Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Laughing at myself

This isn't really a Project-related post, but I had to share something. I hope my fellow recruits and grads will bear with me.

I have ranted in this blog frequently about the indignities of middle age and the futile attempts to stop the aging process. Creaking joints, metabolism like a sluggish walrus, cellulite gleaming like shrink-wrapped lard in the reflection of a dressing-room mirror -- I confess it all. But there is one thing that has been happening to me over the last couple of years that is bizarrely funny and makes me laugh at myself every time it happens.

OK - what happens is, I catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye -- a street sign, a billboard, a menu -- and see the wrong word, something totally incomprehensible and out of context. My eyes are aging, and years of writing technical documents and working on a computer has made my mind/vision connection pretty frayed. The first time it happened I was driving with my kids somewhere, and we happened to pass an apartment building with a sign out front that seemed to say "FREE MEAT." Huh, I thought, what a nice thing to do in these lousy financial times -- they're giving away meat to people who rent! Then I thought, hmmm, what if they're vegetarians? do they get free veggies? Then, slowly, it dawned on me that the sign actually said..... "free heat." I couldn't stop giggling to myself -- then I had to make up a joke to tell my kids so they wouldn't think old Mom was losing her shit on the way to the grocery store.

It happened again just last weekend when I went out to dinner with a group of my girlfriends. We were at a very nice restaurant and I was drinking my wine, happily chatting, and then my eye caught the menu where I swear, for just a second I thought it said "House Cat Ribeye." Damn, I thought, that's gotta be a big-ass housecat for them to cut a ribeye from it -- but who eats cat? Of course what it actually said was "house-cut ribeye" but for a few seconds I had visions of an overfed Maine Coon on a plate. I laughed so hard at myself my girlfriends thought I was losing it.

This is the second time this has happened with the same group of friends -- I embarrassed myself last time in a gorgeous French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant in Chicago where I glanced at the menu and saw "Mouse Fried Rice." What the hell? I knew it was a fusion restaurant, but I thought that was taking it a little too far -- I mean, what sort of mouse? Dark-meat mouse? French mouse? Do they leave the tail on? I contemplated ordering it, just to be adventurous and try something wildly new but I didn't think I could figure out how to ask the Vietnamese waiter if they could make it extra spicy, but hold the mouse.

I am very, very careful now when I place an order for house fried rice at my favorite takeout Chinese place. Maybe I should eat more carrots, I hear they're good for your eyes.

Friday, May 1, 2009

The voices in my head

It seems that the voices in my head are back, and getting louder. At the beginning of the Project, I was out-shouting those voices -- I was going to kick those voices' ASS, get them out of my head forever, and clear their slimy residue out of my psyche. Ha.

One of the voices came back just this morning. It's the one that starts murmuring when I step on the scale, that evil awful device that I have a love-hate relationship with. I stepped on the scale, and quelle horreur -- I had gained back half a pound. "HALF A POUND!" said the voice. Oh my God, it's all over. OVER. Fat would soon be exploding out of my thighs, my stomach would soon be the size of a sea lion, and probably my chins would triple if I had a glass of juice. I pictured my body blowing up like the Michelin man, oozing fat out of my pores. Maybe I'd even grow a goiter.

I went seething down to the basement where I did my aerobic workout on the treadmill, furious the entire time. All because I had to go out and be a pig and have pizza and wine with my girlfriends ONE FREAKIN' NIGHT this week. The voice in my head said, "mmm-hmmm, you did it all to yourself, you scarfed down pizza and had two glasses of wine, I told you not to eat it, you weak-willed, weenie little fitness-wannabe. NO MORE FOOD. You will not eat anything unless it looks like you scraped it off the north side of a tree. Six sesame seeds is three too many!"

This is what happens when you skip meditating for a few days.

Seriously, it's a constant battle to remember to follow the principles of the Project and learn to calm down my mind. No one looking at me would know that this stupid voice exists in my head -- but isn't that true of all of us? How much is our struggle an internal one, a neverending war with the voices in our heads from ourselves and the ghosts of negative feedback from others? This is the challenge. Personally, I want to drag the annoying little voice out of my head and shoot it, but meditation works better.

So I am going to meditate tonight, with my pillow and my scented candle, and surround myself with thoughts of calmness and peace. And hopefully that evil, shrewish little voice in my head will dry up and blow away, at least for awhile.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Fear of flying

Chris's email about those of us Project Grads who are "flying solo" this summer prompted me to think about all the previous backsliding I've done on my fitness journey. He is right - it's SO damn easy to slide back into your old ways, not just of behavior, but of thought.

