After eating 2 half-sandwiches of mixed cheddar and mozzarella cheese, 1 half-sandwich of peanut butter and honey, and 2 bowls of cereal with milk and sugar, I'm rather astonished that I only feel full edging toward stuffed, rather than nauseatingly packed to the brim.
Also slightly astonished at my behavior. I have overeaten at dinner and events before, and I have eaten too many calories throughout too many snacks in an afternoon before, but I have never before eaten 1200 calories in one sitting in the afternoon, flagrantly disregarding the plan.
Apparently I'm at the point where pushing too hard for too long leads to binging. Apart from I'd waffle on the out of control clause, I think this fits the markers of a real binge. Well, so be it. The last 4 days were excellently on-track - I'm talking 1500 calories plus a workout kind of level - and I've been feeling great because of it. I've been at 131.2 for 2 days, which means I lost the semester-party pound and am mostly finished with the final-projects pound. Next week I'll be cutting out pot for a bit, drinking coffee, and doing (hopefully) interesting work that keeps me (hopefully) on my feet in the lab, plus being on campus with running trails and the gym available at lunch, so I would expect to do pretty well during the week, and if you think of that plan I had before where I'd restrict during the week and indulge one day out of the weekend, well, today's Friday. If I'd been thinking of it that way, though, I would have rather indulged on a pot of Annies mac and cheese or a pint of ice cream, except that I can't afford it this month anyway, so...
I'm at 2300 calories for the day now and I'm beginning to look shiftily at that number. It seems like every time I overeat in an unplanned way, it peters out around 2300. I'm pretty sure 2300 is close to what maintains 165 at my typical level of activity. Dammit setpoint, stop looking at me like that!
Friday, May 27, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
I get high on eating less
I could have titled this "I get high on dieting," but that would be slightly disingenuous because I don't consider what I'm doing dieting. Incidentally, when I a senior in high school and had never done anything close to a diet, I wrote in a list of 100 things to do before I die (assigned for a class, don't ask) that I'd like to follow a series of ridiculous diets, like "foods that start with vowels." I still think it would be fun to try silly diets just for the sake of trying them and being silly, but that's not what I'm talking about. I could also have titled it "I get high on restricting," but "restricting" is always the medical term used to describe what anorexics do, and I'm pretty sure a girl with a BMI of 22 who regularly eats 1800 calories a day is far from anorexic.
Nevertheless, I notice that after a week or two of undereating consistently, if not by a lot, it gets easier, and not because I'm getting used to something, but because my physiological reactions are changing. I feel a little giddy; I feel like I'm balancing on the edge of something, feeling, in fact, AMAZING as I push an interval between meals to 4 or 5 hours, but knowing I have to end it and put something in my mouth before I crash and get cranky, at which point it wouldn't taste that good anyway. I love going to the point where I'm starting to feel light and hungry, then going for a run, feeling airy, empty of matter but full of energy, flooding with adrenaline and then flooding with endorphins when I get home, take a shower, and finally eat lunch.
This works better in the summer. I don't know why, but something about either the stress of school or just my brain draining glucose too fast makes it so I don't get that far. By the time I'm hungry, I'm also tired, and I really want to just eat some damn food and get onto the next thing.
I hope this does not mean I have to always be undereating to feel amazing, or that I have to always be keeping track of what I eat to feel amazing. I hope that at some weight, it all comes together to maintain weight and feel great and be mentally sustainable all at the same time.
Nevertheless, I notice that after a week or two of undereating consistently, if not by a lot, it gets easier, and not because I'm getting used to something, but because my physiological reactions are changing. I feel a little giddy; I feel like I'm balancing on the edge of something, feeling, in fact, AMAZING as I push an interval between meals to 4 or 5 hours, but knowing I have to end it and put something in my mouth before I crash and get cranky, at which point it wouldn't taste that good anyway. I love going to the point where I'm starting to feel light and hungry, then going for a run, feeling airy, empty of matter but full of energy, flooding with adrenaline and then flooding with endorphins when I get home, take a shower, and finally eat lunch.
