Fit for Free

I’ve subscribed to “The Daily Raw Inspiration” (E-mails from Jinjee of The Garden Diet Web site, on my blogroll), and loved this quote from her e-mail today:

“Building muscle is almost like experiencing the level of health of a child again – in the sense that you are building a body!”

Hope everyone’s having a wonderful night!

Today’s note to self (from the drafts folder in my work e-mail account), is one I’ve referred to often over the past few years. I found it on this site. These questions are definitely helpful on the eating/exercise front, but I imagine they’d work for almost anything.
* * *
Today, when you are out of balance, ask yourself the following questions in this order:
1. How do I feel? I feel angry, sad, afraid, guilty (explore and express each one at a time)
2. Are my expectations reasonable?
3. Is my thinking positive and powerful?
4. What is the essential pain and the earned reward?
5. What do I need?
6. Do I need support?

* * *

I love these questions. They feel like something a therapist might say to you; carefully worded, logically arranged, and (for lack of a better term), thought-provoking. Especially the progression from question 5. to 6. (I bet most people have trouble answering question 5.!). And each time I’ve looked at the list of questions, I’ve been surprised by how I answered the question about “essential pain,” because it’s never what I think it’s going to be. The things that are really bothering me, the things that are often the hardest to change, often surprise me.

Over the years, I’ve answered these questions, on various occasions at work when I was feeling completely lost on the food front. All the answers are in the same e-mail. For example, on Oct. 31, 2006 (a few months after I’d joined WW for the first time), I wrote the following:

* * *

• 1. How do I feel? I feel angry, sad, afraid, guilty (explore and express each one at a time) I feel pretty mellow, but I feel overstuffed and a little lost too.
• 2. Are my expectations reasonable? I want to be better about overeating than I used to be. I want to allow myself to overeat when I need to. But I also want to be free of these urges and find newer, more powerful ways to deal with these feelings. I’m doing this because I started the day by stuffing myself. If I’d started the day lighter, I would have had a feeling I wanted to maintain. Or, at least, WAITED until I was hungry to eat a big breakfast.
• 3. Is my thinking positive and powerful? My thinking is vague and unclear. I am planning on making brownies tonight, but I don’t have a clear plan for how I’ll deal with having them around (and whether I’ll eat the batter, etc.)
• 4. What is the essential pain and the earned reward? Essential pain is figuring out what’s really bothering me. Spending time digging a little deeper. Maybe exercising more than walking home after work, so I won’t feel so guilty for eating afterward.
• 5. What do I need? I need the new week to begin so I can be free of this one, but mostly I need a hug, to be with Sonny, to not be stressed out and feel responsible for us having a fun Halloween, to not be mad at myself for not allocating points for tonight, to deal with all the preppy housewives in my building if I go to the building’s party tonight, to not be jealous of Katie for having such an awesome fun group of friends in VA, to not be jealous of surfers/skaters in California [I'd just watched the movie LORDS OF DOGTOWN, hehe] and wish I had that drive and ambition and singular focus. To not be preoccupied by the fact that I haven’t exercised today and all this energy jumping out of my pores. Morning exercise has gotta be it.
• 6. Do I need support? Mostly I just need time to think and cook and decompress and let my stomach return to its natural state. Right now it is completely overfull… and it has been this way for the past week.

* * *

SO many of the emotions here are alien to me now, and it makes me realize that—although I ultimately stopped going to WW before starting up again this past summer—I learned a lot in the interim. Namely:

• [Question 2]—I don’t need to overeat. I don’t need to feel overstuffed. I was overeating because I wasn’t eating enough at my other meals! And since I’ve started eating my “forbidden foods”—like cookies and ice cream—more often and in smaller portions, the need to go crazy on them has almost disappeared.
• [Question 3]—Baking should be fun, not something I overthink! I didn’t need to make brownies just because it was Halloween. I shouldn’t bake if I’m in an emotionally “off” place, because then I’m more likely to eat too many and feel guilty. And that guilt is not worth it.
• [Question 4]—Exercise should not be a tool to minimize food guilt!! Exercise should not be “essential pain” !!! The “essential pain,” though I didn’t see it then, was facing the things I talk about in Question 5. The essential pain is TALKING to someone about the food stress, however uncomfortable I might feel about it.The essential pain is realizing that my life is lacking in focus and ambition, because I’m not doing what I’m meant to be doing.

