Wow.  The weekend went fast. 

Before I get into stuff, go check out the cooking blog.  I just posted a dinner recipe for quinoa, shrimp and sun-dried tomatoes.  YUM. 

I’ve been fighting a virus all weekend, so although I did get a few things done, mostly I laid around and watched way too much TV. 

I’ve been thinking about stuff while I was laying on the couch, though.  For instance, where is the line between “baby steps” and “half-assing it?”  Really.  At what point do I move from making small, sustainable changes into just phoning it in?  And conversely, where do I move from making small, sustainable changes, to making totally unrealistic ones that are just too big to make all at once?  I mean, ok, if I never exercised, and I suddenly decided to start doing an hour EVERY DAY without fail, that might be a big change.  But what if I’ve done an hour every day before, but done it sporadically?  Does dropping back to 100 crunches and the 100-push-up challenge mean I’m phoning it in?  What if I’m trying (as I currently am) to get enough sleep (again)?  What if getting 7 or 8 hours a night means either going to bed at 8 or sleeping in until 5 or 6 in the morning?  And if I’m not used to going to bed at 8 (it’s already 8:30 as I write this), does working on dialing back my bedtime to an ungodly-early hour mean I’m not phoning it in?  I’m slightly confoozled. 

Whatever.  This week, I’ll keep working on the Beck book, and I’m also going to work on:
Getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night,  no exceptions.
Drinking 80 oz. of water a day.
Daily crunches and pushups.  (100 crunches and the 100-push-up challenge, over in the sidebar.)

I think the next thing will be to add cardio (back) in, but for now I’ve GOT to get some damn sleep.

Also, I was reading the part in the Beck book about eating slowly and mindfully.  What I said before about feeling even MORE deprived when I give food my WHOLE attention still stands, but I also realized something else.  The main reason that I eat quickly, the main reason that I’ve done so for so many meals that it’s become my dominant paradigm (ooo, look, a 50-cent word!), is because I’m CONSTANTLY thinking about the next thing on my To-Do list.  I have a To-Do list that’s about 5 miles long at any given time, and I always think that I have to get everything on it done RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW or YESTERDAY at the LATEST.  I live my life like that, and failing to slow down and eat is just another incarnation of that mentality.

But I was thinking about it, and I realized that the reason I eat quickly is because I’ve got so much other stuff to DO, but then, after I’ve eaten, I still feel anxious and rushed instead of like I’ve had a break.  When I sit down and SLOW down, it slows my whole day down, but in a good way, like meditation (which I’ve also convinced myself I don’t have time for lately, but let’s not talk about that right now, ok?).  And I’m realizing that if I’m really THAT busy (I’m not) and THAT stressed (I am), that I need to seriously re-prioritize some things.  First and foremost is that my self needs to stop taking a back seat to EVERYTHING ELSE.  I can’t put myself last or I’ll burn out.

There’s a concept espoused in the church that I go to called “giving from the overflow.”  It’s the idea that when you need healing, when you need replenishment and rejuvenation, you TAKE IT.  You do what you need to do in order to fill yourself back up.  And you fill up until your “cup runneth over.”  And THEN, and ONLY then, when you’re so full of life and love and energy and happiness that you can’t contain it anymore, THEN you give back.  THEN you take on extra projects.  THEN you do favors for friends, pick up the slack at work, etc.  And you’re literally giving from that overflow that is coming from your cup, because you’re just TOO FULL to contain it anymore. 

At the moment, my cup is empty, but I keep taking on projects.  And the more projects I take on, the more I forget that OTHER things have to come off my list.  It’s more important that I fill out law school applications than it is that I vaccuum twice a week, and it’s more important to cook healthy meals in advance than it is to hang new shelving in my room.  Some stuff has to come off the list so that I can take care of myself.  The more projects I take on, the more water drains out of my cup – and at the moment, there’s nothing there to drain, so I’m basically living in a deficit.  My cup is empty, and I’m out on the streetcorner selling lemonade, trying to be all things to all people for all projects.

So tonight I dragged out my lists.  I need to remember to differentiate between what is Important, and what is Urgent.  Sometimes things are both, but more often they’re only one or the other.  And things that are Urgent but not Important can wait.  Nine times out of ten, they aren’t really all that Urgent at all, except in my head. 

And we all know the kind of Crazy that lives in my head.

