Dancing Through Life

My partner and I signed up for ballroom/latin dance classes and last night was our second night. There is nothing so emotionally and mentally exhausting than learning how to dance with someone who is the love of your life. Half way through the cha-cha, I was sure we were going to kill each other, but we both left tired and elated when we finally “got it”. It’s been a really fun adventure and we are learning so much about communicating and working together to separately learn the same skill. It’s been really fun. We’re building a date night into our week. It’s also a surprising workout, mostly because you’re on your toes so much of the night. The first week I made the mistake of not stretching afterwards and I felt it.

We also went on a bit of a cleanse together for a week. It was just for a week, but we’d been on a road trip together and gorged ourselves on rich food. We took a week off from all irritating or heavy food. It was so hard to think ahead – we’re both busy people, and while we love to cook, we often eat late because we don’t plan ahead. When your options for food are so restricted, there’s no such thing as a last minute bowl of pasta or ordering in. It was tough, but we both felt quite…cleansed?…by the end of it. I’m not sure I love cleansing, but sometimes it’s a nice way to reset your eating habits. For me, I was already avoiding junk food, so cleansing wasn’t a big shift. For my partner, it was really hard.

However, now we are both in the habit of thinking of healthy things to eat together instead of just grabbing a quick snack. In that way, it helped us to think of alternatives to junk food and we have a huge tub of trail mix in our truck now that is there for emergencies instead of grabbing a coke and chips.

I’m not sure that I’m doing enough activity to see a huge physical change yet, but I have two structured weekly activities built into my life and as they become more solidified habits, I can only build. It’s nice to add habits one at a time, instead of trying to change everything over night. I find that it gives me a feeling of success that I can build from, instead of failure because I haven’t completely shifted my behaviour overnight. This way, it’s gradual, but sustainable.

It feels good.

Dinner Parties

Recently, I moved back to the area where I grew up. As a result, I’ve been spending a lot of time with people I knew in my childhood, especially friends of my parents. Many of my parents’ friends became my friends as I grew older and whenever I visited the area I would stop in to see them all. Now, living here again, they are some of our best friends.

Several times we’ve had dinner with them, and for the most part it’s a lot like having dinner with any of our friends. We talk about beer and food, and travel, and other people, and the politics of the day. I’ve noticed lately though, that often we talk about nutrition. Everyone has their own ideas about nutrition and weight loss and healthy eating. Everyone is on some plan or another and is very proud of how well it’s going. Everyone thinks you should try it.

I, of course, am very proud of how well I’ve been doing at slowly changing my lifestyle. It hasn’t be a quick change with immediate results, but I am developing new habits and I feel good about it. However, I would never tell someone that I thought they should go gluten free just because it is working for me. I’m sure I’m just as guilty as the next person of sharing health and lifestyle advice that I think is valuable, and perhaps it is not always welcome.

Maybe this is just me feeling sensitive about how much weight I’ve gained since high school, but I often feel like these conversations are born from my older friends trying to “mother” me into a healthier lifestyle. Since I have a mother who has always been very good at encouraging me to eat better, I often leave these dinner parties trying feeling like I’ve failed the whole neighbourhood by not adhering to a strictly organic, vegan, high-protein, low-carb, glycemic-index-based, Mediterranean, regularly-spaced mini-meal, no fat-with-carbs, no-fruit-or-any-kind-of-sugar, vitamin-supplemented diet.

You can’t please all of the people, all of the time.

I can make small changes, adopt new habits, find my own inner motivations and sustainability plans, and see what works for me. I may not be losing 2 lbs per week like clockwork, but I feel like I am doing something good for myself and I feel like I have made it sustainable.

I no longer think in terms of a timeline (e.g. I will not eat sugar for one week). Now I think in terms of forever (e.g. I will cut refined sugars from my diet entirely except on special occasions). Eventually, I will add new habits, like cutting all refined and non-refined sugars from my every-day life, or reducing the amount of cheese I eat, or increasing my legumes and protein.

I can make small changes, adopt new habits, find my own inner motivations and sustainability plans, and see what works for me.

 

Sweet Slips

Yesterday I kept my word and counted calories. I ate 1500 more than I was supposed to. The stupid thing was that I forgot to eat lunch, so most of those calories were guacamole and chips when I realized how hungry I was, and then we had bison  burgers with goat cheese for dinner, which was delicious, but the cheese was too many calories again. The thing is, I’m a bigger fan of eating less of the good-for-you things that are high in calories than of cutting them out entirely. Things that are bad for you, it’s easier to cut those out, or at least restrict them to cheat days.

Today I took a friend to an event called Empty Bowls, where you pick a bowl made by a local potter and then you have soup (donated by local restaurants). The soup was fantastic. My friend has some mobility problems, so I got up to get her some desserts and tea at one point, and when I got back she offered me the meringue on her plate. I thought to myself “Oh! I can eat that – it doesn’t have any gluten in it!” I was half way through it before I remembered I also wasn’t eating sugar. Luckily it was a very small meringue so there wasn’t any major harm done, but the funny thing was how easily I completely forgot my own rules. This isn’t the first time that’s happened. A few weeks ago I stopped with a bite of a biscuit in my mouth and had to spit it out because I’d forgotten I wasn’t eating gluten.

Apparently reducing gluten and sugar intake will improve my memory. I wonder how long it will take for that to kick in!

 

 

Constant Vigilance!

It turns out that even your tools can become excuses. I haven’t been writing in the blog because I didn’t want to make excuses for any failures – so of course, I had no accountability to myself or anyone else (real or hypothetical).

I was tracking everything I ate, and I lost five pounds. I only ate sugar once in March on the boyfriend’s birthday, and I have been gluten free since the beginning of March. It’s been good. Gluten free hasn’t been too hard. My family is used to accommodating it because my Mom doesn’t eat gluten. Sugar free was harder, but I’ve been managing. I ate sugar at Easter because…well…there were jelly beans. I’m hopeless before jelly beans.

Other than that, I haven’t done too bad. But the thing was that I lost five pounds. And once I started to have some success, I stopped keeping track of my food. I decided that I must have the hang of it, and I gave up writing and tracking – the two things that will really make the difference in longevity on this project. Mad-Eye Moody was right – “Constant vigilance!” is the only way to succeed in life. With a few treat days.

I did go for a run yesterday. It felt amazing. I ran for a full 15 minutes – almost 2 km – and then turned around and walk/ran home. Today the boy and I headed out for a walk and I wanted to run. My muscles were aching to get back into it. Walking ended up being a good switch though. It felt like there were different muscles at play. I will run again tomorrow. I will start keeping track of my food again. I will write here again. I will keep going because this is a long-term investment in my own longevity, nothing less.