This works better in the summer. I don't know why, but something about either the stress of school or just my brain draining glucose too fast makes it so I don't get that far. By the time I'm hungry, I'm also tired, and I really want to just eat some damn food and get onto the next thing.
I hope this does not mean I have to always be undereating to feel amazing, or that I have to always be keeping track of what I eat to feel amazing. I hope that at some weight, it all comes together to maintain weight and feel great and be mentally sustainable all at the same time.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Plans and updates
After watching a few more days, I think I need to revise that to "my weight has stabilized around the 133 range." Which means the 5 pounds now only go down to 128. That's fine anyway; that'll be about 2 pounds back to my birthday weight, and 3 pounds after that. I realized that I haven't been watching a graph of my weight since my birthday, and today I put my post-birthday weights in a graph and could see exactly what's been going on. For about two weeks I basically stayed steady, then gained about a pound in the last two weeks of classes, and then with the end of semester party and my period hitting just after I got a big spike in my weight, so I had to wait for the water retention to level out, but it looks like I gained about a pound for real over that weekend. Anyway, my weight has been edging slowly down for the past few days, and I think I've been on the right track (if chipping a little slowly) for the past week and a half or so.
I've been following that pointlike plan I described last time with 33-222-111-zeroes-dinner as the target. I may stick with this plan on some days for the summer but I was also thinking of a new template. The idea would be, eat a sensible breakfast, eat a normal dinner, and plan on often having after-dinner treats or beverages, but during the day, bring a protein bar and 500 calories' worth of fruit and vegetables, of which I can eat as much as I want. There will be a fridge at work, so I can just keep track of what I have there and top it off to 500 each morning. I'll try to get some cardio most days, which can be before either breakfast or my protein bar. I think the 500 calories' worth of fruits and veggies is brilliant, because if I eat it all that's definitely 5 or more servings, and 500 calories of fruits and veggies is really a lot of volume, so it shouldn't feel limiting. It also keeps my calories around 1100-1200 before dinner, which leaves room for a nice dinner and a drink or a dessert all within 1800 or so, and my exercise will basically be my deficit. I'd like to keep doing yoga, but I'm not sure where I'd go. I don't know if I want to keep doing Bikram - although once-a-week or so would probably kick my losses up a bit - but any other type of yoga I'd want to do more often than I can probably afford.
I've been following that pointlike plan I described last time with 33-222-111-zeroes-dinner as the target. I may stick with this plan on some days for the summer but I was also thinking of a new template. The idea would be, eat a sensible breakfast, eat a normal dinner, and plan on often having after-dinner treats or beverages, but during the day, bring a protein bar and 500 calories' worth of fruit and vegetables, of which I can eat as much as I want. There will be a fridge at work, so I can just keep track of what I have there and top it off to 500 each morning. I'll try to get some cardio most days, which can be before either breakfast or my protein bar. I think the 500 calories' worth of fruits and veggies is brilliant, because if I eat it all that's definitely 5 or more servings, and 500 calories of fruits and veggies is really a lot of volume, so it shouldn't feel limiting. It also keeps my calories around 1100-1200 before dinner, which leaves room for a nice dinner and a drink or a dessert all within 1800 or so, and my exercise will basically be my deficit. I'd like to keep doing yoga, but I'm not sure where I'd go. I don't know if I want to keep doing Bikram - although once-a-week or so would probably kick my losses up a bit - but any other type of yoga I'd want to do more often than I can probably afford.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Lose 5 more pounds
After waiting for my weight to stabilize, it looks like I'm back to the 132 range. I've done a lot of exercise the past couple days - gotten back on the elliptical since I found my Sansa cable again, and really pushed it, a whole 60 minutes today, plus some yoga while cooling down.
