inspiration

When Lazy is Good

/ leslietoldo.com / 2 Comments

<pimg018> 

(This is a photo of me and my dog, Otis, who turned 13 today. It fits the theme, and he is pretty darn cute, after all)
I cannot lie. My own laziness may be helping me succeed in ways I had never imagined possible when I started this whole not-eating-gluten experiment.  Here is the thing, and I am really only giving you a watered down version of said “thing” because I am not completely clear myself on what the “thing” is when it comes to gluten. Oh, yeah, the watered down thing:  you have to look up ingredients of ingredients in a lot of foods to make sure they do not contain gluten. Who has time for that? I probably do, but I am not going to do that. I will have a nervous break down (as if not eating gluteny foods isn’t going to make me snap in the first place). 

I am just getting acclimated to reading ingredients on labels for the obvious, “hey, this is loaded with gut bloating gluten” information. I do not need to worry about whether percolated hypochondrial starch isolate has some kind of gluten festering within. You know? So, how does this help me succeed beyond just avoiding gluten? Well, because silly, I am eating less processed food. The fewer things on the label, the easier to understand, the more likely I am to eat them. 

How cool, right?! I must be losing all kinds of weight and have an arse like Jillian Michaels and ….(insert needle scratch on record). No. I do see a difference in my shape. My tummy is less bloated. I feel better. I mean, I really feel better overall. My joints are not aching. I am sleeping better. My tummy isn’t as tumultuous. I also have more energy- just not enough more energy to read labels with more than 5 ingredients on them- that I can pronounce. 

The truth is still the truth: a calorie is a calorie. They all add up the same way. If your daily pile of calories exceeds what your body needs to make it through, those calories sort of loiter around and you don’t lose weight- well, I don’t, anyway.  But, I am exercising a lot more. I am trying not to get too crazy and put a specific number of pounds I want to lose out there- not today, anyway. 

I was actually not tested for gluten intolerance. I read the symptoms and thought I might be. A few times, while researching gluten as a topic for my day job- ace medical reporter- I read and heard that if you go off of gluten and you feel better, chances are you have an intolerance. The real test is to then eat gluten and see what happens. Well, what happened for me was pretty icky. I felt hung over. I was very nauseated. It was not good.  By “not good” I mean, kind of miraculous. I ate truffles- you know, chocolatey ones- and felt horrible and vowed never to do that again. Say what? I am still sort of in shock. My mother, who found a way to make Atkins Diet shakes higher in carbohydrate content than the ones sold at most malt shops around the nation, would be really disappointed. I did not give her any grandkids, and she is a Saints fan, so she is used to disappointment. 

So, I have been on the wagon, headed away from the gluten fields for a few weeks. It really is not as bad as I thought. I can have potatoes. I can also have any number of “gluten-free” labeled products. I am trying not to get into that, because I like eating kind of clean.  I feel good. Yes, I wish I could report some crazy thing about how my body is transformed and my skin glows and Tom Brady keeps calling and I have to remind him we are both married, etc. My body is getting more toned. I am feeling better. Guess what? That is because I am weight training and running. 

I have been a medical reporter for roughly 20 years. I have talked to some of the great minds of medicine, diet and fitness. It all comes back to one thing, well, actually two things- diet and exercise. If you want to lose weight, what you eat is probably 80-percent of the equation. But, there is still that other 20-percent. Exercise is so good for you. I have never regretted a workout. I always feel better afterwards not because I look like the chicks in my Shape magazine, but because I did something good for myself. 

I really hope I make myself read this again in the morning, when I try to talk myself out of going to the gym. I am sure if I leave myself a note, I will read this again- if I am not too lazy, you know, and hit the snooze button. Oh, wait, I have dogs, they really do not honor the whole “snooze” philosophy. 

So, let’s keep fighting the good fight. 

(are ya happy, Kim? This is your update.)

Inspirational lies

/ leslietoldo.com / 3 Comments

Image

The really awesome thing about having your own words in print- especially on the internet, where they will be around forever- is that you can always go back and review your past musings and get a good laugh. I could cry, but I choose to laugh.

The month was August. The title:  “C’s Get Degrees”.  I wrote the following:

“So, when I finished weight training and a run this morning, and thought, ‘I am just going to give this everything and see what this does for me when I do that full marathon in February’, I got this twingey, awesome feeling. I am not going to let fear stand in my way. I am just going to do this- and give it my best effort.”

Hmmm. I wonder when I was planning to give it my best effort? Seems life got away from me. I thought I had not written in a couple of weeks. turns out it is going on a couple of months. Wow. So, how are things? Are you on some inspired high, accomplishing great things? I sure hope someone is.

So, I think I gained weight back. I have been “busy”. I love that word. It is so short, tidy and “busy”. It even sounds like, “I just don’t have time for anything longer than a four letter word– so much happening.”  I guess I have been working. I have had some stuff going on at home.

Nope, I think the four letter word I am grasping for is lazy.

I am being hard on myself. I have not been lazy at the grocery store, while visiting TJ Maxx specifically to buy chocolate (they have great stuff, by the way), or when going out for ridiculous lunches. Oh, sure I start the day logging in my Livestrong food journal. I go to the gym and bang out runs. I most certainly have not given my best effort to this whole marathon training/being healthy thing. I haven’t been getting on the scale either. My psyche views it as some sort of Kryptonite.

