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Welcome to my blog. The purpose here is simple: to chronicle my thoughts, actions, plans, and goals in getting healthy in the year 2017. Feel free to look around and offer encouragement or suggestions.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Oh! What A Difference The Meat Makes

Of all the things I've given up, I miss my meat the most. Anyone who knows me knows that I have an affection for animal flesh that borders on the verge of unhealthy obsession. Sure, I can't stand the consistency of animal fat and you couldn't come off of enough green to make me eat chicken skin. Well, you could, but it would have to be a HEFTY chunk of change. In a way, that's been a saving grace for me. I don't really enjoy fried chicken because all the crunchy tasty is attached to icky skin. I avoid some of the more popular cuts of beef and pork because they're extra fatty. But nice, lean, muscle mass cooked to perfection? YUM. It saddened me to restrict my meat intake to twice a week. I really struggled with it, but I kept it up for over a year. It seems that may have been just enough time to forget why I cut back on my meat to begin with. Last week, I broke my eating pattern to have meat every day. I told myself that I was experimenting. I told myself that maybe I could include more meat in my weekly planning. I told myself that perhaps my original logic for cutting out the meat was flawed in the first place. I told myself a lot of things. In reality it was all a cover for the fact that I missed meat and really, really, really wanted it. Every day.

So I indulged.

And it showed...on the scale. A lot.

Now to be fair, I'm still not sure it's so much the meat itself as it was the way I was eating it. It wasn't as if I was eating grilled chicken breasts all week. I was eating Mexican, burgers, Chinese, chicken nuggets...basically anything my greedy little carnivore heart desired. I mean, if the goal was clean eating, I was eating as smutty as it gets. Add on a few sodas and some sweets and I found a lot of my hard work blown. To the discordant tune of ten pounds. Crazy what a week can do, right? So THIS week I'm back to my schedule...even if it is difficult, not to mention tedious, to explain to people.

This leads me to another problem I'm encountering. With my dog walking, I am out of the house a solid three hours in the middle of the day and any time outside of that has been dedicated to sleeping. It's tricky, since I want to avoid getting into bed much beyond 3pm, because then I can't get enough sleep. Then I drag at work and leave exhausted. Trouble is I get so focused on the fact that I have to sleep that I don't sleep and I leave exhausted anyway. So I nap BEFORE walking dogs, just so I can stay on my feet. Long story short, I don't get time to cook, what with all the sleeping...or trying to sleep. And I'll have less once I dedicate myself to hitting the gym with my workout partner to be. This means I have far fewer healthy options at my disposal and have been relying on fast food and quick fixes. This is also a contributor to my ten pound slide. I keep telling myself (a theme this posting) that one...maybe two... good night's rest will put me back on track and I can get my cooking done before my walking and then sleep like a baby after the gym. That's been the plan, anyway, for the past few weeks and I've yet to implement it. I'm thinking of other options. Maybe I need to cook all my meals for the week on Friday or Saturday. I hesitate to say Saturday because it really is the only day out of seven on which I can be social. I'd hate to give up my only chance at human interaction to spend time slaving in the kitchen. Or I can suck it up and run on less sleep. I've done it before, but I get cranky and that can tend to be...unpleasant...for those whom I work with. But I hesitate to do that because I don't want to trade one unhealthy behavior for another. Plus, sleep deprivation is counterproductive in the weight loss game. Anybody have any suggestions?

1 comment:

  1. My best advice: 15 minutes. You can do anything for 15 minutes. Put beans/rice on to cook and veg in the oven to roast for meals that will get you through a couple days. Work out with weights/video/whatever for 15 minutes in the living room. It seems little, but it adds up, and it's better than giving up your whole Saturday. I've been working out and doing housework in 15-20 minute increments while totally exhausted and it's helping me get my groove back.

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