Revenge of the Freshman 15 1

Those of you who’ve known me for a while know that I’ve lost a lot of weight – at my lowest point, I’d lost 86 pounds. I am literally a different person than I was when this all started President’s day weekend of 2007.

But in the last couple of months since school started, I’ve gained about ten pounds back, and that realization has been extremely frustrating.

I can tell you exactly why: I’ve eaten like crap. Being back in school, exercising a lot, and bike commuting have made me feel like I had a license to eat whatever the hell I want.

The problem is, eating whatever the hell *I* want means eating about 30-50% more than I actually should eat. I’ve always been terrible at portion control unless I’m really, really concentrating on how much I’m eating.

And if you’re eating that much, unless you’re Michael Phelps swimming 10,000+ meters a day, you’re not going to burn all that shit off.

I always felt when I was working and trying to lose the weight that I would treat the weight loss as my second job. I think I need to get back to that mentality, because I’d slipped away from it for the last 3-4 months and that’s when things started to fall apart.

The thing that’s probably going to help me the most in getting back into physical shape is the fact that I am a complete tightwad: Most of the additional calories I’ve been taking in have been purchased in restaurants or off Twittering food trucks and not in grocery stores, and are thus expensive in both cash money and fat-assery.

So I’m getting back on the Public Declarations of Nutritional Intent bandwagon with a few resolutions to get this shit back under control, because I can already tell if I don’t it’s going bad, bad places which will require much larger pants:

– I will no longer count my bike commute as part of my exercise for the day. Either I actually work out or I have to really watch what I eat – I must choose one. It’s only about 2 miles each way anyway, and it’ll be a lot less strenuous in the uphill direction once I buy a bike that’s not a completely rusted out piece of shit (more to come on that in a couple weeks, hopefully).

– For larger platters, I need to stop stop eating halfway through, wait 15 minutes, and then decide if I am actually hungry for more or just wanting to finish it for the sake of finishing it. I have always been the “I must finish everything on my plate” type, often to my detriment. I need to be a lot better about stopping when I’m physically full.

– I will order healthier stuff when eating out. I will, in fact, have the salad. I will stop ordering the freakishly enormous chicken burrito from every Korean/Mexican Fusion food truck that pulls up to the quad. The healthier stuff, unsurprisingly, is usually cheaper because it’s just physically less food.

Proofreading this post, I realize I sound like I’ve become a little unhealthily fixated on food, but the problem is that if I’m not, I become flat-out unhealthy.

The good news is, I think I’ve identified the problem before I allowed it to get completely out of hand. We’ll see how it goes undoing the damage I’ve already done.