Master Mind

My fellow Americans… and everyone else who reads this blog… hehe. I’m feeling better, can you tell? I went to the back cracker today and he told me that I am doing well and don’t need to come back. Fantastic! My back has gone from painful to uncomfortable in a matter of days, thanks to my resting. Starting my workouts again next week looks promising.

For those of you who read this blog fairly consistently, you know that I often times am at war within my own mind over health and fitness. I go through spurts of avidly counting calories, to the point where it becomes obsession. Other times, I say to myself, You know what? I’m just going to let it go, be healthy, and enjoy life. But alas, I always find myself falling back into the food guilt trap.

With the wedding coming up, I’ve been especially obsessive, spastic, and emotional over my food intake. I understand this is not beneficial behavior, but still have a hard time removing myself from it. Then I get here to SA, where good food is everywhere and nutrition facts are listed in kilojoules, making it nearly impossible to count calories. The fare is succulent, it’s beautiful, it’s savory, it’s sweet—everything a food lover could dream of. But it’s also very hard to resist.

A combination of knowing that I am losing a week’s worth of working out coupled with being around some of the most amazing food I’ve ever tasted, I immediately started to worry about fitting into my dress and started planning twice-a-day boot camp routines for myself once I got better.

Then today, as I mulled over my future calorie-burning workouts, I thought, I’m doing all of this for what? I’m going to fit into my dress, bottom line. I’m not going to gain 10 lbs. in 4 weeks, or even 5 for that matter. And why should I be harder on myself and make myself miserable (and everyone around me) just a few weeks before what’s supposed to be one of the most wonderful days of my life. This process is about being happy and in love and celebration. Not deprivation, punishment, and irritability.

So I’m going to just keep doing what I’ve been doing: making sure I get exercise in 5 or 6 days a week and eating well.

Here are today’s attempts successes at doing so:

Grapefruit and cottage cheese with dried raisins, apples, and cherries.

Most gorgeous, blood-red grapefruit I've ever seen. Most juicy, sweet grapefruit I've ever eaten.

Smooth cottage cheese will forever be a substitute for cream cheese. New obsession.

This is so delish. And has 5 g of fiber, 5 g of protein. Yes please.

Rice cake with hummus and cukes, rice cake with cottage cheese and sliced tomatoes, celery with peanut butter, chopped carrot, and yumalicious figs.

Curried ground beef with brown rice and salad with avocado OTS.

My wedding day should be about joy and the pleasures of life, and I don’t want to be dreading the preparation. My worst fear is to spend all this time fretting over stupid stuff and not enjoy the actual day itself. I only get one shot at this.  I always say I want to enjoy life, live in the moment, and not sweat the small stuff. One can say they want to do those things all they want, but never actually do them. It’s all about training your thinking, which is something I need (and desperately want) to learn to do. But it’s a process, just like everything in this life. It has to become a habit, one that I am going to implement.

Something to think about:

“…You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you’re gonna to wear that day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on your mind.” –Eat, Pray, Love