So tomorrow I’ll work on slowing down.  Or rather, on slooooooowwwwiiiiiiing doooowwwwnnnnnnn.  (Hee.  That was fun to write, actually.)  (Yeah, I know.  I’m a nerd.)  (No, really, I know.  Shut up.)  And I’ll work on remembering that in the end, it’s not really about the food.  It’s about going through life at a breakneck speed, when if I’d just SLOW DOWN, a lot of my anxiety and stress would resolve itself. 

And after reading all that, I think that crunches and push-ups and water and sleep is probably not half-assing it.  Not at the moment, anyway.

Ok, I have to get to work, but wanted to check in. 

Today’s assignment is to eat slowly and mindfully.  I’m not sure how I feel about that; sometimes eating that way just makes me feel MORE deprived.  Like, “Hey, I better enjoy this because it’s ALL I GET.”  I think because when I ate very VERY little, that was how I ate: every bite was to be savored, because I had so few bites.  So I might not commit to “slowly.”  I’m good with “mindfully,” because that basically boils down to “enjoy what you eat,” and I can do that.  And I CAN commit to waiting 10 or 20 minutes before eating something else, because I do tend to eat quickly, and sometimes I think I’m still hungry, when in reality the food just hasn’t had time to hit my stomach yet.  So, we’ll see.

In other news, I’m going to start posting again over at the cooking blog.  Mom and I haven’t posted since August, what with all the family members dropping like flies (ok, just two - and they were old, granted), and other stuff going on (buy a house! go on a business trip! apply to law school! take the LSATs! etc.), so we’ll see if anyone is still reading. 

This weekend (Sunday) I’ll have a recipe for shrimp with quinoa and sun-dried tomatoes, all made with ingredients from Trader Joe’s!  Also 5-3-1 omelettes: 5 ingredients, 3 minutes, 1 dirty dish.  It’s pretty awesome (and is my healthy-eating-at-work staple).

I’ll keep posting over the weekend (I’m SO dedicated – ha!) because the Beck book doesn’t have days off.  Just FYI. 

So I mentioned the other day that one of my big bosses was let go.  That was because a bigger boss than him was let go, and the new guy who replaced THAT boss is restructuring some things.  And today, the axe fell hard.  We lost between 4 and 8 (depending on who you talk to) major executives within our company, some of them people I know and have worked with.  At the moment, my department is safe, and it looks like we’ll stay that way (thank God), but the tension in the air today was thick enough to cut with a knife.  I’m wiped out.

Also, I don’t think I’m going to retake the LSAT after all.  Although I’m getting more accurate at the logic games, I’m not getting any FASTER, which means I’ll end up with a similar score in the end.  So I’m going to wing it and see what happens.  (*gulp*)

On the weight/health front today, I think I did ok.  Except for lunch.  I stood in my boss’s office with my scallops and he ate his tuna sandwich, and we both worked during lunch.  Oops.  (The irony here is that I USUALLY sit down for lunch, albeit at my desk.)  I walked out of his office, and went, “Oh, SHIT!” when I remembered that I was  supposed to sit down.  Eh.  Whatever.  I did eat dinner sitting down though, which is unusual for me.  (I’m a stand-over-the-sink-and-shovel-it-in-so-I-can-get-on-to-more-important-things girl.  Er.  Or, I USED to be that girl.)  So that’s a skill I will have to do a LOT of work on.

I have to admit that I was surprised that other people really DO sit down to eat.  I think I thought it was something people only really did if they had kids or if they were a tv family.  Seriously.  I hardly EVER sit down to eat.  You know when I sit down?  When I’m at work, and I work through lunch.  THEN I sit down, because my ass is glued to my desk chair.  But I don’t think that’s what Beck has in mind. 

The next lesson is on giving myself credit.  The first sentence in that chapter was something like, “People who have trouble with weight loss are often very self-critical.”  I read that and I started laughing, because when I opened the book and saw that it was about giving myself credit, my first thought was, “For WHAT?  I didn’t even eat sitting down today!”  Ok, point taken. 

Actually, giving myself credit for things is traditionally something I have not been very good at.  I tend to look at the things I’ve done well and think, “But that is stuff you’re SUPPOSED to just DO.  You don’t get CREDIT for that, for fuck’s sake.”  But Lord help me if I slip and fall, even a little.  THEN it’s all, “You idiot.  You can’t even do the simplest things.  Other people do this without a problem.  What the hell is wrong with you?”  I kind of can’t win for losing, you know?  And even as I sit here now thinking, “Hey, I missed lunch but at least I sat down for dinner,” another part of me answers back, “Um, all you did was what you SAID you would do, and you didn’t even do that!  Don’t turn it around to say that it’s ok you were half-wrong because you were also half-right.  There’s no such thing as half-right.  That’s like being half-pregnant.  So don’t sit there and think you’re all virtuous just for not screwing up a SECOND TIME.”