I'm sort of back to counting calories. It's actually a little like a WW points system, only with big points, and I think of them more as levels - plus it all translates back into calories at the literal end of the day, just a much rougher estimate than I was working with before. The benefit is being able to think about my meals and snacks as "chunks" in the plan of the day. I assign foods or combinations of foods I often eat to levels:
1 - under 100 calories
2 - 100-200 calories
3 - 200-300 calories
There are then "zeroes", which are under 30, and the idea is to account for a piece of hard candy or a bite of someone's food without using up a whole level 1. My typical target day plan is eat 2 "3's", 3 "2's" and 3 "1's" apart from dinner, then about 500 calories for dinner (counted normally), and less than 100 calories' worth of zeroes, estimated according to how many and what they actually were at the end of the day. Estimating 1's as 100 calories, 2's as 150, and 3's as 250, this totals about 1750-1850.
I'm making it a goal to lose 5 pounds from here. So, I want to see 127.x. I'm not sure what the timescale will be, but I'd say a month would be ambitious and it should definitely be done by the end of the summer. Maybe by 4th of July.
I'm sort of back to counting calories. It's actually a little like a WW points system, only with big points, and I think of them more as levels - plus it all translates back into calories at the literal end of the day, just a much rougher estimate than I was working with before. The benefit is being able to think about my meals and snacks as "chunks" in the plan of the day. I assign foods or combinations of foods I often eat to levels:
1 - under 100 calories
2 - 100-200 calories
3 - 200-300 calories
There are then "zeroes", which are under 30, and the idea is to account for a piece of hard candy or a bite of someone's food without using up a whole level 1. My typical target day plan is eat 2 "3's", 3 "2's" and 3 "1's" apart from dinner, then about 500 calories for dinner (counted normally), and less than 100 calories' worth of zeroes, estimated according to how many and what they actually were at the end of the day. Estimating 1's as 100 calories, 2's as 150, and 3's as 250, this totals about 1750-1850.
I'm making it a goal to lose 5 pounds from here. So, I want to see 127.x. I'm not sure what the timescale will be, but I'd say a month would be ambitious and it should definitely be done by the end of the summer. Maybe by 4th of July.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
On fat acceptance
I've read various blogs and articles on fat acceptance before, during, and after my weight-loss process. I agree with much of what they have to say, but I feel like writers are often so pained by their individual experiences of prejudice that they are too vehement, too general, and obscure some important points.
I agree with FA that all people deserve to be treated with human dignity and respect, regardless of their size, and for that matter, regardless of why they are the size they are. Even people who do nothing but eat Pop-Tarts and pizza in front of the TV all day deserve decent treatment - and possibly emotional counseling, but that's beside the point.
I agree with FA that BMI is a crude and often inaccurate indicator of appropriate weight. I mean, in the first place it doesn't even make dimensional sense. You take your weight, and you divide by... the SQUARE of your height? Prescribing the same BMI range for everyone basically suggests that your weight should be proportional to your surface area. If it were the cube of height, then it would at least give units of body density, but that's not the case, and that's why plenty of short "underweight" people are fine and most healthy tall people are high-normal to overweight.
I agree that obesity is not a disease, it is at most an indicator, and one that is neither specific nor sensitive. Not everyone who is sedentary and eats crap becomes fat, and fat can be a result of not just run-of-the-mill bad lifestyle but also leptin imbalance, binge eating disorder, PCOS, side effects of medication, or a nonpathological high setpoint.
But then there's something like Katy Harding's "BMI Project." It's not a bad concept. Lots of women, a few men, and one cat of various BMIs pose and their BMI-based category is displayed. The point is to show that BMI is absurd, and... it sort of does. Most of the "underweight" people look just as normal as the "normal" people, and so do many of the "overweight" people. Some of the "overweight" people do look overweight, and most of the "obese" people do, though I wouldn't have guessed a lot of them were in the obese category, and in some cases it's obvious all the weight is in the boobs. What starts to bug me is in the comments, where everyone glees over the fact that all these people look amazing, and suggest that BMI of 20-40 should be considered "normal".
