still not fifty three pounds, or king.

Work is so easy. Eating at work, I mean. Because I can't sit at my desk and eat a ham, and since I work at a public service desk, I can't disappear into the break room and eat a Christmas turkey every ten minutes, and the food on campus sucks and the vending machine is almost always broken, if I simply remember to plan ahead, with my baggies of cereal and the lean cuisines and the yogurts and the fruit, I am golden all day. A beautiful golden god.

Home is less easy, even though I have learned the most important lesson about stocking your house with groceries, which is Do Not Leave a Bucket of Fried Chicken Or A Cake In Your House lesson. If you have the stuff within reach, look there you go! Reaching for it! It seems a very simple lesson to learn, but it took me a very long time to learn it. Because I am not so smart.

Since I am not so smart but lazy, it is easy to fool myself into not eating the not-so-great stuff after hours, but not as easy to eat good stuff, because, see above, re: laziness. I can stuff my fridge with all the arugula it can hold, but that sure as fuck doesn't mean I'm going to actually do anything with the arugula, unless it involves climbing over the arugula to get to the take out menus, or tossing the arugula in order to fit the leftover Chinese food in the fridge.

But I can usually get around that by making myself a peanut butter sandwich for dinner and then pretending that the kitchen doesn't exist any more, which exercises my brain, which burns calories, which makes me lose fifty three pounds a week. I am telling you, I am a diet genius and should really write some kind of self help book.

Which is all well and good on days I come home after work. On days I go out after work, I try to remember to save some points, and Make Smart Choices and Not Screw Up By Ordering A Pie, and sometimes it works (a coffee after dinner sometimes undercuts the urge to order All the Dessert in the World) and sometimes it really, really doesn't work (a coffee is a lovely accompaniment to Chocolate Lava Love Cake of Ultimate Doom) and sometimes it works okay (biscotti is nice).

In a perfect world, I would be, too. Perfect, I mean. But I have been trying to remember that the best I can do is do the best that I can, and I have been trying to not yack up immediately after thinking that. Because it is true. And belongs on an embroidered pillow.

I've been trying to remember to plan ahead as much as possible, make choices that are as good as possible, and think really hard about exercising (see above, re: burning calories with your mind and losing fifty three pounds).

It's working okay. I lost .8, and that is almost a pound, which is not too shabby in a week with little exercise and a lot of going out.

This week I have decided to be more forceful in my planning ahead when I go out, with looking up menus and saving points and asking for things on the side to not be brought out with my food and avoiding empty calories during the day. I'm going to poke around the exercise classes presented at my gym and check them out, squelching my embarrassment and trying to not die. Even though I'm totally going to die. But at least I will go out kickboxing.

This entry was posted by anne, on Wednesday, June 22, 2005. You can leave your response.