Do 40 minutes on the treadmill like yesterday. Yesterday was a good first day back at the gym. How many calories did I burn yesterday?
I beat myself up for not remembering.
Let's do 45 minutes just for cushion.
"The Biggest Loser" is on TV. What a shitty show to play at the gym. Subtitles read, "I burned enough calories to eat a cookie". Go to hell.
Start off walking at 1.5 incline, 3.7 speed. Run at same incline, 6.0 speed. Walk 5, run 5, walk 5, run 5.
30:00. 277 calories. Portia de Rossi wrote in her Unbearable Lightness, that she ran at 6.0 on a 1.0 incline for 30 minutes. I feel good already. Almost past my day's intake. Let's break 300 for the banana I ate before the workout.
35:00. Walk at 3 incline at 3.7 speed. It's a little tiring, so I grab the handles. Then I think, moving my arms back and forth has to burn more calories than grabbing the handles.
44:00. 377 kcal. Back at 1.5 incline. Want to break 400 even if it goes past my earlier decision to do just 45 minutes. A nice round number, 400. 48:10. 400kcal. I reached my goal. I can stop now, but what kind of number is 48:10. Might as well go to 50:00. Why stop at 50 when I can go to 60?
54:20. Feel so powerful. People coming and going on the machines on either side of me. I feel stronger, more intense, more superhuman than those people who give in to their body's signals (there are too many parallels here to my food behaviors). I tell myself, today is the only day I will exercise like this.
55:00. Walk these last 5 minutes. 55:43 470 kcal. Want to break 500. Will this ever end?
59:33 488 kcal. So close, keep pushing. Increase incline to 3.0 because it burns more calories faster. 61:38 500 kcal. Take that, Portia de Rossi.
It's only 8:55PM. Too early to go back home and do nothing so might as well stay and burn some more. Move on to the bicycle. Cigarettes in my bag look so tempting and rewarding. My tendency to delay any sort of gratification, tells me that waiting is going to make them that much tastier.
Damn. 2:46 16 kcal. What is this. Shit, I forgot to suck in and tighten my stomach.
Got a call to open the front door of my apartment. Thank goodness it's only half a block away. I get off the machine. But wait, I forgot to read the kcal burned. I panic a little. Get back on to check and am relieved to see that resuming the workout will show where I left off. 35 kcal. Total of 535 kcal for 1.5 hours. I run to apartment to continue workout. Why walk when I can run? This feels like it's about a 5.0 incline. Open door, run back. I deserve a cigarette, and damn, the wait did make it tastier.
Get back in the gym on to the bicycle. 3:15, 16. Reading my beloved book, Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher. Who the hell reads a memoir about eating disorders at the gym. I do. It reads, "We speak as if there was one collective perfect body, a singular entity that we're all after. The trouble is, I think we are after that one body. We grow up with the impression that underneath all this normal flesh, buried deep in the excessive recesses of our healthy bodies, there was a Perfect Body just waiting to break out. It would look exactly like everyone else's perfect body. A clone of the shapeless, androgynous models, the hairless, silicone-implanted porn stars...As Andy Warhol wrote, "The more you look at the same exact thing...the better and emptier you feel." (p. 47)
19:02, 95 kcal.
"Recent research suggests that an extremely strong desire for academic achievement may be as significant as sexual maturation, if not more so, in the development of eating disorders in young women. There is a combination of...a family that has high expectations of achievement...a child who is prone to excessive self-imposed pressure; and a child who exhibits unusual levels of academic ability and intelligence. The combination often results in mental paralysis.The child may defect from expectations - her own above all else - and take refuge in an entirely antirational set of behaviors that have, in fact, a highly organized structure." (p. 54)
Marya Hornbacher: she is my hero. It's called Wasted. Everybody should read it, whether or not they have an eating disorder. It's a great parenting book.
25:00 126 kcal.
28:30 147 kcal. Need to break 150.
Pedal harder.
30:00 151 kcal.
686 kcal not including the run to and from my apartment.
Time for some arm exercises.
Get on the fixed pulldown. 40 lb (pitiful). 5 sets of 15. I wish these had calorie counters.
I walk to a more open area to stretch and do some crunches. It feels good to be at the gym.
2.25 hours, around 700 kcal burned. I don't want to exercise like this again. Too many memories. But, if I don't do it again or even raise the bar next time, I'm going to feel mentally weak and physically larger.
I am starving.
I get back home, take an amazing, long shower, and I feel weak, shaky. The hot shower leaves me even more hungry, and I contemplate not eating anything to keep up my caloric deficit. I catch myself getting caught up in my old ways and grab a banana. I think bananas are literally the quietest foods, from the peeling, to the chewing, to the disposing of peel. Well, I guess yogurt and pudding are similar in noise-level. I'm not a big banana-lover, partly because it's not juicy at all, partly because it's so dense and has so many calories. But I think, "I burned enough calories to eat a banana" and try to eat as quietly as I possibly can. This takes me back to my bulimic days when I used to binge in the kitchen when everyone was asleep, trying to make as little noise as possible.
But this time I don't purge.
Because I already did.
No comments:
Post a Comment