Why oh WHY is it so hard to keep track?  I need to find my journal – which would be a big help!

So far today:

2.5oz turkey breast, tomato, onion, lite mustard dressing on a sandwich thin

2 Kashi “cookies” – though they are really round granola bars

Where is my food journal?  Sigh – back to cleaning.  I have been cleaning and organizing for three days now – you’d think I would have found it by now!

I want to try vlogging a bit.  I had some trouble with filesize and my Wordpress here, but I hope to work those kinks out with YouTube – as if I need yet another little spot of the ‘net to squat on.  However, when it works it works and it might make it easy because it has Twitter and Facebook hook-ins that might help me out for networking.

First I need to position myself better, or rather the camera needs to be centered properly.  It was difficult because I used my regular camera’s video feature and could not see the view finder and had to guess how I looked through the view-finder.  So, I’ll work on that.  Also, I look a little wack with my hair all pulled back and no make-up on, but this is just a test for heaven’s sake, so here we go.

Please let me know how the video works for you or if you have any problems.

i can’t post today and don’t know if i can tomorrow

this is all i have the energy for

will put up what i can when i am up to it

“Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child that you have stolen, for my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great. You have no power over me.” ~ Sarah from Labyrinth

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The thing I try to remember, though it seems impossible to believe at times:  people only have as much power over you as you give them.  Sometimes the only thing you can do to stop hurting is to take away their power – which means to stop caring what they think.  That’s a slippery slope I’ve always thought, when you are talking about close relationships and love.  To not care.

I have stuff from yesterday but I don’t feel like figuring out the numbers and posting it and adding photos and all that stuff at the moment.  I am crying and emotionally exhausted.   Frankly, I’d like to go back to bed, but there is just too much to do.  I will do it though.   I need to do it.  To stay on track.

I couldn’t exercise yesterday because my back just hurt too badly.  I’ve taken some pain medication this morning and will sit on the heating pad a bit so I can try and get my exercise in today.  If I can’t manage to bounce, run or bike, I will at least go on a stroll.  That way I’m staying in motion, which I think is really the most important thing overall.

I’m actually surprised with as depressed as I have been on and off lately that I’ve managed to do this project at all.  Today is one of those days where I just want to curl up in a ball and become unconscious until the storm clouds pass.  But, they won’t.  It doesn’t work like that.  Each day holds a fresh hell.  The only difference is the way I handle it.  The way I look at it.  Is this really a fresh hell heather?  Or is it an opportunity to grow?  What lesson is the universe trying to teach me today

Sometimes you just can’t depend on love.  That’s all there is to it. Which is quite a statement coming from me because I always believed love could make anything better and worthwhile.  Sometimes love just makes things harder.

I am currently on day 77 of the Weighting for You living art project.   Weighting for You is a part of Body Politics my collaborative project with artist Tammy Vitale.

This little experiment has exposed me to every manner of my old eating disorder triggers.  Just before the project began I had a personal crisis whic called into question my body and how it looks.  This was also a very old trigger from a specific source I am vulnerable to.  In the past two weeks I have found myself slipping in and out of the desire to seriously restrict my calories.  In moments I even wished for that feeling I got after I would resist a temptation, even though I was starving.  Or what it felt like after I threw up something I “shouldn’t” have eaten.  It makes you feel powerful.  In control.  That is a very suductive concept when you are feeling rather helpless.

I have not dropped to 1000 calories like I had pondered one day on this blog.  In honesty my brain even tossed out 800, which I immediately rejected.

I am going in and out of a body crisis right now.  The only thing that I can hang onto is that I know it will change.  Well, I think I know.  If I don’t have hope that it will change, that I will become stronger and confident, then I wouldn’t want to go on in life like this.

This is what happens when you allow outside sources to dictate whether or not you are sexy.  Whether or not you are worthy.  Allowing others that power makes you powerless inside of yourself.  And you can’t escape from yourself.

FOOD JOURNAL

Day 75

Grape juice spritzer – 95
English muffin/egg/Smart Balance – 120, 85, 30
orange/grapefruit juice – 90
berry smoothie (frozen blueberries, strawberries, vanilla soy milk) – 175
2 handfuls of Target popcorn – 35
2 squares of chocolate – 95
3 oz salmon – 150
less than 1/2 cup jasmine rice – 85
1 tbsp of vinaigrette – 45
garden salad – 35
2oz Angelfood cake – 150
grape juice spritzer – 80
very thin slice of deli bread – 145 (about 1/4 tsp of butter)
less than 1/4 cup mixed seeds – 90

TOTAL: 1505

Day 76

English muffin/egg/Smart Balance – 120, 30, 85
1/4 cabbage gozleme – 175
1 stuffed grape leaf – 40
4oz skim milk – 45
smoothie – (berries, yogurt, vanilla soy milk) – 150
4 sq of chocolate – 190
2 glasses of white wine – 210
3/4 of a piece of baklava – 250
1 stuffed grape leaf – 40

I managed to avoid the Pa Pa Johns pizza that came.  I was exercising when the pizza arrived and was watching “You Are What You Eat.”  Had it been a heavy veggie day, I wouldn’t have had any problem eating one slice of pizza.  However, since I’d had chocolate, wine and baklava, no way was I going to eat pizza too.  I made a smoothie and went out on a date.  I felt good about that.  I love pizza and there is plenty left over, so I may have a piece this afternoon or tomorrow.  But if I do, it will be the only saturated fat, white flour food I have today.

