Filed Under: boredom

Crap, I got fat again

September 23, 2008 at 9:57 am

Censored!

There is a box of clothes on my closet floor labeled, “Fat clothes (in case of emergency)” which is slightly less full than it was two weeks ago. Sound the sirens and alert the diet police because this is most definitely an emergency.

I stepped on the scale two weeks ago and a scary number appeared in the window, like a gremlin peering in. Aaah! It wasn’t so much a surprise as an inevitability, considering that I’d stopped exercising for three weeks are started eating whatever the hell I wanted. Oh, the cashiers at Kroger could tell some tales! Let it be known that I have discovered the secret to weight gain: eat more, move less.

I was sick of exercising. I was sick of eating salad. I was sick of seeing everyone eat donuts at meetings while I was eating carrot sticks. I resented how much time exercise took, leaving no time to work on my blog redesign. And most of all I was bored. Bored with Pilates. Bored with running. Bored with lifting weights. Bored, bored, bored. I’d done it all before and it had lost its mystery, just like my new kitten is fascinated every time I flush the toilet, but my seven-year-old cat is so over the wonders of indoor plumbing that he can’t be bothered to roll his eyes in boredom. All I could think was, “Running? Again? Seriously?”

And beyond all that, I started not to care. My book promotions were basically over, so I didn’t have to worry about looking like a bean bag chair on television. I’m happy with my body when I weigh about 180 pounds, so I didn’t feel a need to lose any more weight. So I went to BlogHer and I ate a lot of cookies. And I went to New York and I ate a lot of ice cream. And I went to the state fair and I ate a lot of deep-fried everything. And then I came home and sat in front of the computer, burning very few calories by typing.

I saw the weight slowly creeping up on the scale and in the fit of my clothes, but I didn’t say anything on the blog because then I would be expected to do something about it, which would have greatly interfered with my plan to eat a pint of ice cream in the Fresh Market parking lot after a stressful day at work. I still didn’t care all that much, even though my pants were one size larger and my face was a little rounder.

Then my pants got really tight and I had to move up two sizes larger than my skinniest size. I stepped on the scale and saw scarier and scarier numbers. Then I was lying in bed and heard my heartbeat as I rested my ear against the pillow. I counted and noticed that it was beating over 60 beats per minute. This above all things pissed me off, more than the pants and more than the scale. My resting heart rate had previously been a rather freakish 40-45 beats per minutes, which is very low and typical only in athletes. When I would visit the doctor’s office, the nurses always commented on my low pulse. It made me proud because it was proof that I was in shape. I was an athlete. But now my heart was beating faster, which meant it wasn’t quite as strong because I hadn’t been exercising it.

And suddenly all that apathy I’d been swimming in got sucked out with the tide and I started to care again. A LOT. Because while I expect my weight to fluctuate slightly up and down for the rest of my life, ultimately there has to be a line. This is the line. I promised not to buy new pants, and I’ve stuck to that promise, though via a loophole since I’m wearing old, larger pants instead of buying new ones. I can’t get any fatter. It’s rather amazing how quickly I gained back weight. It happened at a rate of over a pound a week, as if I was an actress preparing to play Bridget Jones. I didn’t even do it on purpose.

For the past two weeks I’ve been getting my ass back in gear again, working on ways to lose this weight I’ve gained. I’m not going to say how much because I’m sick of weighing in each month. I will say it’s between 10-20 pounds and I am going to mention that it happened. I’ve always thought it was bullshit when people stopped blogging when they gained weight. It happens to everyone. It’s why weight maintenance is so hard. There’s no sense in not talking about it. I’m not ashamed that I like to eat donuts. Granted, I tend to wait until I’m back on the straight and narrow before I mention any gains, but oh well, I ain’t perfect. That’s why this is a blog and not a 24/7 objective window into my life.

I’ll talk about everything I’ve been doing to lose weight again in my next entry. But now I should go shower because I’m all sweaty from running.

Working to stay thin

December 12, 2007 at 7:27 am

I think I might have to become a workaholic.

When I’m bored, I eat. It’s my favorite hobby. Sometimes I come home from work and none of the 36 books I’ve checked out from the library look interesting. None of the dozens of TV shows I have to watch look appealing. None of the projects on my “To Do” list look worthy to be crossed off. So I eat. And then I eat some more. And then I finish it off by eating again.

