I’m tired after a long day at work, but here’s my accountability report for the day.
I totally cheated at dinner (naan!), but made up for it with some cardio and calisthenics.
Tomorrow I’m hoping for a cleaner day of eating (no wheat, minimal carbs) and a REAL sweat session at the gym.
Wednesday weigh-in tomorrow!
Bon appetit, my friends!
Tori
I had class tonight, so I wasn’t able to start my Monday off at the gym as I would’ve liked.
That being said, I was EXTRA diligent about my diet. Check out today’s calorie summary:
Unintentionally lower than planned for calories, but the high protein nature of my meals today REALLY filled me up!
Check out the nutritional breakdown:
Not too shabby! I’m hoping to hit the gym hard tomorrow and I will post photos/measurements on Wednesday.
Total exposure, total accountability.
Hope everyone has a great evening and, if it’s dinner time for you: Bon appetit!
~ Tori
As of today, I’m officially 54 days from my birthday.
This is the big one, the birthday I’ve been dreading for years: THIRTY.
This is the birthday that officially says goodbye to the naivete and excuses of youth and slams me smack-dab into the center of adulthood. I’m old enough to know better and yet young enough (at heart) to recognize what I’m missing out on.
I envisioned my life to be very different by 30. When I was a teenager, I imagined that with my 30th birthday came children, a minivan stocked with soccer equipment, and the body of a fitness model.
(For some reason, I always thought a minivan was cool – perhaps because I was the only one of my friends that didn’t have siblings and I found the conveniences of a minivan to be luxurious beyond measure. Broaching 30, I’m kind of excited I don’t have a minivan.)
While 54 days isn’t enough time to pop out a football team (hallelujah!), it is enough time to recommit to my fitness goals and see tangible results. Since my fitness/nutrition/health is the one thing I am in control of in this crazy, hectic world, I’m dedicating myself to it for the next two months.
Today’s starting weight: 131.2
Current jean size: 26/27 (between sizes 4-6, depending on brand)
Diet plan: Mostly Paleo, but allowing dairy.
Fitness plan: 60 minutes elliptical/5 days per week. Walk 60 minutes per day. Strength training 3/week.
So, there it is. Here’s my Monday Manifesto, my public declaration of goals in the hopes that all of you can help me stay focused, stay centered, and stay motivated.
On that note… bon appetit, my friends!
~ Tori
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I don’t like what I see in the mirror today.
I’m frustrated. Frustrated with my body, frustrated with my will power, frustrated with me (on every level).
I kill myself at the gym only to come home and eat junk food. I know better. I understand good nutrition and I eat healthy 90% of the time, but I find myself in a self-sabotaging mood almost every evening.
In the span of minutes, I undo all the work of my day. A bite here, a bite there, and I’ve cancelled out an intensive sweat session.
I’m angry. Angry at myself, angry at genetics. My mother is tiny. My father was tiny. I never once saw either enter a gym. I never once saw either count a calorie. They just were.
For the majority of my adult life, I’ve been aware. Aware of what I eat, aware of what I do (or don’t do), and aware of how I look. I’ve never just existed. I’ve been hyper-aware of food, of my body, and of the world’s perception of me for as long as I can remember.
I’m tired of being jealous of other people. Tired of being jealous watching someone eat something I deny myself, put on a pant size I can never hope to squeeze into. I’m tired of not being satisfied of where I am of, of where I’ve come from.
Will I ever love my body? Will I ever hit my “goal” if my goal is never static? Will I ever stop being jealous and start appreciating what I have?
Looking at myself in the mirror today, I think the answer is no.
Hoping for a better day tomorrow,
~ Tori
I’m trying to keep myself calm. I’m trying NOT to freak out. I got on the scale this morning and it’s WAAAAY up.
I’ve done a lot of exercise lately (I ran for 2 hours, 45 minutes on Friday alone) and a lot of strength training, so I know most of the weight is the result of muscle fatigue and lactic acid back-up.
I’ve also consumed a lot of salt lately, polishing off a gigantic bowl of Vietnamese Pho on Saturday like it was my job:
This was a picture taken HALFWAY through the bowl. Yeaaaaah, I finished it.
I’m trying not to believe that these five pounds are real, but the numbers terrified the snot out of me this morning.
