The Pursuit of Perfection

Today:
Breakfast: smoothie
Lunch: baby carrots, romaine with blood orange vinegar
Dinner: handful of cashews, spicy red lentil soup with normandy blend veggies

Exercise: 30 min treadmill, 30 min w/ Maya

Fuhrmometer Reading: Kale

Kale Days really aren’t that hard to achieve; I know I sound like quite the hypocrite saying that but it’s true. It really isn’t that hard to eat what you’re supposed to and to say no to the things you aren’t supposed to. It’s just a matter of being mindful of such things – perfection isn’t always an unattainable goal. I know that I can be perfect with making my scheduled workouts all week – so I’m sure that I can accomplish perfection in my eating habits.

I think that in a lot of instances perfection is all about pushing laziness, procrastination, and fear out of the picture and just doing it. I know that I can avoid the food that I shouldn’t be eating – but in the past few weeks I have become mentally lazy and I know that I can do better.

Many people in situations where weight loss (moreso a considerable amount of weight loss) is an aspiration believe that while they dream about weight loss it’s something that they will never achieve. They condemn themselves to a lifetime of unhappiness because they’ve tried and failed to lose weight in the past or they think that they have an addiction that they just can’t overcome. I just don’t believe that. I have dealt with being overweight since at least middle school (and I can remember times in elementary school when people made comments too), my mother and grandmother dealt with being overweight – and my father’s side of the family can be categorized as “big boned”, I’ve lost weight in the past and put it back on and then some, if I could I'd live on takeout and frozen food. I know that I have an emotional attachment to food and gravitate to it when I’ve had a tough day or want to celebrate or am just bored. I think that if there were a perfect profile of an overweight american who is predisposed to be this way it'd be me.

But really, I think that all of that is crap.

Losing weight is all about mentally committing to following whatever food plan one identifies with and finding a way to exercise – AND DOING THESE THINGS CONSISTENTLY. The reason I gained weight back in the past? I stopped working out; I stopped cooking for myself.. It wasn't genetics or an attachment to food; it was that I stopped trying and I stopped caring. I started caring when I hated my wedding dress and was stuck with it. I started caring when I couldn’t make it up the stairs without being seriously out of breath. I started caring when I had only a few pairs of pants that fit comfortably.

And this little plateau of late? It’s all because I got too far ahead of myself after hitting the -50 mark. I have got another 100+ to lose, so why was I celebrating? I got sloppy, I got lazy, I started procrastinating (I’ll get back to eating right tomorrow) and the only reason I didn’t gain in these past few weeks was that I’ve been working out. I’ve gotten to a place where I don’t have to talk myself into working out, I just do it. I need to get to that place with food. I know a prolonged string of Kale Days is the only way to get there. I am going start out by going for 10 in a row.

As my Grandpa wrote in an anniversary card to hubby and I: “1 down and 99 to go – they say the first 100 years are the hardest.” The same goes for Kale Days – 1 down and 9 to go.