First things, first. Today was weigh-in day #3 and I am pleased to announce that in just 3 weeks, Steph has lost almost 4% of her starting weight! It's amazing and I can hardly believe it. It's like 4% of her just fell off. It's completely due to discipline and hard work on her behalf and I am just so damn proud! Way to go Steph!
I have many tricks when approaching healthy eating, dieting, exercise, etc. However, when you are a food addict like myself, it's a little trickier than Cosmo Magazine titles such as "Get a Great Butt by Tonight!" I have been able to control my bingeing for 4 years now through dedication, meditation, breaking and forming new habits, portion control, etc. The largest contributor to my success, though, has been distraction. Yes, distraction. I will always love food. But I have discovered that I do not need to love food all the time. I can love it some of the time, 4 to 5 times a day in fact, and love other things in the mean time. Basically, if I were sitting around bored all day, I would be hitting up the fridge much more often. For food addicts, once you find a successful distraction which you find yourself returning to again and again as a substitute for food, you find that they have a name; hobbies.
When I was in college and doing nothing but eating nonstop, I was jealous of my friends who played instruments, wrote poetry, rode horses, heck even those who could muster the energy to read for fun. Why didn't I have any interests? Oh wait, I did have interests. They included ordering two large Papa John's pizzas at 2AM and eating them both...alone. That was my idea of a good time. Pathetic and sad, I know, but also true, I swear.
It's kind of a catch-22 though. You need to let go of food, just a little, before you can find your hobbies. And once you find them, you become a little less reliant on food for entertainment. At least, that's how it worked for me. I had no mental space or energy to contemplate what I was good at, enjoyed, or would like to be good at because my every waking moment was spent thinking about food and when I would eat it next. Once I graduated and started working 2 jobs, I no longer had that lazy college student schedule with all the free thinking time to be spent fantasizing about Outback cheese fries. I got into a schedule and found myself wondering about other things, like books and dancing and even gambling. Once I stopped obsessing about eating, I discovered my distractions.
Today, I am not the same sad lost college student with no interests. I am very happy to say that I love many other things in life including Zumba, poker, reading, and trying myriads of new things with friends and family. I am so much happier now that I have other things to love rather than just food.
Which brings me to my most recent "distraction." We, meaning Rich and I (and Steph, but only by force) have been intrigued by such ridiculous shows as Storage Wars and Auction Hunters. We got wind of all the auctions in our area and have started attending. Today, we are the proud owners of our first unit! Now, what does this have to do with dieting and exercising you ask? Firstly, it's a great distraction and a fun little summer project for us to clean out and sell items from the unit. Secondly, you try bending, lifting, carrying, shifting, and moving tons of crap in the hot sun all day and tell me you're not burning calories! I am not going to say how much we paid for the unit, because it's embarrassing. I did not bid intelligently and do not foresee making our money back. However, I am hoping it is just a rite of passage, that everyone's first unit is a total bust, not to mention a real pain in the rear to clean out. Steph agreed to come with us to help sift through everything and decide what to keep. We found some great drug paraphernalia, loads of unused prescriptions and oh, some gigantic brassieres. Rich even gagged a few times when we encountered what looked like feces rolled up in a shirt and a giant dead spider. Of course everyone blames me because I am the one that was determined to buy a unit today. So I get to live with the fact that we have found nothing but total crap (so far, Stephanie! We're not done yet, so shut up!) but it is a fun learning experience. Rich might also disagree but it just shows how short-sighted they both are.
My point is that today was a fun and healthy (albeit somewhat annoying) day out of the house. We had some great laughs and all showered twice when we got back from sifting through the unit. Who knows though? This may be a recurring distraction for us that might just blossom into a hobby.
1 comment:
Live at NASA!
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