The Athena Diaries

So I started doing the 5 or 6 small meals a day thing, which helps me control my eating more. I'm less likely to eat impulsively if I have a small amount of food throughout the day, and my willpower is stronger. I know it's healthier, but I've never been able to pull it off because I'd be teaching classes all day, so it was HUGE breakfast, small fast midday meal, HUGE FATTENING and DESPERATELY LARGE AFTER WORK SNACK, and then supper. I could maintain this crappy eating style because I was on my feet all day. Now I'm on my butt all day.


So far, the scale hasn't budged. But I feel thinner. Maybe that's just hunger. Couple of things.

1) There are two required meetings that I go to each week and so far, everytime I've gone they've had some sort of food there. It's not, like, low-fat yogurt and granola. No, it's like muffins, or bagels and Shmear or birthday cake. Yikes. I've found that if I eat a quick snack before the meeting it's much easier to say, "No thanks," I'm tempted to say, if asked, for my birthday, I'd like a nice tofu salad and bowls so that everyone can share.

2) There are a distressing amount of people here with large bowls of candy on their desks. It's always a huge variety of candy, too, meaning that no matter how quickly I avert my eyes, they are bound to settle on something that I truly L-L-LOVE. Everytime I see one of these bowls, I want to throttle their owner.
DON'T YOU KNOW? Can't you tell? How poor my willpower is? PUT THIS AWAY!

Or, maybe I'll just put on my big girl panties and deal with it. It's temptation. When I'm not trying to cut 15 pounds for a 64K run I might try one now and then. Meanwhile, I have to learn that not everything that tastes good has to be eaten nowNOWNOW and, I can abstain.

3) The way the small meal thing works is that you don't skip the small meals. EVER. Yesterday I was to have lunch with a friend, and she was about an hour later than I expected. By the time she showed up, I was ready to gnaw on my arm. I felt sick and angry at the world and thinking to myself, Oh, so this is hunger. Hunger sucks.

4) I had SparkPeople to make a little quick strength routine for me, using my bodyweight. It includes exercises I have traditionally avoided, like lunges. So, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I shut the door for 15 minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon, and do them in my 6 x 12 office. Everything thinks the decorative rug I put down is just pretty, but what it is is very cushiony for doing floor exercises. I've arranged furniture to do this. The routine is simple, 2 sets of 12-15 reps:

• Pushups, Plank (60 seconds hold, not reps), back extension, crunches, and crunches with a twist (morning)
• Forward lunges, squats, Calf raises, then stretching (afternoon)

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I run during lunch. M-W-F I'm going to try to speedwalk during lunch. Sweet Baboo insists that I should be running more, but I'm also running Friday evenings and Sundays, so I'm okay, I think. Occasionally, I'll probably miss a workout, and once the days get longer and start heating up I'll have to switch running to the morning before work, I guess. For now, this works.

BTW, Sweet Baboo did get the promotion. Shhhhhh. It hasn't been formally announced yet.

I bought this new oatmeal that we found at the local grocery story, it's Kroger brand Active Lifestyle Oatmeal. It had a lot of fiber and was on sale and had enticing pictures on the front. Go ahead and skip it; it's fairly bland. I'll finish what we bought, but I like Quaker's Simple Harvest oatmeal much better.

I'm learning a lot about psychotic disorders and symptoms, and pretty soon they'll begin training me on doing neuropsychological assessment, which sounds very cool. Meanwhile, I accidentally left my door open about a foot today and SMILE! guy stopped and talked to me for nearly 20 minutes. Of all the skills I've learned so far, extricating myself from conversations for which I do not have time are not one of them. Need to study this.

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