One thing that I've learned this month is pacing and moderation. First of all, after changing our diet to about 50% Paleo around Thanksgiving, it's been easy to see how things work and don't work (as far as my body is concerned) with certain food choices. And for the last month, we've been following it pretty strictly (the husband eats what he wants--he usually has chips or cake or something like that for himself), and seriously, yo. One of my cookbooks has a 30 day meal plan--everything from breakfast to snacks to dinner--and that's what we had been eating off of for the last three weeks. We were without a fridge for a few days, so we couldn't shop and store things for part of this week (we had a cooler, one can only fit so much in a cooler, and at least the freezer was still working), so this week has been more improvisational but still in the spirit of the meal plan, in spite of my dark chocolate (some trainers say dark chocolate, like 85% is ok. I need something sometimes, you know).
Anyway, my point of all of this is, for like the first time since I was about 12 (sad, right? and maybe perhaps the first year after my divorce) I have not been counting calories, logging food, keeping track of calories burned or even measuring stuff out. OH.MY.GOD! I feel so liberated! Eating out can be a bit tricky, but not really. Now, it's not like there weren't struggles during the month, but on the whole, holy shit. Seriously. I feel better than I ever felt on any vegan or vegetarian diet. For me, I may have found what works. And this is the first time in the history of this blog (in all its incarnations) that I have been working out consistently and have been losing weight consistently over the last five and a half months. Usually my M.O. is to talk about how great I've been doing for a month, then some crazy academic crisis hits or I get my period or something derails me, I undo everything in the span of the two or three weeks, and then boom, back to square one, and the broken record begins again. I'm going into summer feeling pretty good without having to think about summer as "finally the time when I'll get back into shape."
Again, it's liberating.
What has gotten me through finals week so far is that I've made sure that I'm exercising. One thing that I've been doing since January, that exercise is a part of, is making sure I take care of myself. This has meant ignoring certain things--the house isn't always clean; I don't obsess over class prep, and I do probably slack a little bit in it. But if I'm stressed, tired, and miserable, all the preparation for class isn't going to mean shit if I can't deliver it. And when I'm taking care of myself, I'm a better professor and a better wife, and I'm a better mom to the dogs.
I have also changed my workouts in the last month, too. I've decided that Mr. P90X and I need to go on a break if we ever hope to repair our relationship. I understand he has a product to sell, but his animosity to the principles I hold dear are starting to wear on me. I have found strength, beauty, and self confidence in the Cross Fit/Paleo lifestyle (which has been a part of what I've been doing since January, but only the focus really in the last month), and I do take it a bit personally (although we've never met) to hear that being torn down in public forums. Perhaps it is "trendy," but Mr. P90X, so are you, so there.
Anyway, the point is, I have some long term goals now that go beyond just getting into a particular pair of pants or my bikini for summer or getting to a certain size (which is part of the goal, but not THE goal). I think I have finally been able to look at these changes as lifestyle changes not diet and exercise, but the things that make me part of who I am. And they make me able to take care of myself which keeps me from completely losing my shit during finals week with all the grading, for example. Rather, I'm finally starting to feel comfortable, for the first time ever maybe, in my own skin.
Now if I can just get that conference paper and those two articles written...
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