Totally Confused

My body utterly confuses me.  I am a brain that rides atop a device completely foreign.  Somehow the brain functions pretty well on it's own, but there are lots of things the body doesn't do.  It doesn't run properly.  It has no coordination for dance.  The skin burns easily or worse, gets covered by freckles with just a bit of sun exposure.  The nose doesn't lay straight, needs a full reworking, just to gain the ability to breathe.  The feet are too big.

But now that I'm trying to get the body in shape so I can climb Mt. Hood, I can see that a connection is necessary.  After all, if I don't trust my body, why would I have it take me up to the top of a mountain?  Plus, it might be nice to dance with Joe at a wedding.  Or run with the kids. 

At the moment, what has me totally confused is how much to eat so I will lose weight.  My handy app worked great the first week (down 10 pounds!), but now seems to have turned on me.  I faithfully type in every speck of food I eat, how much I exercise, suffer through hunger that is equal parts mental, and not only have I stopped losing, but I think I'm up a couple of pounds.  The only conclusion is that the app might have me eating too little.  Curse you!

So I've adjusted the settings to add a couple hundred calories and I'll try that for a week.  Maybe if I can make some sense of this dilemma, it'll be like a conversation starter.

Brain, meet body.
Body, meet brain.

Fighting Weight

I’ve known this since I stated out loud my goal to climb Mt. Hood.  I am not unaware or naïve.  I know that this endeavor, to climb the highest peak in Oregon, is more likely be a success if I can drop some weight.  I am not one of those people who claim to be healthy even though I am overweight.  Two blood tests at the naturopath confirm I have high triglycerides.  Too much sugar, too many carbs.  I’ve sat with this information for months and months and months doing nothing at all.  Until Monday.

Monday I started using a new app on my iPhone.  It tracks calories in, calories out.  I’ve lost 8 pounds since then. 

What’s the magic?

None of course.  I am hungry a lot.  I walk two miles every day.  I don’t eat the kids’ Halloween candy that thankfully is almost gone.

But so far, so good.  It’s a little weird, because this time I don’t feel like I’m going to die which is how I usually feel when I’m on a diet.  Irrationally, my brain tells me that controlling what I eat is like depriving myself and deprivation leads to death.  Craziness, right? 

I figure overthinking is going to jinx my efforts, so forget I said anything.  If I don’t notice I’m losing weight, if I just see it out of the corner of my eye but do not turn my head, maybe I can sneak up on this.