July 10: Daily Recap

Breakfast: 2% Cottage cheese with cherries.

This morning I was DESPERATE to step on the scale. I'm feeling great, like I'm getting smaller, but for some reason, this just isn't enough to verify that I'm successful. I need to KNOW. And, after weighing myself multiple times every day for my entire adult life, the scale is still my benchmark, my measure of success.

Rationally, I know that I'm being asinine. But I need to know if I'm eating too many calories. I need to know if I'm working hard enough. I need to know if I'm doing everything right.

Rationally, I know that I'm eating about the right amount, on most days. My workouts are intense. I'm doing everything right.

So...why the obsession with the scale...?

I'm trying not to focus on that damn number and, yet, despite my attempts to be rational, I have a number in mind that I want to see when I stop on the scale in 16 more days. I want to see 178. Or less. And anything else will be a great disappointment to me. It will not matter that I've shaved time off of my Hogsback rides and walked, it will not matter whether or not I can do a regulation push up, it will not matter how far or how fast I've ridden my bike. All that will matter is that, to me, I failed.

Ri-fucking-diculous.

That said, at least I managed not to step on the scale. Today, anyway. 16 days is a lot of days.

Exercise: 
Part I: Run five times up the easternmost stairs at Huntington Beach for time. This was easier than I thought it would be. Time for ten ups (and nine downs) 11:44.15. I'd like to finish that sub-ten minutes by the end of the summer. The next few times I try it, I'll try and see how many climbs I can get in under thirty minutes. That should, I think, get me faster on this sprint.

Because I felt that 12-ish minutes was a bit short for a workout, I came home and did a quick circuit.

Part II: Completed three rounds of the following (time: 13:57:15):

• 10 Single-legged deadlifts/right leg (2 10-lb plates)
• 10 Single-legged deadlifts/left leg (2 10-lb plates)
• 10 weighted side bends/right (25 lb plate)
• 10 weighted side bends/left (25 lb plate)
• 10 upright rows (25 lb plate)
• 10 bent-over flys (5 lb dumbbells)
• 10 crunches on ball

Lunch: Salad with spinach, cucumber, radish, red bell pepper, broccoli, hard-cooked egg, savory sprouted tofu, herbed goat cheese, craisins, and walnuts, dressed in Dijon mustard and honey.

Could I BE any more boring? Could I?

Snacks: I was hungry today, and had two pineapple macadamia macaroons, and some raw almonds and dried cranberries. Could be worse, I guess.

Dinner: Brown rice topped with Veganomicon's Chickpeas Romesco (recipe here) with...can it BE..MORE steamed broccoli??? Get the fuck out!! With a touch of butter even!?!? Wow!! What creativity!

Also? Fuck broccoli.

Dessert: Yeah. This happened. Ben & Jerry's peanut butter cup ice cream with some leftover Malley's hot fudge. Consider this an invitation for fat to remain on my body. *sigh*