BMI has its flaws, but a BMI of 40 is not a good sign for most people. There are, in fact, statistics on mortality rates associated with BMI, and there is a U-shaped curve bottoming out around 25-27. Considering this is the low-overweight range, this is one of the most solid reasons to criticize BMI, but a BMI of 40 carries a statistical mortality risk roughly equal to a significantly underweight person. Of course, in both cases there is wide variability. Some underweight people are anorexic and at very high risk of heart attacks and infections for common-cause reasons, while others are simply light people, but they still will have a lot of trouble if they get too sick to eat for some time, and will be more likely have low bone density, because these are direct consequences of low weight. Some obese people eat junk food on the couch all day and are at very high risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes for common-cause reasons, while others are simply heavy people, but still are more likely to have sleep apnea, joint, and back problems, because these are direct consequences of high weight.
Then there's the other part of her site where she insists that diets don't work, even if you "don't call them diets", and basically suggests that losing weight is hopeless and unreasonable, and if you think it worked, get back to her in 5 years, and if you've kept it off that long, you're a freak of nature. Part of what rankles me about this statement is that she effectively says, if you are exception to my rule, then you must be so exceptional I don't have to take you seriously. The other thing is that diets do work for the initial phase. Even stupid diets will make you lose weight. Better diets will make you lose fat. And thoughtfully considered weight-loss plans will make you lose a significant amount of fat without feeling deprived, provided your body is okay with it.
Where diets "don't work" is in keeping off the weight. And basically what this says is that diets don't work if you don't stick to them. Lifestyle changes don't work if you don't stick to them. But this is not news. Nothing, in any area of life, works if you don't keep doing it. So the question is not whether weight loss strategies work but why people don't stick to the plan to maintain. Katy's answer to that question is set-point: people's bodies drag them back to their previous high weight. That's probably the case for some people. But it's not the case for all people. Some people successfully lose weight and keep most or all of it off. Some people simply go back to crappy habits, and in that case it's a failure of discipline. Please note that I don't attach any moral judgment to that; often our "discipline" is highly mediated by situational factors. It's easy to go back to Pop-Tarts for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, frozen dinner from a box, and a cascade of coffee with cream all day if you are poor, busy, stressed, and easily hooked on sugar. It's also easy to simply add a chocolate bar every day as a stress reliever to an otherwise healthy diet and gain 20 pounds. My point is that people's bodies aren't driving the weight gain in those cases; it's a constellation of mental and social forces that may have little to do with their body's ideal weight.
Fitness, and the actual presence of health problems or more immediate risk factors are fair distinguishing factors. Fat people who are strong, enjoy exercise, have healthy blood pressure and good insulin control, and don't have any chronic health issues, are likely to be in the set-point category. Fat people who have high blood pressure, experience sugar cravings, and can't jog for 5 minutes are likely to be in the bad-habits category. One comment in the BMI project thread I think was spot on: "whatever the category associated with the lowest mortality – there is NO evidence that becoming fatter (if you’re under that “ideal” weight) or thinner (if you’re over it) causes you to acquire the health characteristics of those who are naturally at that weight." What I think needs to be added is that not everyone "naturally" approaches their own "ideal weight." Some bodies are particularly susceptible to harmful environmental influences. It seems like FA advocates hate when people bring up the fact that the population as a whole is becoming heavier, but it is a clear indication that not all obesity is due to genetics. It's changing too fast for that to be the case. I agree with FA that not all fat people should lose weight, but I disagree that anyone who has difficulty losing weight or keeping it off should not be trying to do so.
It's difficult to discuss, I know, because so many fat people have been subjected to harmful discrimination or frankly inhumane treatment solely on the basis of their weight. Yet some fat people do need to lose weight. Some fat people with clearly fat-related health problems are ignorant or in denial and need to be motivated to change their lifestyle more than they need to be told to accept themselves (although this can become tricky when shame or self-esteem issues are connected with not taking care of one's body). Most importantly, it is unhelpful to people who would benefit from losing weight and want to, to be told that it's a hopeless enterprise and they should just accept themselves the way they are.
