Next time you’re feeling like overeating, take a moment and watch this animation for a little while.
Sometimes just seeing the phrase, “I love you,” is enough to distract me from eating and helps me keep on track. It turns out that sometimes I try to eat instead of just letting myself experience positive emotions.
Animated GIF via: * Your daily gif blog *: For That Special Someone!
I just came off two weeks of severe sickness. I’ve worn a indent into the couch in the living room and every garbage bin in the house is filled with tissues and empty Mucinex bottles. I’m still coughing and stuffy, but now I’m finally able to stand without dizziness and I have enough energy to turn on the computer and push a few keyboard keys. How did I eat while I was sick?
Quite poorly, actually…
I usually stay away from juices because they have a lot of calories and don’t really fill me up. While I was sick however, I craved orange juice. It was one of the foods my mother gave me plenty of when I was sick because the vitamin C was thought to help with colds back in the Seventies. While I lay on the couch, unable to do anything more than read some comic books and gossip magazines, I drank almost a gallon of orange juice.
Probably not the healthiest choice available to me.
What should I have done? Shouldn’t I just stop trying to diet when I’m sick? No. Following my diet plan would have probably helped me get healthy quicker, but I abandoned it at the first moment of ailment. Why?
Comfort.
Comfort food has its name for a very important reason. It makes us feel a little better. Did the orange juice and the Tyson Chicken Cordon Blue Bites make my sinuses drain? No. Did the french fries and cheeseburger make my muscle aches go away? No. Did the macaroni and cheese ease my dizziness? No. How exactly did all that food make me feel better?
It didn’t. Comfort food makes my BRAIN feel better not my BODY.
So, how do I fix this? How do I make my brain feel better without abusing my body?
There are several ways to comfort myself without stuffing my face. Firstly, is to nurture myself WITHOUT food. Here is a list of things that make me feel comforted.
Giving myself this sort of nurturing will help me need comfort food less. What do I do about those cravings for comfort food, when they do come?
Macaroni and cheese, chicken soup and orange juice used to be the foods that I ate when I was sick. In fact, they were the staples of my diet this last time around. They don’t actually cure me, however, although there is a case for chicken soup. All they do is make me feel better emotionally.
The only way to solve the comfort food problem is to teach my body to crave new comfort foods.
Next time I’m sad, sick or upset, instead of turning to high fat, high carb and high salt foods, I need to turn to healthy foods. If every time I got sick, I ate apples, I would start to crave apples every time I got sick. Comfort food isn’t some magical combination of ingredients that makes me instantly calm. It’s the mere act of repetition that makes it comforting to me. I need to retrain my body to crave healthy food instead of what it currently craves.
I suspect this will take a while before the new cravings take hold and override the years of abuse I’ve done to myself. As soon as I’m able to make that leap, I’ll tell you about it.
For the next few weeks every Monday, I’ll share a playlist of songs that I have in my Workout Playlist on my iPhone. I’ll include clips to listen to, where you can buy them and why I have them in my list. Just so you know, I do get a portion of the sales of these songs from Amazon, so if you buy them, you’re helping me out.
Less Talk More Rokk by Freezepop: I love this song because of the title. I do A LOT of talking about weight loss and fitness just because I write here and I need a constant reminder that I need less talk and more ACTION. Plus, I love Guitar Hero and playing this song reminds me of the game.
I Like To Move It by Will.I.Am: This song was from the movie, Madagascar. If you haven’t seen the movie, then this song might not be as inspirational to you, but seeing all those meerkats dancing to this song made me want to get up and dance myself. I truly DO like to move it!
Destination Calabria by Alex Gaudino Feat. Crystal Waters: I love the lyrics to this song, “Follow me and lets go to the place where we belong and leave our troubles at home. Come with me we can go to a paradise of love and joy a – destination unknown!” I also like the sound of cheering in the background. Sometimes I pretend they’re cheering for me.
Thin! by SkinnySongs: This week’s song from the Skinny Songs album is a good reminder of all the things I need to do to be thin.
Working Overtime by New Order: Sometimes I let work get in the way of the things that I want. I especially don’t want to get to be like the person in this song, so it reminds me that I need to focus on my complete self.
I Can’t Stop by When In Rome: This song is great to listen to when you’re thinking of quitting your workout before it’s completed. The chorus keeps repeating “can’t stop” over and over. It keeps my feet pounding on the treadmill instead of pressing the stop button.
Walk Down by Kyau Vs. Albert: I love this song. It sounds pretty, has a good beat and encourages me to walk a little faster to “try and touch” the singer of the song.
Beautiful Day by U2: The version of this song on my playlist is a Paul Oakenfold remix that is much more upbeat and a great song to run to, but this one has the same lyrics and is just as positive. I like to listen to it toward the end of my workout because by then, I actually believe that it IS a beautiful day!
Wonderful Life by Gwen Stefani: This song is a good cool down song because it’s a little slower in tempo. Here’s the history behind this song: Gwen wasn’t the first lead singer of No Doubt. John Spence was the original lead singer of No Doubt and in 1987, he committed suicide, leaving the Gwen to pick up the pieces. This song is about John and how he should have stuck around for long enough for him to see the success that they achieved.
Listen to the clips for these songs. If you find just one song this week that motivates you to exercise, then buy it and make it your powersong when you’re working out this week. I bet you’ll find that you’re more willing to get your butt to the gym and your workouts are easier.
