Comments (40)

By kilax, January 12, 2010 5:31 am

Thank you for all of your feedback and questions yesterday – I really appreciate it. I am taking many notes to review. Keep the suggestions/questions coming!

I have to share a little secret – I have been weighing myself every single day since October 17th.

And to make it worse? I have been tracking every weigh-in in excel. Oh yes, so I can make fun charts like this:

What does this all mean?

That I am about to get chewed out for weighing myself 7 times a week?

Actually, it means that I have been using the home scale since October 17th and have not stayed overnight anywhere since then.

Well, that is about to change! We’re going to Barbados!

Ha! Not! I wish. No, we are leaving for Iowa soon and will be there 5 nights and 4 whole days.

That is a lot of time away from the scale.

Dun dun dun… what is going to happen?

What usually happens when I visit family (or they visit) is that I lose all abandon and stuff my face silly. But these past few months we’ve had family over a few times, and I have been fine. In fact, in the past few months I have only had four incidences where I felt like I was binge-eating, and they were all at work.

So, I am feeling pretty optimistic that I can forget about that scale for (gasp!) 5 days and see what happens. I think I can have fun and eat reasonably. And I know I can fit exercise in.

But just in case, what are your tips for eating healthy when you are in a situation that normally triggers the opposite?

My tips are to focus on the company, not the food, and to drink lots of water.

Comments (36)

By kilax, December 17, 2009 5:01 am

Have you ever been worried about the health of a loved one but not been sure on what you could do to help?

I know I’ve been in that situation. And people have probably been in that situation with concern for me. The problem is, I never figured out what to say/do to help.

I was reading Men’s Health* while working out on the bike on Tuesday. In the “Ask the Girl Next Door” section of “Ask Men’s Health” I saw this question:

Q: My wife eats junk food and never exercises, and I’m worried she’s going to balloon when she hits 35. How can I address this without getting my head ripped off?

Um, I would start by NOT using the world balloon. Men’s Health’s answer (remember, this answer is from a woman):

A: First, see if you can help her change her lifestyle without having a direct conversation. Ask her to take a walk with you after work. Hold her hand and ask about her day. Cook dinner more often and assume grocery duties. In fact, do more chores in general – remove a chunk of her daily obligations, and she’ll have more time and energy to spend on herself. If after a few months you still see no change, that’s when you sit her down, hold her tight, and say you’ve noticed that she hasn’t been taking great care of herself. Tell her it worries you on both a health level and, you’re embarrassed to admit, a sexual level. Say it makes you feel shallow and that you hate hurting her feelings, but that it’s something you want to address. Then ask her what’s going through her mind. And this is the most important part: Listen to her answer, and tell her, as many times as it takes, that you’ll always love her and you’re wiling and eager to help make her life easier.

Wow.

So… I thought there as definitely some good advice in there – splitting chores to allow equal free time between spouses, listening to each other’s concerns, working out together…

But damn. The sexual comment? Not being honest about your concerns from the get-go? That doesn’t fly with me. If you are going down that route, you might as well follow this AWFUL list of “10 subtle ways to tell her she’s getting fat.” Yep. It’s awful. Read it if you want to be a little bit pissed off for the rest of the day.

Would these techniques work on you? What would work? Have you ever tried to help someone out with following a healthier lifestyle?

I sometimes have food issues – binge eating and eating too fast. These issues are triggered by being rushed, feeling like things are out of my control, stress, general anxiety, and we can’t forget the last one – boredom. Steven has tried to help me. But I am so defensive about it. I think even if I came up with the perfect thing for him to say, and he said it, I would still find something wrong with the tone of his voice, or his timing. I don’t want to make it a lonely battle, because I am sure I could use support from time to time, but I am just not ready for it.

In the same sense, I don’t think I discuss exercise with him in the way he would prefer. I love to hear about other people’s workouts, so I will ask if he had time to fit one in, and if he didn’t, I think me asking makes him feel bad.

I am not mentioning these two examples because it’s a huge problem for us – it surely isn’t. We support each other by cooking healthy meals, working out together, and discussing our healthy goals. I just want to say that I think it is difficult to help someone else get healthy**, even if you have great communication. It’s so personal. You have to be really comfortable to even talk about it.

*Seems like a great mag, by the way!
**Especially since healthy can mean so many different things to different people.

Comments (20)

By kilax, May 19, 2009 6:47 am

I get a lot of comments at work like, “your lunch is so healthy,” “your snacks are so healthy,” “you always eat so healthy,” “do you count carbs or calories?”* “what do I need to eat to lose weight?” “when is your next run?” “what do I need to do to start running?”**

I think that people think I am some sort of… health freak? They see me walking around with an apple, or eating my homemade granola bar, or getting fresh veggies out of the fridge for lunch, and think I am super focused on eating healthy ALL THE TIME.

