It’s Day 6 of the Gunnar Challenge.
This might be the longest I’ve lasted on a diet/exercise plan without making fun of it, cheating on it, giving up, or just convincing myself that this is too mainstream for me to participate in.
I am doing okay for me. I am not doing perfect. I thought about exercising all day yesterday. I thought about exercising so much I swear I broke out into a sweat while making dinner. I have promised to exercise every day, but I knew it would be a promise I couldn’t keep. I started looking around at the house thinking of things that might be able to count for exercise. If I squat while picking up stuff off the floor? Sweeping the shedding dog’s hair up?
The cat brought a baby bluejay into the house and I had to find a box and make a makeshift nest and bring it food and water and worry about the cat jumping in the box and killing it afterall. I chased the cat with a broom. How many calories were burned? I went up and down the stairs in the house at least 20 times. Calories burned? I start thinking about whether I can ‘deserve’ something if I haven’t expended energy.
At first I thought this whole online food diary was the answer to my sloth. If I had to examine in detail every last bit of physical effort I put into the day, what would happen? How much energy do I expend? If you stared at yourself naked in a full length mirror in the bathroom trying to find a difference from a week ago how much energy did that take?
I try to cheer myself on I have 56 more days of this challenge thing. I try and tell myself things like “remember when your roll of fat was so big you couldn’t see below it? Well now you can see below it. Isn’t that nice? It’s still a big role of fat. I think the problem with me and my fatness is really I have no imagination to see myself any other way. I don’t remember how I looked when I lived in Asia. I don’t remember what I looked like before I got fat, happy , and content. And other than that impending doom of gestational diabetes coming back in a pun intended big way, I can’t think of a good reason not to be fat. It cuts down on the come hither stares. A 40-something fluffy girl has the amazing freedom of being ignored. How many calories are burned by entering things into my online food diary? Do online food diaries lead to OCD?
I think about how many calories I burn doing all sorts of things. How many were burned washing dishes? How many were burned arguing with my kids to pick up their clothes off the bathroom floor? How many were burned having sex? Does the food and exercise diary have specifics for that? Like can I plug ‘sex’ into the online food diary and have it come up with options of which positions optimize for conscious calorie burners like myself?
I weigh in for the first time in a few hours. Wish me luck. And I’m hoarding calories to ration out a vodka gimlet a night.
