New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Pursue Happiness

Tags

fitness, happiness, ideal self, new year's Resolutions, weight, writing

I have mixed feelings about New Year’s Resolutions. I feel like people make resolutions just to feel good for a while, and don’t really think about it. Most years I don’t give a thought to my resolutions until New Year’s Eve rolls around again.

But there have been exceptions.

Many years ago, I made a resolution to “SORT THE F&%$ OUT OF MY LIFE”. I was struggling in a relationship in which the same problems kept coming back, and no amount of arguments seemed to change or improve things. I was painfully aware of the fact that my best friend who lived on the other side of the country gave me more emotional support and interesting conversation than my significant other, and I felt that this was not how the world should be.

But I wasn’t sure how to change things. And as the year passed and I became increasingly worried about the fact that my life was NOT getting sorted out, I found the resolve to put down a foot, and say, “if X happens again, I am done with the relationship”.

It happened again. I ended the relationship.

I can’t say that it made me happier. Ending a long term relationship with someone you genuinely care about does not make life happier. It was painful and chaotic and I felt like my entire life had been turned upside down.

But I knew that nothing could get better until I did that. It was a necessary, if unpleasant, step.

Within six months I had started officially dating my best friend, and life was much better. It was unspoken from day one that we would get married. Sometimes you just know these things.

Things got sorted out, and I ended up happier in the long run.

So when I read this article about how the pursuit of happiness is a false God, it spoke to me. Specifically, it said this:

It’s the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves which grants us happiness, regardless of superficial pleasures or pain, regardless of positive or negative emotions. This is why some people are happy in war and others are sad at weddings. It’s why some are excited to work and others hate parties. The traits they’re inhabiting don’t align with their ideal selves.

The end results don’t define our ideal selves. It’s not finishing the marathon that makes us happy, it’s achieving a difficult long-term goal that does. It’s not having an awesome kid to show off that makes us happy, but knowing that you gave yourself up to the growth of another human being that is special. It’s not the prestige and money from the new business that makes you happy, it’s the process of overcoming all odds with people you care about.

He talks a lot about how people mistake pleasure for happiness, and how worrying about their own happiness can make them afraid to take important life steps which will, for a while, make them less happy.

And when I look back on it, the resolutions I have kept in the past were the ones that really mattered to me. The ones that were life changing.

And so, this year, I resolve to try to pursue my ideal self. I will try to make changes that align myself with the person I feel that I am inside, the person that I want to be.

Since that person is thinner, but dieting has never worked long-term for me, I am going to try to increase my exercise and make a conscious effort to eat along the lines of the diabetic diet I was on during pregnancy. I think that even if I don’t lose a lot of weight, I will feel better about myself if I am more active and make good eating choices more often. I will feel closer to my ideal self.

I think that losing weight would make me happier, but I am not going to make that a goal. I am just going to become the kind of person who COULD.

I am breaking out the old fit bit, and I am going to download Zombies Run onto my phone. I will listen to it while walking the dog, and we’ll see if that helps keep me moving.

Since that ideal self is also a dog trainer and a writer, I am going to focus on finishing and then publishing (through createspace if necessary) my dog training book, even if that means that I have to put my fiction book aside for now. Having that dog training book will help get me business, and help free me from the shackles of working as someone else’s employee.

Once I have done that, then I can play with fiction.

We’ll see how this goes. But something needs to change, and I am going to start now.

Meet Zippy

Tags

dieting, exercise, fitbit, food diary, gadgets, my fitness pal, new toys, pedometer, reviews

So a friend of mine who is always giving me embarrassingly awesome gifts gave me a Fit Bit Zip for Christmas!

I call him Zippy.

He counts my steps like a pedometer, calculates how many miles I have walked and how many calories I have burned, then syncs this info with My Fitness Pal and measures it against how much I have eaten that day.

How awesome is that?

Except for one thing – I have found out that Zippy is also a tattle tale.

You see, My Fitness Pal bases its calorie estimates on a certain assumed number of calories burned. So one night I went to bed and My Fitness Pal told me I was 20 calories under my goal! Yay!

I woke up in the morning and my diary for the day before had changed. Since I had gone to sleep instead of continuing to walk around, My Fitness Pal changed its mind. By midnight that night, it had switched me over to being 17 calories OVER my goal.

Thanks, Zippy, you little green rat.

The Girl Diet

Tags

baby, boys, diet, gender, gender selection, gender swaying, girls, low calorie, pregnancy, sex ratio

PH and I need to have a girl next time because we can’t work out a boy name. We’ve vetoed each other’s favourites (with the exception of Owl’s name, a favourite of mine that PH didn’t mind) and cautiously accepted as “maybes” some other suggestions.

Girl names are easier.

We worked out several possible girl names as well as Owl’s name before we even got engaged. We know the name of our future girl.