It’s not a very nice voice.  Ahem.  I think this lesson might be a tough one.  (Possibly even tougher than sitting down to eat.  Possibly.)  And on that note, since ya’ll were helpful yesterday with the sitting down thing, do you give yourself credit for stuff?  Do you have trouble recognizing that you’ve done something well?  What about when you’ve screwed up?  Are those two things balanced in your head?  ‘Cause they’re sure not in mine.

And after the day’s emotional roller-coaster (who gets the axe?  Will we get the axe?  I don’t THINK we’ll get the axe.  Oh no, HE got the axe? Etc.), I’m going to bed early.  Really early.  REALLY really early.  Like in 1o minutes.  At seven.  (Ok, I might read for an hour.)

I’m thinking I might have to start adding exercise back into my day as well, but I haven’t fleshed out the baby steps on that one, yet.  I’ll keep you posted.  (Because I know you JUST. CAN’T. WAIT.)

Today was a MUCH better day than yesterday.  There were no big-boss-departures announced, no meltdowns on the phone, no roses that smelled like Grandma’s house.

Thank God.  I don’t think I could have taken another day like that.

Crazy voice has definitely kicked in, though.  I put my hair up this morning, and standing in front of the mirror, from the depths of my psyche, that snotty little voice said, “Hello, fat girl.”  Ouch.  And I immediately started to get sucked in, to feel BAD AND MAD AND SAD and like there was no point in even trying and andandand.  And then I stopped.  And I just stood there for a minute, waiting it out.  And I realized something.  (One of those things was that I should stop starting sentences with the word “and.”)  I realized that that part of Crazy voice is how I justify not changing.  It’s the part of me that is so, SO afraid that if I try, I will fail.  It’s the part of me that thinks deep down, it would be better not to try, better to just remain a medium-sized failure than to give it my best shot and be a HUGE failure.  What’s that saying?  “It’s better to be thought an idiot than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”  That’s kind of how I feel.

So I went to work, and printed out little cards.  Beck calls them Response Cards, and you print the “sabotaging thought” at the top, and then all the counter-thoughts underneath it.  Then you read it when you’re in a bad way.  And you know something?  It seems to be helping.  (Of course, I have about 12 copies of each card, and I have them stashed freakin’ EVERYWHERE.  It’s amazing how much I hate on myself.)

Day 3’s assignment is to eat sitting down.  At first I thought that was no big deal, I could do that.  And then I kept reading.  I have to sit down for EVERYTHING.  If I want a spoonful of peanut butter for a snack, I have to SIT DOWN for it.  If I just want a piece of cheese, I have to sit down.  No bites of anything, no tasting what I’m cooking (I do draw the line at that, because how else am I supposed to know if it’s seasoned properly??).  Weight Watchers used to refer to those as the BLTs: Bites, Licks and Tastes.  And in the last couple of days, while I haven’t been Sitting Down, I HAVE been paying more attention to what I eat standing up – most often while fixing something else. 

Turns out I eat a fair amount before my dinner ever hits the table.  Some days that’s because I just didn’t eat enough during the day, and I’m freakin’ HUNGRY.  Other times, it’s just convenient, or it just looks good.  (Sun-dried tomatoes go in the shrimp and quinoa?  Well, I’ll just snag a couple tomatoes out of the olive-oil-filled jar to eat!!)

We’ll see how I do tomorrow (which is the official Thou Shalt Sit Down day).  Like I said, I’ve already decided that if I’m cooking, and tasting to check for seasonings, I’ll continue to do that.  What I won’t do is continue to “taste” after the seasoning is right (because you know, it just tastes really GOOD).  And if I need a snack, I’ll get it out and put it on a plate.  Ideally, I’ll sit down, but if I can’t (tonight was a throw-dinner-together night, and I didn’t have a chance during prep to sit down), at least I can eat it off of a plate, which still makes it feel more significant than food I’ve “sneaked.” 

And now, I’m beat.  I’m off to bed.

What?  You didn’t think I’d go 24 hours without a meltdown, did you?  WHAT FUN WOULD THAT BE? 

But first, some other stuff. 

