You crapped out, Vegas Mom.

26 tomorrow!

Tomorrow is my birthday, I will be 26, and I’ve already got the accompanying gray hairs!

My dad gave me a gift card to buy the new Verizon Iphone, so I’ve officially stopped being a relic of the early 2000s. So far, I’m fucking obsessed with it, and I’ve only had it one day. I listened to two podcasts at work (Doug Loves Movies and The Film Vault, in case you were interested) watched an hour of “This Film is Not Yet Rated” on lunch and tracked my food on Livestrong’s Calorie Tracker App. Amazing. How did I live without this? Best of all, now I can have Pandora when I run outside, and I don’t have to be a slave to my treadmill anymore. Plus, with planning the wedding, I really need to be more diligent about checking my email. So hopefully this will help.

BTW, down from 126.5 to 123 as of last week. This morning weighed myself nude as the news, and was 121.0 exactly. Amazed, because I feel like I’ve been eating a lot.

setbacks

Totally had a slip up and minor setback on my lunch break. Ate a pack of Lance Real Cheddar on Whole Grain Cracker Sandwiches - 180 cals and 9g fat.

Anddd a handful of Pretzel Stix.  Feel disappointed in myself, but I’m hitting the gym tonight. Trying NOT to freak out and overcompensate by eating only a small salad for dinner.

I wasn’t even hungry, I just saw them and went at them. This is behavior I need to avoid. My trigger could have been stress - I was rushing to get my stuff together for the gym and as a consequence didn’t have a lunch break at all.  I need to learn to take time for myself.

Trying not to feel bad about it, but feeling pretty low. Actually feel like I can feel my stomach bloating/growing from eating it. This is bizarre, I know, but it’s how my life has been for so long. Feels weirdly cathartic to get that off my chest.

Wrap up of Yesterday/ Today

Ok, so I think it’s going to be impossible for me to keep putting down the calories of everything, considering I don’t know the calories in a salad from the salad bar. So I’ll just write what I ate, and hopefully people will message me if they know it’s incredibly unhealthy.

Dinner Yesterday

Salad from Shop Rite Salad Bar - Romaine, Spring Mix, Mushrooms, Cucumbers, Carrots, Tri Color Peppers, Grilled Lemon Pepper Chicken (probably like 3 oz) and Crumbled Feta (1/8th of a cup)

With Wegman’s Fat Free Parmesan Italian Dressing. ( I don’t measure my dressing. I don’t drown it, but 2 tablespoons isn’t really enough for a huge salad - take that as you will)

For Dessert: 1 Tall Starbucks Skinny Caramel Latte w/ ½ an equal - I think this is about 90 cals

 1 60-cal Sugar Free chocolate pudding, with 1 teaspoon Lite Cool Whip and one Reduced Fat Graham Cracker.

I was trying to approximate a healthier version of S'mores with the dessert. It was pretty good! I liked the graham cracker with the pudding. It was more like a mini chocolate cream pie.

Gym Yesterday - 30 mins on Treadmill at 6.5 speed. 340 cals burned. 30 mins on elliptical. 245 cals burned.

Today - 2.25.11

Breakfast

1 medium banana - I ate approximately 3/4  - the bottom was extremely bruised.

1 Dannon Light and Fit yogurt  - Caramel Delight flavor* with a handful of Cheerios.

Snack

I tried some Blue Diamond 100 cal almond pack. They were Wasabi and Soy Sauce Flavored. They had a really weird after taste. I probably ate about ½ the pack, so I’d estimate around 50 cals and 4 grams of fat.

Lunch

Kashi Honey Almond Flax Chewy Bar, 1 organic apple with approximately 1.5 oz of Adam’s Reserve Extra Sharp Cheddar cheese (the most amazing cheddar cheese on the planet) If I had to guess, I would say the apple was about 80 cals, Granola Bar was 140 with 5 grams of fat and the cheese was like somewhere around 165 cals.

*The Caramel Delight flavor is so good, it could easily sub for a dessert (think  butterscotch pudding) Sadly, it’s a “seasonal” flavor, so I don’t know how much longer they will have reserves at the grocery store.

So far today…

Here’s a list of what I ate so far and it’s nutritional value. Didn’t make it through the grocery store at lunch without some impulse buys, but I tried to select things like 100 calorie packs of almonds and Baked Lays instead of candy and cheeze doodles.

I’m listing the calories and nutritional information for 2 reasons:

a. some people may find that helpful if they are calorie restricting

and

b. I like to see how much sodium and fat I am consuming in general, how much protein I get, etc.

Breakfast

1 medium (approx. 6 inches) banana - 90 cals, 0g fat, 1mg sodium, 23g carbs, 3g fiber, 1g protein

Kashi Heart to Heart Golden Maple Brown Oatmeal (instant) - 160cals, 2g fat, 100mg sodium, 33g carbs, 5g fiber, 4g protein

Lunch

*Homemade lentil soup, approx. 1 ¼ cups or 275 mls. 190cals, .5g fat, 34g carbohydrates, 45mg sodium, 16g fiber, 13g protein.

