Lack of Exercise

Here’s the deal- my weekend was fine. It was good. All things went well except I didn’t eat well, and I didn’t exercise well. I am not going to beat myself up over it. I simply won’t allow myself to belittle myself for taking a little breather from being obsessive/compulsive girl. I have been so incredibly “on” for over a month that taking a mini-breather is not going to kill me. And in the end, it wasn’t terrible awful either. It really wasn’t.

Friday I completely took off from exercise. I went to dinner at Red Lobster. I haven’t been out to dinner in far too long and honestly I really needed the nice dinner. I ate healthy on the menu but did eat 2 of the biscuits and had 2, yes 2, mixed drinks. Oh well. Not the end of the world. Saturday morning I got up and went for an amazing hike. We are talking true, trekking thru the Oregon woods kind of hike. Did I mention that this was climb to the top of not 1 but 2 different hills in order to complete the hike? They say the change in elevation on the hike is 400 feet. It was crazy intense uphill climbing in parts. I wore my heart rate monitor and turned it off every time we stopped as to not count those moments as “exercise” calories burned. Anyhow, the entire duration that we actually spent hiking was 4 hours 20 minutes and while some of it was easy peasy, some of it was intensely hard. 1300 calories burned. We pretty much were gone all day long. We got Subway early in the morning and carried it in for our lunch on the river. Beautiful!

When we got home I was exhausted. Had a decent dinner. I ate too much as a general rule but it wasn’t awful foods. The quality was there, just in excess. Still didn’t feel too bad about things. Then yesterday happened and I did not exercise. Boo. And then the lack of exercise really messed with my brain and while I was relatively good most of the day at some point last night decided it would entirely be a good idea to eat cookies and chex mix. When there is a will to “binge” one will always find a way. It wasn’t awful. Really it wasn’t epically bad or anything. I think the biggest problem for me was that I was missing my exercise high quite honestly. That is 3 days in a row that I did not go to the gym. Yes, I did do a massive hike on Saturday which is definitely exercise but it wasn’t the usual so it threw me off somewhat.

As much as I don’t like Monday’s or want it to be Monday and back to work part of me is glad to get back to my normal routine. There is comfort in the known. Eat well, and of course gym time. I think I missed the gym. Tonight is personal training so that will probably kick my ass in lots of good ways. I am certain I will feel much better once I have completed my 1.5 hours of great workout tonight. I am certain I am missing the cardio high that I need.

Consequently the lack of exercise and eh eating left me feeling emotionally yucky. Self-esteem issues left me not liking what I saw in the mirror which really is all in my head since in 3 days nothing about my body changed from Thursday night when I was loving my body! Go figure. We are a messed up species aren’t we? Basically I think I am just looking forward to feeling strong. I like the progress I am generally making and need to step back and learn that taking a few days off doesn’t mean that all my progress disappears. Maybe I wasn’t actively adding to the progress but I wasn’t really diminishing from it either. It’s okay to just exist for a couple days from time to time. Not every single day has to be 100% about my health and fitness. There, that is the truth. I am trying.

While on my hike in the middle of nowhere, where we are lucky if we run into another soul, I was walking down a trail and looked up and saw a couple coming towards me. Low and behold it was my cousin’s ex-wife. It was kind of heart breaking really. This is my younger cousin whom I adore and this girl was the love of his life. Like he still, to this day, is in love with her. Anyway, she cheated on him. Broke him to pieces. And there she was, in the forest, walking towards me. I haven’t seen her in 2 years. It was strange and surreal at the same time. Very small world indeed. I don’t run into her in town or at a store, but in the middle of nowhere, literally. I’d like to think there was some greater lesson to take away from that, but there wasn’t. It was simply a shitty situation that they lived thru and I was simply sad for my cousin. I wish it had worked out differently because I really liked this girl. I thought they were great together. We had a lot in common; thus the hiking in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday afternoon for fun. That’s it. End of story.

It’s almost lunch time, and once again, I have a bunch of work errands to run around town. Mailbox, drop off stuff at the bosses house, etc. Good times. Actually I’m kind of looking forward to getting out of the office today. Some days you just want to be outside, even for a moment.

Only problem is this, I am super stupidly hungry today. Not sure the reasons for that. Maybe it’s because I ate more food than I should have all weekend and my tummy now thinks that it needs more food than it really does, but I can’t stop from eating way more than I should. Shut up stomach, you are full! I say so. And with that, since I’ve already just now eaten my lunch and it’s not noon, I think I need to get out of this office. Off to errand.