I was blog-surfing (when I should have been working (unless there are work people reading this in which case I WAS WORKING LIKE A DOG ALL DAY because I am THE BEST EMPLOYEE EVER)) today, and I read Roni’s post.  It was pretty much a “this-was-my-weekend” sort of post, but at the bottom was this:

Seriously.. how fabulous a day was that?
Is my inbox bursting from the seams? You bet!
Do I have about a million things on my to do? ohhh yeah.
Is the house completely spotless? HA! not even close.
BUT…
I had a great day with family. I prepared for the week by cutting up fresh veggies, making lunches tomorrow and pulling out stuff for dinner tomorrow (gonna experiment with the crock pot.)

Bolding mine.  And my weekend was almost exactly the opposite: my house got cleaned, errands were run, email cleaned out.  But did I prepare my food for the week?  No.  No, I did not.  Now, that was a conscious choice.  I had 2 dishes to make, and they were both 30-minutes-or-less to prepare, and I was tired yesterday, so I decided to do them after work on Monday and Tuesday.  But when I read that this morning, I thought about what I had chosen to make time for over the weekend, and what I’d blown off.  The house is clean, so I definitely have peace of mind.  But even (especially?) though I knew I was starting a Normal Eating Plan today, I didn’t fix those dinners.  (Now, I did fix one tonight, and I’ll fix the other tomorrow, so I didn’t blow them off completely.  But still.  You see my point.)

I just thought it was an interesting thing to note.

Today I read my affirmation cards at all the appointed times, so that was good.  But after last night’s battle to sit down and just freakin’ DO THEM, it stirred up enough emotional crap that I didn’t sleep well last night.  I kept sort of floating up to the surface of sleep and then back down again.  So today I was TIRED.  EXHAUSTED, even.  And I do not do well on little to no sleep, ok?  NOT. WELL. At all. 

And so the end of the day found me on the phone to my mom, weeping softly sobbing hysterically that my life SUCKS and the LSATs SUCK and I DON’T CARE, and Grandma’s DEAD, and I didn’t get to go to her FUNERAL, and the roses outside my office smell JUST LIKE GRANDMA’S HOUSE, and PART OF ME THINKS SHE’S STILL IN HER HOUSE, (NOT MY BRAIN BUT THE EMOTIONAL PART OF ME BECAUSE I DIDN’T GET TO GO TO HER DAMN FUNERAL) and I cleaned my house but there is still FALL CLEANING TO DO, and the Goodwill to take things to, and one of my big bosses at work is LEAVING (and not voluntarily), and I’m SAD and life SUCKS, AND THIS FUCKING DIET BULLSHIT MAKES ME THINK ABOUT HOW I’M FEELING INSTEAD OF JUST EATING SOME DAMN OREOS AND FUCK-FUCK-FUCKETY-FUCK-FUCK AND DID I MENTION THAT LIFE SUCKS???  Because it DOES.

Ahem.  Yeah.  Poor mom.  She said, ” . . . Well.  Would it help if I came up for a day or two?  I could do your fall cleaning for you and fix dinner.”  And if I hadn’t already lost it, I would have lost it then.  As it was I lost it EVEN MORE, and said something like, “*SOBSOBSOB* yes *SOBHICSOB* please, I *SOBSOB* need my mom!!!!  Please come up and hold my hand!!! *SOBSOBSOB*”

Good times.  Let’s just say that I see a hot bath and a glass of red wine in my VERY NEAR FUTURE, ok?

SO!  One day down, 41 more to go!!  Woo-hoo!  *end sarcasm*

*sigh*  I knew this would be hard, so in some ways it’s ok.  I mean, in the way that it’s totally NOT ok, except that I was kind of (sort of) braced for it, and I know it’s a necessary part of the process and blah, blah, blah, so THAT part is ok.  If that makes sense.

And on to day 2!!  *Dies laughing*

Today my assignment (which YES, I DID already look at several days ago) is to pick two diets: one to start, and a fall-back plan.  Since there are basically 2 kinds of diets (the count-something kind – like Weight Watchers - and the “eat this, at this time, in this quantity, every other Wednesday when the moon is full” kind – like the Zone), I figured I’d pick one of each.  So I’m starting with a 1500-calorie diet, and using the food combining plan as my fall-back.  I have experience with both, they’ve both worked at different times (um – when I’ve adhered to them), and they each temper a different part of the Crazy.

Couple of things, though.  First, because I know the answer, but need to be yelled at a little, please remind me that IT REALLY IS A BAD THING if I eat 1500 calories, and then burn 600 at the gym.  Um.  That’s bad, right?  If I eat 1800 and burn 600, is that ok?  That gives me 1200 altogether.  I mean, I know some diets do that, but I don’t want to TOTALLY screw up my metabolism.  Should I keep 1500 as my absolute, thou-shalt-not-drop-below?  Or can I go down to 1200?  (Does it really go without saying that 900 or 1000 is bad?  What if I’m not hungry?)  Please beat me over the head with this in the comments, because I’m feeling rebellious and like if I’m super-sneaky about it, and don’t feel hungry (except maybe a little, but I don’t want to mention that part) it WILL BE TOTALLY FINE.  (Um.  And I kind of sort of think it might not know it WON’T be fine.)