But sometimes at work I’ll get absorbed by a project like water sucked into a sponge. Then I’ll look at my watch and it’s five o’clock and I haven’t eaten my afternoon snack. I have to stick my apple and cheese sticks back in the fridge when I come home. My brain gets so preoccupied that it forgets to tell my stomach to eat. Who hasn’t gotten hungry after watching a burger commercial on television? This is just the inverse. If I forget to think about food I only get hungry when I actually need to eat.

Thus, I have to keep busy. For the rest of my life.

Which sounds totally exhausting, but could also be extremely fulfilling if I don’t work myself to death. I love that feeling after I’ve made something, be it a beautiful blog entry or an ugly crocheted envelope holder. It’s the high of accomplishment and creation. It’s the satisfaction of a sense of purpose, even if that purpose is just to clean that gross grease stain off of the stove top. I used to float through life, not knowing what I wanted to major in or what job I wanted or what I was going to do with all this time I’d been given. I’m still not sure about that last bit, and I’m sure there will always be periods of uncertainty and fear about what I should do with my existence, but it’s so much better to live a life full of accomplishments than a life full of potential. They might be stupid little accomplishments I write down on the list just so I can cross them off, like “Take a shower” or “Eat breakfast.” Or they can be bigger things like “Lose 200 pounds.” But they’re all accomplishments and they’re all mine and they only happen if I work for them and keep myself busy. They also have the nice side effect of keeping me thinner.

So, I’m going to try to keep myself busy for the next 50 or 60 or 70 years. I haven’t planned my whole schedule yet, but there will probably be lots of writing and running and dancing in the living room when no one is looking. Just as long as I’m not eating and eating and eating to occupy the time. Though that’s okay too on some occasions, as long as I follow it up with a Cha Cha in the kitchen.

The same, but different

October 22, 2007 at 8:18 am

I used to get bored on long car trips as a child. This was before they sold SUVs with DVD players or iPhones or personal MP3 players. Back in the 80’s you played license plate bingo or you hit your brother. After 12 hours of driving from the Midwest to the east coast, this could get very boring and if I could have stopped the car and gotten out to watch some She-Ra instead I would have. I think this is one of the reasons people fail at weight loss. They get bored and they stop the car.

There’s a strange conundrum to weight loss, an oxymoron almost, that you must keep doing the same thing over and over again but differently enough to keep you interested. I have to exercise day after day, but if I do the same Pilates routine for too many weeks in a row, I start to dread rolling out my mat. I have to eat healthy day after day too, but if I eat the same foods over and over again my elation over Parmesan chicken breasts starts to wane. I have to remember to constantly challenge myself and try new things.

However, trying new things all the time can get quite exhausting too. I’ve been cooking lots of new recipes in the past month. While it’s been fun discovering some tasty new breakfasts, dinners and desserts, I’ve started to burn out. When I wake up in the morning I don’t always want to try something new. I want something familiar that I know I’ll like and I already know how to make. Learning new recipes and trying new sports requires a mental effort as well as they physical work of chopping vegetables or properly executing a sidekick. There’s a mental exhaustion and frustration that comes with learning new things. When I’m trying to follow a new exercise tape there are moments when I just want to hit the “Stop” button in frustration. Finding weird new items in the grocery store is tiring too. I hate scavenger hunts. I hate reading a million labels trying to figure out where they shelve the canned pumpkin. I still haven’t found it! (I should just ask a clerk, but half they time they don’t know either.)

I tend to go through cycles where I try lots of new things for awhile and then settle back into a comforting rut. Then I get bored again and start looking up recipes online or signing up for strange aerobics classes. I’m constantly fighting against boredom, but trying not to overtax myself and quit trying new things in frustration. It’s hard to live a life without boredom, in weight loss or in any aspect – be it love, work, or friendships. My mind always wants to be stimulated, to learn new things and face new challenges. But there is also comfort in a routine, of knowing what I’m going to do during the day and what I’m going to eat and not having to figure it all out on the fly.

I suppose it’s like a marriage. You’ve vowed to live your whole life with someone, but you need to keep some spice in the relationship to keep it from getting old. Or maybe it’s like being a musician. You don’t want every album you release to sound exactly the same. You want to progress and try new things, but still have your work reflect your unique voice. I’m always going to have to exercise and eat right, but I can’t expect to do the same things forever without getting bored of it. Parents sometimes threaten to stop the car if you don’t stop hitting your brother, but there’s no way I want to stop the car on this journey, no matter how bored I get from time to time. At least I have lots of exercise DVDs to watch, in my living room, not an SUV.

Filed Under: boredom

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