An interesting and quite sad article.
Still not doing quite so good as I was pre-wedding, I am afraid to report. Not eating badly, as usual, but just have an overwhelming sense of lack of balance and feelings of anxiety around all kinds of foodie issues and am beating myself up about it. I just wrote a huge long post on it all and then deleted it because really, musings on my disordered thinking have nothing to do with CRON at all... quite the reverse actually, as we all know. So I'm here, I'm reading blogs, I've linked back to some of the blogs I'd lost track of (hello Christina, Nenette!) but until I have a damn good CRON week and stop fretting, I think I'll be pretty quiet here.
With luck, that won't be too long...
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Hey Sara,
I know how you feel about beating yourself up over food. I've made a few bad food choices this week which have left me feeling like crap too. I'd encourage you to post your thoughts because what's the point of us only posting when we are doing well? We end up making CR look too perfect and easy. It's not! It's like April said: it's not hunger that's the biggest challenge, it's the social side of eating that's the hardest part. Now that we're getting a bit of summer it seems like everyone and their aunt wants to go out to eat. I just spent a lunch hour in Balls Bros watching my colleagues eat steak sandwiches and chips... but I'd rather save my calories for a nice meal with my boyfriend tomorrow than on some some trans fat laden pub food.
We live in a society of (largely unquestioned) unsustainable over-consumption. It's really difficult to do good CR in the face of that.
J
I'm just a bit embarrassed about having fallen back into "bad thoughts" about food again, is all. It hasn't been following CRON that's done it - but I'm getting angsty about not getting my 100%'s all the time, or rather not knowing I'm getting my 100%'s because I can't weigh and measure all the time (your portable scales sound great, maybe I should sneak those into my bag or something!), and I'm getting angsty about eating too much when the likelihood is that I'm not at all, but I think I am. Urgh! All this from the scales showing 114lbs on Monday morning when they showed 110lbs on Saturday (weekend cheese, bread and booze). It's... ridiculous. CRON is not about weight, but my thoughts are on weight all the time, and that is what I am ashamed to blog about. That, and my lack of discipline when it comes to the wine...
It's not shameful to be concerned about weight; it's a measure of how well we're doing at CR. Not only that, it's a marker that affects how we feel physically. If my weight goes up by 4-5 lbs (as it did this weekend too) I FEEL it. I feel sluggish, bloated, my clothes are tighter, I can't run as easily. Gaining 5 lbs in a weekend (water weight though some of it may be) has a much more drastic effect on my body and frame of mind than it does on my partner or even a larger woman. Proportionally, it's a much greater gain for me.
It's a number that has a has a lot of emotional significance for a lot of people. However as CRONies we have a better understanding than most about what it means and how our behaviour makes it rise and fall. It's a very personal and important marker and no one else should trivialise it or make you feel bad about caring about it.
The fact of the matter is that my (our?) calorie requirements really are that low. More than one meal out a week does make a huge difference to my weight. I simply can't eat the same size portions or calorie dense food as my boyfriend (or again, as someone bigger than me), I don't need it. It's excess and will cause me to gain weight. My body can't cope with excess. I need portions to be small, very small when it comes to calorie-dense foods like fatty cheese and bread.
Our world is just not set up to accommodate that requirement. The expectation is indulgence. Nearly every restaurant meal contains half or more of my daily calorie requirements. But still, I LOVE going out to eat and I LOVE good food. There’s the problem. It’s not that you’re obsessed with weight, it’s that we live in a society where one-size-fits-all over-consumption culture is the norm and *does not meet our needs*. I’d even say that food and drink portion sizes and nutrition information in restaurants are feminist issues. At the moment, if I go into a restaurant and want to order a reasonable sized dish of something tasty (not just a bland over-dressed salad) I immediately come up against barriers (they can’t do that, I’ll have to pay the same, whatever, order a starter and then have it brought early so I have to sit through a main course etc). The alternative is wasting food which I can’t abide given how many miles it’s clocked up to get to my table in the first place. This deserves a rant on my own blog…
Oh wow. Thank you so much for taking the time to write that and post that. I have to dash now (to the Great British Beer Festival with P and friends, no less *head-desk*), but... thank you. And I'll respond properly to it tomorrow. :-)
Sara, hang in there! I know how you feel. Last weekend when we were away and eating out all the time, it was a weird feeling to not really know what I was eating.
And the newness of being "just married" can be stressful too - you have a lot going on right now.
And if it helps you feel better, I'm sure there are plenty of us who wouldn't mind a ranty post here and there.
Thank you for the comment earlier! I do hope you feel better about things soon.
Oh yeah, weight and wine? Right there with you on both of those.
Thanks Christina. :-) Yeah, the wine. Another of my "issues", because I am aware I am drinking too much in any case recently, let alone too much for CR! Again, it is a social thing, something that P and I both enjoy, but something that I really want to rationalise and exercise some discipline on.
JD - you are so right about the slight extra weight making a huge difference in how I feel in my body. I really can feel those extra pounds, but I have been told for so long by everyone around me that it's my imagination and I can't possibly feel it that I've really started to believe it. And you've also hit the other problem spot on the head - I too love going out and I love good food. If I maintain discipline and restrict when I am alone, I can cope with going out or the ad hoc eating (and I've known this for years before I even knew about CR) - but it's been the lack of opportunity lately to excercise that discipline that has thrown me off course. I need to get back into the mindset that cheese and bread are fine for me in company and socially, but alone I am far better off physically and mentally eschewing them for my piles of beloved vegetables and that there is nothing wrong with wanting to eat like that.
Obviously all this is very trivial really... but this is my blog, so I hope anyone reading this won't judge my shallowness too harshly!
I really sympathize with the weight thing too. I'm 5'3" and I'm used to being 105, but lately I've been hovering around 108/9 and I really don't like the way I feel. Not because I think I look 'fat' but because I just don't feel right. My boyfriend not only thinks I'm crazy, he wants me to be 110. I feel like it's a constant struggle to make to him that I really *do* feel better at a lower weight and I'm not just neurotic.
Hi Sara
Hope you get your groove back soon. I just did a mini rollercoaster weight loss/weight gain this week, so I think all of this can be quite comical at times.
I wrote the above before reading the comments. I tend to like expressing my view before being influenced by the opinions of others. But I see that the others have adviced you wisely.
Maybe you actually need the cheese on ocassion - for calcium. You're vegetarian, right? I have started adding yogurt this past week, so I haven't been vegan. It's hard for me in another way because I don't digest dairy very well, but I have gotten the protein I needed.
Regarding the concern about getting the RDA's, well, I take supplements. I actually don't enter those into COM, or it confuses the software so much that the colors go to blank out the graphics. Overload of nutrition, perhaps? I just take those that are recommended for vegetarians - zinc, cal-mag, iron, b-12 ocassionally, vit-C, lecithin, taurine, etc. I don't take a multi-vit.
There is a camp in the CR group that does not believe in supplementation. I'm just not on that camp. But I also don't think I'm over-supplementing and causing harm, at least I hope not. I always go back to thinking about my grandfather, who lived to an old age and used to take lots of supplements.
Cheers,
Arturo
O Sara. Don't punish yourself for being "bad." Don't wait until you've been "good" to write here.
There is no wealth but life. Not pounds (or lack thereof), not calories (ditto), but life. If CR makes you obsess... maybe it's not the CR.
Congratulations on your wedding, and on all the beautiful things in your life.
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