It's not the food. Healthy food can be (and in the case of my meal plan, IS) good.
It's not feeling hungry all the time. I got over that in about two days, and honestly I'm perfectly satisfied with the amount of food I'm eating now.
It's not that I'm craving cookies. Ok, I WAS craving cookies, and I may or may not have eaten a couple (TWO but it was TWO DIFFERENT DAYS. ONE COOKIE EACH), but that craving has finally subsided as well.
It's not that I can't have fun at parties. I had a lovely time at a party on Friday, and I didn't stuff myself with food as I usually do when I drink booze (with diet Coke). People who know me know I don't even like booze that much so it's a great excuse NOT to drink.
It's because I. FUCKING. HATE. COOKING.
Before I started this diet/exercise plan, I didn't care for cooking. I found it a mere annoyance, but also realized sometimes it could be fun. I don't put baking in the same category as cooking - I used to love to bake and not particularly care to cook. Now I have an active (and growing) hatred of cooking. Why?
1. I have to cook EVERY DAY. The way the meal plan is structured, I always seem to be preparing something, whether it be multiple servings of lunch that I'll take to work or a dinner I'm going to eat right away. Even though I get 2-4 portions out of each cooking batch, IT SEEMS LIKE I AM NEVER NOT COOKING. JUST ONCE I'd like to heat something up in the goddamned microwave and sit on my couch and be eating within 2 minutes.
2. If I have to chop another fucking onion I'm going to throw myself in front of a bus. Every goddamned meal takes onions, AND I LIKE THEM but SWEET JESUS half my day is spent chopping them. Or bell peppers. Or bok choy. OR EVEN FRUIT. I'm developing carpal tunnel in my cutting hand. There's a reason I pay more for the pre-chopped broccoli and cauliflower - I just wish there was a pre-cut option for every goddamned fruit, vegetable, animal, meat substitute, or whatever else I have to eat. I will pay top dollar for you to come over and fucking cut all my produce for me.
3. IT'S TOO HOT. Maybe it's just me, but having the stove and the rice cooker and the crock pot and a curling iron and a mechanical cow and a flame thrower all on at once makes me sweat like a dirty old man. I have my AC on and it's 70 outside because my apartment has taken on the ambient temperature of whatever the fuck is on my stove.
When my meal plan says something like "Snack: apple and cashews" I get so fucking excited because there's no prep involved. I've never been excited about a goddamned apple before. Bake chicken? Fuck no, that shit's going in the crock pot, where I can leave it and go do something. That and I've never baked a piece of meat that didn't turn out too dry, undercooked or shitty in some other way.
Here's a list of things I like better than cooking:
studying civil procedure
cleaning the litter box
driving on the 405
going to the dentist
cleaning my apartment
waking up to go to work
not being able to eat cookies
looking for parking in West Hollywood
sitting next to a hobo on the train
having a hangnail
doing laundry
However, cooking still tops:
anything to do with needles
being around children
the existence of Justin Bieber
Country music
90% of the drivers in LA county
people with ironic handlebar moustaches
Arkansas
Monday, July 13, 2015
Monday, July 6, 2015
GETTING OFF MY LAZY ASS, WEEK 1
During my recent bout with the black plague, I finally decided I needed to go to a doctor when I got winded and lightheaded walking back to my car from work and had a full-on coughing fit. Before he forced me to take electronic bong hits of Albuterol and some steroid to fix my ailing lungs, he did what all doctors do - he weighed me. For the last, oh, year, I've been avoiding weighing myself or seeing my weight at the doctor, and doing a pretty damn good job of it. I figure if my clothes still fit and I'm happy with how I look, I don't need a number on a scale to make me feel bad.
Well, my clothes are fitting too tightly and I don't like how I look right now, so I suppose it was time for me to actually (accidentally) look at the scale. And boy, was I large and in charge. I was 10lbs heavier than normal and had reached a number I swore I never would, and at that moment I decided I needed some serious motivation to actually eat better and work out. Such motivation for me comes in the form of either a) lost income or b) shame. I chose both.
