Blog

Important safety tip. There are now three yoga poses you should not go wild for when you have a hernia. Triangle pose. (Keep it more like a square pose). Wide legged forward fold. (Gravity was not a figment of Newton’s imagination.) And, as of last night, the Dolphin Plank. If you hold it long enough you look like this:

There’s a push-me/pull-me situation with this diet/fitness program. There are different classes of mistakes. In order of severity

• You consciously and deliberately obtain food that’s no good for the process.
• You are caught without supplies.
• You succumb to social pressures and eat small amounts of the wrong stuff.

• You are feeling fine, but just can’t bear the thought of exercise.
• You are feeling fine, but you are called away to a meeting or (in today’s case) a sick child at home.
• You go to the gym or fitness class and just don’t try very hard.

How badly do you beat yourself up on this stuff? I find that if I’m too harsh with my inner voices, it seems to lead to more “cheating”. A kind of flipping the bird at yourself. Having no self-inflicted psychological penalty doesn’t seem to work either.

Where is the middle ground? My theory is that setting and resetting very near term goals (e.g. please don’t go into Urban Fare) seems more reasonable.

But who’s reasonable when dieting? A dilemma.

Wow. The self-loathing is pretty good today. And it’s not that I’ve done anything too bad. Yesterday was sedentary, which happens when you sit and watch Iron Man 1 and 2 with your sick son who’s crashed on the couch.

Perhaps this should become a mental health blog because if I don’t get back into my diet/fitness regime in a more hearty way there might be some serious self-hatred. On the other hand, why is it when strictness, whether applied from within or without, leads me to flip to bird and head to the snack bar?

Perhaps today’s yoga class will stretch me out of a rut.

For sure Dim Sum is not going to work for your diet. On Friday there was a team lunch at Victoria Chinese Restaurant. We were celebrating the end of the fiscal year. We ate a lot.

Of course I could have planned ahead, made sure I had only the vegetable dishes, etc. However, two problems arose. 1. It was really good. 2. I organized the team lunch in the first place.

Had I been really smart, I’d’ve organized it at a salad bar.

This of course dragged down the whole day, dietary-ly speaking.

Today I am keeping a sick little boy company. I’m not eating much but I’m not doing much either!

Goodness. I’m better than 25% into Plan D. Yikes.

Who new fitness could be so dangerous? I was cycling past Science World. I was passing two guys on two different bikes who were obviously together and they were riding the new bicycle share Mobi bikes and were going slowly. They had to be going slowly if I was passing them. As I was passing the first guy, the second pulled a U-turn. I blurted out “Dude! Seriously.” I didn’t even have time to swear at him. He blurted out something negative to me that I did not catch and I kept going as I was on the way to daycare to pick up Tim. The equivalent of 3 blocks later, I sense someone trying to catch up to me. Once in range he said something like “you got a problem?” in a naff sounding British accent. I said in an emotionless tone, “you startled me when you made your U-turn.” He then said something about me not being in my lane and he cycled away. It was a good choice because it saved me all the effort of shoving his stupid bike share bike up his ass.

From 6-8 PM I did the first karate class in at least 3 weeks. Oh boy am I sore today.

Diet/fitness regimes should not involve this level of personal risk.

I tried to avoid a late night snack attack with bacon and eggs. I was in the midst of preparing upcoming breakfasts and just decided to cook more. And eat it.

I am plagued with doubt. Every food decision seems wrong. I think the cause might be self-sabotage. For example I learned of a co-worker’s health issues and the journey that person faces to correct the situation. I felt bad. The journey, were I faced with it, might be too much. But what does a person feel? Do you feel glad it’s not you? How nice. Try to give advice? Hmm. How much do I like receiving diet advice? Not much.

And there’s always the feeling of “you could do better”. One more trip to the gym. Avoid those carbs you snuck onto your plate. Push harder on the bicycle. But in the end there’s a sense that perhaps this is all a complete waste of time. It’s possible that there’s no hog-licking way I’m ever going to reach the goal. And even when I do hit the ill-defined finish line, all it means is a) hernia surgery and b) ongoing diet and fitness to maintain the finish line.

Humpf. Speaking of hernias … reminder to self and others: triangle pose and hernia do not mix.

It just keeps coming the challenges. OMG. So I rode home and very rough throat kicked in. Ate questionable things. Eventually went to bed. No, today, just a rough throat. WTF?

Bless Victoria my trainer for staying encouraging. I have weigh-in data but it’s in a sealed envelope. My plan is to reveal it with my next weigh-in at the end of October. Apparently I’m not a train-wreck.

I feel like a train-wreck. However I rode today and it’s a gorgeous Autumn day. Other challenges can go away on other fronts. These cover the range of issues from elder-care to CASL (Canada’s Anti-Spam Law).

I’m going to go to yoga and try to breath deeply. Send chi.

So it’s weigh-in day. To mitigate mental strain I am going to get the numbers put in an envelope that will stay hidden until the next weigh-in date. I just don’t feel like any meaningful progress has been made. If any more stress is added, I may say screw it.

The exercise numbers below show that indeed the weather is changing and that external forces are chewing up vital time that’s needed to execute a diet/fitness regime. I swear if I ever here “if it’s really important to you, you’ll make the time” or some other dumb platitude I will insert banana muffins up someone’s posterior.

Considering I hate bananas, it seems a fitting use for such a product.

Now back to my regularly scheduled personal challenges.

I just returned from the gym and it was terrible. It felt like I was working through molasses and rocks. Lack of sleep? Bad food choices? No yoga class yesterday? (Darn Royals.) I don’t really know.

Honestly, I’m quite possibly the closest I’ve been to quitting. This despite the fact I’m totally organized with my food for the next few days and the fact that I’ll never be able to convince someone to fix my hernia without stabilizing the weight.

Of course I could always stabilize the weight at HUGE and be done with it.

Well, it’s odder by the minute. I was going to do a yoga class at 2:45 today but we discovered that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (a.k.a. William and Kate) are going to be 3 blocks from our place today. There’s a sense of irony that they’re visiting the Coast Guard Station that Mr. Harper closed and Mr. Trudeau recently re-opened. Closure Insurance?

So a combination of volunteer work and a Royal Visit are going to likely remove my yoga class that I normally take on Sunday. When I ordered my wife’s Earl Grey Tea Latte at Starbucks this morning, I made sure to ask for A Royal London Fog. Considering the way the weather is going, that seems an appropriate drink.

I’m supposed to weigh-in on Tuesday. I will but it will be sealed numbers. The reality of this first 3 weeks is not good. This gives me 79 days to fix this mess. At least I have food supplies!

Holy crap I might as well go to the all wheat all day all night diet. Hammer me blind.

However, I did buy a lot of stuff at Costco last night and some of it I cooked myself. Jerry once again is coming to the rescue for some cooking. At least I can’t blame this all on lack of supplies.

However on Tuesday I’m supposed to weigh in. I will but I’m going to seal the numbers and add waist and chest measurements. Then I can push to the next weigh-in and if I feel secure I’ll look at the data.

I so totally forgot how wild Septembers are with the kids heading back to school and work projects coming head-to-head with fiscal year ends and general lack of attention over the summer.

May next week be more goodness and less wheat.