| Fatty, fatty, two by four... |
[Mar. 20th, 2009|04:35 pm] |
My weight loss has been at a standstill at best, and slowly creeping up from time to time. I was as low as 304 in September, but now I am back to 314. I blame several factors, mostly dealing with me and me alone. Nobody made me eat those Reese's PB eggs but me. I can't blame Reese's for making delicious candy, that's their job, and also their job is to sell it and make money. And God Bless them for it, they are yummy. And the Chinese food restaurant behind my house still has some of the best General Tso's chicken ever.
But apart from eating, my body has been storing fat for the winter because that's what my people do to survive. Sadly, I no longer live in Culd Nuutsakk Valley in Sweden and do not need to worry about long winters in a snow covered hut with nothing to do but chop wood, hunt for rabbits, and drink until I sleep. Actually, that doesn't sound so nice. No internet in 6000 BC. But my body, bred through countless generations of plump Viking women and people who didn't have enough body fat dying out and not reproducing has led to a body that stores fat because I might have to go outside and hunt a woolly mammoth. You never know. I have to admit, if I see a hairy elephant, my first thought is to chuck a spear at it, which is why I am not allowed at the spear and javelin gift shop at the National Zoo anymore (it's near the small mammals house, my picture is next to the cash register with a red X on it).
Sadly, my severe downturn in my stalking and spearing of giant unshaven pachyderms has lead to lack of exercise. It used to be I walked about 2-5 miles a day because of work, but now everything in the data center has been moved close to my desk, and so now I am down to about 2 miles a day on average and that's just my metro and the blocks I walk from metro to work. That has to change.
I have mentioned my issues with exercise. Some deep, dark process at the back of my mind sabotages exercise at a very basic level. It's like the moment that part of me realizes I am exercising, my knee hurts, my ankle swells up, or my brain ceases to work and I forget what I am doing and stop. I am more than convinced it's all psychosomatic, and indicative of some deep trauma I am so disconnected from, I don't even know where to start. My first and most obvious guess it has to do with the day after day humiliation in gym and PE in school. It seems *extremely* logical to connect the two, but when I meditate on the problem, they don't connect at all.
For instance, I am aware that I hated PE and gym. But when think about why I don't exercise, another part of me responds. The part where I hated gym is actually directly connected to a sense of frustration and futility linked to my depression. THAT I can feel and know the connection which causes different things. When I feel a certain kind of helplessness at some physical task, I have echos of memories of being beat up by some guy, or mocked by fellow classmates, or whatever. There's emotion, anger, and angst there.
But as to why I hate exercise, some different part of my brain not connected to depression or anger simply says, "It's stupid and pointless. You're walking in a circle. Stop it." It's almost like its part of some grander efficiency circuit. It's distantly related to the circuit that reminds me I have been traveling in a circle when I get lost. Or doing the same thing over and over with no result. Trying to say, "oh, you are working to a distant goal, look at the big picture, think long term..." and so on, "isn't fooling anybody." Some people speak about runner's highs and how great they feel after exercise, but in reality, I don't feel this. I feel like I am in pain, and then I don't move for a while because my ankle is swollen, and then shit doesn't get done.
The best way I have had to try and get around this is to work exercise into every task I do, and "make it harder." It used to be I always tried to make my trips up and downstairs more efficient: take down laundry, bring up laundry. Or, "I am in the kitchen waiting for my dog to poop outside, so I'll do dishes while I am here." But now I am trying to say, "don't wait to take that SETI server down to the laundry room, do it now, even though you have nothing to bring up when you return." Or work it in with yard work, which has a tangible goal. Like if I mow the lawn, the lawn is done. if I walk in a circle around the block, there's no tangible asset. And I think that's the problem.
Oh well, so that's how that is going. |
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