And the second diet, the food combining diet: I’m going to do the Suzanne Somers one, because OMG her recipes are SO GOOD.  (Seriously, if you do high-protein, medium-high fat, low carb?  GO BUY HER BOOKS.  Just buy them.  REALLY.  Even if you don’t follow the diet, they’re worth it just for the recipes.  SERIOUSLY.  I AM NOT KIDDING.  GO NOW.)  Food combining basically boils down to: don’t eat protein and carbs together.  Some folks take it a step further and say not to eat carbs with any fat either, but I can’t do that – I get stomachaches.  I CAN however commit to only eating plant fats with carbs, because my system seems to process plant fats differently from animal fats.  So I can’t have pasta with alfredo sauce, but I can have pasta with pesto sauce.  And you have to eat fruit separately.  Whatever.  I don’t usually eat fruit with anything else, anyway, so I don’t care.

Anyway, the food combining diet is a good way for me to short-circuit the Crazy when it starts pushing my calorie intake ever lower.  There’s no counting in FC, so that takes care of that.  And it placates the part of me that craves rules.  (At least until I go to the opposite extreme.  But that’s what the counting plan is for!)

I figure, much like WW, I won’t switch between the two more than once a week.  (Probably not even that much.  I like my counting for the most part.)  That way I can’t screw up any good results by PRETENDING to diet, when I’m just rebelling.

PHEW.  That was super-long.  Aren’t you glad I’m done?  I am.  Glad, I mean.  But also done.  Now I’m off to soak in the tub until I’m all pruney.  Lord knows I need it after today.  Woo-hoo!

So it’s day 1 of the Beck Diet, or as I’m thinking of it (and will continue to refer to it, because I’m trying really hard to avoid the word “diet” and the way it makes me feel), the Normal Eating Project. 

All I had to do was make a list on index cards of what the advantages were to eating normally.  In my case I made 2 cards, because one of the advantages of eating normally will be weight loss, but I wanted those things on a separate card.  (That way if I’m feeling crazy, I can just read the “Normal Eating” card without dealing with the weight-loss part.)  And I’d already pretty much done it, because I knew that it was the first day’s assignment (and yes, I was THAT STUDENT).  So I just had to reprioritize a couple of things on the list, and then print it. 

It took me almost an hour.  I needed some water.  Then I had to go to the bathroom.  Then I thought that I should watch my movie first, because I might not have time to after finishing the assignment (!).  (I did NOT watch the movie, just FYI.)  Then I thought that I should pick up the coffee table first.  Then I needed some more water.  Then I had to go to the bathroom again.  Then my pencil wasn’t sharp. 

I feel like I’m five years old.

I DON’T WANNA!  IT’S UNCOMFORTABLE!  I DON’T WANNA THINK ABOUT THIS STUFF IT MAKES ME FEEL SAD AND MAD AND BAD!
(Hey, look at me – I’m a hack-rate Dr. Seuss!!)

I finally decided that I was NOT getting up again.  I was going to do this goddammit, come hell or high water.  So I did.

Part of the reason I made two sets of cards was because sometimes looking at reasons people have for losing weight just makes me sad and angry and feel like shouting, “FUCK YOU, SOCIETY!  IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY BODY, THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM, NOT MINE!”  For instance, there was an example of someone’s list in the book.  Among things like “I’ll feel in control,” and “I’ll be able to move around better,” were statements like, “Sharon will be proud of me,” and “My sister won’t make comments.”  And those last two just made me want to cry.  (It also made me want to track down the woman and offer to beat up her sister and Sharon.  What?  I’m just sayin’.)

When I read things like that it just reinforces the feeling that I’m bad, fat, gross, unworthy, unlovable, blah, blah, polysyllabic-blah.  And rather than motivate me to change, it makes me feel like, why should I even bother? 

Um.  You see why I’m trying to focus on the normal eating part, here. 

But I did it.  And I sent myself an email at work to remind me to set up Outlook reminders so that I read the little list(s) more than once a day. 

