Working the Plan
Since my ice-cream epiphany from the last blog entry, I have been doing much better with my fitness plan. I have only missed one workout in three weeks, I think, and my eating habits are much improved, although as always I am not even close to eating six times a day. I have not had any ice cream since I finished off the supply I had when I wrote that last blog, a day or two later. And it hasn't been too difficult.
My desire for no-no foods waxes and wanes, both over the course of a day and on a longer cycle. For example, I generally don't even want to look at sugar until evening, which I think is partly due to the fact that when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to eat candy until after dinner (although other sugary stuff was permitted). So if I were to take a day where I just totally ate what I wanted (which rarely happens now, even with the principle of "free day"--after all, nothing in life is truly free!), I would generally not have anything sweet until after dinner. Then I would pig out on sweet stuff all evening. Puts me in mind of when Tom and I were in college: For quite a while, almost every day, after dinner we would go over to the little store in our dorm complex and get as much candy as we could carry--sometimes more, at which point we needed a bag for it--and then take it back to one of our rooms and eat all of it. That was a lot of candy! It is astonishing that we both stayed quite thin during that period; I guess there really is something to the adolescent metabolism thing. If we did that now, we would probably gain 10 pounds each in a week! Which is more or less what was happening to me with the whole ice-cream thing, so I'm glad I wised up.
My craving for sugar always goes away sometime in late evening or the middle of the night, and when that happens, it looks kinda disgusting again. Completely schizophrenic. But I also have days--weeks, even--where the craving never hits, or it's mild enough it doesn't really bother me. I was really glad of those times when I was off sugar completely for about 3 years. A lot of days were a struggle, though. Sometimes I think I should go back to being totally off sugar again, especially when I've been overdosing on it, and then other times I feel that it's under pretty good control.
I am very pleased with myself this week, because I have been doing something I have not been successful with in a very, very long time (most of my life, in fact): I have been voluntarily going to bed and getting up quite early (for me)--I've been going to bed by 10 p.m., and getting up between 6:30 and 7 a.m. I've even been waking up before Tom's alarm goes off at just after 6:00, which is astonishing to me. Just to give you an idea of how dramatic a change this is for me, let me explain that for the last couple of months, I have been in a downward spiral from even my normal night-owl habits (which were bad enough), in that I have been going to bed around 6:30 a.m. (when Tom was getting up) and getting up sometime in mid-to-late afternoon. In other words, I have shifted my schedule by almost half a day. Pretty amazing, I think. It is really nice to be on a schedule comparable with most of the rest of the world, instead of having to worry so much about when things close. It is less nice when I have plans for the evening and I can't keep my eyes open past 8 p.m., like last night when we were trying to get the Christmas decorations up and things started going wrong (most of them having to do with our new kitten, who, among other things, decided that the tree, the ornaments, and especially the lights, needed to be played with and taste-tested; I finally had to shut him in another room so I could string the lights on the tree without fear of having him explode anything again; I leave the details to your imagination). I have had cats all my life, and I know better than to have anything fragile or dangerous on a Christmas tree, especially with a kitten around. However, he was more creative than my precautions took account for. Tempers were flaring, and it was not one of your postcard holiday moments. But I feel better now that I have slept on it (even if the complications pushed my bedtime back by about four hours, and I got up at 6:30 a.m. anyway).
I pick up my brother from the airport this afternoon, and then we are all going to my mother's house tomorrow, and Tom and I will come back the next day, Christmas Eve, for festivities here at home and with his family (we alternate years for which family we spend the actual day with). I am finally starting to feel Christmasy, which I think has to do with having the decorations up. Even if the tree looks like it was set up and decorated by a drunk due to the kitten contributions....
My desire for no-no foods waxes and wanes, both over the course of a day and on a longer cycle. For example, I generally don't even want to look at sugar until evening, which I think is partly due to the fact that when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to eat candy until after dinner (although other sugary stuff was permitted). So if I were to take a day where I just totally ate what I wanted (which rarely happens now, even with the principle of "free day"--after all, nothing in life is truly free!), I would generally not have anything sweet until after dinner. Then I would pig out on sweet stuff all evening. Puts me in mind of when Tom and I were in college: For quite a while, almost every day, after dinner we would go over to the little store in our dorm complex and get as much candy as we could carry--sometimes more, at which point we needed a bag for it--and then take it back to one of our rooms and eat all of it. That was a lot of candy! It is astonishing that we both stayed quite thin during that period; I guess there really is something to the adolescent metabolism thing. If we did that now, we would probably gain 10 pounds each in a week! Which is more or less what was happening to me with the whole ice-cream thing, so I'm glad I wised up.
My craving for sugar always goes away sometime in late evening or the middle of the night, and when that happens, it looks kinda disgusting again. Completely schizophrenic. But I also have days--weeks, even--where the craving never hits, or it's mild enough it doesn't really bother me. I was really glad of those times when I was off sugar completely for about 3 years. A lot of days were a struggle, though. Sometimes I think I should go back to being totally off sugar again, especially when I've been overdosing on it, and then other times I feel that it's under pretty good control.
I am very pleased with myself this week, because I have been doing something I have not been successful with in a very, very long time (most of my life, in fact): I have been voluntarily going to bed and getting up quite early (for me)--I've been going to bed by 10 p.m., and getting up between 6:30 and 7 a.m. I've even been waking up before Tom's alarm goes off at just after 6:00, which is astonishing to me. Just to give you an idea of how dramatic a change this is for me, let me explain that for the last couple of months, I have been in a downward spiral from even my normal night-owl habits (which were bad enough), in that I have been going to bed around 6:30 a.m. (when Tom was getting up) and getting up sometime in mid-to-late afternoon. In other words, I have shifted my schedule by almost half a day. Pretty amazing, I think. It is really nice to be on a schedule comparable with most of the rest of the world, instead of having to worry so much about when things close. It is less nice when I have plans for the evening and I can't keep my eyes open past 8 p.m., like last night when we were trying to get the Christmas decorations up and things started going wrong (most of them having to do with our new kitten, who, among other things, decided that the tree, the ornaments, and especially the lights, needed to be played with and taste-tested; I finally had to shut him in another room so I could string the lights on the tree without fear of having him explode anything again; I leave the details to your imagination). I have had cats all my life, and I know better than to have anything fragile or dangerous on a Christmas tree, especially with a kitten around. However, he was more creative than my precautions took account for. Tempers were flaring, and it was not one of your postcard holiday moments. But I feel better now that I have slept on it (even if the complications pushed my bedtime back by about four hours, and I got up at 6:30 a.m. anyway).
I pick up my brother from the airport this afternoon, and then we are all going to my mother's house tomorrow, and Tom and I will come back the next day, Christmas Eve, for festivities here at home and with his family (we alternate years for which family we spend the actual day with). I am finally starting to feel Christmasy, which I think has to do with having the decorations up. Even if the tree looks like it was set up and decorated by a drunk due to the kitten contributions....
posted by Cheryl | 8:44 AM
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