Stop the madness

You know how sometimes you let yourself go and use something else as an excuse? That's what I've been doing all summer. Writing my dissertation has taken all the mental energy that, over the last few summers, I have channeled into running marathons and riding my bike and generally getting super-fit. And that is okay. I wrote a good dissertation, I look forward to a successful defense one week from tomorrow and I am proud of what I have accomplished in that area. And I haven't exclusively been sitting around on my butt. I managed to run the Mt. Evans Ascent, train for a duathlon that I would have done if it hadn't been cancelled, and finish the Breck Crest half marathon. Sure my times were slow, but I am still proud of having trained for and done those races.

BUT... somehow I managed to use the writing and sitting and not marathoning as an excuse to not go to the gym practically ever and to eat WAY too much bad stuff. Not like fast food. More like cookies that I bake with flax seeds and wheat germ and walnuts and then pretend they are health food and eat, like, 15 of them. All the while typing and writing and thinking about binge eating. How lame is that? So today I sit here feeling like a blob monster with a roll of fat around my middle kind of wondering how I got here. I know the answer, of course. And I know how to get out of this place. And I will. But I wish I had never gotten here.

I generally think Shape magazine is useless but I get it because there was some promo at my kids' school. Anyway, this month has an interview with Brooke Shields, who said something that really struck me. In response to a question about whether there was an athlete or celeb with whom she compares herself, she said no, that comparing yourself to others is always a losing battle since you can never become them. She then went on to say that her best motivator is to remember back to when she felt her own best, the fittest, etc, to remember how that felt and use that feeling to help you get back to that place. That really struck me. I feel gross about myself right now, but I have had times when I feel great about myself. I am going to hold that memory in my mind as I work to try and get back there. So when I want to eat a cookie I need to think short term vs. long-term gratification. Especially since I need to start putting work clothes back on again in a month.

Take that, cookies!