Also, both days I’ve exercised.  In fact I get on my little mini-trampoline whenever I have time.  I have to time longer workouts for when I will be getting my shower and doing my skin routine.

TOTAL: 1335

I have been busier than usual this past week.   Primarily I have been working on art proposals and doing searches for such things and out buying food and exercising.  I lost my food journal for two days and by the end of day 62 I finally found it buried beneath some of the work I was doing.  When I first noticed it was missing in the early afternoon of the 61st day I had my breakfast in my head.  I kept thinking, “I’ll just keep a mental tally and when I find it later, I’ll write it all down.  By nightfall, I hadn’t found it and hadn’t written down a damned thing.  This was the same day I rolled sushi for the first time.

My day, I know, had been light food-wise, but I did load up on sushi.  It was veggie sushi mostly – some with a shrimp bit in it – but primarily it was veggie and brown rice.  Which means really, that I was allowed to eat a bunch of it without concern for calorie totals.  The other thing I write in my food journal is exercise.  I do not recall if I did any walking that particular day, but I do know I have been making time every single day to at least do my crunchy frogs, vertical crunches and butt crunches.  In any case, day 61 did not get recorded.  So, I just moved on to day 62.  Weirdly enough I’d forgotten I couldn’t find my food journal the day before.  I’d eaten some fruit and half a yogurt then went for a walk at White Plains park then went to the farmers market in La Plata.  A Turkish woman was selling homemade authentic Turkish food, which we sampled a bit and chose some items to buy.  A spicy Bulgar wheat salad, a black-eyed-pea salad and some pan bread as well as some tea and baklava.   We dropped a good chunk of change on veggies and berries and Turkish food.

By the time we got home I was starving.  We came home and I did my crunches.  I managed to do a few more than I had the day before, which made me feel stronger.  I made a salmon and goat cheese omelet in a blur and had some blackberries with the other half of my yogurt.  After all of that activity I wanted to record the food and exercise and it dawned on me that I hadn’t found my food journal yet.  After some poking around I told myself to just remember what I’d eaten and by dinner I will have found it and it would be fine.  Dinner was simple eggplant and zucchini with curry and a marinated vegetable and bean salad along with the pan bread that I’d bought from the Turkish woman.  Some of the family members were not in love with the dinner and it was pretty much decided I wouldn’t make that combination again, unless there was some curried chicken and maybe pizza to go with it.  By evening I was feeling munchy and sat down to watch a movie with the hubby – a looong movie – and I gave in and ate one and a half cookies that I’d purchased at the health food store.  They are good and I’m getting hungry now just writing about them.  Yum!  Vegan and good ingredients, but calorie dense nonetheless.  But, I allowed myself to eat that much I think because I hadn’t found my journal and I wouldn’t be writing it down.  Then I thought to myself, “I don’t want to tell everybody I ate all that cookie!”  I was just making justifications for eating too large of a portion at that point.  I knew I shouldn’t eat that much sugar and flour (even if it’s organic and such) that late in the evening.  Had I simply had half of the big cookie, like I normally do, it would have been fine.  I made certain to find my food journal before I started the next day.

Confession: I ate cookies and baklava – two pieces – on Wednesday and felt like it was something I “shouldn’t” have done.  So much so that it felt very linked to my old eating disorder.  I made an effort to simply move past it and not think on it, but honestly considered not mentioning it in my blog.  That is what concerns me primarily.  The very fact that I would consider concealing something and I’m not even sure why.  Does it feel like failure that I ate several sweets that day?  I was very active.  I walked, did crunches and was running around all day long.  So, why the self-judgement?  Why the feelings of needing to brush what I did under the rug like it was something bad?  This is where I think the fat acceptance community may be on to something – this may be the concern over moral judgments on food.

Confession: I lost my food journal for two days and by the end of the second day had taken in more sweets that day than the previous week.  There must be some connection.  It feels like there is.  The amount of sweets was not a ridiculous – 1.5 cookies and 1 square of baklava cut in to two triangles – I ate both triangles.  But, it was enough to cause a glucose spike.

Confession: I have been thinking about my weight more than I should be.  I need to just do the work and record the data.  I was talking about this in the kitchen this morning and there was some discussion of Tycho Brahe and his dedicated observation without expectation.  I should be simply recording the data without expecting anything in particular.  In fact, that is essentially what I am supposed to be doing, but it is so difficult not to become more emotionally invested in my own body than that.  I do feel myself wanting to lose some weight.  In part, because my tummy gets in the way of everything.  But in part because it seems to go along with generally restricting your food intake.  Which, I am.  I think that all of that conditioning to expect some weight result has crept in and I need to keep a more observational perspective.

