Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Belly Flops

She's in the ladies bathroom at the gym folding her sleeves up while she gets ready to go get her workout. I walk in and get the look. You know the one where she looks me up and down to decide whether I look like I should be there or not. If I look 'fit' enough to look so satisfied about getting my sweat on. Or if I look too big to be so proud of myself. I do a mental check to see what I'm wearing. I'm glad I have my Fila relays shirt on (even though it doesn't say so on the front, only on the back).
Is this why I want to wear my race shirts to the gym? So that I look like I belong? So that the big girl can stay even though her belly seems to move independently of the rest of her body?

Too bad the 3M shirt is full sleeved, I can't wear it during my workout.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

It is definitely the sugar

I think I write this blog more for me than anyone else. It's a place where I can write stuff down that I don't want to forget. Its finally paid off. Around december I wrote about how I think sugar makes me crazy. Well last week I had some run ins with Jam that made me eat like I was training for a marathon. So today I ate some sugar but keeping in mind what I was doing. I ate some cottage cheese with jam and then a hard candy. Its around three in the afternoon right now and I've spent the last hour trying to stop myself from thinking about food. Sugar, it seems, resets my food gauge. I remember this used to happen to me during undergrad where I couldn't eat anything sweet for breakfast or I'd spend the rest of the day rabidly hungry. Now, it appears, sweet stuff seems to do that no matter what time of the day I eat it.

Strangely enough, natural sugars don't seem to matter. I eat a piece of fruit almost every afternoon without any repercussions. This is good since I am unsure if a fruit-less existence is worth my effort.
I guess the next step from here is going to be to figure out if eating the sugar with something else helps or not. Past run ins suggest that neither protein nor fat are going to help.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Blah blah blah and then some insight

Jess recently wrote about thinking a single nice thing about someone. This is something I've been trying to do myself but in a slightly altered way. I've been trying not to be judgmental about people I see around me. To be more exact, I've been trying not to judge people based on how they look by deciding who is 'too skinny' or 'overweight'. Its not acceptable to do something like that unless I'm okay with that being done to me (which I am not since, you know, you don't know me).

Yesterday was cold and windy so the gym was mostly empty. That meant that for my body sculpt class, the middle area, which is usually full, had spots available in front of the mirror. As a result, I got to work out with the added benefit of watching myself workout. This is something I have managed to successfully avoid for the past month and a half. Initially, I just wanted to spare myself that instant when you realize what you look like. It doesn't help that for some reason most of the people in these classes are really really slim (not unhealthy just naturally tiny). Compare and contrast at its best.

So I had to work out in front of the mirror. It wasn't bad and I caught myself thinking I don't absolutely hate the way I look. As in the past, I didn't spend my entire time avoiding looking into the mirror. Then I noticed that the girl next to. She was a little wider than I was but she had no tummy. Just amazingly flat abs. Unfortunately, the rest of the workout was then spent wondering why my abs are, shall we say, not flat?

So I'm going to try something new. Along with not judging people I see based on how they look, I am also going to try and be nicer to myself.