I haven’t limited myself to one Cadbury egg this week; I’ve had 2-3 daily most of this week. I believed my extra workouts entitled me to it (which they did, I guess, if my goal was to cancel out my exercise with food) and now I’m trying to assure myself that I haven’t gained five pounds from chocolate.
Right?
I’m guzzling water and coffee today. I’m avoiding salt. I’m praying for a miracle tomorrow.
~ Tori
Looking for an alternative to peanut butter (aka, the Reese’s peanut butter cups I was inhaling prior to the New Year), I scoured the shelves of the local Publix for something new and different from the plain almond butter I’ve been living on. Bless my lucky stars, I stumbled across this hidden gem: MaraNatha Caramel Almond spread. It was approximately $7 for the jar – a bit steep – but I decided to give it a try.
I didn’t realize until I got the jar home that it contained both soy and milk derivatives – two things you’re encouraged to avoid on the Paleo/Caveman diet. However, given the fact that I’d paid so much for the jar and was curious about the flavor, I decided to count it as my “cheat” and dig in for a spoonful.
This stuff is AMAZING. Crack-in-a-jar.
It has a rich, buttery, and sweet flavor that hits your tongue in a foodgastic explosion of taste. It’s more of a butterscotch flavor than caramel but I assure you that I mean that in a complimentary way: it’s decadent. The texture is much like normal almond butter, only it had a creamier (more sinful) residue on the tongue.
A serving consists of two tablespoons packing a whopping 190 calories, 14g fat (4g saturated), 13g carbs (11g of which are from sugar – yipes!), and only 4g of protein.
Fortunately, the flavor is very strong, so I was able to use less of it and still get a satisfying experience. The label on the package actually suggests using it on cake, so I probably should have been prepared for the ambrosial experience. Who needs cake when you have this stuff?
I had to hide it from myself to avoid eating more. It’s so good, it’s bad.
So, for those of you looking for a heavenly sweet treat (and not worried about the extra sugars/lack of protein), I would strongly suggest picking up a jar of this stuff. But make sure you have a sturdy padlock to put on the cabinet you store it in because I promise you it’ll be a Herculean feat to stop yourself from eating it all once you taste it.
On that note, bon appetit!
~ Tori
I didn’t post my Weigh-in Wednesday update yesterday. You may or may not have noticed.
Why?
I slipped.
I went on a binge for the first time in several weeks.
Yes, I’ve over-eaten junk food several times in the past month, but I’d always maintained control. I stopped myself. I splurged and then regained composure.
Last night, I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop.
I started innocently. Healthy. A piece of salmon. Some cheese.
Then beer. Chips. Cookies. Chocolate.
I couldn’t stop shoving food into my mouth. My stomach growled, my brain roared. My husband came home during the middle of my binge. Normally, that snaps me out of it.
This time, I kept eating.
He asked me if I was hungry.
He asked me why I kept eating if I wasn’t hungry.
He suggested I eat some baby carrots – they would fill me up and I wouldn’t feel guilty.
I went into the bathroom to shove cookies into my mouth.I finally stopped around midnight, not because I was full, but because I had run out of accessible junk food. The only options left were apples, carrots, celery … not the satisfaction you want during an episode.
My husband, confused (and likely disgusted), took our puppies for a walk while I sulked on the couch. When I was sure he was gone, I slipped into the medicine cabinet and pulled out my hidden supply of laxatives. I’ve told him, and everyone else, that I don’t buy them anymore.
(There is a box hidden in my car. Another in the kitchen.)
One pill? Three?
Fifteen small, pink pills. Fifteen guarantees of pain, of redemption. Fifteen annular gifts, each promising to purge my stomach and my soul.
The pain this morning was unbearable. Knife in the stomach, tearing a burning path into my lower intestines. Cramps, exaggerated by dehydration, crippled my abdomen. It feels as if you’re slowly digesting a belly full of razor blades. You can feel the acid churning.
I sat in a hot bath at 4:30 in the morning. I prayed, vows of lies and false promises.
Each lie, greater than the last.
The pain subsided, a combination of warm water and 800 mg of ibuprofen, and I climbed back into bed, damp and despondent.
My husband slept, my puppies snored, and I cried.
It wasn’t until 8am that the true effect of the pills kicked in and, despite the previous hours of suffering, I couldn’t help but smile when the scale consigned a loss.
