Food Flashback

Something weird is happening to me.  First, I haven't felt like blogging lately.  The last few days when it crossed my mind to blog I felt like, eh, I'll pass.  Then today, with the food.  Ugh.  Before I get into that I'll tell you some good stuff that I did so the food doesn't look quite so bad.  Though it is.  Bad.

I last wrote on Wednesday so Thursday is where I'll start.  Thursday was a gym day and the first time I ran since the half-marathon last Sunday.  I hopped on the treadmill with an idea to run 25-30 minutes.  Since I'm no longer training for a run I figured I'd run based on time and not distance.  I ran between 4.5 and 5.0, with a brief stint at 5.5 for about 25 minutes and felt good.  The running felt easy and almost effortless, which was nice.  Since I'm running for such a short amount of time I think I'll start to push myself a bit on the speed.  After the run I did legs/shoulders/core work.  Squats, lunges, shoulder presses, etc.  I had a really good workout and managed to get it done in an hour, stretching included.  Miguel was putting dinner on the table when I walked in the door.  Nice.

Friday (yesterday) I went to the gym and rode the upright bike for 25 minutes, still doing level 6, random.  And it was, dare I say, not all that challenging.  I decided it's probably time to up it to level 7.  Or increase my rpm plan.  Either one would work.  After that I did back/biceps/core work.  I decided to do assisted pullups first and really decrease the amount of assistance.  I've been doing 150 pound offset and dropped it to 135.  I couldn't do the same amount of reps but at least I feel a little more respectable with the offset.  I'd like to get it down below 100 maybe by the end of the year. 

A quick side-word about the plank.  I usually do them on bent elbows, like this picture here on the left.  But I read that this is not a "true plank."  And that a true plank is with your elbows straight, as in the upper part of a push-up.  So I decided to do one of my two planks with straight elbows.

I held the straight elbow plank for the same amount of time I normally hold the plank, 40 seconds, and I didn't notice that much difference.  If anything the straight elbow plank seemed easier overall.  Anyway, enough about all that.  It's time to talk about food.

So today I ate almost a pint of ben & jerry's ice cream.  I basically only stopped because I was starting to feel a bit sick to my stomach.  It was sweet overkill.  And then, a few hours later, I ate fast food.  Fast.  Food.  I haven't done that in a while.  At least not like this - for no good reason.  I wasn't in a hurry and I ate it basically by myself.  That's old behavior.  I went to Jack in the Box, which I like to say with a thick Spanish accent, Yack in de Box.  Anyway, I had two tacos and an order of onion rings.  Ugh.

Now this is the type of thing that does more damage psychologically than physically.  I just end up feeling crappy about it for days, long after the calories are burned off.  Hopefully that won't happen this time, hopefully I've gotten better at letting things like this go.  I'm glad I'm going on a long bike ride tomorrow because, A - I can tell myself I was just carb-loading and, B - I will balance the ton of calories with a ton of work.  Oh, and let's not forget C - exercise usually clears out the brain.

Writing about this is not easy.  I want to be fit Michelle, healthy Michelle.  I want to be a Michelle that doesn't do these types of things.  I'm embarrassed.  I recently was out to eat and considered getting dessert and one of the women I was with said, "it's a good thing you look so good or I'd be disgusted right now."   I broke that down to mean that if I was fat it would be disgusting that I was eating a brownie sundae.  Maybe that's one of her tools for resisting crappy food, to think of it as disgusting (maybe I should try that).

Anyway, I don't know why I just told that little story, maybe because I've thought about it a few times since.  Or maybe because I think you will be disgusted by me.  Or maybe because I'm disgusted by me.  That's not true though, I'm not.  Disappointed, yes.  And wondering why.  One thing that occurs to me is sleep.  I have been staying up way too late and these last few days I've been feeling tired.  Of course it's 1:15am but I had to get this off my chest.  I'm feeling like a very "real" person today.  Being real ain't all it's cracked up to be.

I'm off to bed now.  Can't wait for tomorrow's bike ride to make everything right again.