Scale Trickery
Also I'm learning that I can be full on less food. Lightbulbs are going off everywhere my friends.
Labels: exercise
Labels: Weigh-In
Oh, how I love advertising. Effectively achieving goals one day at at time… ever have that feeling … your hair doesn’t shine enough, your teeth not white enough, your thighs not smooth enough, your family not smiling enough, your car not big enough (suv, anyone?) or fancy enough, you're simply not creating these over elated moments of satisfaction everyday (every second) of your life? Ah, yes the power of advertising. I’ll give it to them, they are witty and creative. The people-always smiling with wedding rings, one boy and one girl, two story house, big car in the garage, dog with a Frisbee, and its always sunny unless you're selling soup on a cold winters day…snuggled by the fire in a little cottage, (your second home) in the mountains, of course.
Do you ever wonder how advertising effects what your eating? The commercials with the up close view of a moist cookie breaking apart, or a cheesy pizza sloooowwwlly being lifted out of the pan, its so effective. I don’t have cable, so I don’t watch commercials, but I remember how effective commercials were. I knew when McDonalds or Burger King had a new artery clogging invention, and I always wanted to try it (and always did). The people eating it are always thin, always smiling and the food glistened. It does glisten, right? They effortlessly make us all think that it is normal to be eating all this food, all the time.
I did a little research…
Frito Lay.com Check out those families! Do you see the creepy yellow smiling face on the left side of the site smiling about all those chips he is eating? The dad sharing a bag of chips with his son, the wholesome family standing around the grill with a bag of chips, so normal, so happy to be snacking all the time on chips…chips chips chips, it must be normal to feed your family chips all the time.
McDonalds.com I love the girl on her cell phone, she’s so hip and cool. She’s chatting away about French fries and how cool McDonalds is…she starts singing “ba ba ba ba baba I’m loving it.” You go girl!
And then the guy jumping in the air, oh wow, how many hamburgers does it take to jump that high? And those kids at the park playing! The world of McDonalds is so bright and shiny. But, the best part of all is this guy: What is he doing? Is it me, or did his fried chicken breast with bacon and cheese give him an orgasm? Perplexing. And how many young men does this guy represent, continuing the cycle of only eating fast food, everyday?
I know why advertising exists and why it is the way it is, I just like the idea of challening ourselves and the ideas that huge corporations feed into our culture and everyday lives.
I did well this week with food; I ate out a couple of times this week and made smart choices with portion and the food I chose. There were a couple of times that I would find myself falling into a pity party with food. It goes something like this mixed with sighs of exasperation
“but, everyone else gets to eat foods they like, why can’t I?”
“one of those donuts won’t hurt, just one! I will get one…hm, no I won’t…yes, just one…er no” ,
“why can’t I just eat normally”
“agh, im tired of tracking everything”
These feelings are normal and are the same feelings that honestly would bring me down and headed towards the grocery store. It wasn’t as if I told myself “no” to all of these thoughts, but I just didn’t linger in them. Avoiding situations temporarily (note, the word temporary) that could bring on “food pity parties” can really be a good idea. If you feel like you will be around people plunging into grease and sugar, give yourself a moment alone to compose your thoughts and come up with a plan of action. It only takes a minute and that minute can give you long-term consistency.
Something else that I will admit is that I often do not want to be seen buying bad foods in public. Some people may have this fear, but ignore it and put on a brave face and others simply may not care. Either way, I don’t think these fears should be used as a tools to lose weight because it simply puts more stress and low self-esteem in your life, but it is very rare that I will have a craving enough to go out and buy junk food or gorge on grease in front of co-workers. My fat and the fear of what people may think is so great that if I did buy unhealthy food it would always have to be mixed in with other non-overeating treats. Can other people relate to this? It’s kind of funny, really, but it’s like the ever-embarrassing condom checkout, you don’t want to just buy condoms, so you put other things on the counter so hopefully they don’t stand out as much and get lost in the other stuff. For me is was went like this: lettuce, ice-cream, chicken breast, cheese, frozen pizza, tomatoes, cookies, whole wheat bread, potatoes, candy, carrots…you get the idea, never would I have the nerve as a 290+ girl to walk in and buy ice cream alone no, that would spin too much guilt and embarrassment. I would always think that the people seeing me carry the ice cream were thinking “another night alone but, she’s got ice cream” and that wasn’t far from the truth either…
I guess the point of this entry for me and for anyone else that may read this and need inspiration to keep going, is to keep going! Don’t let pity parties end dismiss all of your efforts. Don’t feel bad for taking care of you, celebrate it!
Labels: Pity Parties