Born This Way

One of the biggest factors in my decision not to pursue even higher education is the fact that my least favorite part of educating myself was doing the research. No amount of scintillating class discussions, speech and debate trophies as tall as I am, or waived tuition  can convince me that I want to spend any more time on doing research; which is, you know, 100% of what you have to do to create theses or dissertations. I can read the hell out of anything you give me, and even draw my own conclusions when reading articles and studies in conjunction with each other but the process of tracking down information is to me what picking socks up off the floor and making the bed is to an 8 year old. I don't wanna, and you can't make me.

I just finished watching the documentary "Fat Head", comic/author Tom Naughton's response to Morgan Spurlock's "SuperSize Me". The premise is that he found SuperSize Me to be over-the-top and laughable, and set out to possibly prove Spurlock wrong. Naughton's tone the entire time was one of ironic superiority, causing me to wonder if Spurlock gave Naughton a swirlie during an intermission at Sundance in the past, though I did find myself liking Naughton and the cut of his jib. I also recall enjoying SuperSize Me and liking Morgan Spurlock as well. Troubling. Now I (as well as most people, I would hope) approach media of all sorts, especially documentaries, with a healthy dose of skepticism. I'm not as stupid or gullible as advertisers and promoters wish we all were. Fat Head made a lot of questionable claims, but it's difficult to argue with Naughton's main conclusion: this is a free country and people are different. They make different choices, they have different values, and they have different preferences (though he does deliver this with a meaningful glance over his glasses after accusing I, the watcher, of choosing to sit on a couch eating Rice Crispy Treats instead of taking up volleyball).

All in all, I've drawn the shocking and controversial conclusion that Eating is Tricky and Bodies are Weird. Last year when I was doing my personal training and struggling with a high protein, low carb diet I lost around seven pounds (the goal was fifteen), lowered my body fat percentage, and was pleased with how flat my stomach looked. Unwilling to keep up all that hard work, I reverted back to my old habits with a vengeance and as predicted by statistics gained the weight back and watched my tummy flub return. Thanks to the fancy scale Seester got me for Christmas last year I am in possession of the knowledge that today, I am ten pounds lighter than I was two months ago and a full three pounds lighter than I was when I was doing with three months of intense (for me) diet and exercise last year.

I certainly didn't do it on purpose. Armed with the basic knowledge that in order to get less flabby I'd have to eat better and exercise more I settled instead for trying to love my body the way it was. My kitchen manager tried to fight me about the fact that I had lost weight when, after he admiringly asked if I had, I responded that I didn't know, I hadn't been trying. He insisted that I must have changed something (drinking less? stopped eating at night?), so I suggested it was because I stopped eating Friday's food since we weren't allowed to hang out at the bar anymore. He looked a bit wounded. He IS in charge of that food, after all. Alls I know is that I eat a lot of fried and carbohydrate'd crap, usually in one large sitting before I go to work, drink more beer than I probably should, and avoid anything that resembles exercise like it'll give me cancer on the spot. How I've lost weight is beyond me.

What bugs me, and what was highlighted after watching Fat Head, is that I will probably never know what it is that has caused my body to become slightly healthier. It clearly varies from person to person, and diet, exercise, and health are all extremely relative. This means that in order to figure out what my ideal mixture is I will have to do, you guessed it, research--all KINDS of research, since there is literally an opinion backed by a study or PhD or MD to support every single version of diet (or lack thereof), exercise (or lack thereof), and standard of health. I am way, way too lazy to bother with that nonsense.

On Counting Calories

Diet Coke and pizza please

Kate Moss once said that "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels", and I had this concept in the back of my mind while on this Squish-loss quest. I kept mental tabs about my happiness re: appearance, physical exertion, and food choices. At the end of my fitness experiment I came to the conclusion that the only good part about semi-intense exercise was how good stretching felt at the end, and that following a Very Healthy diet make me intensely unhappy.

I had mixed feelings about the few physical changes I had. My face was almost imperceptibly thinner, which I think made me look more my age than like the high schooler I occasionally get mistaken for. I was slightly less depressed about the number the scale was showing me. My ab muscles were actually getting used, therefore my squishy abdomen was lifted up, making me look "effortlessly" better in some of my clothes. My arms were gaining definition, which I felt made them look bigger rather than less-flabby. I was sleeping less (which, in the grand scheme of sleeping 10+ hours a day is an improvement).