To sum up: we all have different bodies. Some of us have thin bodies, hard and lean bodies, fat and squishy bodies. Some of us have dark-skinned bodies or light-skinned bodies. Some of us have male bodies, or female bodies. Each type has advantages and disadvantages relative to other types. Fat people are statistically more likely to get Type 2 diabetes? So are black people, but people aren't told to change their skin color from black to white, and even if they did, we wouldn't expect it to affect the underlying mechanisms that give rise to that risk. On the other hand, white people who become significantly darker through suntanning are legitimately told that they shouldn't get so much sun because they're increasing their risk of skin cancer. Some people deviate from their "natural" body type for such reasons, and that can introduce unnecessary health risks. We should all seek to find our personal ideal weight, because that's probably the best bet for minimizing our own risk. We are stuck with the particular set of good and bad proclivities that our genetics handed to us, but we can avoid extra problems by not straining our bodies in directions they're not designed to handle. That means everyone should eat a healthy diet, get regular exercise, and engage in meaningful social activity. It means some fat people (like many featured in the BMI slideshow) are gorgeous, curvy, triple-D-cup women who should stay that way, while others (like myself at a BMI of 30) need to lose a lot of inches off a lot of places and will feel better when they do. We may still have trouble keeping off the weight, but if we feel more energetic, have a better mood, look more shapely, and enjoy the things we can do with our light bodies, then what we need is not exhortation to accept being fat but support in fending off the deleterious environmental influences that are making us fat against our body's natural inclination. Similar comments apply to thinness, and other dimensions of body type.
I agree with FA that all people deserve to be treated with human dignity and respect, regardless of their size, and for that matter, regardless of why they are the size they are. Even people who do nothing but eat Pop-Tarts and pizza in front of the TV all day deserve decent treatment - and possibly emotional counseling, but that's beside the point.
I agree with FA that BMI is a crude and often inaccurate indicator of appropriate weight. I mean, in the first place it doesn't even make dimensional sense. You take your weight, and you divide by... the SQUARE of your height? Prescribing the same BMI range for everyone basically suggests that your weight should be proportional to your surface area. If it were the cube of height, then it would at least give units of body density, but that's not the case, and that's why plenty of short "underweight" people are fine and most healthy tall people are high-normal to overweight.
I agree that obesity is not a disease, it is at most an indicator, and one that is neither specific nor sensitive. Not everyone who is sedentary and eats crap becomes fat, and fat can be a result of not just run-of-the-mill bad lifestyle but also leptin imbalance, binge eating disorder, PCOS, side effects of medication, or a nonpathological high setpoint.
But then there's something like Katy Harding's "BMI Project." It's not a bad concept. Lots of women, a few men, and one cat of various BMIs pose and their BMI-based category is displayed. The point is to show that BMI is absurd, and... it sort of does. Most of the "underweight" people look just as normal as the "normal" people, and so do many of the "overweight" people. Some of the "overweight" people do look overweight, and most of the "obese" people do, though I wouldn't have guessed a lot of them were in the obese category, and in some cases it's obvious all the weight is in the boobs. What starts to bug me is in the comments, where everyone glees over the fact that all these people look amazing, and suggest that BMI of 20-40 should be considered "normal".
BMI has its flaws, but a BMI of 40 is not a good sign for most people. There are, in fact, statistics on mortality rates associated with BMI, and there is a U-shaped curve bottoming out around 25-27. Considering this is the low-overweight range, this is one of the most solid reasons to criticize BMI, but a BMI of 40 carries a statistical mortality risk roughly equal to a significantly underweight person. Of course, in both cases there is wide variability. Some underweight people are anorexic and at very high risk of heart attacks and infections for common-cause reasons, while others are simply light people, but they still will have a lot of trouble if they get too sick to eat for some time, and will be more likely have low bone density, because these are direct consequences of low weight. Some obese people eat junk food on the couch all day and are at very high risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes for common-cause reasons, while others are simply heavy people, but still are more likely to have sleep apnea, joint, and back problems, because these are direct consequences of high weight.
