Nip It!

I am currently under snack attack, for some reason. Nothing devastating to the flabby waistline (an extra banana here, a sugar-free pudding there), but I don't like this deviation from my routine. I feel a little less in control, if you know what I mean. As I type this I've decided my best counter measure may be the retrieval from the desk drawer of my "hunger scale", which is an index card with ratings for the level of hunger I'm feeling (or think I'm feeling.) I suspect some of the snacking may actually be Level 1 "I'm really just bored" snacking, and that Will.Not.Do. In the words of the immortal Barney Fife, I need to "Nip it! Nip it in the bud."

Oh, terrific. Now I'm going to go around all day singing "Nip it!" in my head.

Wait, that might actually work.

::sigh::

The things I do to be fitter.

Before I return you to the normal world, I'd like to thank you commenter friends for giving me an awesome idea for my (pending, I'm sure) Goal Celebration! When I reach goal, I will post a photo of my very own feet! LOL Do NOT ask me why I think this is a good idea, but it struck my fancy and it seems like fun. And if we're not going to have fun here, then let's just all pack it in. (For the squeamish among you, I will try to figure out how to post the image behind a cut. I have awfully big feet so the image will be large by necessity. *G*)

Hmm, so other than the sincere thank you, I have nothing truly worthwhile to contribute to the community today. Time to sign off. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

And remember: Nip it!

Menu Then, Menu Now

Delusional Gym Manager asked me the other night to tell her a typical day's menu for me these days. I told her what I'd had the day before, and it wasn't until I was on the way home that I thought to compare it with what I might have had a year ago or two years ago.

Typical Daily Menu Then
Breakfast: biscuit w/butter and grape jelly or a biscuit with milk gravy
Snack: something from the cafeteria (muffin, maybe) or peanut butter and crackers
Lunch: cheeseburger and fries, or slice of pepperoni pizza and a salad
Snack: oversized cookie or a candy bar
Dinner: maybe a Taco Bell run (2 tacos and an order of nachos) or fish and chips
Snack: chocolate something, or microwave popcorn (whole bag), or both
(probably around 3000 calories or more)

Typical Daily Menu Now (actual from Monday, a strength training day)
breakfast: banana, Fiber One bar (peanut butter and oats)
snack: Fiber One yogurt
lunch: chef salad, tbsp of hummus & salsa (yum!) on a pita wedge
snack: apple, New Balance protein bar
dinner: turkey & pepper jack cheese on whole wheat w/lettuce, tomato, & yellow mustard; 3/4 oz pretzels
snack: watermelon (1/4 cup) and mini-rice cakes (or was it sugar free pudding? I forget.*G*)
(Note: I wouldn't normally have two "bar" products in one day, but the cafeteria didn't have fat-free milk so I skipped cereal.)
(around 1300 calories, if I remember correctly)

As you can see, not a perfect diet, even today, but it's so much better than it was. I eat much more good protein, much better carbs, and a fraction of the fat I used to. I'm very pleased with my progress and looking forward to continuing changes for the better.

I think I've mentioned before something an ex-manager used to say frequently: "Don't let best get in the way of better." There are a lot of "right" things about striving for perfection, but we are all human. We will fail, and we will often do it spectacularly. If we're lucky, we'll learn from it, but sometimes the only thing we can do is get past it. We will know we have truly grown if, after one of those oops! moments we sometimes have, we refocus on this fundamental truth: We don't have to be the best. We just have to be better.

(All my own widdle opinion, of course.)

Wishing all of you a better tomorrow! :)

~

A Pearl for Andrew

The amazing Andrew asked: "What is the one pearl of wisdom you would share?"

One? Okay, I can do one. :)

I don't profess to have all the answers, or even to have any of the answers for some folks. But the one thing I've learned after, lo, these many years, is that you can't overhaul your life overnight. Successfully changing a lifetime of bad habits takes practice and time to execute, both physically and emotionally, along with the banishment of expectations of perfection.

I look at it this way: If someone gave me a list of home improvement projects that instructed me to clean all the windows (inside and out), sweep all the floors, remove all my switchplates and doorknobs, clean the patio and garage, catch up the laundry, repave the driveway, mow the lawn, and paint the mailbox, and then told me to start all of them on the following Monday morning and do them all perfectly, I'd run for the hills. Once I'd been revived and could pick myself up off the floor, that is.