Laxatives: 1, Scale: 0
Self-Esteem: -1,000,000.
~ Tori
I am a junkie of the Huffington Post. I have a tendency to start my morning on a reading binge, going through about a dozen articles (via my cell phone) within the first thirty minutes of waking up. Half-asleep and attempting to brush my teeth, I scroll through the pages as quickly as my groggy eyes can read them.
While I’m often consuming articles on trending news or world wide events, most of my reading consists of the Healthy Living section: diets, workouts, and nutritional advice.
One article, specifically, caught my eye today:
Today’s article really struck home, as I struggle with the voracity of my appetite most days of the week.
Seriously, if I allowed myself, I could consume THOUSANDS of calories at every meal and still have room for more. Perhaps it’s the remnants of my bigger days, but I can put away food with the best of them.
My dream job… if calories didn’t count.
In reading these tips, I feel like I need to smack my forehead a few times. I know these rules, but I don’t adhere to them. I’m horrible about skipping breakfast (coffee counts, no?) and I’m horrible about mindless munching.
Take, for example, this morning:
Since it’s a Monday, I decided to start the day with a healthy breakfast – four turkey sausage patties.
Yeaaaaaah!
Then I got to work.
Four rice cakes (NOT PALEO!) topped with sunflower nut butter (yum!) and raw wildflower honey and I’ve consumed double the calories of my breakfast in just minutes. And it’s not even lunch time yet!
I guess I’m just a hungry, hungry hippo today.
I’m the pink one, of course.
Fortunately, it’s still early in the day, I have a healthy lunch packed, and I plan to hit the gym extra hard this evening – both to burn off stress and the excess calories. I’m glad I read this article this morning, as it brought me back to a point of awareness. Most of my dieting failures are the result of complacency – I stop paying attention. Being aware of what you point into your body is just as important as working out and far more important than the numbers on the scale.
So kudos to HuffPost for reminding me to be aware! I needed that today!
On that note, it’s time for this hungry, hungry hippo to get some work done. Bon appetit, my friends!
~ Tori
OK, my shoes may look dorky as all get out, but these bulky little calves just did the MAXIMUM on the calf press EIGHT times!
Yes, you read that correctly: I just did eight calf raises of 400 pounds!
When I finished, utterly pooped, I got a high-five from a trainer that had been watching from across the gym.
Strength > skinny.
Hell yeah!
~ Tori
Like many of you, Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. It’s equally a child’s holiday as it is an adult’s, with only a small age range that chooses not to participate. I remember at 13 saying I was “too old to dress up.”
I’d like to go back and slap 13-year-old-self in the face! You get to eat copious amounts of candy without judgement, attend parties, and dress up like anything you want! Come on, young-Tori, don’t be an idiot.
I’m pretty sure the costume stores have double the adult options as they do kiddie choices, and they’re not all “sexy cops” and “sexy nurses,” either. This year, since I’m attending multiple parties, I stocked up on props (fake blood, fake battle wounds, etc) and splurged on a secret costume that I’m going to unveil at a party next weekend.
Last night, I attended an OUTBREAK Survivor Party, so the majority of our costumes were zombie themed. I had fun with the makeup and shirt-decoration last night:
So, what’s the downside to all of this partying and costume menagerie?
At the beginning of last week, I had gotten down to my all-time low of 130.6. I’ve never seen the scale dip that close to the blessed 120s and I was ecstatic. As usual, I took a picture because I could hardly believe it:
As you can imagine, though, I’m no where near that number today.
After almost two weeks of snacking on candy at work and then attending a few parties consisting of fried foods, chips, and lots of frothy beverages, my weight this morning is back up to 134.
SIGH.
It’s just a never-ending cycle. With holidays always a part of life – and the desire to splurge when around friends – it makes it really hard to come to an equilibrium with my body. I’m regimented for weeks, then destroy my efforts in a few days of all-out eating. I’m not going to cut my friends out of my life. I’m not going to convert to Jehovah’s Witness to avoid the celebration of holidays. So what’s a yo-yo to do?
Well, I can tell you what this yo-yo is going to do today:
Halloween is both my joy and my challenge and I’ve decided I’m just going to roll with it today and not let a slight increase on the scale bring me down.
Bon appetit, my friends!
~ Tori
The Memoirs of a Yo-Yo Dieter 