Try-ing This Again - One Step at a Time

I can't believe I've still never done a triathlon. Law school has totally kicked my ass. I am extremely sedentary and I eat crap. I've done some sporadic dieting and exercising, but I haven't fully committed to anything because I don't have the time or the energy. I keep thinking that when I'm a big fancy attorney I'll get a personal trainer and things will be better. That way I don't have to think about what I'm doing. I just show up and do as I'm told. I can do that.

But alas, I'm not a big fancy attorney yet, and I'm not going to be anytime soon. And something has to change right now. Today I ate an entire box of macaroni and cheese. I am disgusting. I have an extremely long summer ahead of me in which I will be studying about 10-12 hours a day. That doesn't leave a lot of time for exercising, and it seems like a situation in which it would be easy to eat a lot of fast food or at least unhealthy food from a freezer, full of preservatives. This is a recipe for disaster.

Here's me at Barrister's Ball a couple of weeks ago - about 30 pounds more than I was when I came back from Europe less than 2 years ago.




I can't believe I spent so much time just now trying to find a flattering picture. The whole point of a "before" type picture is to pick a bad one. Besides, they're all bad right now (I'm wearing spanx under that blue dress and it's still bad - look at that chin!). Which is horrible since it's close to graduation and there are a million events where pictures are taken.

I'm not one of those people who eats less when stressed out - I eat more. And I eat worse. Candy, cake, cookies, ice cream, McDonald's, etc. I cannot do that this summer. So I figure I've got to start doing something. For one thing, I'm going to start writing on this blog a lot more. It will be easy, because I'll always be at a computer. I'll always have a few minutes every day to write what I ate, what I did for exercise, what I did right and what I could improve.

Clearly today's downfall was the box of macaroni and cheese. That won't be happening again. While I won't be completely cutting out mac n' cheese (it's one of my favorites, it's cheap and is easy to make when I'm busy), I will promise to eat no more than one serving, and I will supplement my meal with fruit or salad or something else fresh. It's not as bad to eat something like mac n' cheese if I also eat some natural food. I will also do this with whatever other food I eat - I will eat only the suggested serving size.

Also, I think that though it will be extremely difficult, I'm going to try to cut out soda. I drink a lot of it. I always drink diet or Coke Zero or whatever, but it can't be good to be filling my body with so many chemicals. It tastes delicious, and there's nothing quite like that first cold sip of soda - it tingles and it is so refreshing. But it's time to make some tough decisions. When I need caffeine, I will drink tea. When I need carbonation, I'll drink soda water. I have about a 12 pack left at home, and when it's gone, I won't buy more. It's expensive anyway. I'm not saying I won't buy the occasional soda from a machine or something in the future, but I'm going to work hard to cut way down.

So, my first two steps are to only eat one serving size of things (this is going to be most difficult with cereal), and to cut out soda. Let's start with that and see where things go. No need to go crazy with goals right now. The best way for me to fail is to try to take on too much at once - especially at a time when so much other stuff will be going on in my life.

I do have long-term goals, though. First, I will compete in a triathlon sometime in the next year. Second, my dream is to lose 40 pounds. It is possible, but it won't be easy. I was going to use the metaphor of how the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, but that seems really inappropriate for this situation. Instead, I'll use the metaphor of climbing a mountain - it can only be done one step at a time.