What?  What’s on my list, you ask?  (Yeah, I know you didn’t ask, but it’s my blog, and you can’t stop me from posting it, MUAHAHAHAhaaaaa!)  This is some of the stuff I listed, and I did mine in the form of affirmations.

On the Advantages to Eating Normally card:
I don’t need to be surrounded with food to feel “safe.”
I don’t live in fear of feeling hungry or need to carry extra food with me everywhere.
I feel less out of control and more IN control.
I have more energy because my body is getting nourishing food.
I’ve learned to process my feelings of anxiety in constructive ways, instead of burying them with food and/or alcohol.
I never feel ashamed to eat in front of other people, no matter what I’m eating.

(Yeah, that last one is a sad one.  But it’s a big contributor toward binges, that feeling of needing to hide away and eat fast before anyone sees me.  So I needed to put it down there.)

And on the Advantages to Losing Weight card . . . well, those are pretty much like everyone else’s, though I tried not to put anything on there that made me feel sad about my current weight.  And for some curious reason, I feel more protective of my weight-loss reasons, even though they’re JUST LIKE FREAKIN’ EVERYONE ELSE’S, so I’m not sharing.  Maybe later. 

Now I have to remember to read them all day.  Ha!

(Scroll down to the next post if you want DisneyWorld pictures.  )

Lately I haven’t been eating well.  I haven’t been going to the gym.  I regained the 5 pounds that I’d lost before my grandpa died.  I find myself standing in the kitchen late at night (well, late for *me*, anyway), inhaling whatever I can get my hands on: Doritos, crackers, spoonfuls of pesto sauce, butter right off the cube, mayonnaise straight from the jar, bacon bits from the bag, uncooked spaghetti noodles.  It’s not a matter of not having ”trigger foods” in the house at the moment: I’ll eat LITERALLY whatever I can find.  It’s not a fun place to be. 

A few days ago I went to the bookstore.  I found myself in the cookbook section, poring over books.  When I looked at my watch, I realized that over an hour had gone by while I paged through book after book.  And I realized something else: I felt calmer.  I felt soothed.  I didn’t feel anxious or unsettled, although I had a list of things to do that was longer than I am tall.  And with a jolt, it hit me that I haven’t been cooking.  Not at all, really.  I’ve been heating up food, and assembling ingredients, but nothing much beyond prepared entrees (though if you have Trader Joe’s nearby, you HAVE TO TRY their Spinach and Salmon Crepes from the frozen section) and salads.  And whenever I do that, I get tense.  Eating becomes a purely mental exercise, a calculated intake of calories, carbs, fat, protein.  I forget that I LIKE food, and I LIKE cooking.  I like standing at the stove, smelling the onion as it cooks, chopping the tomatoes, reducing the sauce, searing the chicken.  I like the smell of a pork tenderloin roasting in the oven, coated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and bunches of herbs and spices.  I need that sensuality to override the monkey mind that tells me to eat less, less, less, OMG I ATE TOO MUCH I’M A BADBADBAD PERSON.  I need that sinking sense of relaxation, the smell of garlic and onions browning, the rhythmic sound of the chopping knife, the alchemy of disparate ingredients combining to create something bigger, something better,  the heat from the oven wrapping me in the curious warmth that only comes from a kitchen.  If food symbolizes love in American culture, then cooking symbolizes the process of loving someone – in this case, myself.  It is the physical manifestation of the idea that I am worthy of care.  And when I feel worthy, I binge less.

And curiously, reading certain cookbooks gives me sort of a contact high that way.  I’ve been known to read Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks as though they were novels, or more accurately, picture books: paging through them before bed, reading the introductions, drifting to sleep with dreams of sugarplums in my head.  So when I got home that day, I started looking around my kitchen.  My cookbooks fall into three distinct categories, with just a little overlap between: the ones I read, the ones I cook from, and the diet cookbooks that I hide away, only breaking them out when I really and truly hate myself. 

So I’ve been cleaning out my cookbooks.  Oddly, I find it hard to get rid of some of the diet cookbooks.  Some don’t fill me with self-loathing  (the Suzanne Somers cookbooks don’t have a single bad recipe, I swear), but others do, and even of those I find myself thinking, “But I might need something that drastic again.  I know the recipes aren’t very good, but ‘diet’ food shouldn’t be good.  I should hang on to that book.”  It’s been an interesting process, to say the least. 

