This is a fan-freakin-tastic shot of me on the eve of my first half marathon. I look perfectly despondent. I am. I am also blissfully oblivious to any thoughts of calories, fat,  protein or carbs.  Hello? I am running 13.2 miles in the morning. I can eat a damn Flinstone’s-knocking-the-car-on-its-side rack of roast beast. I am practically immune to carlories. Haha!

Yeah, ha. Ha. Ha. It’s all fun and games until you realize that you actually burn a finite amout of calories running- no matter how far your little legs and blackened toenail feet carry you. 

And that whole “muscle weighs more than fat” line of crap your training buddies lay on you when trying to lessen your horror at actually getting fat while training for a half marathon is just that: crap. Kind hearted crap. But it is crap.

Moving on. So, now I am keeping a food diary. No teenage angst. No, “I can’t believe he kissed her, she’s fat”, because I am the fat girl in this scenario and he better kiss me.  So, yes, I really do log what I eat at this “Livestrong” website- which was started by that skinny bitch, Lance Armstrong. I am still working through my body envy issues. And, yes, they are sometimes directed at men.

Truth: It is helping. This whole food journal thing is miserable, ugly, honest and disturbing. But, it is helping. It is hard to keep up with, because, as is the case with every other “healthy” change I have made over the last several years, old “Fred” has to chime in with his unhealthy eff-it laden two cents. Who is Fred? He is that devil on my shoulder. He’s like that Mayhem character, but he belongs to me. He can seductively position himself around that chocolate bar and convince me that making smores with a cigarette lighter in the middle of my bed in the middle of the night is perfectly rational and not necessary to document at that skinny  Lance Armstrong’s diary-of-torture site.

Fred has been such fun. He really has. Oh, the nights we’ve spent making little chocolate sandwiches, him reminding me that I am not my body. I am so much more than that little bit of chub poking out under my belly button. Well, I am. But, guess what, Fred? That fat makes me unhappy.

So, Fred, we are going to have some sort of chocolately goodness tonight. Promise. But, we are not going to have ALL of the chocolatey goodness. We need to leave a divinely portioned bit for you to try to talk me into eating  more than I should  tomorrow night.

I am setting my alarm. I am getting up specifically to work out for an hour before I do ANYTHING else each morning. Then, I am keeping my Lance Armstrong Diary. I am going to shave 30 minutes off my marathon time by February 24th. I am going to shave off 30 pounds to help me get there. So, Fred, and Lance, if you are in you are in, if you are not, I will have to do something really ugly to both of you with my smores kit.  Let’s play nice.