hungry like the wolf

Pharm test today went well--I think I did fine. That is a relief. I have IVs in the morning, so I'll be getting up at 5am to be in SAU in scrubs by 0545. That means I can't work out too late tonight...gotta get to bed at a reasonable hour.

I made an appointment for a fill in 2 weeks. It's with the PA, a guy named Brian. I really could care less if I see the surgeon or the PA for a fill. My experiences with PAs have been entirely positive so far, and a fill isn't exactly brain surgery. (I guess I should be knocking wood, after saying all of that.) It isn't so much my hunger (which is there, at about 3 hours after I eat), it's more the constant thought of food and rummaging for food that makes me think I need another fill.

I spent most of my adult life trying to avoid feeling hungry. I'm trying to have a new relationship with hunger, not see it as such a bad thing. Dr Judith Beck (The Beck Diet Solution, a cognitive behavioral therapy approach to weight loss) advocates doing a hunger experiment: Try to go a day without eating. I did it for most of a day, and found that after that intensely unpleasant hunger feeling goes away, so does the actual hunger. It comes and goes, but it's not as bad as that initial feeling of strong hunger that you get about 20 minutes after the little beginning hunger feelings start. So, here's a new way of thinking: What if I make my goal TO GET HUNGRY? I can eat, when I am hungry. The point here is to avoid eating when I'm not hungry, so telling myself that the goal is to get hungry seems like a sort of no-brainer solution. Another no-duh thing I've found recently about hunger is when I go to work out a little bit hungry, that hunger goes away fairly soon after I start my cardio routine. The blood leaves the stomach and goes to the legs and lungs and heart. So getting some real exercise when a little bit hungry seems like a pretty good idea--as long as I have eaten a meal that day (and I rarely exercise in the morning, and NEVER before I eat), it won't hurt me at all, and will probably reduce my calories.

Last night, I did my full workout including 22 minutes of running, followed up by 4. Yes! It felt good to get back in the groove. I did all of my weights, and got pissed enough about the leg press situation that I finally spoke to management. See, there are lots of 20ish young guys who like to leave their 100s of lbs on the leg press. Sometimes they are doing a different set and plan on coming back to the leg press. Other times I think they just think it's macho and cool to let everyone see their 400 lbs sitting on the leg press. I get SO pissed. They are 100 lb weights, and I'm sure I'm going to herniate a disc or drop one on my toe when I have to unrack them. (The biggest weights I put on are 45 lbs--I use 2 of them and 2 of the 25 lb weights.) When I know who left it on there, I ask them to rack them for me--I play up the chick thing, because they should be SHAMED into racking the weights, dammit. Who is so lame that they don't rack their own weights? So I talked to the management about putting up signs. They told me no one has ever complained about it before (is that possible?) and the upper management folks are anti-sign, but they'll ask about it. It actually sounded a little more hopeful than that. The manager was an older woman, and she agreed with me that we shouldn't be expected to rack someone else's 100 lb weights. There are little old ladies that use the weights for rehab and such and they certainly can't take those things off. So I am hopeful that there will at least be a sign up. But there is nothing there to tell people what they should already know is a common courtesy--you rack your weights. You don't get to commandeer the leg press for the 30 minutes it takes you to do your circuit the way you like it. There is one leg press, and you need to be a man and take your damn weights off. We'll see if anything comes of it.

So, I think I'll go make some dinner, finish proofing my paper, mail the tax returns (ahem), and then go run at the hospital around 6:30. Then home and to bed by 9.