But what I might do is choose to clean the patio and garage this weekend, tackle the switchplates and doorknobs next weekend, the windows the week after that (and maybe I'd call on a friend to be my window-washing buddy), and perhaps I'd paint the mailbox--the first coat, anyway--while I waited for the rinse cycle on the washing machine, and so on and so on.

It actually sounds possible that way, doesn't it? I might get it all done, and done well, if I break it up into manageable pieces.

Why in the hell, then, would I ever expect myself to begin a rigorous exercise program six days a week, eat only healthy foods in daily allotments that are a fraction of what I sometimes ate by noon before, drop all caffeine from my diet and replace it with water, give up chocolate and all other snack foods forever, learn everything there is to know about nutrition and how it affects my body, and deal with the emotional issues of all of the above? And do it all perfectly, with nary a tear or complaint.

Starting next Monday.

You can't overhaul your life overnight. Steady, consistent, positive changes, time to execute them, and room to screw up. It will work.

It only took me 30 years to figure all this out.


So enough of my rambling. Let's make a necklace of these pearls!

If you could share one pearl of wisdom with folks, what would it be?

Thanks to Andrew for the question!

Where Kindness Matters Most

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. ~Lao Tzu

I came across this quote today and I copied it down, thinking I'd use it to remind myself to be kinder to others. While I'm generally a pretty nice person, I could certainly use a little reminder every now and then that the world is not really all about me.

So on about my day I went. Work, lunch, work, manicure, cardio--another exciting day in Cammy-land, as you can see.

Oh, but I forgot to mention the ritual! It's a new thing I've started recently, whenever I'm changing clothes, and it goes something like this: I pause to look in the mirror and obsess about my droopy breasts, my flabby belly, and my sagging thighs. I count the wrinkles, the ones that weren't there this time last year because my cheeks were so fat, and twist my neck from side to side to see the folds of excess skin ripple as I do so. And then I sum it up with one of two words: Yuk! or Gross!

On rare occasions, in the right lighting, I use both.

It was no different tonight, until a tiny inner voice piped up with, "Now exactly how is that 'kind'?"

I didn't have an answer, not a good one anyway, because it's not kind. It's downright cruel. There's no way I would ever say that to a friend, so why in hell would I ever say it to myself?

My body is not beautiful just now, at least not in the conventional sense of the word, and I'm not going to try to convince myself otherwise. For the record, I wouldn't do that to a friend either. But if asked, I'd damn sure be kind with my answer. I'd point out that this interim body is a work in progress, maybe add a reminder that the caterpillar-to-butterfly transition gets kind of icky in the middle part, but it all works out beautifully in the end. If we're talking close friend, I might even joke about the number of crunches in her future, and the newer, healthier me would offer to do them with her. Maybe I'd find more words of wisdom, but I know none of them would be "gross" or "yuk".

This is what I thought about when I was on the treadmill tonight, and I vowed to be kinder to myself, to give myself the gifts that build confidence, profoundness, and love. When I finished my cardio (and caught my breath), I dug out this poem I copied down years ago, and it's now taped to my bathroom mirror. It's the kindest thing I knew to do for myself.

SOME ME OF BEAUTY
By Carolyn Rodgers
(as read on Oprah many years ago)

I took a good long look at myself in a full length mirror
Sometimes it's good to look in a full length mirror
And what I saw was not some soul sister poetess of the moment
But I saw just a woman
Just a woman feeling
Just a woman human
And what I felt was
What I felt was a spiritual revelation
And what I felt was a root revival of some love coming on
Coming on strong
And I knew then, looking in a full length mirror,
That many things were over
And some me of beauty was about to begin

Don't mind me, I'll just be here.

Waiting.

Patiently.

Other People's Words 12-30-07

One of my favorite quotations is a Japanese proverb: Fall down seven times, get up eight.

Here are some others I like:

People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas. ~Author Unknown

The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books - how not to eat what you've just learned how to cook. ~Andy Rooney

Food is like sex: when you abstain, even the worst stuff begins to look good. ~Beth McCollister

When I buy cookies I eat just four and throw the rest away. But first I spray them with Raid so I won't dig them out of the garbage later. Be careful, though, because that Raid really doesn't taste that bad. ~Janette Barber

To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality. ~ Naomi Wolf

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. ~Mark Twain

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools. ~Spanish proverb