As excellent as the Cool Running Couch to 5K Podcast [iTunes Link] is, I have to admit that I would MUCH rather listen to my own music. 
I dreamed of an iPhone app that would let me program intervals that would break into my workout playlist and tell me when it was time for me to run.
I got my wish with UltraTimer.
With UltraTimer, I was able to program in the Cool Running Couch-to-5K Running Plan so that it would tell me when to run. I could even record my own voice saying, “Increase speed to 5.0 mph.” This has been so helpful to me because I don’t have to look at the iPhone screen while I’m doing my workout. I just listen to the prompts that I recorded for myself.
I was worried that it might be difficult to use, but I found it incredibly easy and I was running with a program that only took me about five minutes to program, and that included recording the voice prompts. At the end of the workout, I even have a voice prompt that tells me that I did a good job and that I’m proud of myself.
There is even a way for me to export my workouts, so soon, I will share my running plan with you (since the Couch to 5K basically leaves you wondering what the heck to do if you’re a REAL beginner). If you own an iPhone, creating and downloading a running program just got a lot easier. Try out UltraTimer today!
A special thank you to Braidwood at Authentic Threads for reminding me of Alanis Morrisette’s song, Thank You.
In the first verse, she sings, “How ’bout stopping eating when I’m full up.” In fact, everything she says in the song is a healthy way of living, no matter who you are (unless those antibiotics are keeping you alive).
When that video came out, I remember thinking that Alanis was so brave for being willing to show herself to the world, nearly naked. She has said that she fought anorexia and bulimia when she was in her teens. She wrote the song, Perfect, to express how it felt to struggle with eating disorders.
She is a runner and completed the New York City Marathon last year in 4 hours, 28 minutes. She said running a marathon is, “An unbelievably harrowing and beautiful and moving and serene experience.”
Thank YOU, Alanis, for giving me another hero to remember when running and eating healthy gets difficult.
I remember being really worried about sweating too much when I first started working out. I had almost completely forgotten about that time, but a girl at Weight Watchers the other day reminded me of how I used to feel. She said:
I can think of any excuse not to exercise. Sometimes I think, “I’m too gross. I have to shower before I go to the gym.” Then after I shower, I think, “I just showered, I don’t want to get all sweaty and gross by working out.”
Hearing her talk about her excuses for not exercising reminded me of when I first started exercising at the gym during my lunch hour. I never had enough time to shower, so I followed this plan so that I wouldn’t end up being super stinky for the second half of my day.
Wear fresh workout clothes: I always had clean workout clothes every day. When I was in high school, we used to take our gym clothes home once a week, but that never worked for me because by the second workout, they would be too stinky. I always work out with CLEAN gym clothes.
Use antiperspirant: This might sound like a no-brainer, but you can’t believe how many women I would see at the gym head out to their workout without a fresh spray of anti-perspirant. Additionally, I would spray it on my trouble areas like the crooks of my arms (why do I sweat so much there?!), right under my jogging bra and other non-traditional areas.
Wash my face: I always sweat a lot on my face and hair. My hair is actually worse and the sweat will drip down from it onto my face. I always wash off my makeup before I workout to prevent breakouts. Plus, I don’t want my mascara running because of sweat.
Bring a hand towel when you workout: I was required to carry a towel around the gym at all times, so I used it on my face and neck to prevent too much sweat from collecting and starting to stink. It’s not the sweat that causes body odor, it’s the bacteria that grows in the damp areas. If you mop up as much sweat as you can, it will prevent the bacteria from growing.
After the workout, change as quickly as possible: Don’t sit around in your sweaty gym clothes. I was under a lunchtime constraint, so I would rush to the locker room so I could change quickly. This prevented any smelly bacteria from growing.
Dry off as much as you can with a towel: After I had taken off my gym clothes, I would go over my body once more with a fresh towel to dry off any more sweat on my body.
Reapply antiperspirant: After I dried off, I would reapply antiperspirant and even add perfume.
Drive back to the office with the window wide open, even in the winter: To keep myself from sweating in my office clothes, I would cool off by allowing the air to rush in the car window. In the summer, I turned the A/C on full blast the whole way home.
You can workout during your lunch hour, even if you don’t have time to shower. If a sweaty girl like me could do it, then you certainly can. Let go of all your excuses and fit that workout into your day!
Animated GIF via: three frames: The Lonely Guy starring Steve Martin
Shame on The New York Times for saying that Christina Hendricks is anything but the totally hot babe that she is. For their review of the red carpet for the Golden Globe Awards, their fashion critic wrote, “You don’t put a big girl in a big dress.” Apparently, only size zero is good enough for The New York Times.
Christina Hendricks is one of the stars of Mad Men and her curvy beauty makes all the men’s heads turn. What the frak could that fashion critic for the New York Times have been thinking?!! Just look at her give Betty the low down on the office here:
I first saw Christina Hendricks in the excellent science fiction series, Firefly, over eight years ago. She played the evil genius, Saffron, who nearly wiped out the brave crew of Firefly and almost outwitted Captain Malcolm Reynolds.
You can see her in her evil and busty glory here:
The next time a comment from someone makes you feel like your body doesn’t quite measure up, remember the idiotic fashion critic at The New York Times. There are always imbeciles out there whose sole goal in life is to bring other people down. Don’t let them decide how you feel about your body. Walk with the grace and swagger of Christina Hendricks and keep your head high.
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