79. Flying By

Man, I cannot believe it's day 79 already. We've been doing this for so long I can't really remember what life was like before we started, but at the same time I feel like I'm just getting started. I'm not ready to let go yet, not ready to go back to regular life. I know I've got 10 days to go, but I'm really getting sad to be done. I know that a lot of it can stay the same, I can keep exercising the same way and keep eating the same stuff, but I'm going to miss everybody and their blogs and whatnot.

Ok. enough emotional nonsense. Does anyone else feel like the new diet is so much food? I know I'll get used to it but boy do I feel like I'm eating way too much. Especially dinner, but that's probably because I'm still mourning the loss of the apple dinner a little bit.

And a question for Patrick -- why are chest dips the second best exercise we can do for wellness? Is it because they're really super hard and make all your muscles work?

I can't decide if I dislike them because I can't do them/they hurt my wrists and shoulders or if I can't do them because I dislike them and therefore don't work as hard on them as I do on things that I like, like pull-ups.
Have I told you how much I like pull-ups? I still can't do a full one by myself but think the Jordan-assisted ones are the best things ever. I know that I'm not doing all the work, but they make me feel so strong! And to think the very first day of inclines pull-ups I couldn't move myself at all.

Oh and I indulged. The other night after firefighting class I had no interest in cooking, so we went to our local super good Vietnamese restaurant. I got pho, which is my favorite, but is also supposed to generally cure what ails you, so I figured it might be good for my stomach. It probably wasn't as many calories as it was supposed to and wasn't actually that unhealthy. The broth didn't seem that oily and the beef in the soup is lean, so aside from being a little salty, it was pretty decent pcp wise, I think. I did doctor it up with a ton of bean spouts and lime and some chilis so I got a bunch of veggies in there too. It tasted good. Not really really good. But not gross. So I'm happy that I'll still be able to eat some of the things that I loved before without finding them weird tasting. Mostly it was just nice to be able to stop and sit and be waited on and know that there wasn't a mound of dishes waiting for me afterwards. I did get a glass of iced sweet chyrsanthemum tea and it was so sweet I could only a sip or two before I was done.

53. Indulged

So I had my indulgence last night. I'm not sure that I deserve it due to the diet disaster that was last weekend, but I did anyways. I had pancakes from IHOP. I hadn't really been intending on having pancakes, but they were on the list of potential things to have, and when the situation arose they were ideal.

They definitely didn't taste as good as I'd hoped. I was expecting a rich, buttery, pile of fluffy goodness and I didn't really get it. The butter wasn't indulgently salty and rich it was just greasy. I ordered the buttermilk pancakes and the waitress asked if I wanted 3 or 5 and in my head I knew I should only get 3 but figured since it was an indulgence I might as well go all out and get the 5. I only ended up eating two of them and three cups of coffee with fake milk creamer and then I was totally full. Totally completely stuffed. My stomach was a little upset, I'm not sure from what but it wasn't that big of a deal. Man I was really expecting better.

Oh and I had half of piece of bacon dipped in Nutella. That one little bit of greasy, salty, sweet disgustingness might have been more fulfilling than the entire stack of pancakes.

The one good thing that came out of this and the past few days has been that I think that I've demonstrated to myself that for the most part I'm not an emotional eater anymore or am on the road to not being an emotional eater . I'm more of a didn't manage to pack lunch, buy groceries, or some other aspect of bad planning that leads to eating out all the time type of eater. I haven't managed to pack myself a good lunch the past few days and have been ravenous the past few afternoons. If I wasn't doing this I would totally have grabbed a candy bar from the vending machine or stopped to get something to eat on the way home. But I just stuck it out and tried to find the biggest apple in the fridge to eat for dinner when I got home. So there you go, bad planning leads to poor eating.

