Weekend

It's almost here, yay!

And I have some plans.

I've started (in kind of a small way) a change to my eating plan. (I do not call it a diet. I will not call it a diet. Because "diet" is another word, in my mind, for "deprive yourself until you have no tolerance left and you run around snapping other people's heads off for fun." And yes, I used to "diet" and that was pretty much what happened around Day 10 or so).

This is, instead: eat more nutrients. And limit "fun foods" to an average of 200 calories per day. ("Fun foods" - sweets, cookies, Chee-toes, potato chips [which I am really not fond at all of so it's no sacrifice to give them up], pop [ditto what I said for the potato chips], etc.)

Simple plan. I don't have to count calories if it's regular "nutritious" food, because frankly, I do pretty darn well when it comes to regular "nutritious" food. It's the snacking, or the emotional eating, or the desserts that do me in.

(All bets are off however once Christmas 2008 rolls around; I don't want to be "that woman" who minces around and goes, "but I can't eeeeeeeeeaaaaaaat that." And all bets are off if there is a net poundage change of 0 or a positive number come my annual checkup in May.)

(And yeah, it might be tough at times to stick to it. Though I will say I already decided to avoid a grocery-store "King Cake" that someone brought in the other day: looked at it, thought, "Is this worth not eating a couple squares of dark chocolate after dinner tonight?" decided "No" and left it be. And if I hadn't left myself the option of "this or chocolate" - making the option "this or nothing but regret later" I might have been more tempted. I do better with concrete things and concrete choices.)

At any rate: another thing that used to frustrate me back in my "dieting" days was the glacial pace of the "reward" of being thinner, stronger, my clothes fitting better, random guys whistling at me on the street [not that that ever really happened much but I suspect that's partly because I lived in a northern city that prided itself on being "enlightened" in those days, and random wolf-whistles at women were seen as a form of harassment]. (And yeah, yeah - I exercise too. I'm just one of those unfortunates who has a body that really, really likes to hang on to the fat it has. So I'm doing everything "right" and dropping maybe 4 ounces a week, while someone else I know cuts out one of the several Cokes he drinks in a day and loses 6 pounds a month...part of what kills me on these plans is what I see as the fundamental unfairness of that.)

So I decided to help this thing along a bit, I'll set up a "carrot" for myself. (because "sticks" never work very well for me): if I can stick to my goals of eating at least five servings of fruits and/or vegetables each day, if I can get "enough" lean protein, and if I can keep the average "fun" calorie expenditure 200 or less per day, every 2 weeks I get a treat of some type.

(No, not a food treat, I hasten to add. I'm smart enough to know that).

It can be little - a paperback copy of a mystery I want to read - or big.

This week, I decided because of the way time falls (I'm less busy this week, next week I'm tied up with volunteer work Saturday, the weather's good right now and it might not be later on), even though this is just the end of the first week, I am getting a big treat.

There is a smallish city to the south of me that has fantastic shopping. A couple of quilt shops, many antique stores, some of those stores that sell "stuff you don't need" (but that is, for me at least, life-enriching). So I'm going to take tomorrow and go shopping and just walk around the stores and if I see something I can use or that I want, I'm going to buy it.

(This is also predicated on the fact that I received a nice-sized check - payment for something I did a long time ago but suspected I was never going to see the money for - so it's "found money" in my book. And though I usually put "found money" in my savings account, this once I'm just going to enjoy blowing it.)

There's also a nice restaurant there with good pie. And I'm going to get a slice of pie. (Another rule of the game: if I want something more than the "fun calories" for a given day, I can "bank" for it by reducing the "fun calories" on adjacent days. So I'm doing that.)

I'm so looking forward to going. I have some research work to do this afternoon but if I get that done, I won't even need to come in tomorrow - so I can spend the whole day on me.

Part of it is the pleasure of being away from my usual haunts...one of the things about being "away" is that people can't call you up semi-last-minute and ask you to do something (I get that a lot. Don't know if I have needy friends or if I have an invisible "sucker" tattoo on my forehead, but I often get called in the evening to do something for the next day, something I don't particularly want to do).

Part of it is all the possibility - so many things to look at. I like antique shops particularly because of the chances of seeing something I've never seen before (I do not feel that way about the mall). All of the things I could consider buying and taking home with me.

Part of it is getting to spend a day with my own thoughts - not having to entertain anyone else, not having to be "on stage" with teaching or leading youth group or anything. My only responsibility (well, outside of the normal social niceties which I'd regard anyway) is to me, and my own contentment. Selfish? Maybe. But it's just one day now and then.

Part of it - especially in the quilt shops - is being around people who are enthusiastic about something I'm enthusiastic about. Who share my interest. Who can't wait to show me something they think I'd love, or that they love themselves.

At any rate: I promise not to become a tiresome diet-blogger. This may be the last time I mention this (unless it works great guns and I get to put up a very self-congratulatory post in a couple of months). But it seems to be something that will work for me, without feeling too much like I've locked myself in a cage with a chocolate cake sitting just out of my reach on a table, and I have to sit and see it and smell it every day while I gnaw on celery and Rye-Krisps. It's a lot easier to turn something down when I tell myself, "You could have this, or you could have a couple squares of Green and Black's Maya Gold after dinner" because it gives me the opportunity. (And it gives me something to look forward to; I very much need things to look forward to or I lose stamina fast.)