Ha. Ha ha. I WISH! While it is my goal to get closer and closer to eating a healthy, fresh diet most of the time, I am totally not there yet.

I have two secrets to share:

1. I want to run the Chase Corporate Challenge 3.5 miler in 28 minutes.
2. I’ve gained 4 pounds in the last 4 weeks.

The second secret pretty much cancels out the first one.*** Because, I can feel the small amount of extra weight and it is slowing me down a bit during my runs. I can feel it shaking in my butt.

AND, it’s NO BIG DEAL! I was stressed out, I was eating emotionally, blah blah blah, what did I expect to happen? Mathematically, I knew my calories in was higher than my calories out, even when running 20+ miles a week. I just chose to ignore it for awhile. Because I am human, and I cannot eat perfectly all the time, no matter how hard I try. And I don’t even WANT to eat perfectly all the time. How boring would that be?

Anyway, it makes me laugh at work when I get SO MANY comments on what I am eating and how healthy it is, because I do not “eat healthy” all of the time and I don’t think of the food I eat during the day as “healthy,” I think of it as the food I want to eat – fruit, veggies, whole wheat crackers, granola bars, cereal, veggie dogs, etc.

The good thing is, when people keep saying that to me, it encourages me. It keeps me going. It reminds me that I do need to be making conscious, healthy choices most of the time. And not just “for show” (which it’s not), but because I want to.

So even though the comments do get annoying from time to time (I mean, come on, can I just prepare my lunch in peace?!), I am going to channel it into good – encouragement.

And I am going to quit all of that mindless gosh darn**** snacking.

*Give me a freakin’ break. I am NOT afraid of carbs.
**My punctuation kind of went to crap in this paragraph.
***So I think I will try to finish in under 30 minutes.
****This is me not swearing.

Comments (15)

By kilax, April 25, 2009 8:39 pm

Peanut Butter is a trigger food for me. It can sit in the pantry for weeks and I don’t even think about it, but once I open it, I eat WAY too much.

We had two containers in our pantry from November – creamy and crunchy. They were both half full this week. They are now gone – mostly because of me.

We went to Target today to get groceries, and even stopped by the peanut butter, but I didn’t say that we needed any, because I didn’t want it in the house. I was being selfish.

Steven noticed we were out when we got home. He was upset that we didn’t get any. I can understand that. He likes to have it every once in awhile. And it was wrong of me to only think of myself when making the grocery list. I told him I would go pick some up, but that it is a trigger food for me, so I had no idea how long it would last. And I have no idea how long this overeating/binging phase is going to last for me. Why do I go through phases like this?

So now I feel guilty for eating too much AND for not getting any more peanut butter for the pantry. Yay.

Comments (14)

By kilax, March 17, 2009 6:54 am

Do you ever have a strong urge to call a friend and let all of your emotions and frustrations out, but you hold back, because you don’t want to burden/bother them?

What is with the filter?

I had a day yesterday, that, let’s just say, didn’t make my sour weekend mood go away. Let’s just say it built on it. There’s a lot going at work. It’s nothing bad that reflects on me individually, but something that affects my organization. It was enough to stress me out after I left work and make me have dreams about it last night.

I needed to call someone last night and talk about it. I used to always call my mom first. She has always been my #1 go-to person, and probably always will be. She’s a great listener, and always gives me the reaction I need.

But she’s not always available. She has important daily commitments. And I don’t want to bother her when she’s busy. And quite honestly, I am selfish, and I don’t feel like I get the attention I need when she’s busy (makes sense – she’s busy).

So last night, I had the urge to call a friend first. Someone who is also a good listener. Someone who can relate.

But, I didn’t. I didn’t want to burden her with my work stress, when she already has her work stress.

Thinking about it now, that’s bull-crap. Our relationship is not set up on the premise that we both have perfectly wonderful lives with no stress. Yeah, we’re both generally happy and know we have a lot to be grateful for, but what’s to say I can’t call her and just let her know how stressed I am at the moment?

I believe it’s fine to say I am stressed out about my job right now, without having to justify it with “I am grateful to have a job.” OF COURSE I am. But for the moment, I let that hold me back.

I believe my friend and I are both the nurturing type. We have the tendency to listen a lot to other people’s problems first, before we share ours. It’s not that we don’t share them, just that we don’t prioritize them all the time. We maybe sit on them. I sometimes do, anyway.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. I’ve had strong urges to reach out and call her other times. Once, when I was having some food related issues. I just needed to talk to someone who understood. But still, I held back.

If I am lucky enough to have this wonderful, understanding friend that I can relate to, and who is also a great listener, why don’t I let myself be 100% MYSELF to her?