So this time, we’re going to try to have a girl.

When I found out that Owl was a boy, I had a lot of mixed emotions. On the one hand, I have always wanted a boy. Whenever I dreamed of babies, they were boys. I LOVE little boys. I’m not so hot on little girls. They’re manipulative and often shallow and obsessed with their Barbies’ hair.

So I was glad I was getting my boy.

But PH wanted a girl. PH isn’t big on men in general. He likes and admires all things female.

So I was concerned that he was disappointed.

He has never expressed any disappointment – he loved Owl from the moment he laid eyes on him – but he has teased me about the fact that I got my boy.

“Hey, it’s your sperm that determines the gender,” I would say defensively.

“I gave you millions of girl sperms! You picked THIS one!”

It was all a big joke, but I got hired on Elance to write a series of articles about selecting your baby’s gender earlier this year and I learned a few things:

1. While the gender is in fact determined by the man’s sperm, the woman’s body has final say on which gender it produces.

2. Boys are slightly more common than girls, 51% of babies being boys.

3. The world is full of myths about timing your intercourse to have a certain gender, assuming certain positions etc and all of this is completely unsubstantiated by modern science.

4. Women (and other female mammals) who are stressed, eating low fat or low calorie diets, or living in crowded situations, tend to de-select males, and start producing more females. The effect can be as much as 60-80% females born over males. Women who eat high calorie diets experience the opposite – 60% more males than females.

The idea is that if resources are low, females are a better bet. We only need ONE male to repopulate the world, but we need a lot more women. Also, since male babies require more calories to make, a female is easier to put together if there isn’t a lot of food to go around.

It’s called the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, and there seems to be a lot of research to back it up. 

Male blastocysts also appear to be less hardy – they don’t absorb sugar as well from the uterine environment and are less likely to survive to implant in the uterine wall if the mother’s blood sugars aren’t stable.

The difference is such that just skipping breakfast can affect your chances of having a boy.

So…. guess what I’m doing?

I’m back on My Fitness Pal, logging my calories, and I’m skipping breakfast.

I’m not cutting back on calories dramatically. After all, if a woman is starving she’s not likely to conceive at all, and honestly a second boy would not be the end of the world. PH would love him and still consider our family complete.

But I would like a girl, too. First, I’ve done the boy thing and now I’d like to try the girl thing. Second, while I’m not big on little girls, I would like to have a grown daughter some day.

Plus I just like experimenting with science, especially science that motivates me to lose weight.

So I’m on a restricted, but not unreasonable, low calorie diet and skipping breakfast.

Que sera, sera.

At least I can tell PH that I tried!

…And yes, I will stop the low calorie diet the moment that second line forms on the pregnancy test.

Fat For Thought, Or, In Which I Get Sarcastic About People Who Defend Fat-Shaming

Tags

bullying, children, concern troll, cyber bullying, diet, examples, exercise, fat, fat shaming, fitness, health, jennifer livingston, lifestyle, morality, news anchor, obesity, role models

Everyone’s talking about that overweight anchorwoman, Jennifer Livingston, who defended herself against a concern troll who emailed her.

Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain. I leave you this note hoping that you’ll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.

Livingston called him out on-air and pointed out that fat people KNOW they are fat and don’t need it pointed out by random strangers, and asked him if he really thought that his rudeness set any better of an example.

So now the world is full of people applauding this woman for standing up for herself, while others go “but he’s right, you know.”

I had to listen to it on the radio this morning. The male DJ was totally behind Livingston, while the female DJ kept saying “yeah, but he had a point. I mean, would it be okay to have a fat children’s show host?”

It was all very Helen Lovejoy.

Won’t someone PLEASE think of the children?

Sure, Jennifer Livingston wasn’t smoking on tv, or guzzling potato chips while delivering local news, but she did commit the fairly sizeable (pun intended) crime of BEING FAT PUBLICLY.

Fat people, just by going on tv, looking fat, are telling our kids that it’s okay to look different from the anorexic models in the fashion magazines.

And we don’t want THAT, do we?

And, the woman DJ argued, what is wrong with a little concern trolling now and then? As she and many commenters on the Youtube clip point out:

a) The concern troll emailed her in a private email, so it’s not like he was mean to her in public, which is the important thing.

b) The email was written politely and didn’t use the word “fat”.

c) The emailer was just trying to help.

After all, aren’t we all morally obligated to offer help to someone who walks around being fat all the time?

a) Maybe they don’t know they’re fat, and need someone to tell them. It is entirely possible that they haven’t glanced in a mirror, looked down, or checked the size of their clothes in years.

b) If you don’t actually use the terms “fat”, “pig-like” or “tub o’ lard”, and as long as it is phrased politely, it is completely socially appropriate to go up to a stranger and suggest they reconsider their physical flaws.

c) Won’t someone PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

There’s just a couple teeny little points, though, that I would like to add as fat-for-thought to the people who make these delightfully smug little arguments.