I decided to come back here for some inspiration. What went wrong the past two months? Why do I keep going on food “benders”.  There has to be a reason. I keep hearing all of the great voices of trainers past saying things like, “you either want this or your don’t. You aren’t going to mess up my life if you don’t stick with this.”  I read my own snarky, enlightened words and it is as if someone else wrote them. Maybe I have an evil twin- wait, maybe I am the evil twin.

Why would I write such truthful and un-motivational crap in my positive-life-changes blog? Because it is the truth.  I am not going to spew unicorns and rainbows out of my arse just because it is what I should be doing. I will never understand why I have such a struggle with food. In order for me to lie in this little blog-  to you- I have to lie to me first. Why do that?

So, what happens next? Well, I am taking a first step now. I have some thinking to do. I am making some changes. They involve sugar and gluten. I am really not trying to jump on a nutty bandwagon with the gluten thing. I have been diagnosed with chronic fatigue. I have arthritis. I have some stomach issues that I don’t need to go into here. Use your imagination- just don’t be really gross, because it isn’t “really” gross.  I have learned that gluten can do all of the above to your system.

The good news is, if I ditch the gluten, and I am not diagnosed with a disorder, the change will not hurt me. I guess Gluten is not something we humans really need in our bodies. I do feel crappy a lot. I guess I will try this. This whole thing could get really fun. Maybe I will diagnose myself with something else in a couple of months. Who knows. I am just going at this thing a day at a time- even a month at a time.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers- but I sure do have a lot of questions. I am not giving up hope. I just hope the “twingey” feeling I had in the previously above mentioned exert from a past blog will come back. It took me a good 7 attempts to quit smoking. I guess this food crap started way before I started smoking. Maybe it will just be harder to make these changes.

Anyway, I am going to attempt to get back on track- guess I need to make sure I can find the track.

So, till we meet again, my friends.

Emptying bowls, and bags of chips, and… oh you get the idea!

/ leslietoldo.com / 3 Comments

Image

(The bowls, pictured above, are from a fundraiser for the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan. They were all made and donated by local artists. You buy a bowl, you eat all of the soup you want for $15. The soup was provided by local restaurants. No, they do not have much to do with today’s post, but aren’t they pretty?)

I found myself wanting to write, but thinking that I am not “inspired enough” right now. Read: I don’t have a bunch of unicorns and fairies floating through my brain. I don’t have the 10 magic steps to happiness and fulfilment to offer. I do have reality. That was supposed to be the point of this whole blogging venture. Right? Junk I think is not always inspired at awesome. Sometimes it is the uninspired and un-awesome that I need to pay the most attention to. My personal bout of “crazy” has something to teach me.

So, this is where I am. I am still in love with running in the rain- or running anywhere.  But I am in a bit of quicksand this week. I am a little restless. By restless I mean, up at midnight eating Funions, Salt and Vinegar Lays and Fruity Snacks. I do not really even like any of them. They were there. I was feeling anxious. You get the idea.

That little moment of avoiding the real issue was a great follow-up to the 36 bowls of soup I had at a fundraiser for the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, called “Empty Bowls”. Oh, I emptied some bowls alright. So, maybe I did not eat 36, but I ate four. Yes, FOUR! Where was all of my, “damn I’m good and healthy” bravado that I was waving around earlier in the week?

While the lbs scale and the fat scale slowly continue to trek downward, it is not fast enough for me. I took my measurements and had lost only about two inches- across my entire body- over two weeks. Never mind how differently my clothes are fitting. It is all about cold, hard numbers right?

Here is the thing, it is- and it isn’t. I have been working pretty hard and keeping up with a training plan, except for this week. I got in two great runs, but I skipped my weight training because I spent the time I could have been weight training weighing out whether I actually had time to squeeze in some weight training.  Any time I start doing that is a good time for me to stop and ask, “hey, chick, what is wrong? Do you want to do this or don’t you?” No one is holding a gun or anything else to my head. I made a choice to get healthy. I am either in or I am not. Period.

Skipping the things that I know make me feel great- like the workouts – and then doing things that I know will make me feel bad, like pounding down Funions et. all-  are signs that I need to be honest with myself. About what is really floating through my kooky little brain. Something has to be off, especially since I specifically schedule time and set my alarm so that I will be able to fit in workouts. I specifically do not buy snacks I love so that I will not go on midnight benders.

I am trying to get healthy, not win a body building contest. Still, there is a voice in my head telling me that things are not happening fast enough.  A friend posted yesterday that she had lost 23 pounds. I am sincerely happy for her, but wondering why is it going so slowly for me. The answer is simple: because it is. Comparing myself and my progress to anyone else’s is a recipe for failure.

Maybe my friend did not go and empty a bunch of bowls at the Empty Bowls event. Maybe she did not power-eat snack food she did not like last night. Maybe she has been at it longer than me.  Maybe, when she is not feeling inspired, or feels like sabotaging her own efforts she stops and listens and tries to understand why Funions seem like such a great idea right now.