When your looking at the whole mountain, it is easy to become overwhelmed. I mean, it's a MOUNTAIN. Just look at it! How will you ever get to the top? That thing is at least 14,000 feet high. This is impossible. I'll just sit on my couch in front of the fireplace and stare at the wall instead. We've all been there and, whether it is a literal or figurative mountain, scaling it can be daunting.
I find slapping myself in the face and yelling "Get it together man!" is sometimes effective. Most days though, I just make a list. What can I do to break this obstacle into thirds or fourths? What is one step I can take. Just one. Stop looking at the whole mountain for a second and just put one foot in front of the other. Today, I will shower and put on pants. Britches always make conquering mountains easier. Then I will take out a bag of trash or do a load of laundry. I will put on some tunes and step for 10 minutes. The power of endorphins and pants will give me the strength to do the next thing and the next. I've never been a big fan of Miley, but now would be the appropriate time to borrow her words, "There's always gonna be another mountain/I'm always gonna wanna make it move/Always gonna be an uphill battle/Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose/Ain't about how fast I get there/Ain't about what's waiting on the other side/It's the climb." This "Lose it" app is amazing and terrifying. Turns out that I have done a very good job convincing myself that it's not so bad. Sure I eat unhealthy, but I was going to the gym, I'm working on getting in more steps - that will counteract the bad food choices, right? That is a big fat lie, emphasis on the fat.
This app is not magic and I'm sure that there are others like it, but it is a good healthy slap in the face of denial. You see, my husband and I both downloaded it, and we both agreed that no matter how badly we ate, we would honestly record what we had consumed. We've stuck to that for the last four days and our lives will never be the same. They always give 2,000 calories a day as a generic starting point for calorie consumption and I thought I knew that I was going over that a smidge some days. Oh, that is now a good laugh. After calculating what I ate through the holidays (and yes, I know that's not the same as a week day), I'm unsure how I don't have diabetes and haven't dropped over dead from a lard coma. My mother makes these delicious pecan cheesecake fudge squares. There's 30 servings in an 8X8 baking dish which means that they are small. I will not lie when I say that in past years, I have consumed at least 5 or 6 of them in the course of an evening. Turns out, those little buggers are 246 calories PER serving. Eating 5 of them constitutes 1,230 calories! And I'm just eating those five squares? Right. I am also having Christmosas at 243 calories per 6 oz glass, and eating ham rolls at 41 calories per roll. Then there's the chips and dip, lasagna, crackers and dip, and on and on and om nom nom nom. At a typical holiday party I have easily consumed upwards of 5,000-6,000 calories! And, of course, there is the Panda Express where my normal meal is over 1,000 calories and Spangles where I take in another 1,000 calories. Gone are the innocent days of thinking "It's just a turkey bacon ranch on sour dough." Now I know. The veil has been lifted and I know. For me, that's the terror and the glory of this app. It's not about counting calories perfectly, it's about cold, hard truth. It's about forcing myself to acknowledge just what I have been washing down my gullet. Take yesterday for example. When we stopped at Panda Express we could have said to hell with it and eaten what we wanted for the Holidays, but the truth was just too ugly and brutal. Instead, we got a one entree bowl each, split an Izzy and a single order of crab Rangoon, and in a great psychological victory, stopped eating when we were full. I could have finished that whole tantalizing bowl, but I didn't, because I was full and it just wasn't worth it. I'm not going to be able to give up my bad eating habits overnight, but I will be able to make better choices. I will think twice about how bad I want that fudgey five layer cake and if a dinner plate size portion is really in my best interest. |
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June 2023
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