"Finish your plate"

In my nutrition class there was a lecture on developmental nutrition. This was very interesting to me... My professor talked about how small children are very good at determining how much they should be eating. She said somewhere along the line, we lose touch with our bodies. And that probably has to do with being told to finish our plates.

I can remember being six and walking away from the dinner table with food on my plate. I remember being told to finish my food. Sometimes I'd be able to delegate the task to my brother, a living garbage disposal. Or sneak food to the dogs. And once I remember my oldest brother wrapping up my greenbeans in a napkin for me so I wouldn't have to eat them. One of my favorite childhood memories, actually.

I also remember when I started finishing my plate. I was proud of myself.

It's also largely that I got eating habits from my parents. A "daddy-sized" bowl of ice cream got me in trouble in the fifth grade. It was like five scoops. I don't think I was old enough to make the connection between eating and chubbiness, even if I already suspected I was chubby.

Point is, when I have kids - I'm going to let them eat however much they want, and probably try to make them choose small portions and go back for seconds if they want them. lol, I admit I did "make my eyes bigger than my stomach" a lot when I was little. I wasted a lot of food and hated leftovers. I hope they'll see food to be as trivial as my boyfriend does, and not feel bad throwing out half a burger if they can't go home to wrap it up.

This whole guilt thing I deal with has to go! I feel guilty eating, I feel guilty throwing it away... and I feel anxious wrapping it up because I worry it will get touched. Hopefully things will get better when I'm out of that awful house.

Neither of which really capture the character...

At first I saw THIS and was amused in kind of a guilty sort of way....

Then I saw THIS and I don't know what to think anymore -_-

Speaking of halloween, I'm going to be a sexy police officer. Because cops are scary and should be degraded.

>_>

Anyway. Yeah. Exposed belly button. Need more sit-ups.

Worst part is I'll be PMSing on Halloween, so I don't know what my belly and/or skin will be doing. I know they're not stunning right now.

Changing your self-perception

I have a friend. I think I've mentioned her. She's maybe 5'2" and 100 pounds.

She's got a naturally tiny appetite, and she gets teased for being small.

I envy her. She'll forget to eat all day, and then when she gets a chance she eats the fattiest foods she can, but can never manage to finish them.

I've been trying to emulate her in this regard. You know, without the fatty foods thing. As a result, I've dropped a few pounds. Which is fantastic. Fake it 'til you make it sort of thing.

So if I pretend to have the appetite of someone who's 100 lbs naturally, maybe I can get a little better than I have been.

I really wish I was a type-A personality too. I know plenty of people who are. I have role models in that regard. Lately I've been thinking of how much I hate missing my first class of the day ( I really DO hate that so much! ). I'm hoping I'll stop thinking of myself as the kind of worthless slug who misses buses over and over and over because I fucking suck at life o_0

...I'll be okay

Anyway. Yeah. I need to change my self perception to change my behavior and performance. Little affirmations help.

I AM STRONG

I DO MY HOMEWORK

I CAN DEFEAT MORNINGS!

Mornings are tough. They literally make me ill. Getting up quickly has always made me sick in the morning, and I have to unwind in bed for 20 minutes to avoid puking up whatever little thing I eat for breakfast.

So much of my poor performance is because I don't think I deserve better than I've been achieving, and that I hinder my performance because I think someone else deserves to reap the benefits more than I do. This isn't conscious, but it's something I need to make conscious so I can fight it.

I've been taking better care of myself lately. I try to put a little more effort into my appearance so I don't feel like I'm less than other girls. There's nothing standing between being a thin, beautiful, successful woman except my own willingness to achieve what I know I do want. I don't know why it's so hard to act like I deserve to be better than I feel like I deserve, but somehow it is.

This post was somewhat inspired by something I watched about performance on standardized tests. You've probably heard of the experiments where they give complicated math tests to men and women, and preface them with a note about the scores typically being affected by gender, or not affected at all. The women performed better when told that men and women perform the same on the test. Their own expectations about how they would perform affected the outcome. The experiment had more to do with the fairness of standardized testing and how prejudice affects a child's performance on state exams, and things like the SATs, but it got the gears in my head going.

Don't act like you don't deserve something you want, when you can have it as easily as anyone else.

Too-Cool Thinspo

Theses are epic ^_^ It's the songs that really put it over the top.

Omega 3 update

I've noted a marked improvement in my hair, my nails.... and yeah, my skin. Which is pretty awesome, actually.

I can't say for certain that it all gets traced back to the omega. My cycle might affect things. I have this new coconut mousse for my hair. I tried this nail hardening stuff...but lost it after I tried it once. Which sucks, because it was kind of expensive.

But my skin is looking pretty good. I mean, someone who doesn't know my face would still say I have bad skin, but the redness has definitely gone down. I have some pimples, but they're pretty minor.

I was just looking at myself in a mirror a little while ago. I smiled. I was noticing features I normally don't.

I felt like I was looking at a pretty girl with scandinavian features. My nose, my chin, my cheekbones, my eyes. I am more than my bad skin :] I haven't felt that way in ages.

And even if it is partly in my head, or my cycle, or temporary in any way - it was an entirely new way of seeing myself. I saw myself the way I would see another person. Another person who wasn't ugly.

I feel like a salesperson lately. Maybe I should work at a GNC or something.

Not eating at home is the best thing I've done

My biggest challenge with losing weight has been how I always insist on eating the leftovers from the dinner my parents made... It's kind of a guilt thing, because I'm never home. On a week day I'm gone from 8:30AM-12AM or later. My boyfriend is everything after school.

But ... for reasons I don't care to repeat... in part because they make me look completely mad, I know... I haven't been eating at home. Except for the fiber plus bars I have stashed behind the couch, and I learned the hard way not to O.D. on those.

Yeah, but anyway - I don't really know what else to credit for my being a solid size 4. At least in Old Navy. I didn't try on jeans anywhere else, I had a coupon. I think the sizes weren't weird or anything, though ^_^

It's nice, though - being able to google my size and find skinny people in the pictures. :]