6 medium strawberries - approx. 24 cals, 0g fat, 0mg sodium, 6g carbs, 0g fiber, 0g protein

*Obviously, since this is homemade, I don’t have a ton of information on it. However, my fiance’s mother made it for me, and I ask her to make it simple, as I actually kind of just like bland food. I believe it contains only lentils, carrots, celery, onions, seasoning, broth and a little olive oil. It’s a very simple and totally vegetarian recipe. Anyway, I googled some general info on lentil soup and found this, so that’s what I am going by.

Trying to revamp my Health/Eating

After a giant piece of Oreo cake, a LARGE quantity of pretzel sticks, two helpings of chicken casserole and a nervous breakdown yesterday, I’ve decided to try and change my eating habits for good (both for the better and for the long term.)

I want to use this space to chronicle my daily ups, downs and fulls or empties.  It’s no secret (or maybe it is?) that I have a long and storied history with emotional eating, dieting, anxiety induced eating/starvation, etc. I do not have, and likely never will have a good relationship with food (without the help of a mental health professional, which I can’t afford.)

But, that doesn’t mean I can’t try to normalize my relationship with food and my body on my own. It’s likely I will always have body image issues, but I can at least feel better and have more energy. Here be my (abridged) life story:

Growing up, I was always the fat sister. My father liked to call me his “little linebacker” which left an indelible mark. I never self identified as fat, nor do I think other people would have labeled me as such, but I was always a little chubby, particularly compared to my sister and my mother, both naturally thin.

High school brought added pressures, though I still maintain that the cruelty inflicted in middle school is what warped my brain. In any case, HS would be the beginning of the periods of binging and severely restricting that would rule the rest of my life. One day I would eat only half a peanut butter sandwich with water, salad for dinner, no breakfast. The next day, I would split fries with my best friend at lunch and have pizza with ice cream for dinner. I think my whole family generally viewed the weekend as “eat crappy/ whatever” time and I still can’t break that. I stayed slim, likely due the fact that I would reduce myself to one piece of food a day if I felt I needed to “lose weight” - I was around 114 lbs through all of HS (for reference, I am 5'2".) Plus, my mother generally didn’t allow sugary snacks, and cooked us healthy dinners when she could. I was never active because I was TOO COOL to be a jock (god, what an ass I was.)

In college I gained 15lbs freshman year, mostly from ingesting nothing but chicken fingers and fries. I lost about 7 lbs by the summer before my sophomore year, but still wanted to get back down to my high school weight. I became more active in my sophomore year, going to the gym and doing cardio about 4 times a week, and limiting what I ate to what I felt were “healthy” foods only and coffee. As you can imagine, this was not sustainable and after I met my boyfriend, lived with 5 guys and spent a few years working my way through paying for off campus housing, I had gained about 25 lbs, and was the biggest I ever was.

I used WW to lose 20 lbs, and felt like I looked good, but was miserable. I agonized over every little calorie and piece of food and didn’t even feel like a person anymore. What’s more, I began to go back to my old habits of finding ways to severely restrict after I “slipped up” or ways around the system  - eat a fat free yogurt with nutrasweet because it is only 1 point. Only eat 10 pts. a day to make up for binges. At this point, I was restricting myself to only about 600 cals a day, then ridiculously binging on the weekends ( sweet and sour, fast food, taco bell and fries, you name it - I’ve eaten it) Which, as you can imagine, has now made my metabolism so low that when I do try to eat normally, I gain a ton of weight.

That pretty much brings me up to date with my latest nervous breakdown. So, at this point in my life I’d like to document how a fast food junkie like me can attempt to eat healthfully, not scale obsess and add more exercise into her life.  Just a heads up, I don’t cook. Well, that’s not true, I cook on weekends. I seem really lazy and stubborn, but I am just really busy (two nights a week I have school until 9 pm after working 8:30 to 5:30, the other two nights I work a second job from home that requires total silence and computer use until about 9 or 10 pm) And I know there have to be other people like me who just can’t sacrifice that time to make anything. So, I think my trials (and successes!) with navigating staying healthy in a jam packed life  - did I also mention that I am trying to plan my wedding?  - will be of use to other people like me who just don’t have time to cook yummy, healthy stuff every day.

Plus, I’m hoping writing down what I eat and my feelings on here will keep me more on track instead of doing “secret” eating or emotional eating. This is in no way a “diet”, because at 25 (26 in 2 weeks) I really want to stop dieting and start eating in an intuitive and sustainable way, and maybe as a side bonus get in shape for my wedding.

Of course, I’ll still have my inane celebrity/fashion posts on here, and people will still be able to groan and roll their eyes at that. But sharing my food experiences will hopefully help me stop having such an agonizing relationship with eating and body image.