MUST EAT LESS BREAD

Tags

dieting, weight loss

That’s it! I gained, like, 6 pounds while away, effectively undoing all the weight loss I enjoyed under the strain and stress of working with Mean Vet.

I’m going on Atkins, dangit, and for real real, strict-like. If it affects my milk, well, Owl’s nearly two. He can suck it up. Literally.

Or not, just as he likes.

(As an aside, according to our daycare lady, Owl didn’t gain any weight on his time away despite frequent fast food meals and a great grandmother who spoon fed him several containers of yogurt every day, and fried chicken every second day. Life is just not always fair.)

A diet that beats Atkins.

Since I have managed to achieve neither breakfast nor lunch the last two days, perhaps I will just be starved into slimness? Does one still need to forgo carbs if one is also forgoing food in general?

Sigh.

The scale says I dropped two pounds today. I’m the lowest I have been in a year and a half. IN MY CLOTHES>

But I would KILL for McDonalds.

Or Tim Hortons.

Must go walk my dog.

Lost ability to type full sentences.

Hey, look, a Babby.

Have you tried wood, Boob-Lady? It's like food. NOM.

Carbs, Glorious Carbs: Our Day At The PNE

Tags

family outings, food, PNE, the ex, the fair, tourism, Vancouver

A year ago, I dragged my pregnant butt down to the Fair at the Pacific National Exhibition, and waddled around in the sun all day with Perfect Husband. I was 9 months pregnant, due to go into labour at any second, and determined not to miss my chance for mini donuts before Babby burst his way into my life.

This year, we went back. Babby was still bulging around my belly, but he was 10 pounds heavier, outside of my body and actually much less encumbering than 12 months before.

Why drag our baby/my pregnant body to the PNE?

Because it is AWESOME.

There aren't enough oxen in baby books.

When Mommy blows out her candles, she wishes for a draft horse!

That's it, right up the cow's nose.

There are cows and horses and little bunnies to look at, which I like.

There are booths set up hawking all kinds of as-seen-on-tv products.

But mostly, we love the food.

Like a hotdog on a pretzel bun, SMOTHERED in macaroni and cheese, with crispy fried onions.

I EAT IT

NO, *I* EAT IT!

Boob-Lady scares me

Hey, onions! I eat dem.

Or deep fried Pop Tarts.

And most importantly, mini-donuts, those little cinnamon-sugar bites of heaven.

Deep fried pop tart... and mini donuts!

SO GOOD.

We walked around for so long that even Babby eventually passed out from sheer awesomeness.

Is... is he breathing?

I gained three pounds after our day there. But since I’ve lost five, I’m still ahead of the game and it was SO WORTH IT.

Stupid Weight Loss Means I Can’t Have Carbs.

Tags

atkins, carbohydrate cravings, dieting, portion control, psychiatrist, weight, wellbutrin

I had an appointment with my shrink yesterday.

She said that they often try taking people off of their meds a year after the baby is born, but she didn’t think that I was ready, especially since I’m about to start a new job and you all know how WELL I deal with change! Not to mention that I get blue just thinking of losing my Babby time, and the fact that I develop anxiety when away from Babby for more than two or three hours.

I start next week, full time. It’s going to be FUN.

She was also intrigued by my new diet.

“Have you tried, just… moderation?” my shrink asked. (I hate it when people ask questions like this. Do they really expect me to say “No, I haven’t tried just eating less. What a great idea!“?)

“Yes. I gain weight.”

“You can’t do it?”

“No, I can’t, and on the rare occasion that I succeed, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I gain weight if there are any simple sugars in my diet. But no, I can’t do moderation. One piece of bread leads to more. Always.”

“I thought that you said the Wellbutrin reduced your carb cravings?”

“It did.”

And I told her how it was before.

How, whenever I tried to cut out carbs, I would find myself near tears in the grocery store, looking longingly at the Olivieri pasta.

How, one time, when I couldn’t find the dregs of a bag of chips, I ransacked the entire house (including linen closets) trying to find it. It turned out that PH had finished the bag and thrown it away.

You know that Sex and the City episode, where Miranda takes cake out of the garbage and eats it? That was me.

The Wellbutrin DOES help.

I have passed day three of my no-carb diet, and I haven’t cried at all. Mind you, I’m not being overly strict. On Monday I ate PH’s Strawberry and Spinach salad, and on Tuesday we dipped our fried tofu in Sweet Chili Sauce, and yesterday I ate more tomato in my Greek Salad than would be ideal for “induction” Atkins.

But no bread, no pasta, no potatoes. That’s HARD. Especially since I am still giving Babby bread and fruit. I actually asked Perfect Husband to cut up Babby’s strawberries this morning, because I didn’t trust myself. As it was, when one piece got pushed out of Babby’s reach, I licked my fingers after handing it to him.