Then there's the other part of her site where she insists that diets don't work, even if you "don't call them diets", and basically suggests that losing weight is hopeless and unreasonable, and if you think it worked, get back to her in 5 years, and if you've kept it off that long, you're a freak of nature. Part of what rankles me about this statement is that she effectively says, if you are exception to my rule, then you must be so exceptional I don't have to take you seriously. The other thing is that diets do work for the initial phase. Even stupid diets will make you lose weight. Better diets will make you lose fat. And thoughtfully considered weight-loss plans will make you lose a significant amount of fat without feeling deprived, provided your body is okay with it.
Where diets "don't work" is in keeping off the weight. And basically what this says is that diets don't work if you don't stick to them. Lifestyle changes don't work if you don't stick to them. But this is not news. Nothing, in any area of life, works if you don't keep doing it. So the question is not whether weight loss strategies work but why people don't stick to the plan to maintain. Katy's answer to that question is set-point: people's bodies drag them back to their previous high weight. That's probably the case for some people. But it's not the case for all people. Some people successfully lose weight and keep most or all of it off. Some people simply go back to crappy habits, and in that case it's a failure of discipline. Please note that I don't attach any moral judgment to that; often our "discipline" is highly mediated by situational factors. It's easy to go back to Pop-Tarts for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, frozen dinner from a box, and a cascade of coffee with cream all day if you are poor, busy, stressed, and easily hooked on sugar. It's also easy to simply add a chocolate bar every day as a stress reliever to an otherwise healthy diet and gain 20 pounds. My point is that people's bodies aren't driving the weight gain in those cases; it's a constellation of mental and social forces that may have little to do with their body's ideal weight.
Fitness, and the actual presence of health problems or more immediate risk factors are fair distinguishing factors. Fat people who are strong, enjoy exercise, have healthy blood pressure and good insulin control, and don't have any chronic health issues, are likely to be in the set-point category. Fat people who have high blood pressure, experience sugar cravings, and can't jog for 5 minutes are likely to be in the bad-habits category. One comment in the BMI project thread I think was spot on: "whatever the category associated with the lowest mortality – there is NO evidence that becoming fatter (if you’re under that “ideal” weight) or thinner (if you’re over it) causes you to acquire the health characteristics of those who are naturally at that weight." What I think needs to be added is that not everyone "naturally" approaches their own "ideal weight." Some bodies are particularly susceptible to harmful environmental influences. It seems like FA advocates hate when people bring up the fact that the population as a whole is becoming heavier, but it is a clear indication that not all obesity is due to genetics. It's changing too fast for that to be the case. I agree with FA that not all fat people should lose weight, but I disagree that anyone who has difficulty losing weight or keeping it off should not be trying to do so.
It's difficult to discuss, I know, because so many fat people have been subjected to harmful discrimination or frankly inhumane treatment solely on the basis of their weight. Yet some fat people do need to lose weight. Some fat people with clearly fat-related health problems are ignorant or in denial and need to be motivated to change their lifestyle more than they need to be told to accept themselves (although this can become tricky when shame or self-esteem issues are connected with not taking care of one's body). Most importantly, it is unhelpful to people who would benefit from losing weight and want to, to be told that it's a hopeless enterprise and they should just accept themselves the way they are.
