Breakfast, Etc.

Breakfast: A granola-type mixture. It’s pretty darn good.

I took one Nature Valley Honey n Oats packet (which is two bars) and crumbled it up. I added a sprinkling of Almond Accents Slivered Almonds, craisins, and added about three spoonfuls of plain yogurt, and then drizzled honey over all of it. Mixed it up, then added half a green apple, chopped, into the bowl. It is tasty.

I’m trying to eat it slowly so that I see how full I’m going to be after eating it. I’m used to some sort of bread with breakfast but I’m hoping the granola will count, and that the almonds will help with the fullness too. We’ll see. If not, I can always whip up an egg (substitute) or have a piece of fruit to go with it. If I need it, I’ve only had like five bites of my breakfast. Settle.

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Like many attempting to lose weight, this is not the first time I’ve done this. Last time, I was fairly successful, but then I let life get me down. Anyway, last time I also did a fair bit of writing, but it was all in private, non-online journals (Gasp! Writing! With a pen!) that I kept to myself and hoped my parents never accidentally opened.

I decided to go back and read my previous thoughts, and see what still works and what isn’t so great this time around.

From my first entry, February 2007.

“Maybe some days I’ll count calories. Some days I won’t. I’ll go to the gym, but not every day. I need to let go of strict rule and just focus on…focusing. Rules make me want to break them. I need to make better choices.”

“You can’t view this as a punishment. This is a great thing I’m doing for myself. I should be just as proud of this as I am about applying to grad schools. Losing this amount of weight (Editors note: I was just at the beginning, I hadn’t lost anything yet!) is impressive and it will drastically improve my life. I am proud of myself. “

“It feels like going to the gym is the equality of saying ‘I’m fat and I need to lose weight’…GYM = living healthfully and treating my body positively!”

Ah, and that was only part of day one. And, if you would please be so kind as to excuse weird sentence structure and switching “you” and “I” quite often. They say write what you know, and one thing I don’t know is any formal style of writing. But I know how I felt, and how I feel now. Looking back at all of that, I definitely believed it for a while, but in the end I did get obsessive over calorie counting - for meals and exercise.

There are definitely things there I need to remember, though - especially the part about this not being a punishment. I had honestly forgotten about that, and it was good to read it now. I’ve never been good at doing healthy things for myself, because I just don’t have the self-respect or self-worth that I should - and then of course we beat ourselves up for not having said self-respect or self-worth and the cycle continues. Le sigh.

So for me, it’s really about finding the balance between taking it easy but still focusing on what I’m doing, eating, and exercising. It all matters, but in the end I matter most, right? Whatever that means.