I never want to be "a downer", and I promise, soon, some food pictures, recipes and fun! But until then let me finish a few thoughts.....
I started my own personal blog to record, in great detail, my food journal, not just my calories, but my true feelings about what and how I was eating, the time of day I was eating, and what was going on in my life between meals. I had to accept the fact that I was going to have to get "real" about the amount of food I was eating if I ever really wanted to lose this 10 lbs. I had been saying I wanted to lose.
My original intention was to, just plain, get scientific about my exact daily calorie count, but what ended up happening was I became "the calorie police". During one particular blogpost in which I was beating myself up about weighing .2 lbs more than the day before (yep, .2 lbs, not 2.0 lbs!), I became mortified with what I had turned into. This is what I wrote....
"good lord, if i was a stranger reading this blog i would think this chick is way too consumed with self torture. for gods sake, how lucky am i to go to yoga? how lucky am i to have found kettlebells, only having to swing the damn things a few times a week for 1 hour?
stay positive....ok."
2 days later I wrote....
"what was learned this past 2 days? enough with the torture of micro-managing every stinkin' morsel i eat. i have to eat, i can't starve. starving was fun when it was easy, but it's not easy anymore, it sucks. so starving is over, and now i have to find the true food needs of my body. "
I haven't keep an exact calorie count since. I also stopped weighing myself daily. I will weigh myself again, but I know pretty much what I weigh based how my clothes fit.
I know that not all calories are created equal! But when it comes to bodyweight, not nutrition, then it's hard to argue with the bottom line of calories in, calories out, and for that reason I will always be a believer in calorie counting, and I will continue to promote it until something proves to me that there's a better way. But like daily weigh-ins, exact daily calorie counts can start to bring you down. Recognize when it becomes "a negative" and find a better or different way.
I know when I'm eating too much, I don't need an exact calorie count to prove it, lol!
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6 comments:
First of all, you're title makes me think of the Radiohead song "Karma Police" - I will be rewriting the lyrics for you shortly.
Secondly, um, YEAH! I still weigh myself daily, it's like, well, a compulsive addiction! I hate doing it, and how it makes me feel. I know it's totally unrealistic to expect to lose several pounds overnight. Not that I haven't done that, but let's face it, when I do, it's through not so healthy means. And with calorie counting, yeah, I keep a mental running total in my head, not exact numbers, but I eat so much of the same stuff, i know damn well what's in it. The days I keep a written, rigid record, I find it a lot more stressful. It'll be, say, 6pm, and I've had my calories for the day, and I get this mantra on repeat 'I can't eat anymore, nothing, not even a bite. What if I get hungry in a few hours?' And it flipping sucks.
I have no pearls of wisdom here, just a rambling 'right there with you'. Christmas cookies this year? I made the fig ones the other day and thought of Rif.
Let me know....
Christine,
We "compulsives" are crazy aren't we?
I don't make the time to read many other blog these days (there's a reason for that...), but every so often I know, you know, I check in on you.....
I'm in the middle of writing a new blogpost addressing your comment, but I've got a 6:30am KB client, then 2 yoga classes today, but I'll be back.....
I've broken away from weighing every day...I moved my scale into the "other bathroom"...but I had already begun gaining weight. My weight problem began when I was a small girl eager to be a member of the "clean plate club" and guilty of wasting food that could save "starving children of India"....that is the fodder that n my eating pattern was traced from for a lifetime. I struggle to erase those tapes embedded in my brain and though the rational adult can divide the truth from the emtion, the child in me cannot. I feel as though I cannot escape that merry-go-round. Here I am again...for the umpteenth time...losing the same damn 50 pounds. I am so tired of this nightmare of the vicious cycle of weight loss and gain and loss...stop the maddness. Evict the calorie police. Please let me remember when I am thinner to not let the hunger return to rule my life again.
The five pounds that plagued me as a child have become tenfold through my life and I cannot escape that legacy.
Damn you scale. Damn me.
I know this has nothing to do with counting calories, but did you ever look into the elk meat??
Beth,
This comment has touched me deeply, in fact the first time I read it, especially the last part I teared up.
You've provided a giant mirror for me to look at....a mirror that many of us can see ourselves in.
Diana,
I haven't yet looked into he elk meat, mainly because I am current trying to make room in my freezer!
Once my younger son moves back home I can start cooking more often, but for now I have way too much food!
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