My lovely friend Manda (who has a blog, This Fit Blonde) moved to Singapore like a jerkface, but luckily she's still accessible via FitOrbit, an online training and diet site. When it comes to accountability, I'm vaguely scared of her, EVEN FROM 20 HOURS AWAY, so this was perfect. I plunked down $60 for a month of her telling me exactly what to eat and how to work out, and creepily monitoring me from another continent in the process.
I started on July 1, nice and easy to remember. It's been almost a full week. Here's my current outlook:
Day 1 - I get a grocery list emailed to me so I can get the foods I'm supposed to be eating in the next week. I spent like 20 minutes in the produce department. Seriously. I started to worry that the employees thought I was stealing things, because I just kept picking up more and more produce like some sort of zookeeper. Some of the things were normal, like strawberries and cucumbers and broccoli, and then there were the not-so-normal. Ginger root? No thanks, I've got powdered ginger in my spice rack at home. That's going to do whether you like it or not.
When I get home I realize that I have to take this food to work, since Starbucks and the fast food Indian place aren't on my meal plan. So I have to start cooking.
If you know me at all, you know I hate cooking. I'm not bad at it; in fact, I'm pretty good at it, but I despise taking the time to do all the little nuances of making a meal. To me, "cooking" is putting things in the crock pot and turning it on. Having to make different things in different pots is just more than I can fucking handle.
At one point I had a rice cooker, a sautee pan and something else all going at the same time. I kept telling myself "you're cooking for 3 days, you get to heat and microwave this for the rest of the week!" but it wasn't necessarily making it better. You know what's the easiest thing to make? FRUIT SALAD. You know what's the most annoying thing to do? CHOPPING A FUCKTON OF FRUIT. Ugh.
The meal plan even tried to make me cook every day. Oh hell no, meal plan, I'm eating the same thing for 3 days and then I'll make the new thing, like hell I'm cooking every night. And my laziness got the better of me a few times - steamed broccoli? That takes too long. I'm just eating it raw.
Exercise - I may have mentioned I just recovered from the black plague, which took quite a toll on my already weak-ass lungs. I have an inhaler now, which would normally be for exercise but instead is for any slight exertion that causes me to cough uncontrollably. Not great for someone who is looking to get in shape.
The first workout was spin class, which I thought was a little heavy for someone who had just nearly died and also hadn't worked out in a hot second, but I went for it. I made it through 30 minutes before my coughing began to cause people to look concerned, so I left in shame and hit the inhaler.
I'm still (5 days later) coughing when I walk up too many stairs or walk too quickly, so I'm not sure how the cardio portion of this is going to go - but I can do weights just fine. Hope that works.
THE COOKIE - Despite being very good and sticking to the diet nearly verbatim (with exceptions for the 4th of July), I have been hit with an unshakeable craving for a chocolate chip cookie. At all times. I would shank a man to get a cookie. I think about them in my sleep. I think about them at work. I think about them when I eat my fruit - my deliciously inadequate fruit that no matter how hard it tries, cannot become chocolate.
The food they have me slaving over is actually quite good, and after the first day of nearly dying of hunger I do now feel satisfied after most meals, so I can't complain that I'm eating only raw oats and a single stalk of celery, but DEAR GOD, THE COOKIE. It's like heroin. It follows me wherever I go. Pictures of cupcakes are becoming like pornography, and Pinterest is nearly out of the question right now. Before the diet I would crave an Indian buffet or pad thai, but never desserts. But sweet merciful mother of god, cookies are all I can think of.
Thankfully, no cookies have been in my grab area (criminal law joke) since I started, but all it takes is me asking a Starbucks employee very nicely to remove one from behind the protective glass from whence it sits.
Do I have the willpower??