I was talking to someone recently about the fear of losing all this progress. During the Project I went out to dinner on one of my "free" Saturdays, and it all came crashing down on me - the fear. I had had an awful day at work, my kids were being the most irritating and worthless little people in my world, and all I wanted was a couple of glasses of wine and six pounds of pasta to zone me out. My husband took me to an Italian restaurant and I ordered a plate of bowtie pasta primavera. It was faaaaaabulousssss, and so was the wine. I was just beginning to relax and enjoy myself when the fear hit me.

I looked up from my bowl after eating about half the pasta, and immediately thought about the fat I'd just eaten. The calories. The starch, the butter, the sauteed spinach -- as reasonably healthy as it was, I was convinced that I was going to gain all ten pounds back that night. It was all true. I would step on the scale the next day, my weigh-in day, and all the weight would be back. What a pointless, fruitless exercise this was, and I might as well go home and eat a can of frosting and drink straight tequila, and waddle off to bed.

My ego laughed at me maniacally.

This is where the awareness comes in. The habit of awareness is a hard one to master - it means recognizing reality instead of being driven by fear into old patterns of thinking. I gradually became aware that it was my old fearful ego talking, trying to drag me back into that nasty neighborhood in my mind.

So I took a deep breath, pushed my plate away, and declined dessert. Yes, I had too many calories. Yes, I was temporarily unaware of the bigger picture of the Project. But I talked myself down from the ledge, got up early the next day to do my workout, and started over again. Just as I intend to do now that I'm flying solo, this day, the next day, and as many days as I can.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The insanity of women's sizes

Allow me to rant for a minute. If you have read Sherri's recent blog post, you learned about the awful experience of trying on clothes in a department store dressing room. It's a peculiar form of torture for women, as all the mirrors are designed by carnival workers especially talented at distortion, and the lighting was developed by sadistic surgeons using laser technology to create actual bursts of greenish-grey light that illuminates your every pore. We've all faced it.

Dressing rooms are bad enough. The other part of the insanity is the sizing in women's clothing. Oh lord, the sizing. The variation between clothing designers, the attempt to fit everyone into the S-M-L-XL model, and especially the "vanity" sizing that seems to go along with very expensive stuff in an attempt to get some poor schlub to spend $$$ for a size 4. You're petite, but only if you are between 4'11" and 5'3". If you are 5'4", you are average, just like someone who is 5'8". WTF??? Just pulling a pair of pants off the rack isn't enough -- now we have to obsess over petite, average, tall, apple-shaped, pear-shaped, fitted, relaxed, curvy, boot-cut, athletic, full-figured, busty, zippered, button-fly, racerback, prepubescent, military-cut, clown-sized midget circus trapeze-flying..... OK, I exaggerated those last few, but not by much.

There is so much competition between women when it comes to sizes. Why do we do it to ourselves? I went shopping a few days ago, like Sherri, because it was fun to get a couple of new things for spring after being an "official" Project graduate. Whoopee! I lost 14 pounds, surely I'd be down a size or two.

I tried on a few things. Some smaller things, some not. I was disappointed that I wasn't a full size down, but I haven't shopped for pants in awhile. Then it struck me that again, I was focusing on numbers that don't matter -- numbers that I DO NOT WANT to matter anymore. As was every woman around me in the dressing room.

I overheard two women in the next booth talking about their sizes. Two very petite, lovely women who may or may not have been best buddies but seemed to be in a tiny snit about their bodies and the clothes they were shopping for. One of them was complaining that the pants she was trying on, a size 6, were "just hanging on me. Just HANGING. I swear, I need a size 4 or I'll look like a COW." The other one commiserated with her on the difficulty of finding pants that were "small enough but still long enough for me. I had to buy a size ZERO the other day and I KNOW I'm NOT a size zero. I'm so pudgy I can barely walk!"

Can you begin to imagine my thoughts, as I pulled my size 8s over the gelatinous columns of flesh known as my legs.

Seriously, it took all my yogic calm not to speak my thoughts out loud, which were basically "what the fuck size do you need to be? A size 00? Size 000? Size 12 in children's clothes, size 6x, size 18-36 months? Do you want to be infant-sized, or would that still be too chubby? Maybe you'd be happier if you were an actual zygote? Would that be thin enough for you to actually stop bitching?"

I thought those awful thoughts, knowing that a very pissed-off Jesus is up there listening and thinking "Oy, do I need a bong hit. Why did I give people numbers when they do this to themselves? Sheesh."

Eventually I bought a couple of cute new tops that look very nice on my much fitter body, and I vowed to stop looking at the size every five minutes. Just don't get me started on swimsuit sizes, OMG.....

