A new day...or an old one take 100

I am constantly starting programs, creating plans, trying to persuade myself to do the things I "want" to do. First problem - I do not really want to do them. Yes I want to lose weight, be in shape, look like that 30 year old did in her bikini on Sunday. OMG I want to be able to run half marathons with relative ease, workout in the morning and night, be that girl that is just non-stop going, exercising and looking fabulous. But that is a lie really. I want to be the girl that eats great food, drinks lots of wine, is chilling and relaxing and enjoying the day. These two wants are diametrically opposed and I end up just hating myself. The one side hates that I am sloppy and overweight, the other side hates that I work all the time be it work or exercise.

My real problem is despite what I read and inspirational quotes I read, I do not really enjoy working out. I hear all these people talk about how they love to run, or feel so much better afterwards, or get "addicted" to working out. Seriously, I couldn't be one of those people that got "addicted" to working out. I am addicted to a lovely glass of wine and some beautiful food - not sweating, hurting and beating up on my poor body.

Find the exercise you can enjoy - I hear that a great deal. Dudes- I don't like any of it. It's a pain in the ass and frigging hard work. So I have to resign myself to giving up what I want to do for what I hate to do. Why? Why not just succumb and be kind of plump and enjoy?

I HATE being plump. I hate my stomach having rolls, my thighs not fitting into my pants,and the triple chin that starts to form. When I start to look bad, I start to feel bad, and then I beat myself up a ton about how much I suck, which takes the joy out of just about everything.

One of the things I am going to do on this attempt is to give up alcohol. First, ton of calories, second I feel like crap and don't exercise, third, I use it to forget about how much I hate myself for #1 and #2.

I read this article yesterday A Sobering Exercise where she does a thirty day alcohol free exercise.

Nina says this - The month felt long. I don’t mean time dragged--in fact, the long, free evenings I’d envisioned never materialised. I still went out all the time, and did precious little exercise (despite all those nights of quality REM sleep). But there were no elisions, no blurring of events between the first shared bottle and the second. For a month everything I did was clearly delineated.

So what else did I learn after a month of stone-cold sobriety? That it's over-rated. There is a reason why people drink proportionally more the less they like themselves: alcohol takes you, as so much slang for drunkenness has it, out of your head. I’m no self-loathing Hemingway or Parker, but a month is a long time in your own uninterrupted company...

I discovered that I use alcohol the way Susie Orbach claims women use fat: as a locus for blame, a red herring. Off the sauce, I was still tired, lazy and prone to overeating carbohydrates and chocolate. I still spent too much money, talked too much and went out too much. In fact, none of my problems can be blamed on drinking alcohol, except the one that involves drinking a little too much.

Great...so a likely outcome of this little experiment is that I am more aware of my inherent laziness and still have not really taken to exercise. Well at least the calories and cash will be an upside.

Tommorow - more about the "friends challenge" but yesterday's results.

Day 1
No alcohol
No exercise
Ate pretty well really.

Trying to find a good goal tracker program to embed into my blog so it will be easier.