Ouch

Every muscle in my body hurts, yeowch! I knew my workout yesterday felt pretty badass and I was right. I focused on the presses especially, keeping my forearm parallel to my ears and not bringing the weights to close in to my head and boy howdy did that work my back over. I keep that up and my elusive pull-up dream will become a reality, for sure.
I've gone off the rails nutrition wise and YET AGAIN I have proved to myself that strict dieting is made of FAIL for me. I simply can't do it anymore and keep my sanity. I start putting a huge importance on food and fall back into the binge/restrict cycle that I completely banished when I first read Inuitive Eating. So why did I gain weight after leaving the diet mindset? Well I turned it into a free for all, mindless junk eating lifestyle. Hmmm yeah that would do it. So my homework at this point is to re-read Intuitive Eating, slow down and enjoy my food and drink. Be kind to myself. Stop the madness.
Currently hungover and waiting on greasy food to arrive. Sigh. If I can rehab enough to not feel like crap on dry toast then I'll definitely workout-my cool graphic that Marla made me is going to be for workout days instead of being "on plan" food wise.
This is really a skim the surface of a big issue post but it'll have to do for now.

Worked out this morning (full body weights workout) and just got back from my walk. I'm listening to an audiobook that is really enjoyable-a Janet Evanovich romantic comedy/mystery type story. It's cute and the mile and a quarter speed by without me even thinking about it really.
My overachieving nature says that is not a long enough walk but I am proud that I am just doing it at all and I think it will be a good addition. Time permitting we are going to start going as a family too and that will be good for the spirit as well.
I am thinking I will start doing some video posts, it will help me to be more realistic and not get twisted to see myself as I really am and a lot of the time I could talk about things that I just can't seem to type out into words. I hope that won't be too lame for anyone out there. Mainly I'll probably just talk or show things I've found and I plan on adding some workouts in as well, I always liked that on other people's pages. It sounds like more work that might be a deterrant but I actually think it will encourage me to post more often.

Guilty pleasure: Torchwood

Almost done reading French Women Don't Get Fat-great read actually-I wasn't sure what I would think. Lots of intuitive eating principles but with more structure and lots of great recipes. I also bought her book French Women for All Seasons. She talks a lot about eating and living for seasons and how it makes items that come into season (like strawberries or tomatoes for example) so exciting and pleasurable when you wait for them to be fresh and local. That's a simplified version of a great concept that I am bumbling-maybe I'll do a vid post about that. Also, Sally writes very well about this type of idea-actually a lot of what the book says is how she is currently living and succeeding. If you don't read her page, you should start. I'm just saying.

M@rla you may think your comment didn't add anything but it surely did and I wish I had the time to really think it out and respond but I will say something simple and rather controversial to some: I do think diets are disordered and the wrong way to go. Becoming a dietitian gives me a slightly different perspective on everything, notice I said different and not better. I kind of think it gives me even more to think about because I have to decide what I'll do with patients and clients and I can't with good conscious put them on a diet plan, even the most healthy wonderful plan tends to fail eventually because we are not made to live that way. I don't think nutrition should go totally out the window but artificial rules to govern such a naturally process can only work short term from what I have seen myself and what I have read. There is so much to say about this and you can trust I'll be saying it over the next...however long it takes to think it out.
I ordered a few books from Amazon, one of them being Intuitive Eating by two RD's (what I will be) that I had seen mentioned here and there on the web. I've only read a little bit but I like what I am seeing so far and have to say I agree. It is also great for me to read how they figured things out from a professional standpoint and I can say I am leaning more and more towards the same direction. I even asked my sister-in-law if she would be interested in setting up shop with me (she's a psychologist) to treat eating disorders and educate the public on nutritional and mental health, maybe teach cooking classes for low income folks, provide groceries etc. That would have to be way down the road, it usually takes a big org to do things like that, I don't know right now I am dreaming.
I felt trapped before, now the future is wide open.