Also, prior to going to IHOP my two friends and I had spent about an hour standing out in the rain visiting our collective best friend Ali's grave. She died relatively recently and none of us are anywhere near being over it. The evening easily could have devolved into a giant chocolate fueled pity party, but it didn't. We did go to IHOP and we did all eat things we don't normally eat - me non-pcp pancakes, my vegan friend pancakes and eggs, my other friend who doesn't eat sugar nutella crepes, and we all had a piece of nutella dipped bacon, but we all stopped before we gorged ourselves to the point of sickness (although my friend who doesn't eat sugar had a total, hilarious sugar high). I stopped after two pancakes. I didn't even feel the need to shovel the rest of the pancakes down to try to fill the ache. The ache was there, but I really knew that all those pancakes wouldn't help.

28. So I indulged

That's right I actually indulged instead of a half-assed sortof indulgence. Monday night I was yet again at the gourmet hotdog bar playing trivia and had some tatertots with lots of dipping sauces. Trying to decide what to have was pretty hard because I've been pretty satisfied with what I'm eating lately, but I am missing some of that mental satisfaction or feeling of satiety and feel like maybe I'm missing some of the umami taste that comes from salt and fat and sugar. So that's how the tatertots came up. I'm missing intense tastes so what better way to get those than with a bunch of dipping sauces with fried potato puffs as the vehicle for getting them to my mouth.

I split a plate with two other people because an order of tots is huge even by normal standards and chose five sauces: housemade ketchup, chipotle hollandaise, black truffle honey mustard, saffron aioli, and tomato and garlic jam. The tots were surprisingly good, not too salty, but abotu half-way through mine I was full. I should have stopped then, but continued on and ended up uncomfortably full. The sauces weren't as great as I imagined. The tastes weren't as intense as I had hoped, they mostly tasted the same as they did before although the black truffle honey mustard tasted a lot sweeter and the chipotle hollandaise was almost disgustingly rich. It was weird, as I was eating I started to feel light-headed, almost high. The feeling passed and I was left with just a super full stomach.

The feeling full messed my plans for the evening. I was planning on working out after we got home to get the junk out of my system, but there was no way I was going to be able to with how full I was. It would have been a recipe for disaster or vomit. So I went to bed feeling super guilty about skipping the workout and planning on getting up and doing Monday's workout Tuesday morning and Tuesday's workout in the evening. Tuesday morning rolled around and I was tired. I don't know if it was too many kindof late nights catching up with me or the heavy work of digesting all those starches but there was no way I was getting out of bed to workout, or even go to work. I rolled over, grabbed the phone and called in a half vacation day to work and slept til 11.

I finally managed to workout around noon. I did half the day's jumps and my knee feels great. I got a new rope that's made out of rubber or plastic or something and it makes a huge difference. I totally don't get how to do the creep but went with it. The planks make me want to cry and the cats totally love to bother me while I'm doing them. I didn't end up working out in the evening. I went to a block club meeting that lasted forever and then came home and passed out. So I'm still a workout behind, but I'll do it tonight with the day's jumps. I know it's supposed to be a rest day, but the guilt of not doing the workout is gnawing at me and I feel like one slip-up and I'm on the brink of this huge lazy downward spiral.

I really need to recommit to blogging every day and checking in with everyone. I feel totally disconnected.

25. Ahoy there!

I got a worried email from Ilan, so I guess I need to get back in the swing of blogging. I haven't not been blogging because I'm concealing any horrendous pcp slip-ups or having any mental issues with the program. It's just it feels like life now, not so extraordinary to need blogged out. I make my food, I exercise, I don't really have any cravings except for when we go out to the bar that serves gourmet hotdogs with a choice of 50 different toppings or when I walk down the frozen pizza aisle at the grocery store when I'm already hungry, but I got those cravings before pcp too, so even they are nothing special. The way it is now, with the diet and the exercises, I could do this forever. I don't feel deprived or weird or wiped out or resentful. I feel like this is real life!

My knee still hurts so I'm not back to jumping yet, but I am walking and seeing huge progress in the exercises.

I am having an issue with the indulgence. I don't really want anything. Well that awesome hotdog, but that's way over the calorie limit and I'd really like to break myself of the association of eating a hotdog every time I go to that bar. It's my grandma's 80th birthday next Saturday and I think I might use it then so that I can get something besides a bowl of iceberg lettuce with some shaved carrots and red cabbage. So maybe a side of mac and cheese? I just don't know.