To sum up: we all have different bodies. Some of us have thin bodies, hard and lean bodies, fat and squishy bodies. Some of us have dark-skinned bodies or light-skinned bodies. Some of us have male bodies, or female bodies. Each type has advantages and disadvantages relative to other types. Fat people are statistically more likely to get Type 2 diabetes? So are black people, but people aren't told to change their skin color from black to white, and even if they did, we wouldn't expect it to affect the underlying mechanisms that give rise to that risk. On the other hand, white people who become significantly darker through suntanning are legitimately told that they shouldn't get so much sun because they're increasing their risk of skin cancer. Some people deviate from their "natural" body type for such reasons, and that can introduce unnecessary health risks. We should all seek to find our personal ideal weight, because that's probably the best bet for minimizing our own risk. We are stuck with the particular set of good and bad proclivities that our genetics handed to us, but we can avoid extra problems by not straining our bodies in directions they're not designed to handle. That means everyone should eat a healthy diet, get regular exercise, and engage in meaningful social activity. It means some fat people (like many featured in the BMI slideshow) are gorgeous, curvy, triple-D-cup women who should stay that way, while others (like myself at a BMI of 30) need to lose a lot of inches off a lot of places and will feel better when they do. We may still have trouble keeping off the weight, but if we feel more energetic, have a better mood, look more shapely, and enjoy the things we can do with our light bodies, then what we need is not exhortation to accept being fat but support in fending off the deleterious environmental influences that are making us fat against our body's natural inclination. Similar comments apply to thinness, and other dimensions of body type.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Status update
Well, I did okay on Monday and Tuesday of last week, but then the free food took over. I kind of forgot about some of my planned strategies (e.g. one donut only). Now I'm around 3 pounds up, which is still under 135, but I don't think it's all "real" anyhow because I don't think I overate enough to gain 2 pounds in a week.
Toward the end though, I did break through it all in a significant way, I think. During the end-of-term party, I took a certain substance that always makes me uninterested in food, resulting in my not eating for about 15 hours. The overnight fast can sometimes last that long, but usually it's around 8-12 hours, so it was a really a great break and made me feel light and "up" and on-track again. Since then, the past two days, I've gone back to counting calories and I've been doing pretty well.
I was going to try to have a cardio workout and a yoga class all five weekdays this week, but I realized there aren't as many yoga classes as I thought and some of them conflict with other things I'm doing. So I'll go to the ones I can and still try to cardio every day.
I'm looking forward to the summer because I'll be able to walk to campus/work and back, which will mean I'm walking for a little more than an hour a day, plus any real working out I do. I guess I wanted to focus on training my running, but the weather's been so sluggish at becoming summer that I haven't really thought about it yet. I actually have a lot of projects I want to work on over the summer including some writing and I'm not sure if I will have enough time for all of it. I'll be working, but I also want to continue a story I started a long time ago, and write an essay about Hobbes and Locke and Ayn Rand, and train up my running, and I need to keep working on this writeup of the work I did last summer. Hopefully it will all happen...
Toward the end though, I did break through it all in a significant way, I think. During the end-of-term party, I took a certain substance that always makes me uninterested in food, resulting in my not eating for about 15 hours. The overnight fast can sometimes last that long, but usually it's around 8-12 hours, so it was a really a great break and made me feel light and "up" and on-track again. Since then, the past two days, I've gone back to counting calories and I've been doing pretty well.
I was going to try to have a cardio workout and a yoga class all five weekdays this week, but I realized there aren't as many yoga classes as I thought and some of them conflict with other things I'm doing. So I'll go to the ones I can and still try to cardio every day.
I'm looking forward to the summer because I'll be able to walk to campus/work and back, which will mean I'm walking for a little more than an hour a day, plus any real working out I do. I guess I wanted to focus on training my running, but the weather's been so sluggish at becoming summer that I haven't really thought about it yet. I actually have a lot of projects I want to work on over the summer including some writing and I'm not sure if I will have enough time for all of it. I'll be working, but I also want to continue a story I started a long time ago, and write an essay about Hobbes and Locke and Ayn Rand, and train up my running, and I need to keep working on this writeup of the work I did last summer. Hopefully it will all happen...
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