I loved to eat an entire bag of chips. A whole pizza to myself. A bag of tater tots all for me. A half gallon of chocolate peanut butter ice cream... mmmm. Oh boy, those times were no good. I could feel myself getting sicker and didn't have any control over myself to stop. The food is impossibly good. Addictive even. But I wanted to lose weight so badly. So I kept trying. The first step I took in the right direction for a healthier lifestyle was eating less.
I realized my weight had gotten out of control by seeing pictures of myself appear on Facebook. It wasn't the way I saw myself in the mirror at all. However, it was impossible to dispute as I could clearly see myself from an outside perspective. So, I did what I learned from having done the Jenny Craig program when I was 18, which was to eat smaller portions. I didn't change any of the kind of foods I was eating, I just ate less of it and exercised more.
Over time I found that certain food changes would cause me to lose weight even if I wasn't working out regularly. As I mentioned in my first post, an example of this was switching to Trader Joe's for all of our groceries. Trader Joe's (and all grocery stores) still sells junk food, but it's slightly less junky. There's still a lot of unnecessary crap (like excessive amounts of sugar) in their Joe's O's, but they're less junky than Oreo's. As I also mentioned, their frozen hashbrowns were the most shocking to me. Potatoes have always been a weakness of mine and were always in a sort of on-again, off-again kind of relationship. When we switched to Trader Joe's, I became more aware of what kinds of ingredients were different. Sometimes I still shopped for food at Target because it was convenient and I could use my Red Card for a mini discount. But over time I started noticing how much extra stuff was added to the same foods between store brands. Take a look at this hashbrown label from Target.
Over time I found that certain food changes would cause me to lose weight even if I wasn't working out regularly. As I mentioned in my first post, an example of this was switching to Trader Joe's for all of our groceries. Trader Joe's (and all grocery stores) still sells junk food, but it's slightly less junky. There's still a lot of unnecessary crap (like excessive amounts of sugar) in their Joe's O's, but they're less junky than Oreo's. As I also mentioned, their frozen hashbrowns were the most shocking to me. Potatoes have always been a weakness of mine and were always in a sort of on-again, off-again kind of relationship. When we switched to Trader Joe's, I became more aware of what kinds of ingredients were different. Sometimes I still shopped for food at Target because it was convenient and I could use my Red Card for a mini discount. But over time I started noticing how much extra stuff was added to the same foods between store brands. Take a look at this hashbrown label from Target.
The one from Trader Joe's has this on their ingredient's list:
I'm not advocating that people eat more hashbrowns (I don't buy these anymore as I know I cannot be trusted to eat them in moderation), but it was a step in the right direction to eat a little less junky. The most important factor to stop eating them now is the fact that there is sugar in them. Both kinds list it and I didn't catch it for a long time... but it's listed right there at the end. Dextrose. Might not be a LOT of sugar, but it's still sugar and in order to successfully complete the 1 month detox I had to cut all of it.
Here's another familiar thing I heard somewhere: It's dangerous to lose too much weight because it can harm your singing voice. I'm not sure why this one was said to me at all. From what I can find online about it, there is no evidence that losing weight would affect singing in a bad way at all. In fact, the general consensus is that it is actually beneficial for vocal health.
Honestly, I feel like I've surrounded myself by so many excuses that I'm actually getting bored of hearing myself use them. Also, forget what I said last entry about not feeling bad about what I ate at the State Fair last weekend. It was a terrible experience last Monday; I had what I can only describe as a junk food hangover. I ended up feeling sick and crabby all day. I was bloated and irregular. On top of that, I was also blessed by experiencing mood swings, poor self image and feeling insecure. I think I actually told my husband that I "feel like I just gained all of the weight back. Like, I'm suddenly 250lbs again." It was the kind of feeling I used to live with every day before I started eating clean and I do not want to experience it ever again. It's just not worth it. Tuesday was a significantly better day altogether but I'm still upset that I feel like it was a waste of a day. I could have had just a normal day if I my brain hadn't been clouded by chemical abuse. I guess I needed a day like that to truly appreciate how far I've come and solidify my decision to cut junk food from my daily life.
"Just now I was kind of daydreaming as I try to go to sleep and thought about those chocolate sandwich cookies that I used to eat. Keebler? They were two biscuits shaped like humanoid creatures with a chocolate frosting-like substance between them. Were they even good? I'm imagining pulling them apart to eat one of the plain biscuits first. That way I get more sugary goodness in the second half. I kind of didn't like them plain, though. Like, I'd throw it away if I didn't want to go through the sensation of eating it. To a certain degree, it was still enjoyable to eat the plain ones. They had a nice crunch or I could just let it sit in my mouth until it became so saturated that it was as soft as the frosting. I liked both sensations. I also got sugar from it, so my brain was like "Yeaaaahhh go gurrrl!". But I still wonder, why didn't I just throw it away if I didn't like it? I could just eat the parts I liked and discarded the rest. Maybe I felt wasteful? I don't recall. That frosting was the main draw. Was I just craving straight frosting? Maybe it's just me but it seems really wrong to be craving a tub of sugar-goo... and then eating said sugar-goo out of the tub with a spoon. That was my all-time low point with frosting. I must have been so addicted to sugar that I was desperate to get it from anywhere. Imagining doing that now makes me feel sick to my stomach. I couldn't do that to myself again. I immediately regretted doing it. I stopped mid-bite, threw out what was left and never did that again. Sugar, man... Sugar.