765. the best laid plans o' mice and men...
Since puberty, I have been fat. The smallest pants size I consciously remember wearing was a size 14 in eighth grade. (It was a pair of cargo khakis. I loved those pants. I also ruined them by sitting on the track at one of my sister's band competitions with a guy I was crushing on at the time-so of course I'd wind up with black spots all over my ass.)
I have tried numerous times to lose weight, and have had mild success. I've lost and gained the same 10-20 pounds probably a million times. In 2014, shortly before joining my roller derby league, I lost around fifty pounds. Which, by the way, I proceeded to slowly pack back on (plus some), after I stopped tracking my food. That weight loss wouldn't have been sustainable anyway, as I had not changed my eating habits-I was just eating fewer calories' worth of the same garbage as always.
Throughout my entire adult life, while my weight has bounced around various definitions of fat (chunky, overweight, huge, obese, fatass-you name it, I've probably been called it), I've learned some valuable lessons about myself and my relationship with food and fitness. I've also been able to pinpoint my problems and downfalls in regards to dieting and working out. For example, as I said in the previous paragraph, I never tried to clean up my diet, I just ate smaller amounts of garbage foods. Another issue I have is that I'm a very all-or-nothing type of person. If I fail to keep up with my workout schedule, or I have a bad food day, I instantly give up and stop trying at all, even though I know that there will be bumps in the road and nothing will ever go as perfectly as we'd like. Rationally, I know that one bad day or one missed workout will not make or break my fitness journey, but I have never been able to hold myself to that sentiment when actively trying to lose weight and get healthier.
Another problem I've been fighting with is that I am a perpetual planner. I have tons of ideas and plans and goals and recipes and workout schedules (and and and...) written down or typed out or pinned-but I never actually get started. "Oh, I'll wait until the first of the month to start my workout schedule to make it easier." "I don't want to just throw out the snacks I already bought, even though they're all pretty unhealthy, so I'll wait until I've finished those." "I'll have to wait to get paid so I can go to the store and buy the ingredients for my meals." "I've got to have a full meal plan written out so I know what to buy, but for that I'll have to figure up calories and macros for each meal, and for that I'll need to break it down and figure out how many grams of protein and fat and carbs I actually need to have in my diet, and for that..."
See what I mean? That's how it's always been for me. (I'm pretty sure I'm also falling into the planning pitfall just by typing up this entry.)
Right now, I've been trying to research ways to clean up my diet so that any progress toward my goal weight can and will be sustainable, and all I am finding is information on the ketogenic diet or massively low-fat diets or other really restrictive diets. At 30, I've had enough experience with diets to know that if I don't get enough carbs, fats, or proteins, I feel run-down and shitty. So you can imagine the difficulty I'm having with finding appropriate food ideas. I don't know exactly what ratio of macros I do best with, and really I don't want to have to count macros or calories or anything like that. I just want to eat a cleaner, healthier diet, but have no idea where to start. I've thought about trying out a vegetarian or vegan meal plan, but adding in some chicken and other meat protein sources, just because I don't want to cut meat out entirely.
One other problem I have, which is also another reason I don't want to try and track my food this time around, is that I am stuck working night shift. I only work two to three nights a week, but it's super hard for me to bounce back and forth from sleeping during the day when I work to sleeping at night like a normal human when I'm off. It also makes it hard to get the right amount of food-since starting night shift, I've noticed that a lot of times, even when I am off work, I still only get one meal in each day. I snack, so I still get plenty of calories, but I don't have a defined breakfast/lunch/dinner schedule. Besides, eating lunch at or around midnight is irritating and strange, and when I get off work at 7:00a.m., I feel like I should be eating breakfast and not dinner. It feels weird, and besides all that, I don't know how I should track if I wanted to. Would I put in what I eat at midnight as lunch for the previous day, with whatever I eat when I get off work as dinner for the previous day, or would I track those items on the new day that starts at midnight like all of my tracking apps have wanted me to? It's confusing and I hate it. I wish I could win the lottery so I could give up my night shift job and go back to making a meager salary working normal-people hours M-F. (Actually, if I won the lottery, I'd go back to working in daycare but only work PRN. But that plan is another post for some other day.)
I'm going to try again to lose weight and up my fitness level. Hopefully it will be for the last time-I'm so tired of losing a little bit, feeling better about my body and myself, and then bouncing right back to around the same weight I've been for the last few years. I'd like to blog about my journey, or use Instagram to document it. To that end, I don't know if I should use this LJ or start up a separate blog, and the same goes for Instagram. I don't particularly want to have separate accounts for separate parts of my life, but I'm also not positive I want to share my before photos with everyone from real life who follows me on social media. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty comfortable with my body, but I'm also pretty positive at least half of my real life friends don't want or need to see it. The photos I have are pretty unforgiving-just me in a sports bra and a pair of undies. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Post the photos on your regular accounts and use them to document your progress, or make a new account?
I've also dabbled with the idea of vlogging my fitness journey. I tried it several years ago, but only managed to make about four videos before giving up. I think it would be fun to vlog, but I'm not sure I have what it takes. Eh, we'll see. I do have a much nicer camera now, as well as the ability to actually edit videos (the first time I tried, I had to do several takes of each video in an attempt to not have awkward pauses or moments where I stumbled over every single word. It was a nightmare.) so that would make things a lot better were I to try it again.