Monday, April 6, 2009

Gone for good

I've been thinking a lot in the last couple of weeks about all the unhealthy things that I feel are gone from my life since the Project started. I liked what Alison said in one of the meetings about how if she never had another piece of cheesecake again in her life, she wouldn't care -- but she would not get out of bed in the morning if she thought she could never have chocolate again. There are dealbreakers for me as well, but it's funny to think about all the things I would gladly never ingest again. Here's a short list:

  • Cheetos, Doritos, fake sour cream and onion chips: In fact, any flavored junk food chips of any kind. Don't know what they're made of, don't understand the whole day-glo orange powdered-cheese coating, don't care. They smell awful, they leave dustings of cheese powder everywhere, and they seem to be cooked in some sort of space-age petroleum product. Beware of anybody with day-glo orange fuzz-covered fingers -- they probably sit in a dungeon and create computer viruses all day.

  • Doughnuts. If I never ate another doughnut I would not care. Deep-fried balls of dough covered in sticky sugar -- Blecchhhhh. I used to be fond of the occasional pumpkin-spice cake donut, but they're not worth the leaden feeling in my stomach after I've eaten one.

  • Pie. Except for the annual slice of pumpkin pie, it wouldn't bug me if I never had another slice of pie. Too much crust, too much sugar, not enough flavor for the calories. Although I do make a killer blueberry cobbler when blueberries are in season, I'll probably adjust my recipe for less sugar and topping ingredients.

  • Random pieces of candy. Where I work there are several AA's who keep candy bowls filled for everyone to sneak a piece from. I used to take a couple three pieces whenever I would chat with our AA without even thinking about it. It's not just the calories I don't need, it's the habit of consuming something absent-mindedly that I don't want.

Writing down everything I eat has been a huge help for me in terms of the awareness of feeding my body. I still have habits that I need to change, but this is just the start of the journey for me.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

OK, you asked for it

Before I started this blog to capture my experiences during the Project, I wrote another one for awhile. I thought I'd give you all the link, in case you are completely out of reading material or you are looking for something to offend you.

Midwest Diva

The title is a little joke on myself. I have a bunch of fabulous girlfriends, and once when we were all together I proposed that we were all divas, and the name stuck. I am not remotely a diva, but I am Midwestern, and after a couple glasses of wine I have delusions of grandeur.

Some of the posts are pretty personal, but I trust that the group will keep it in mind. I'm thinking about dumping that blog but I might keep some of the posts. Let me know which ones you like. I'm very flattered that the Project members have been reading and enjoying my little scribbles.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Confessions of a nerd

I confess: I am a nerd. A word nerd, actually, and it is my professional job to use words and gather words and edit words and mix them up and add punctuation until something comprehensible comes out. Officially, I am a technical writer, but really I am a professional comma remover. I am your grammar NINJA, and I will hack your sentences and your dangling participles and steal all of your commas, and I will hold hostage all of your double negatives! I will take your apostrophes away if you are unworthy! Beware! those who cannot tell the difference between "it's" and "its" will be doomed to a life with no access to punctuation, or even running water.

That's why it's been pretty easy and fun for me to keep up with the blog -- the only reason I don't post is because I don't have time. If I had plenty of time, I'd happily bore everybody with my jaunty phrases and hokey anecdotes. And you would be FORCED to read along, ha ha ha, since Chris has given me a forum, and part of the Project is to keep up the blog. If I could lose weight as fast as I write, I'd be a size zero already.

Of course there is a catch to all this writing, and the truth is I write because it's so much easier for me to write than to speak, especially in a group. I much prefer to listen and observe. I also don't like joining groups, which is why one of the particular challenges for me is to attend the group meetings on Saturdays. I did have a lot of scheduling conflicts in the beginning due to my daughter's basketball games being on Saturdays, but that's over now. I really have no reason not to attend the meetings - I just can never think of much to say. And if I do, it tends to come out as garbled up nonsense because my mind works so much faster than my mouth. So I end up sounding incredibly stupid and inarticulate, like I was just released from a Remedial Speaking for Hermits seminar. "Hel-lo. I am Ter-ri. I like yo-ga. Thank. You."

I love listening to the group, though. It's amazing, the sense of community that has been building in just 10 short weeks. You can feel the energy flow throughout the room. It's unusual for me to be able to participate in that since I derive so much more energy from being alone. I do believe that people are inherently either introverted or extroverted, i.e., they get their energy from being alone, or from being with other people. I happen to be a person who finds it exhausting to be in a group setting -- it just wears me out psychologically because I tend to want to hear and observe and take in everything around me and the signals can get mixed up. It's sensory overload. When I'm alone again, I can slow my mind down and process the information.

So the next time you see me at a meeting, forgive me for being quiet. I'll be the one hiding in the corner, listening carefully, maybe taking notes. Careful - you might end up as a character in my book.