Phew. I don’t mean to spend a whole post praising myself for the progress I’ve made, but maybe seeing this will help one of you. And I need to remember that I am changing, slowly, year after year, simply becuase I decided I didn’t want to be a food stress case anymore. I often forget this, because physically, I’ve remained pretty much the same in the past few years. Part of this process has been realizing that the real change is invisible, and my self-worth is no longer based on the way I look.

I’m cleaning out the drafts folder in my work e-mail account, and found nearly 40 draft messages I’ve written to myself over the years, mostly recipes I want to try, yoga studios that offer good intro-week specials (like $20 for unlimited yoga), upstate hikes I want to do (maybe this summer?), creative writing projects from the first few months at my job (which was largely spent at the photocopier), and—last but not least—notes I’ve written to myself, taken from blogs, Web sites, books, etc. Probably things I found while googling things like “food stress” and “disordered eating” in the days before I started going to WW meetings. I thought I’d share some of them with you.

First up: a list of words that describe healthy eating vs. restrictive eating. Who knows where I found it, but I’m glad I kept it. Especially because of the first two words on the list.

The words on the left are supposed to be better substitutes for the (often-used) words on the right.

Healthy vs. Restrictive Eating
In Charge > In Control
Nourishment > Diet
Fuel > Calories
Quality > Points
Healthy > Skinny
Aware > Preoccupied
Conscious > Consumed
Mindful > Vigilant
Information > Dogma
Guide > Rules
All foods fit > Good or bad
Balance > Perfection
Variety > Temptation
Moderation > Deprivation
Choosing > Earning
Deciding > Rationalizing
Flexible > Rigid
Hunger based > By the clock
Comfort > Portion sizes
Physical Activity > Penance
Introspective > Smug
Effortless > Willpower
Trust > Fear
Learning > Failing
Self-acceptance > Condemnation
Enjoyment > Guilt
Pleasure > Shame
Freedom > Bondage

I feel like my goal has always been to be “in control.” And unfortunately, like many other people, when I don’t feel like I’m in control I tend to spiral past the point of “healthy” and into a realm that isn’t described in the words above (out of control/lost/helpless/sedentary). I’ve been there, and I don’t ever want to go back! And because of that, it’s been a scary thing to try to eat and exercise intuitively (which really only started since I’ve been keeping this blog). In one sense, I’m tightening the reins (I haven’t had a consistent exercise routine for years), but in another sense, I’m loosening them (since my goal is to get healthier without becoming obsessive).

Loosening the reins is proving to be the biggest challenge! I noticed recently that when I have uncharted chunks of time—like a three-day weekend—I immediately start to think about ways to “control” the time. For example, “Bikram yoga every day! Raw food only! No sugar! Only whole foods!” I’ve been doing this for years without ever really being aware of it.

Unfortunately, trying to control blocks of time like this takes away the very reason for the time off: freedom and relaxation, things that make you happier and healthier in the long run, and things that are a much more effective means to achieving health and well-being than a 3-day yoga marathon or fruit fast.

For me, part of the process of adopting a healthier mindset about food and exercise is realizing that I won’t always be in control of my environment, and that trying to control everything will only backfire in the end. Someone will always be there to offer me an unwanted dessert, or ask me if I want to go see a movie when I was planning to go for a run. And the best thing I can do is to be flexible and enjoy these “distractions” as they come, not try to “control” the situation by passing up an amazing bite of dessert or skipping a fun night out just because I’d planned to avoid sugar that day or exercise that evening.

And likewise, I’ll probably have a MUCH better three-day weekend if I just exercise as much as I want, take advantage of the opportunity to make yummy meals at home, and not try to impose any “challenges” !!!

