rut.

I've been in a bit of a rut these days, as far as eating and exercise go.

My rut has been about two specific life situations.

The first is the TERRIBLE cold with flu-like symptoms that I got at the end of October.  I was so miserable physically for three weeks that I didn't even kind of exercise.  And it's been hard to get back into a routine, even though I've been nearly 100% for about a week now.

The second is school stress.  So many projects, assignments, exams, and papers all happening at once. This happens the last month of the semester every time, so it's no surprise.  But it is still stressful every time!

Stress has actually made me less hungry for once, which is an exciting change of events.  Not in a disordered eating way, just in the fact that I feel more normal now.  Apparently, "normal" eaters get less hungry during times of stress.  They literally forget to eat.  And that has happened to me a couple of times this week.

The only problem with my forgetting lunch is that by the time my growling stomach reminds me that it's 5 pm and I haven't eaten since 9, I overeat to compensate.  I become a crazed grazer, where nothing satisfies me until I'm super stuffed.

Something that I made this week.  It's inspiring me so much these days!
P.S. Any Buffy fans in the house?  ;-)

It's not a good thing.

And my choices have not been the healthiest.  All I crave at that starving point in my stressful day is pizza and chips, followed by chocolate.  It's kind of crazy...

Anyway...  I'm sick of this rut.

There are still three weeks left until the final final is final, and I refuse to continue down this path.

How am I going to get out of this rut?

As far as eating goes:

• I need to remember to eat lunch.
• I need to have some healthy after school snacks on hand, like cut-up fruits and veggies, and Wasa crackers with salsa and hummus.   Yogurt and cottage cheese also need to make a reappearance in my fridge.  
• Pizza and chips can stick around too, because I'm an ex-dieter, but I think that if I remember to eat lunch, I will be less likely to crave only those things.  (Of course, if I'm wrong about that, then I will probably still be satisfied with less than an ENTIRE pizza and an ENTIRE bag of chips if I am not starving!)

Exercise...  I think that the only cure for getting out of this particular rut is to just do it.  My body loves movement, my heart craves cardio workouts, and my head always benefits from the stress-reducing endorphins.  I just need to remember this.  I also need to remember that it's okay to go for a run even if I  only have thirty minutes, or if I know that I won't be able to run again for several days.  No more "all or nothing" exercise routines!

The only good thing about this rut is that my body is finally CRAVING healthy food and exercise.  So I'm going to cook a healthy dinner tonight, and I finally went back to the gym yesterday for a treadmill 5K.

I'm officially one of those awesome people who brag
about their running on their car!  :-)

Have you ever been in a rut?  

How did YOU get out of it?

a picture of my Grandma

This is a picture of my dad's parents, known by me, my brother, and my cousin Shannon as "Grandpa and Grandma New".

This is several years ago, when they got married.  I forget the exact year...  But my dad was born in 1960 and he was their second child, and all three of their kids were some time after this picture was taken, so I'm thinking 1953 or so.

Anyway, I have been told by pretty much everyone who sees pictures of Grandma that I look just like her.

And I agree for the most part.  Except for her thick nearly black hair and her ability to tan (probably because she was 1/8 Cherokee, and my Native American-ness just can't compare to hers), I look a lot like her.

My point is, I'm happy to look like Grandma New.  She is a beautiful woman.

Good bye, labels!

In my quest for complete EDNOS recovery, I decided that it was important to figure out exactly how much of my vegan, then vegetarian, then pescatarian eating was truly because that is how I want to eat, and how much of that is my wanting a label to define my eating besides "out of control".

There are many wonderful reasons to eat vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian.  Seriously.  I've studied all three eating styles a lot, and they are all amazing in their own special ways.

I am stepping away from those labels.  I need to find out whether I ate those ways because it was truly right for me, or if I ate those ways to maintain a certain amount of control over my eating.  Did I go vegan to lose weight?  Did I stay vegetarian and then switch to pescatarian to stay "special"?  Do I really and truly want to eat like that?

These are the questions that I am working on answering.  For now, I have no label when it comes to my eating.  Unless you count "recovering from EDNOS" and "ex-dieter" as labels.

So what does this mean for my diet?

It means that I am experimenting with cooking and eating meat again.  For now, I'm still eating mostly vegetarian.  I still believe that a mostly plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat for me, and conducive to giving me the ultimate fuel for my runs and other workouts.  Plus, I just really love to cook vegan meals!

And when I cook meat, I usually choose fish.  But I cooked and ate chicken for the first time in several years a couple of days ago.  Just to see if it felt right or wrong.  It was organic, free-range chicken from Whole Foods.  I plan to buy any meat that I cook from local farms and Whole Foods, just so that I'm not supporting factory farming, something that I am still very much against (that much I know for sure).

I have realized that all or nothing thinking can apply to this aspect of eating, too.  Just because I'm not vegetarian anymore doesn't mean that I have to eat meat every day or even every week.  It just means that I no longer avoid it at all costs.

So when will I be eating meat?  When I cook it myself, or when a loved one cooks it for me.  I will not be ordering it when out to eat, because I don't see the point in that.  I have learned to eat vegetarian or pescatarian while out to eat.

Mostly, I will still be cooking beans, tofu, vegetables, and fish.  But I will occasionally now cook chicken.  I'm not comfortable eating mammals, and I doubt that will change. And that's okay.

And no, I'm not going to grasp at the newly acceptable "flexitarian" label.  I am label-free for now.

(Be-tee-dubs, I am not saying that labels are wrong for everyone.  I understand all the different needs to label oneself and one's eating style.  I just don't think that they are healthy for ME at this point in my recovery.)  

Do you have a label for your eating style?  

Why or why not?