Well, my clothes are fitting too tightly and I don't like how I look right now, so I suppose it was time for me to actually (accidentally) look at the scale. And boy, was I large and in charge. I was 10lbs heavier than normal and had reached a number I swore I never would, and at that moment I decided I needed some serious motivation to actually eat better and work out. Such motivation for me comes in the form of either a) lost income or b) shame. I chose both.
My lovely friend Manda (who has a blog, This Fit Blonde) moved to Singapore like a jerkface, but luckily she's still accessible via FitOrbit, an online training and diet site. When it comes to accountability, I'm vaguely scared of her, EVEN FROM 20 HOURS AWAY, so this was perfect. I plunked down $60 for a month of her telling me exactly what to eat and how to work out, and creepily monitoring me from another continent in the process.
I started on July 1, nice and easy to remember. It's been almost a full week. Here's my current outlook:
Day 1 - I get a grocery list emailed to me so I can get the foods I'm supposed to be eating in the next week. I spent like 20 minutes in the produce department. Seriously. I started to worry that the employees thought I was stealing things, because I just kept picking up more and more produce like some sort of zookeeper. Some of the things were normal, like strawberries and cucumbers and broccoli, and then there were the not-so-normal. Ginger root? No thanks, I've got powdered ginger in my spice rack at home. That's going to do whether you like it or not.
When I get home I realize that I have to take this food to work, since Starbucks and the fast food Indian place aren't on my meal plan. So I have to start cooking.
If you know me at all, you know I hate cooking. I'm not bad at it; in fact, I'm pretty good at it, but I despise taking the time to do all the little nuances of making a meal. To me, "cooking" is putting things in the crock pot and turning it on. Having to make different things in different pots is just more than I can fucking handle.
At one point I had a rice cooker, a sautee pan and something else all going at the same time. I kept telling myself "you're cooking for 3 days, you get to heat and microwave this for the rest of the week!" but it wasn't necessarily making it better. You know what's the easiest thing to make? FRUIT SALAD. You know what's the most annoying thing to do? CHOPPING A FUCKTON OF FRUIT. Ugh.
The meal plan even tried to make me cook every day. Oh hell no, meal plan, I'm eating the same thing for 3 days and then I'll make the new thing, like hell I'm cooking every night. And my laziness got the better of me a few times - steamed broccoli? That takes too long. I'm just eating it raw.
Exercise - I may have mentioned I just recovered from the black plague, which took quite a toll on my already weak-ass lungs. I have an inhaler now, which would normally be for exercise but instead is for any slight exertion that causes me to cough uncontrollably. Not great for someone who is looking to get in shape.
The first workout was spin class, which I thought was a little heavy for someone who had just nearly died and also hadn't worked out in a hot second, but I went for it. I made it through 30 minutes before my coughing began to cause people to look concerned, so I left in shame and hit the inhaler.
I'm still (5 days later) coughing when I walk up too many stairs or walk too quickly, so I'm not sure how the cardio portion of this is going to go - but I can do weights just fine. Hope that works.
THE COOKIE - Despite being very good and sticking to the diet nearly verbatim (with exceptions for the 4th of July), I have been hit with an unshakeable craving for a chocolate chip cookie. At all times. I would shank a man to get a cookie. I think about them in my sleep. I think about them at work. I think about them when I eat my fruit - my deliciously inadequate fruit that no matter how hard it tries, cannot become chocolate.
The food they have me slaving over is actually quite good, and after the first day of nearly dying of hunger I do now feel satisfied after most meals, so I can't complain that I'm eating only raw oats and a single stalk of celery, but DEAR GOD, THE COOKIE. It's like heroin. It follows me wherever I go. Pictures of cupcakes are becoming like pornography, and Pinterest is nearly out of the question right now. Before the diet I would crave an Indian buffet or pad thai, but never desserts. But sweet merciful mother of god, cookies are all I can think of.
Thankfully, no cookies have been in my grab area (criminal law joke) since I started, but all it takes is me asking a Starbucks employee very nicely to remove one from behind the protective glass from whence it sits.
Do I have the willpower??
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