Confession: It’s been nice talking with other ladies about recipes and motivation.  If there is one thing that ladies seem to all find common ground with, unless they are entrenched in the fat acceptance movement, it’s dieting tips and tricks.  In some ways I still feel outside of this circle, since perhaps my goals are a little different, however, the result is the same I suppose.  And the diet talk is like an old comfortable shoe.  Easy to slip on and wear all day.

I feel as though I perhaps think too much about food as well.  I guess it’s just getting used to the whole routine of so much food I must prepare.  It’s better food and I wasn’t even eating “bad” food before.  It is higher quality and more of it is homemade than ever.  Much of it is simple, bohemian even.  Basic ingredients with little in the way of preparation.  This will get more difficult to keep doing though and I need to have some hunger and family satisfying dinner recipes ready to make.

Day 63 Food/Exercise Journal

75 butt crunches
30 crunchy frogs
60 vertical crunches
30 minute outdoors walk
15 minutes bouncing around on the mini-trampoline “running” mostly
used the 3lb barbels to do 25 each of curls etc.

***

vanilla yogurt – 130
1/2 c blueberries – 41
English muffin, egg, 1.5 oz smoked salmon, 1 tbsp soft goat cheese – 120, 70, 35, 25
1/2 c. mango – 53
1 med banana -108
2 figs – 100
1/4 c sunflower seeds – 70
“pizza” – flatbread with Classico spaghetti sauce and 1 oz goat cheese -385
1/2 Peanut butter cookie – 280
1.5 yam with drizzle of honey, Smart Balance and cinnamon – 375
2 sandwich thins with tomatoes and hummus – 200, 75, 25
1/2 peanut butter cookie – 280

TOTAL: 2372

Heavy calorie day.  Normally what I do is eat my breakfast, record my calories – total them as the day goes so I know how much I’ve had and how much I have left.  I had done that earlier in the week.  This was a carb-heavy two days for me.

I will weigh-in in a while and post that drama too!

I walked yesterday at White Plains Park.  I have done so for the last three days.  My friend Jennifer had posted a note on her Facebook about somebody – she wasn’t naming names – who needed to get off of her big butt and start doing her exercises again.  Well, I was sure it was for me!  There were a couple of other folks that chimed in though – so maybe we all were a little guilty.

I have had more stress in my life over the past eight or nine weeks than I have in many years, or maybe ever.  Some of what has happened to me recently goes to the center of who I am as a person.  I hate to be so mysterious, but I really must.  It’s too personal and too close to the surface at this moment in time.  I’m sure some day I’ll be able to talk about it more, but for now, I have to keep most of it to myself.

The real issue in terms of my art is how my current personal struggles intersect with this project and how the struggles make me feel about my body – in a superficial way.  I never want to go back to that dark place of hating myself.  I hope that sharing what I’ve been through will help others on their journey.  Then it will at least feel like my suffering was worth something.  Like it mattered.  And lately, in regards to one precious and painful swath of my life, I feel as though I don’t matter and never did.  This is something I do not process well, but in the long run may help me grow.

My new friend Sarah has started her own blog journey for health: http://sarahloosesthepounds.blogspot.com/

It’s hard to know when to focus on weight as a culprit and when to simply focus on what you are putting into your mouth.  I have long had the theory that if you simply focus on exercising and what you eat, everything else will fall into place.  However, I have to admit during my journey here on Weighting – that this “performance art” piece has taught me something about portion control.  I have been on every diet from my teens through my twenties so I am well aware of the role portion-control plays in weight loss diets.  However, I never really applied that science to the healthier foods I have eaten.  I am realizing that how much I eat, no matter how good it is for me, really matters.  That my chances of diabetes showing its face increases with overloads of sugars in various forms that my body has trouble processing.  So, I’m being kinder to my body.  Also, I hope to keep up a good exercise routine.

There are days I don’t want to count my calories – and I don’t mind taking a day or even several days off from that.  However, exercise is something I should never go more than a day or two without.  It should be as important as showering, brushing my teeth and other important daily routines. Exercise, I truly believe, is the key to my heart being stronger and my stress being dealt with in a efficient way by my body.

Food Journal

Silk yogurt 1/2 cup of blueberries - 150 +40
banana- 105
bunny grahams – 150
1/2 pita – 77
mushrooms – 25

1 thin-sliced fried chicken breast (homemade) – 250mashed potatoes 1 1/2 cups – 235
1 marshmallow – 25
salad w/ light mustard dressing (peas, baby spinach etc) – 100

Total: 1157

I also walked with a little jogging tossed in for about 20 minutes at the park.  I walked far, but fast.  I don’t know if I should be paying more attention to how far I go or how fast I go.  I think if I had walked at a regular cadence that the distance I took would have been at least twice that amount of time.  Plus I made sure I took the hills and bumps, to push a little harder.  I would love to be able to run a bit some day.  I used to like running – but not love it.  I think just getting to the point where I could run and run well would feel good.

I came home and did my crunches – tummy and butt – again also.  50 each.

I’m tired.  I cleaned house most of the day knowing that it would get dirty again – SOON.  Sometimes I wonder why the hell I dust knowing it’s gonna get all dusty again.

Today was weigh in.

I promise to update Sunday.

PEACE!