My cravings may be reduced, but they’re still there. In fact, in light of the fact that I don’t dare/want to do it more strictly than I am, I keep wondering if it’s even worth it.

I decided that if I hadn’t lost weight by today, I would give up.

I have lost two and a half pounds.

DAMN. That means I have to keep on this, because it may be starting to work.

Hell.

So, for motivation, here are some picures of me, before and after carbs:

Christmas 2002 – pre Atkins, 150 lbs

Christmas 2003, 4 months post Atkins, 126 lbs (PH says I was TOO thin then)

Spring 2004, on maintenance Atkins, 130 lbs

My first trip to Vancouver, 2006, 145 lbs

Wedding day, June 2008, 148 lbs

Early 2010, three months pregnant, 160 lbs, and gobbling ALL carbs ALL the time

August 2010, 213 lbs

This June, 175 lbs

Dieting Is No Walk In The Park

Tags

atkins, dieting, exercise, weight

In 2003, between my third and fourth year at university, I tried a diet with my mother for two weeks.

It was called Atkins.

For two weeks we ate nothing but protein and leafy vegetables. No bread. No pasta. No potatoes. No reason to live.

The weight melted off.

I stayed on the diet for the rest of the summer. I lost 30 pounds, I had more energy than an ADHD kid on Redbull, and I felt AWESOME about myself.

I kept that weight off for a year, too. During the week I fed myself protein and veggies, and on weekends I splurged on a bag of chips or some popcorn. That held my weight steady.

That was one of the best years of my life so far.

The next year I was graduated and working as a telemarketer. I missed university. I missed Perfect Husband, who was still just Best Friend Who Worshipped Me From Afar But Now Lived In Frigging Vancouver. I hated my job.

I started eating perogies for lunch.

Then my boyfriend’s mother brought us an economy sized box of Kraft Dinner.

Then, when I suggested cooking something other than Kraft Dinner, my boyfriend would say “ugh, I don’t feel like eating *insert suggestion here*. Let’s get McDonalds.”

I gained 10 pounds.

Since that wondrous summer, when I broke free of my carb addiction, my weight has slowly creeped ever upwards.

I was 213 before Babby was born. Since then, my weight has plateaued at 175, which is still a good 15 pounds heavier than my pre-baby weight, and THAT was a good 15 pounds heavier than I was on my wedding day, and THAT was 15 pounds heavier than I was after the Summer of Awesome.

I don’t recognize myself in photos.

One problem is that no other diet seems to work for me. Diabetes runs in my family and my body just seems to chemically bond to sugar and then somehow turn it into twice its weight worth in fat. I could eat nothing but salads and whole grain bread, but so long as that bread is there, my weight wouldn’t budge.

The other problem is that I can never get past those first few days, when you’re detoxing from the carbs and you feel like you would sell your soul for a piece of toast.

…that is a universal feeling, right?

Well, I’m trying again. I don’t dare do it too strictly – I don’t want to mess with my milk – but I have to do SOMETHING. I hate my weight. I hate how I look. My clothes don’t fit. It’s just UGH.

But it’s only day 2 of the diet and already I’m starting to think: “Do I really want to ruin my last week off with Babby by cutting out carbs?”

And then I think “Do I really feel like I can’t enjoy my SON without CARBS?”

So I’m fighting it. But it’s hard going. Without carbs to soothe me, everything feels too difficult.

Take our morning walk: I can’t force myself to go all the way down and up the hill on our normal daily walk without my walkolate bar to reward me, so I’m taking dog and baby across the road to the playground.

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I’m glad they’re happy, at least.

Anyone have a piece of toast I can nibble? I have a baby I could sell you.

Bad Old New Good Habits Die Hard (YEAH.)

Tags

chocolate, exercise, habits, reward, walking

Perfect Husband knows that on nice days, I like to walk with the dog and the baby to Esso (except sometimes I call it “the Irving” because apparently my brain has still not adjusted to three years outside of the Maritimes), buy myself a chocolate bar, and walk home.

The round trip is about a kilometre walk, which probably doesn’t burn nearly as many calories as a chocolate bar puts on, but the important thing is, I’m rewarding myself for walking. It builds positive associations in my mind, and eventually I should be able to wean myself off of the chocolate. I’m already buying smaller/fewer bars than I was originally, and now I actually miss the walk on rainy days (which have been most days, the last couple of weeks).

So that’s good.

Well, Perfect Husband came home the other day with a 16 bar assortment pack, with Snickers and Twix and Mars bars in it. His logic was that if I had the bars at home but used them as rewards, I might walk to places OTHER than the Esso.

We call them Walkolate bars.

So, where should I go today?

Hmm. We’re out of pop.

Maybe I’ll walk to the Esso.