I’ve been a bad, bad girl.

My menu from last week reads like culinary erotica.  I defiled my temple and it was delightful, but for your sake I’ll spare you the fried, torrid details and just give you the screen cap from my Lose It! App instead.  At some point I stopped recording my caloric intake accurately and just marked each day as a loss

Yes, it does say 4,122 calories over budget

Needless to say, I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  I wasn’t terribly stressed out about it, after all, what’s one week when you’re changing your entire lifestyle? (Insert eye roll here.)  I knew I wouldn’t lose any weight that week and I’m good with that.  However…

I feel as though I owe some atonement for my dietary detour.  So, I have decided to pay penance by reciting a “Hail Richard” for every bad snacking decision I made and a “Our Fonda” for every fried food I ate.

Hail Richard Simmons, full of sass, our hope is with thee.

Blessed art thou among spandex manufacturers and blessed is the fruit of your ankle socks.

Awesome Richard, beacon of aerobics, pray for us weak gluttons, now and in our hours of temptation.

Our Fonda, who art in Hollywood

Motivational be your story.  Thy ballet failed, thy aerobics prevailed, on video as it is on DVD

Give us this day our daily workout and forgive us our cheeseburgers as we forgive you your brash Vietnam agenda.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from fast food.

For thine is the Lean Routine and leg warmers forever and ever. Amen.

On a related note, do you suppose they make candy rosaries?

Now, please excuse me, I have to go get Sweating to the Oldies and pretend to be totally psyched for a week of spinach salads even though we all know it’s a dirty, dirty lie.

 Feel the burn.

You're Better Than Me.

"You’re making us all look bad” – one of my co-workers circa 2009 said this at the pinnacle of my first bout with weight loss.  It was the ultimate guilt trip and brings me to one more thing I hate about dieting: when people know that I’m trying to lose weight, I think that they think, that I think I’m better than them. (My apologies for that sentence.)

Of course I don’t think that I’m better than anyone else!  I mean, I’m trying to be, but that’s kinda what it’s all about.  There are so many things that you’re better than me at doing.  When I think about it, it starts to get a little embarrassing…

• Math, I’m terrible at math.  Example: 3500 calories = 1lb, so then if I cut 500 calories from my diet a day I should lose no less than 12lbs per week. That’s right, right?
• Not ordering potatoes with every meal I eat.  I would have a sweet make out sesh with any potato farmer that let me raid his cellar.

  

  This guy knows what I'm talkin' bout.  Mmm-Hmm.

• Cooking: Prior to this adventure, my idea of a “homemade” meal was a Totino’s Party Pizza with extra toppings from my fridge and ranch dressing.  (450° for 11-14 minutes will always be imprinted on my mind)

• Running like a normal human being: I went out for track in middle school where they told me I have a very “unique gait.” There were attempts to fix my form but they decided that if the pointing and laughing didn’t correct it they would just assign me to the long jump where the running was kept to a minimum… But I digress, the critique totally psyched me out, so now I run like an idiot on purpose so then people think I’m just being a jokester and not mentally deficient.

This girl will probably be bullied into the long jump too.

• Getting in the shower after someone else has recently showered.  I’m super creeped out by droplets on the walls of the shower.  This is why I live alone.  It makes me feel dirty and uncomfortable, which is opposite of how showering makes normal people feel.

Gross.

So in conclusion, I’m not better than anyone (so please don’t make me feel guilty for trying) and I’m working on the shower thing.

 Cheers.

Farewell Fun Bags

Today, I jumped on the scale naked, hair dried to reveal.... I've lost 10 pounds!  Running and punching around in Rocky-style triumph, I went about my business getting ready for work.  

But my joyful reveling came to an abrupt stop when I strapped on my bra and much to my dismay found that a significant amount of that lost weight had disappeared from my "lovely lady lumps."

I knew this day would come, but I was unprepared.  For me the one great thing about being heavier is that the weight distribution has always been generous on the top shelf and when nothing else is going my way, at least I still had my girls. 

Until now.  My sweater puppies are a little less playful.

Yeah.  It's like that.

So with great sadness, I bid my boobies goodbye. 

Bye bye boobies.  Sayonara Sisters. Toodle-oo Ta Ta's.  Ciao Chesticles.

I already miss you my mammaries...

Work Out Endorphins = Unicorns

"Work Out Endorphins" might as well be uni-horned, mythical, majestic creatures.  I seek them, but do not find.

List of things working out does do for me:

1. Chafe my thighs while reminding me of how long it’s been since I shaved my legs
2. Throw my internal climate control WAY out of whack
3. Help me perfect my “running from an assailant” fantasies (thanks for the idea Mindy Kaling!)
4. Provides me with a really lovely, natural “hippy at a 3-day outdoor summer festival slightly after high-noon” scent
5. Helps me justify my all-too-frequent clandestine meetings with restaurant food.

List of things working out does not do for me:

1. Make me feel happier, healthier, more positive, more energetic… and so on.

Sciency folks tell me that exercise creates endorphins (they say it sternly, like it’s definitely a fact).  Echoing these sentiments are my slutty healthy friends who say that they get an amazing, addicting high from working out and extol the benefits of regular jogging/weightlifting/yoga-ing.  Comparing my experiences to theirs I’m inclined to believe that their brain is just full of empty receptors, in an “every endorphin wins” version of musical chairs.  In my brain however, it’s standing room only.  I have room for, like, four and a half endorphins and those seats are reserved for the endorphins I enjoy when I’m eating chocolate.  Every now and again a chocolate endorphin gets up to be replaced by a “I caught a grammatical error on a menu” endorphin.



Endorphins fighting for a seat in my brain. Yes, my endorphins are teenage Honduran men.



With all of that said… I do work out.  Sort of.
  
Me saying I work out is like Mike Tyson saying he can spell: it’s probably true, but only a little and it has yet to be verified.  I "exercise" (a more accurate term) in a secure location.  And I do what I did when I lost the first 30lbs: 20 minutes of brisk walking at an incline (very important) followed by 10 or so minutes of half-hearted aerobics de jour, three times a week. 

In my past experience I learned it doesn’t have to be hard, it just has to BE.

Shake 'n Bake.

My Diet and I: An Open Relationship

My diet and I have the dysfunctional relationship of a disenchanted middle-aged couple.  I’ve decided that every now and again I want to see other people and my diet doesn’t want to lose me, so he pretends to be okay with it.  In my heart I know that every time I step out on him, he sits at home and watches Lifetime sobbing into a glass of red wine and praying that this will be the last time.  It won’t be.

I realized today that I haven’t really defined my diet.  That’s because it doesn’t have a gimmick.  It’s the Don’t Be An Idiot Diet.  Lower my calorie intake, up my exercise- but still enjoy life.

I’m not a fan of black and white, but eating right really comes down to not buying crappy food and at the store I do pretty well, but when it comes to eating out with friends and family I just don’t have that kind of discipline.  I also can’t stand the thought of being that girl who orders a side salad with water while the rest of the group eats real food.  I give into my cravings at least once a week and I savor it.  I know that if I skipped eating out or made better choices I could lose more weight in less time, but those extra calories I take in eating out twice a week keep me from kicking children and puppies.  And I think everyone would agree that it’s small price to pay to save this lil gal.

Cheers!