Old Habits

Sometimes I feel like I haven't learnt anything. I've lost almost 30kgs. I've changed my eating habits. I eat more veggies now. I eat seeded bread. I eat BEANS (13-year-old me would have shuddered at the thought) And yet... I still find myself making some of the bad decisions I've always done.

Today, after a big helping of dinner, I ate chocolate chips right out the box. Chocolate chips! It's not even a dessert! It's for baking damnit, not for stuffing in your face at hyper speed. To my knowledge there was no good reason for this shameful binge - I'm not upset, I didn't have a bad day, I don't think I was even craving sweets. It was just there and I had it.

Perhaps sometimes, when we're not vigilant, we fall back into our old habits. My old habit is being a Constant Craver and I just want to eat non-stop. There's something ridiculously familiar and comforting about that motion of hand-to-mouth. Then, once I've stopped, I get another familiar feeling - one of disappointment and shame. I get so mad at myself because, even though I've lost all this weight, I've still got this great big belly I'm trying to get rid of. They say abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym - well I've eaten the whole damn kitchen, now what?

As always, I think the only thing to do is pick yourself back up, shake off the dust (and cookie crumbs) and start over.

8-minute abs

A few years ago, I discovered a wonderful 80s-style workout video "8-minute abs". You know that old-timey workout video... the one with a spandex-clad instructor doing a random workout in an empty park... you know the one. 

Of course, I was always enticed by this video because it promised abs in a pitiful eight minutes (my kind of training!) One day I said to myself, "I am going to do this every single morning before I start my day and I am going to have such a flat stomach!" Needless to say, this resolution lasted a week.

Now that I'm more of a seasoned gym-goer, I've been putting in more effort than a half-hearted eight minutes. This morning, however, something drew me to the old abs video. Maybe it was a sense of nostalgia. Maybe it was the urge to rid my sins of the pie the night before. Whatever the reason, I did my eight minutes, and was pleasantly surprised by one little change.

On the last exercise, the instructor makes you place your fingers on your rectus abdominals (the ab area just below your boobs) while you do a minute of crunches. You're meant to feel the flat sheath that makes up the rectus abdominal muscles, and he says "hopefully you won't have to dig too far for long, gang" (Gang... Good god how old is this video? Who says that anymore?) A few years ago, this statement baffled me. I couldn't feel this "flat sheath" and I most certainly had to dig to feel anything under the blanket of fat. Today, for the first time, I felt the flat sheath... and it felt great.