Do any of the words on the list resonate with you? Why?

So, along with everyone else in the NY metropolitan area, I hit the streets and the park to celebrate

PB & Co.!

The PB Sampler!!! (creamy, crunchy, chocolate, white chocolate, cinnamon raisin, honey, maple, and spicy flavors!!!)

I’m proud to say I didn’t eat ALL that peanut butter . . . and happy that the three of us walked downtown from Penn Station before lunch!

After we finished eating, we made a bubble tea stop (for me and Sarah) and a Tasti-D-Lite stop (for Danielle).

The bubbles. The fourth time I've had them, and the third time I've liked them

Danielle eats Tasti-D-Lite for the first time

Sarah drinks milky bubble tea. Sarah, how many bubbles would you reckon you've had in your NY years?

Bloggers on Bleecker Street

Next, we hit up the Union Square Greenmarket. Oh, the produce! Oh, the samples!

I took home a nice bag of apples

It was crowded!!

I skipped the flowers but did buy basil and parsley plants for my little fire escape garden

I had a couple hours off before the next adventure, so I went home, put away some laundry, got more potting soil for my new plants , had some of my leftover pb from lunch (i.e. the YUMMY lunch/snack featured in my last post!), got dressed, and hit the subway with Sonny to his Anzac Day show on the Frying Pan in the Hudson River. Any Aussies out there? I’d never heard of Anzac Day until Sonny’s band (which has an Australian lead singer) started playing this yearly festival.

View of Jersey from the top deck at sunset (hi Danielle!)

Skyline view

It was a good time. The view was amazing!

Sonny and his drums

Aussies on stage singing "Waltzing Matilda"

I had around 1 Corona and a shot of Jack Daniels (courtesy of one of the many drunk attendees—I think his name was Smiley). “Dinner” was 1.5 Pure bars, which I brought along in my purse (and I’m SO glad I did; the only vegan fare on the boat = french fries, which were probably fried in the same vat as the meat pies!).

We left the boat around midnight and headed to the Black Sheep, a Park Slope bar with a foosball table! I had half a VERY strong Old Fashioned. It was fun (though you wouldn’t know it from this pic . . .)

Somehow that Corona bucket made it home with us . . . I think we're going to plant basil in it.

Taco Salad! 2 taco shells (broken up), plus a few tortilla chips; salad greens; brown rice; a mix of morningstar veggie crumbles and chipotle beans; spicy salsa

Our fire escape, where we enjoyed our TexMex fiesta in the 75-degree weather!!

I also had a Coronita (cute 7-oz. Corona!!) just like this one:

And, for not-falling-asleep-in-my-taco-salad purposes:

Dessert: a homemade iced mocha! (iced coffee + a little hershey's chocolate syrup + a spoonful of Ghirardelli hot cocoa mix + a splash of soymilk)

After lunch, we watched Marley and Me. TEARJERKER!!!

I didn’t feel like regular meals for the rest of the day, so I stuck to fun snacks.

Snack inspiration: Newman's Own dried apricots + alphabet grahams!

Snack 1 (dried apricots, alphabet grahams, sunflower seed butter)

Snack 2 (more cinnamon grahams, a large sliced carrot, and another spoonful of SB)

After these snacks, I took Arthur for  a lovely hour-long walk in Prospect Park. Then I came home and had another snack:

Snack 3 (bran cereal + soymilk, in my musical mug)

Then I took him for another hour-long walk. I LOVE SUNDAYS. And I found this table on the walk home! My strength training for the weekend was carrying that sucker home by myself.

The final snack of the day was the last of my Apple/Strawberry sauce (LOVE IT) and the last of my bran flakes with my last tiny banana, 1 tbsp. hempseed, and soymilk. I seem to crave veggies some days, fruits on others (like yesterday!), and grains on others. Some days, I don’t eat a single grain all day, and some days (like today) I feel like I eat mostly grains. It’s nice to see the pattern and try to honor it!

I’m going to miss the fun people, food, and sunshine when I’m back in the office tomorrow!

What was the yummiest thing you ate this weekend?