In other news, I realized the other day that if I don’t deal with my internal bullshit now, I won’t for at least 5 years.  I won’t have the time or energy to change my eating habits or my thinking habits while I’m in law school, so if I don’t want to wait another 5 years (until I graduate), I have to do it now.  I picked up that Beck diet book at the bookstore the other day after flipping through it and immediately hearing the Crazy voice say, “NONONO, I don’t need that, that won’t work, those techniques are silly, that won’t help,” and so on.  So I figured that if it made me that uncomfortable, it was probably something I needed to take a longer look at.  So starting Monday, I’ll be following that program. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how important it is to me to do this, and I’ve decided that it IS important.  I keep thinking that I don’t have the time, but the reality is that if it’s that important to me I’ll MAKE the time.  I’ve been spending the weekend prioritizing things, making sure that I don’t sabotage myself by pretending that the hard stuff will be easy (which I do by making the easy stuff – housecleaning, grocery shopping, etc. – hard and time-consuming).  I’ve rearranged my schedule to allow for extra time in the evenings so that I can do this now.  And conveniently, it will also allow me to go to law school next year without rearranging my schedule much.  (Well.  Except for studying and all that.  But at least I won’t have to figure a new time to do laundry!)

So I’m starting on Monday.  I’ve already skimmed through and read a few parts thoroughly.  I have an idea of what I’m in for (I do better with fewer surprises).  I’m planning on blogging every day (though probably shorter entries than this one!), because the program is a daily one and I need some accountability.  I’m not sure WHEN I’ll post though.  It might take me some time to figure that out: mornings vs. evenings vs. scheduling a post vs. publishing immediately (especially if I’m publishing immediately every evening instead of every morning).  So bear with me.

Like I said the other day though, I’m treating this more as an Eating Normally program than a Weight Loss program.  I’m definitely planning on losing weight, but I need to do it in a way that I can sustain.  I can lose weight - I’ve done it before – but I’ve never done it in a sustainable way.  And I think that sustainable way probably involves eating like a normal person, as opposed to a crazy person.  Huh.  Who knew?    So it’s time to change some of my internal crap: my perceptions of myself and what I do, my behaviors, my coping mechanisms.  I think it’s funny that those changes take me back to the blog title: it’s time to take up my bed and walk. 

Wish me luck. 

Ok, I didn’t have time to post this last week, but I wanted to at least give you a quick rundown of my Florida trip. 

Saturday:
Arrived!  Hooray!  Staggered off to the hotel room, ordered room service and went to bed!

Sunday:
Finally had a chance to actually LOOK at my room!  Check out the view:

I even had a little balcony – big enough to have coffee on in the morning!

And what would a hotel room be without Hidden Mickeys?  Look closely at the lamp base . . .

Closer . . .

See it?  It’s an upside-down Mickey!  The light switch rests between his ears.    There are Hidden Mickeys ALL OVER all the hotels and resorts, both in Florida and California!

Here’s another one, nestled in a mirror’s frame:

And a slightly more abstract one, in another mirror’s frame:

Neat, huh? 

After admiring all the Mickeys, I headed over to the convention center to pick up 18 goody bags and credentials for my executives.

Credentials and laptops for distribution, spread over the other bed:

And the goody bags, lined up for drop-off:

These were for “How to Train Your Dragon,” which Dreamworks is releasing soon. 
The bag:
Inside:
And one more:

What was in the goody bag?  ALL KINDS OF CANDY AND STUFF:

After I got back to the hotel, I spent the next several days distributing laptops, goody bags, credentials, etc.  I drove my bosses around to various meetings, and made sure the restaurant reservations were all taken care of. 

Early in the week it RAINED LIKE CRAZY.  Remember that view from my room?  This is what it looked like that day:
Believe it or not, the rain on the window pane is not what’s obscuring the view.  The impact of the rain hitting the lake kicked up so much water from the lake itself that it created a mist that hung over the lake until the rain let up.  Crazy, right?

But after that it let up, and the rest of the week was not rainy.  Humid.  Humid like WHOA.  Humid like all I had to do was STAND STILL and I would sweat.  It was seriously gross, and I was so glad to get back to California!

But before CA, my youngest sister came out and we played at DisneyWorld!! 

Um.  We were a little tired, obviously! 

The next day, we saw this guy in a show at Epcot France:

Dude, he got so high up there, it was incredible!  I think he put two more chairs on top of that one.  He got so high up that my little sister couldn’t get both him and the surrounding crowd into the camera frame!

And that pretty much wrapped up the week.  Lots of running and gunning, a little playing to cap it all off, and boy was I glad to come home! 

Seriously.  I have the coolest job EVER.

