Monday, June 11, 2007

Aortic Massacre

Have you ever seen the movie Kill Bill? Imagine the most gory, gruesome, brutal scene and that's how any part of my body striving for health and well-being was brought to an untimely death. Capillaries carrying anti-oxidants, vitamins, and minerals had their heads violently lobbed off by three cheese pasta given free reign while I slept and held the endorphins at bay. Why would anyone release such an attack on their body? Why would anyone want to make themselves a victim and treat the very vessels that carry us from place to place, day to day, making life worth living, as if it was a flesh colored hefty bag of crap?
I haven't figured out the answer to that question. Maybe that's why Lindsay Lohan is a cutter and Johny Knoxville plays with poisonous snakes.
I had a pretty good week of walking a mile during my lunches, swimming laps or walking on the treadmill and eating fairly decent food. By the time the weekend rolled around, I was actually feeling pretty good. The slip up started slowly and I'm not sure which is sitting heavier on my heart right now, the guilt, or the glut.
I had known Friday was going to be a "free day" of sorts for me as that is the day that we officially ran out of all edible food in our apartment so it would become dinner and a movie night.
I could have left it at that.

It started when I didn't eat the cereal I had measured and packed for my lunch. Instead, I went out to Chik-Fil-A to celebrate the end of a photo shoot in which I walked back and forth with a clothing rack. The shoot was a blast and lunch was fun. It wasn't completely horrible that I did that. I could have done better elsewhere, but when dinner rolled around, I was "gnaw off my own arm" starving. We arrived at Roadhouse and my recent love of peanuts was satiated, but then we also got an appetizer... loaded with cheese. My meal of choice? The Rattlesnake Pasta, a certain creamy death with a dash of jalapeno spice. It was excellent, of course, but we still got a large soda and popcorn at the movie theater. In my defense, we didn't really eat any popcorn. Still.The plan was that the next day, we would replenish our fridge and I would cook a meal that didn't land quite as close to an early grave. After taking the dogs to the dog park, making a lunch of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (are we seeing a trend here?) we ended up doing a whole lot of shopping that had nothing to do with groceries. SO. Pizza for dinner. In a vane attempt to not be a glutton, I got a thin crust mushroom pizza- small. But I polished that off with a few buffalo wings.

My only saving grace for Saturday was my dedication to going to the gym. I spent 35 minutes swimming laps and an hour on the treadmill- burning over 500 calories and obliterating my fried cheese lunch sandwich and soup. I ended up feeling that Saturday had actually been fairly successful...

Sunday, bloody Sunday. If I could just go back to that morning and redo the mess that I made, I would be so happy. First of all, I didn't work out at all. We didn't even take the dogs to the park. We got up and both polished off the remaining pizza, which we didn't even enjoy to begin with, and headed out for more shopping. We finally had food and supplies and all the other things we had been needing for way too long now and after a late night Saturday, we got in fairly late Sunday. We swung by the Wendy's that's practically an extension of our apartment on the way home. That alone was all I really needed to eat for the rest of the night.... but we ended up going out to "dinner" (squared?) at Applebees around 10:15 at night. I haven' t been to an Applebees in a long time and I wasn't sure what I wanted, but the waitress was ready to take our order so I spit out the first thing that I would have chosen if I didn't need to worry about my food slowly killing me and sucking out my will to live--
Wait--would have chosen? That's what I did choose.
Sigh.
Then I went to bed.

I started my week this week no better. I actually thought that I wasn't doing too bad. I got up earlier than usual. Not early enough to work out, but early enough not to go to work looking completely haggard. I walked a mile at lunch-- but I didn't eat my cereal. I waited too long to eat and was too hungry so I went to Subway.
I entered all of my dinner information into the computer to calculate how much I needed to eat to save myself from that mistake. But I just ate whatever I wanted from our tostada platter, anyway. I polished off almost two small bags of cookies while answering emails and writing to friends and ate way too much of the bad stuff (aka sour cream) during dinner. I topped the night off by skipping the gym and watching "Hell's Kitchen" on the Food Network. Seems fitting somehow, doesn't it? I told myself that at least I would do better tomorrow. I would go to bed earlier, get up earlier-- tomorrow is fresh with no mistakes in it...
Except now its 10:53 and I won't be making it into bed until 11:30.

Oh heart and arteries, I am so sorry. Veins and bones and organs, forgive me! I need to stop the madness. I'm not in school anymore, I'm not working two jobs-- and even those were shabby excuses for not allowing myself to live healthy and enjoy the fruits of what I worked so hard to achieve.

I suppose all we can do is try harder tomorrow and thank God if its not too late.

Sombering thought.

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