I'm going in a whole 'nother direction after getting so blue the other night and reading various things around the net. I say it's a different direction but in reality it is one I've visited before, just didn't stick with it out of fear.
I'm talking about learning to trust myself to make good decisions and to respect myself more instead of punishing. It's amazing how little I am hungry or even think about food when it is not off limits.
I know I've said this before, several times in fact, and I may falter again but I am not 100% convinced that no longer trying to lose weight is the answer for me to be a happier person. If you know me at all you know that doesn't mean free for all crap eating and no activity-that's not me anymore so why do I think I can't be trusted and further more why have I been so afraid of gaining weight? Will it matter if I'm no longer this size, if I never get to a smaller one? Hell no it won't. I'm sorry I had a Spartan birthday out of misguided ideas but each day is a new one and here I go. I'm starting to realize why I had a pretty badass body in high school despite my serious lack of nutritional knowledge and lack of exercise-I didn't have disordered thinking like every other girl I knew. I didn't care what size I was or how much I weighed and I never restricted food-just ate what I wanted and only rarely overate-we were way too poor to go out to eat even weekly so even Burger King was a treat to me. When I got to an income comfortable enough to go out any time the mood struck it became a thing to take for granted and the overeating continued, just all the time instead of a rare thing. I didn't sleep much and worked on my feet and unloaded freight trucks-before that I walked a LOT without a car, played in the woods even before that and was always outside. My lifestyle was just totally different, I guess I was the opposite of what I hear about today (lower economic families being heavier, etc.) We didn't have chips or sodas or candy or any of that nonsense-no money for that. My mom served meat, two veggies and a slice of bread with margarine and we drank iced tea all the time that was barely sweetened. There you go-no breakfast either most of the time and when I started working I had to provide my own lunches (15 yrs old on).
I think I completely lost my train of thought but I don't want to read back through this.
I want salads and water and fruit and lean meats and fresh seafood etc etc etc. Stuff that added the extra weight is not my cup of tea anymore for the most part and I move my ass quite a bit more than I did when this whole thing started. It's time to focus on being happier and to stop trying to meet a ridiculous ideal. My health is excellent and I'm tired of being miserable for vanity's sake.

The full soreness I expected never did quite set in, but my legs are still definitely pretty drained, especially the quads. I used the same amount of weight for the squat sets that I have the last few times, but this time I did them slowly and with major attention to form. For clarification purposes, I never fling myself around or anything but I have found counting to two on the positive part of the rep and to four on the negative has really improved the quality of my sets.
These antibiotics I am on (for yet another UTI) make me feel sluggish and start up the litany of excuses in my head about putting off a workout or moving it to another day, which produces the end result of a MISSED workout, not a rescheduled one. Today I even had my gear on including HRM, waiting for the Boy to nap, and yet I still started in with the, "Oh I don't feel so well, I don't think I should be operating anything like this..." before I just got off my ass and went out there and DID IT.
My legs were tired from lifting Tuesday night still, I could feel it pretty badly the first half though my HR was not rising nearly as quickly as it has been, so my cardiovascular fitness has improved definitely. Personal best of 4.7 miles today in 20 minutes and then I did my silly dancing for a bit. I definitely felt a little altered during the workout and twice I got weird pelvic twinges like cramps but a little more heavy duty. Of course I was fine though, and I would have whinged my way out of another chance to improve my health. Nike was right, JUST DO IT sometimes.
On the eating front I'm noticing that I do much better with mindfully tasting and enjoying my food and slowing down when I am alone or with our son. With Husband home or out to eat with him or others, I still am racing through it and eating way too much. This is my next hurdle to really work on, though I do want to give myself a pat on the back for going out to eat to a very yummy place last night and only eating ONE croissant even though two more were just sitting there and my MIL kept urging everyone to eat them. I also ordered a cup of soup and a salad instead of the other not so smart offerings, and here's the real kicker: I ordered it because that is what sounded BEST to me, not because I was punishing myself or denying anything. I knew I could order anything I wanted on that menu and yet the soup and salad was most appealing. I feel like this is a major breakthrough.

My first bumps in the road cropped up yesterday. I woke up sore all over and the previous days thoughts of, "Yoga is awesome!" shifted to, "Fucking yoga." I decided to reset the alarm and have a rest day, and yet...when I got up I realized that it was mainly my lats that were sore from all the plank, upward dog and push up positions, and I could have in fact done my cardio. At least I think I could have and there must be something to beat myself up about right? I fell off my happy self esteem summit yesterday but I'm scrabbling back to the top today.
Let's review: What made me have a not so great day? I skipped my planned workout because of perceived severe soreness while still laying in the bed, never a good idea. I should have at least gotten up to hit the loo or something and then reassessed. A big part of my new lifestyle is resting when my body is telling me I need it, something I tend to ignore usually and then I crash and burn. So I don't think it was a total loss, just a learning experience. No workout started the day badly and then: I didn't really try and balance my meals that well, ate mindlessly several times, and then proceeded to eat a salty dinner, which was followed by a trip to Br@ums for a peanut butter cup mix. I do not think the ice cream was a misstep in itself, I only wanted a few bites and that is all I had before giving it over to the Husband, but the chocolate tasted waxy to me and really wasn't worth it. The salty food was a reaction to drinking too MUCH water yesterday, I think I got low on sodium and then overcompensated, should have stopped drinking water when I started feeling funny.
Then there was the biggie: measuring myself when I had decided not to do so anymore, until I can get my head straight. I also stepped on the scale this morning, another no-no. Is that being good to me? No. I am still not at a point where I can detach from numbers that should mean nothing when my clothes are fitting fine and I feel good.
This morning I got up, did a full body free weights workout (my arms are shaky still typing this, good sign) and then came in and cooked myself oatmeal and an egg white omelette. I am back on track taking care of me and I am good enough, not lazy, not a failure, and not doing damage to myself.
Gap jeans that were super tight last time I tried them on fit easily this morning, take that inner naysayer!