A New Feature and FOOOOOOOD

Greetings, dear friends, lovely Facebook acquaintances, beloved family, and treasured internet strangers! Today we have two cool things to talk about. I know. It's overwhelming. Last time we talked I shared that I have lost 20 pounds. It is true. I have lost twenty pounds. 21, actually, woot!

Part One: A New List!

 On occasion, someone will ask me "How are you doing it?" and my answer is always the same, "I eat 1200 calories a day and go to the gym 5 days a week whether I want to or not, NO EXCUSES."

Weight loss isn't a secret, and neither is the fact that the secret book is silly-pants.

But regarding those two things there are some pretty specific things that I do. The first is my food situation. My "secret," with that is calorie counting, seriously. I am compulsive about it. People think I am insane. (Especially my brother: for every fiber of me that is orderly, tied to rules and routine there are twelve fibers in my brother mixing Sriracha, honey, maple syrup, taco sauce, white pepper and putting it on a ham/taco meat/marinated steak pizza). I highly suggest counting your calories for a few days. The results are probably surprising! :)

I haven't gotten to this point yet. Please advise my family if you see me doing this.

The second half of that is the sheer amount of time I spend on cardio equipment. I use all kinds of things, a treadmill on a nice steep incline, a crosstrainer or an elliptical on a nice high resistance, or if I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I spend time with my friends the rowing machine and the stair-stepper. Lately I do 60 minutes of cardio. When I do anything cardio, in order to avoid feeling like I want to die the dreaded BB combination, I read.

What is the BB combination? Well, it is a sad combination of what people like to lovingly refer to as "The Burn," (and then describe it as a "Good Burn," to which I say, WTF?! Are you kidding?! I weigh 230lbs! THIS IS NOT A FUN BURN!!! What burn have you ever had that was fun? Is there a difference between The Burn and getting actually physically burned?) and another thing I call "boredom."  So, BB, Burn and Boredom. Terrible combo. To defeat this, I like to read adventuresome books with heroines (okay, and heroes too). Generally, when I'm reading about people fighting in martial arts tournaments, toppling corrupt governments, defeating dark lords and falling into the Greek Underworld, I can suck it up and deal with The Burn (TM?).

Katniss Everdeen, Ginny Weasley and Annabeth Chase. (Drawn by  Burdge and colored by Jennaamariee)

So, the result of the BB combo is that I read a lot. I realized the other day that I'd finished several books entirely on cardio machines.  Thus-- for your enjoyment-- there is now a list.  That was a really long way to tell you about my new list, but there you go. Now you know what I read, really specifically.

Part Two: FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

But I bet you really want to know about why I wrote FOOOOOOOD at the top of this post? It's because yesterday, for the first time since March 3rd, I had too much to eat. I was actively full and I didn't care. Yesterday, Tarver and I paid off our last credit card. We had a snack-ton of credit card debt and now it's gone. We went out to eat and I had Chicken Saag with Basmati Rice. Not a lot of it, but probably two servings. I estimated it at just under 700 calories.

It may not look like much, but it is one of my absolute favorite foods, evar.

Let me be clear about something, team, I had/have (depending on whether or not you subscribe to the once-an-addict-always-an-addict theory) a serious binge eating problem.  I used to bake just so I could binge on cookies and dough. I used to use any cash given to me almost exclusively on burritos. That's not a joke, it's true. I used to put away half a pizza or more along with 5-6 breadsticks covered with Parmesan. Cooking at home alone I would make an entire box of pasta and eat it all in one sitting. With cheese. Whole loaves of French bread. 3 cups of rice with butter and sugar. 5 bowls of cereal. 2 rows of oreos. A whole box of girlscout cookies. 6 tacos. This isn't once in awhile I would do this, this is all the time. Several days a week, sometimes more than once a day. I had a problem.

True, lots of people struggle with much scarier binge eating problems, but please remember, I gained 70 pounds in the span of 3 years. At my heaviest weight, (Which I don't know, because I didn't even weigh myself until we'd been exercising for 2 weeks) I could have easily qualified for gastric bypass surgery. At some point I started snoring and developed acid reflux. I had a brief and scary brush with diabetes. I bought pants with a stretchy band instead of a zipper and a button. I hated myself, probably because I was killing myself very slowly.

Here is a picture of a puppy in case I am getting too intense. :)

So when I tell you I ate 700 calories of something and was aware that it was too much, you need to know that something big has changed. You need to know that this is something I struggle with every single day.  The reason I'm so crazy about my measurements is that I am scared that I'll fall off and not be able to get back on. Again. Like I did the last time and the time before that and the time before that.

Yesterday, I decided I could over-indulge within reason. The restaurant gave me a big, delicious bowl of saag. I ate two servings of a food that I love. I put the rest away and brought it home. I felt full. Am I going to do it again today, or tomorrow, or next week? No. I can't. But, I can be a normal human being and have an extra serving of a favorite dish, because damn it, sometimes it's okay to celebrate.

It's just not okay to celebrate every day. Yesterday I made a step toward eating like a regular person. Mostly eating portioned meals and vegetables and lean protein-- but sometimes, sometimes, having more of a food you love. Because food is not about punishment, sadness and death. It's not about getting as much as you can as quickly as you can. It's the uniting factor for humanity. Food is about life and sharing and yes, celebrating. 

Phew. Okay. That's what I've got for you, team. Thanks for reading!