I'm not sure that there was really much of a point to this entry, aside from being an outlet for my diet-related ranting, so I'm going to end this here. I need to get to bed anyway.
I have tried numerous times to lose weight, and have had mild success. I've lost and gained the same 10-20 pounds probably a million times. In 2014, shortly before joining my roller derby league, I lost around fifty pounds. Which, by the way, I proceeded to slowly pack back on (plus some), after I stopped tracking my food. That weight loss wouldn't have been sustainable anyway, as I had not changed my eating habits-I was just eating fewer calories' worth of the same garbage as always.
Throughout my entire adult life, while my weight has bounced around various definitions of fat (chunky, overweight, huge, obese, fatass-you name it, I've probably been called it), I've learned some valuable lessons about myself and my relationship with food and fitness. I've also been able to pinpoint my problems and downfalls in regards to dieting and working out. For example, as I said in the previous paragraph, I never tried to clean up my diet, I just ate smaller amounts of garbage foods. Another issue I have is that I'm a very all-or-nothing type of person. If I fail to keep up with my workout schedule, or I have a bad food day, I instantly give up and stop trying at all, even though I know that there will be bumps in the road and nothing will ever go as perfectly as we'd like. Rationally, I know that one bad day or one missed workout will not make or break my fitness journey, but I have never been able to hold myself to that sentiment when actively trying to lose weight and get healthier.
Another problem I've been fighting with is that I am a perpetual planner. I have tons of ideas and plans and goals and recipes and workout schedules (and and and...) written down or typed out or pinned-but I never actually get started. "Oh, I'll wait until the first of the month to start my workout schedule to make it easier." "I don't want to just throw out the snacks I already bought, even though they're all pretty unhealthy, so I'll wait until I've finished those." "I'll have to wait to get paid so I can go to the store and buy the ingredients for my meals." "I've got to have a full meal plan written out so I know what to buy, but for that I'll have to figure up calories and macros for each meal, and for that I'll need to break it down and figure out how many grams of protein and fat and carbs I actually need to have in my diet, and for that..."
See what I mean? That's how it's always been for me. (I'm pretty sure I'm also falling into the planning pitfall just by typing up this entry.)
Right now, I've been trying to research ways to clean up my diet so that any progress toward my goal weight can and will be sustainable, and all I am finding is information on the ketogenic diet or massively low-fat diets or other really restrictive diets. At 30, I've had enough experience with diets to know that if I don't get enough carbs, fats, or proteins, I feel run-down and shitty. So you can imagine the difficulty I'm having with finding appropriate food ideas. I don't know exactly what ratio of macros I do best with, and really I don't want to have to count macros or calories or anything like that. I just want to eat a cleaner, healthier diet, but have no idea where to start. I've thought about trying out a vegetarian or vegan meal plan, but adding in some chicken and other meat protein sources, just because I don't want to cut meat out entirely.
One other problem I have, which is also another reason I don't want to try and track my food this time around, is that I am stuck working night shift. I only work two to three nights a week, but it's super hard for me to bounce back and forth from sleeping during the day when I work to sleeping at night like a normal human when I'm off. It also makes it hard to get the right amount of food-since starting night shift, I've noticed that a lot of times, even when I am off work, I still only get one meal in each day. I snack, so I still get plenty of calories, but I don't have a defined breakfast/lunch/dinner schedule. Besides, eating lunch at or around midnight is irritating and strange, and when I get off work at 7:00a.m., I feel like I should be eating breakfast and not dinner. It feels weird, and besides all that, I don't know how I should track if I wanted to. Would I put in what I eat at midnight as lunch for the previous day, with whatever I eat when I get off work as dinner for the previous day, or would I track those items on the new day that starts at midnight like all of my tracking apps have wanted me to? It's confusing and I hate it. I wish I could win the lottery so I could give up my night shift job and go back to making a meager salary working normal-people hours M-F. (Actually, if I won the lottery, I'd go back to working in daycare but only work PRN. But that plan is another post for some other day.)
I'm going to try again to lose weight and up my fitness level. Hopefully it will be for the last time-I'm so tired of losing a little bit, feeling better about my body and myself, and then bouncing right back to around the same weight I've been for the last few years. I'd like to blog about my journey, or use Instagram to document it. To that end, I don't know if I should use this LJ or start up a separate blog, and the same goes for Instagram. I don't particularly want to have separate accounts for separate parts of my life, but I'm also not positive I want to share my before photos with everyone from real life who follows me on social media. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty comfortable with my body, but I'm also pretty positive at least half of my real life friends don't want or need to see it. The photos I have are pretty unforgiving-just me in a sports bra and a pair of undies. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Post the photos on your regular accounts and use them to document your progress, or make a new account?
I've also dabbled with the idea of vlogging my fitness journey. I tried it several years ago, but only managed to make about four videos before giving up. I think it would be fun to vlog, but I'm not sure I have what it takes. Eh, we'll see. I do have a much nicer camera now, as well as the ability to actually edit videos (the first time I tried, I had to do several takes of each video in an attempt to not have awkward pauses or moments where I stumbled over every single word. It was a nightmare.) so that would make things a lot better were I to try it again.
I'm not sure that there was really much of a point to this entry, aside from being an outlet for my diet-related ranting, so I'm going to end this here. I need to get to bed anyway.