New Year, Old Frustration

I'm still not sleeping in a normal sleep pattern and it's driving me CRAZY.  I went to bed late Friday night to sleep in late Saturday morning and was up after about 3 hours.  I've been getting headaches like you wouldn't believe.  It sucks.  Hopefully when the kids get back in school I can get on some kind of schedule.  This is really getting old.

 

Here's the link to Hal's post as promised. 

Hal's Lair :: View topic - Happy New Year Everyone!

I trust you will find it as motivating as I did.  It's not about losing weight, it's about making healthier choices - being the best "us" we can be.  Losing weight just happens to be a really nice byproduct of that.

 

Speaking of weight loss, I'm seeing stuff I don't like over on myspace.  Specifically, young girls pursuing anorexia or bullemia in order to strive for a skinny body.  Not a thin body, not a slender body.  Not a fit, healthy or normal body.  But a skinny body.  There are groups devoted to starvation challenges and they give each other support to do this really horrible thing to themselves.  It's disturbing.  There are also groups devoted to self mutilation and things of that nature. 

These are our kids, man.  The age of these groups tend to run in the mid to late teens.  It's very disconcerting.  Worse, I don't know what to do or say to help them.  Because they don't want my help, they want to surround themselves with people who will help them literally kill themselves. 

It's just sad. 

And it's made me realize that losing weight is not about numbers.  I used to live and die by that scale so much that I self destructed in the other direction.  As much as I would like to think I've grown, it's all about body image replacing self image.  Instead of finding value in myself for who I am and what I've done, all I can see is that I'm still fat (let's be honest here, obese) and those numbers aren't moving.  It invalidates everything else.

And that's dumb.  It's stupid.  I don't need to lose weight to be a valuable person, I am a valuable person.  It's people like me buying into society's need for physical perfection that paves the way for young girls like this to kill themselves to attain some measure of perfection no one can ever reach. 

 

I'm not going to do that anymore.  Like Hal says, it's about the bigger picture.  It's about doing things so that I can be healthier, not just thinner.  Smaller sizes are nice, but what's really nice is being strong and healthy and knowing I'm not killing myself slowly with food. 

So in keeping with this, here are my "health" goals.  I'll still do day to day goals, but here's what I commit to for the month of January.

Walk ten miles a week
Pilates three times a week
Gym at least two times a week

Today is an exercise free day, so I'll concentrate on my nutritional goals.  It's blast off week, so I get:

3 starches
2 fruits
4 proteins
2 fats
4 veggies
2 dairy
1 extra

This day is going to be tough.....