In essence: after time had passed and effort was made, I was happier about my body when I looked in the mirror. I also took more showers by virtue of sweating profusely 5-6 times a week.

Once personal training was over and I no longer had to create food logs to show to a judgmental PT, I was immensely relieved. I didn't have to eat food I found bland. I didn't have to stress over whether I was getting 30 billion grams of protein a day. I didn't have to feel guilty about ordering buffalo wings or having peanut butter toast for breakfast. And so my rapid descent into PTSD (post-training sloth disorder) began. My last training session was just about a month ago, and I think I've made it to the gym about once a week since. Surprisingly, I'm feeling guilty about it, as well as feeling pangs of guilt when contemplating unhealthy food choices.

So while it turns out that TGiFriday's green chile sauce and brownie obsession, Spicy Sweet Chile Doritos, and really good bleu cheese dressing do, in fact, taste better than being skinny feels, losing that good-skinny feeling due to relaxing ab muscles and increasing scale numbers feels worse than a 100% tasty but erratic diet and the guilt that goes along with staying on the couch watching crime drama instead of going to the gym. So it seems some sort of compromise is in order, because seriously; life is not worth living if Applebee's french onion soup is off-limits, but I really don't want to sabotage all of the hard work I put in over the last few months.

Face!
Thrine

Here's to you, the good life, and me

Oh. Hello.

It's been so long since I've been to this site that my browser history didn't even contain "www.diaryland.com". I had to type out the full URL. And now I've typed it out twice. My life is hard.

A brief synopsis of my life:

-After accidentally winning my store-level bar champs, in three days I shall be competing at the regional level. I not-so-jokingly keep telling people that if I get through it without bursting into tears, I will consider it a personal success.

-Living with the individuals I do is slightly more challenging than anticipated, largely because the challenges that I had anticipated aren't the ones that have arisen. Also: every male over the age of 40 who knows about my living situation seems to think my roomies are going to burst into my room in an unwashed mass with a chainsaw to break open my chastity belt. I'm not worried about the roomies, I am, however, worried about what these adult men were like when they were my age.

-As a kind-of birthday present to myself I purchased a couple month's worth of personal training sessions. They're going alright; I'm getting stronger, I'm seeing very slight muscle changes in my body and while I still can't say I like physical exertion, I can say I no longer categorically loathe it. The PT, Grant, is also making me Eat Healthy. Not "healthier", actually Healthy. It's very difficult and I find it more depressing than being squishy in the mid-section.

-For the last couple months I've been moping about due to a severe lack of an intimate-social life. Alex is in Kentucky, Miranda's in a cornfield, Linda's buried under a pile of Virginia Woolfe novels, and the couple other people I consider true, good friends have a schedule opposite mine. Despite working in a bar and hanging out at said bar holding conversations with coworkers and regulars, I've been feeling very isolated. A few drinks at a not-Friday's bar and some time spent at a delightful clam bake (food, not herb) has opened my eyes to the fact that my coworkers are, like, real people who I could possibly actually relate to. This is the first time in my whole life I'm actually having to make friends on my own merit, and I'm feeling reassured that it seems to be going just fine.

-Accidentally hung out with the elder Durbin's the other night when they appeared at Friday's while I was off-duty. While it felt a little strange, it wasn't uncomfortable, and I'm fairly sure they think I'm a fine, upstanding, responsible young lady who is perhaps suited for their son. I did start getting suspicious, though, when after mentioning I've paid off my student loans despite not having a Big Kid Job, they asked me if I have enough money for a down payment on a house. Dear Alex, tell your parents I'm not going to buy you a house, love Cathi. PS we can have joint custody of Guitar Hero if you wish, though.

-I'm discovering that being in a LDR is sad, but not horribly difficult. This is probably a fringe benefit of having the emotional depth of a puddle, in that while things like "sadness", "loneliness" and "hug withdrawal" exist, they aren't crippling me. I've gotten so good at ignoring my feelings that when important ones like these crop up I can Not Think about them with a practiced ease. It's kind of nice, in a pathetic way. I also think the distance, however vehemently I was/am against it, is helping us to put things in some major perspective, individually.

See you in a few months or something, Interested Party. Maybe I'll be skinnier.

Love Story,
Cathi