Oct

7

Embracing it

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Because sometimes it’s just like, what the hell, right?

apron

Oh yes. Clear. Plastic. Heels.

Oct

6

Deciding to care

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There’s no trick to finding the discipline to be fit. Or more accurately, there are a thousand tricks, but they don’t all work for every single person and even when something does work for you at one point in your life there’s no guarantee it will work forever.

Lately, nothing much has been working for me. The transition from working in an office to being home full time has resulted in my complete and total inability to keep out of the kitchen at night. I eat healthfully during the day, but after 9:30 PM all bets are off. Once the laptop is finally shut for the night, I sit and snack in front of the TV until it’s time to head to bed.

I know why this is going on—it’s a reward, it’s a habit, it’s about so much more than the food itself—but I don’t seem to be able to stop. Even last night, after a weekend of crappy food and telling myself I had to get on top of this thing, I still dug into kids’ chocolate bunny crackers while JB and I watched a kung fu movie.

I mean, we’re talking a full movie’s worth of bunny crackers, okay? Not, like, a small serving-sized handful.

(And I don’t even really like bunny crackers.)

(Well, and also. Also, there were Reese’s Pieces, Saltines, and a pile of dried banana chips.)

I’ve been asking myself how much I really care about this. Like I said, I do eat well most of the time, and I work myself to the max at CrossFit a few days per week. I am, in general, a strong and healthy person. So I’ve been thinking, well, maybe I can have this one goddamned thing, you know? I don’t drink, I don’t shop, I don’t even have date nights anymore. I spend my days corralling two hyper kids and chasing down celebrity news and cleaning the house and cooking dinner and writing corporate newsletters and planning homeschool activities. Maybe I can just own that nightly carb-fest, say yeah, this is my vice and it makes me happy and you know what, I’m okay with that.

The thing is, though, it doesn’t make me happy. I suppose it makes me happy while I’m mindlessly gnawing my way through an episode of 30 Rock, but the repercussions are piling up. There’s the weight gain, which I could almost see as worth-it collateral damage except there’s no sign that I’ll just hit some acceptable set point and level off. There’s the way all my clothes feel, and the way I find myself tugging at my waistlines and shirts and abandoning certain outfits altogether under the excuse that it’s just more comfortable now to dress casually, instead of admitting the truth: those jeans just don’t fucking fit any more.

Worse, there’s the increasing fatigue and my reliance on Red Bulls and coffee and iced teas throughout the day. There’s the chemical fuckery of high-glycemic foods that results in headaches and sinus issues and ongoing crabbiness and impatience with the kids. There’s the feeling that I’m losing something important to me, that even though I feel good about everything I accomplish during the day I am continually losing control every night, and I hate that most of all. I hate stepping in the bath at night and catching sight of my puffy self and thinking, oh god, why. Why did you do that again.

I think, where’s that girl who gutted out the pain of training for a marathon? Where’s the girl who learned that all the very best things in life are hard as hell? Since when can a bag of crackers kick my ass?

Maybe the one trick that always works is deciding to say yes, I do care about this. Yes, it’s worth giving up something I don’t want to give up. Yes, I’m willing to start over for the thousandth time.

Yes, I want to feel better, and I know what I need to do so.

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