I have a lot going on in my life at the moment.  That’s been a true statement for several months now, actually, and will probably continue to be a true statement for the foreseeable future.  Lots of things, lots of stuff to think about and remember and make decisions about.  Lots of external stuff (remember to order law school transcripts and clean out those cookbooks and submit the expense report for ShowEast and return the trash can that wouldn’t stay open and wash the car and renew the library books andandand) and lots of internal stuff (more detail to follow). 

I keep thinking that I’ll get some breathing room.  That I have a lot going on, but for a week or two (dear God, what I’d give for two weeks with nothing to do except go to work and run errands and clean the house) I’ll have a breather in there somewhere.  And then I remember what I have going on, and I realize that no, I probably won’t really get a breather – but some little part of me still hopes for it, and is always disappointed when a project ends and another project IMMEDIATELY takes its place. 

So in light of that, I’ve resurrected what I call “The Big Book of Drama Prevention.”  Also known at other times as “Chop Wood, Carry Water,” and originally as the FlyLady Control Journal.  The Big Book of Drama Prevention (BBDP) is exactly what it sounds like: a place to keep ALL the lists, the schedules, the meal plans, etc., so that I don’t find myself in the weeds at some point, running around and freaking out.  A place to keep myself organized, therefore preventing the otherwise inevitable drama that I will create BECAUSE SOME PART OF ME IS WHACKED IN THE HEAD THAT WAY. 

By the time I get to the point of needing the BBDP, I usually have 100 things on my To-Do list, and time to do about 10.  Oddly enough, when the discrepancy is that great, I feel less stressed than I do when I have 15 things to do and time to do 10.  I always feel like if I tried a LITTLE harder, I could squeeze those 15 things in, but hell, if it’s 100 things, it ain’t gonna happen, and I might as well stop worrying about it.  So I become a master prioritizer (hey, look!  I just made up invented a word!).  I’ve been thinking the last few days about what EXACTLY my priorities are right now: what can be put aside, what I have to carve out time for, etc.  Not just on the little things like errands and cleaning, but even on the big things like sleep, food, weight loss, etc. 

There’s nothing like overwhelming demands on your time to force you to clarify what’s important.

One of the things that made the “yes, this is important and if I have to re-jigger my whole schedule to accommodate it, I will just have to start re-jiggering” is weight loss.  The bottom line is that if I don’t use the next year to drop the weight I want to lose, I won’t do it for the next 5 years.  Because really, let’s be honest: losing weight is hard and it takes time – time that I will not have when I’m working full-time and going to school 4 nights a week.  I can maintain during a time like that, but the initial work needed to retrain my brain and all that?  It’s now or never.  Or at least, now or in my late 30s. 

I bought the Beck Diet Book (that I can’t remember the ACTUAL title of, but you probably know the one I’m talking about – the one with the patronizing subtitle that’s something like “learn to think like a thin person”).  Because it’s focused on changing attitudes and behaviors, and on developing coping mechanisms, instead of “eat this food, in this amount, this many times a day,” I think it might be more helpful for me that a straight “diet” book.  It’s presented like a workbook, with assignments every day, and it will probably require an hour or so of my time on a daily basis.  (You see why I would NEVER start this in law school.)  So I’m going to find an hour a day somewhere.  (That’s this weekend’s big project.  Well.  ONE of this weekend’s big projects.  But one of the most important ones.)  I’ve been reading bits and pieces of the book, and I dutifully went out and got some notecards and a notebook today.  I do best psychologically with a Monday-Sunday week instead of a Sunday-Saturday one, so I’ll “officially” start Monday, although I’m already kicking around some of the stuff.  And I can already see that there are a few things that I might have to take more than a day on.

Anyway, I figured I’d review it as I went along.  I have to admit that there is some stuff in the beginning that I’m not crazy about.  Not so much the information itself, as her writing style, which I do sometimes find a little patronizing in that fake cheerleader sort of way.  And the author definitely seems to have bought whole-hog (pun intended) into the idea that it’s just GROSS to be fat, which bothers me.  So I’m going to work her program as written, but I’m going to focus on eating normally.  I’m thinking of this not as a Weight Loss Program, but as an Eat Like a Normal Person Program.  With added weight loss benefits, if all goes according to plan. 

I’ll let you know. 

And I’ll post the Disney trip this weekend! 

Well, I was going to post pictures last night, but my computer wouldn’t connect to the internet for some reason.  *sigh*  So no pics yet.

I have some stuff brewing (read: MASSIVE post of stuff that’s been on my mind for a while) that I’ll get to over the next day or two, and I’ll post the big Disney post this weekend.  So if you don’t log in until Monday, scroll down to see it when you get here!