A year ago, I was a girl that closely followed the paleo lifestyle with the occasional splurge once a month or otherwise sparingly, and hit the gym regularly. Out-of sight-out-of-mind was the way I lived, never stocking my cupboards with junk food, and not a lot of decent restaurants to tempt me. Seamless wasn’t an option either. I was fine without it, and felt the best I had ever felt with such a clean diet and regular dose of endorphins. When I finally made the move back home, gone were those days of oblivious bliss. Temptation was everywhere. My inner pastry/food addict was running rampant down the streets of the Marina.
Living in San Francisco, it comes as no surprise that my office has a fully staffed kitchen staff that cooks elaborate food around the clock. With the ever IPO’ing tech world here, it seems to be standard to culture an office that offers a home-away-from-home, and the financial industry here has started to follow suit as well. So here I am. Eating my way into farm fresh oblivion and cronut rings of hell. Not exactly the recipe for maintaining a paleo-lifestyle and figure/well being to match. If it wasn’t bad enough there, throw in the ubiquitous delicious food around the city into the mix. Oh, and Seamless, there’s that. So whats a girl to do?
Stop. Stop the madness. After several months of excruciating rage over my skinny-fat physique, and more rage when I hit the over-crowded gym with crappy classes that were in no way helpful for forcing me to complete a decent workout, I decided that an intervention needed to happen. Like last month. But whatever. There’s no time like the present, right? After hate-eating a million Valentine’s day treats in the office, and feeling like death and Shamu combined in a pencil skirt, coupled with no longer fitting in my Lululemon, I finally flipped the switch in my head that had been trying to do ever since I started working here. Enough’s enough y’all, because I cannot bring myself to buy bigger sizes or feel the shame of having a tailor let out my seams…and frankly, I cannot deal with Spanx anymore. I value breathing.
So how exactly do you go about bypassing the copious amounts of freshly made deliciousness every day?
Step 1
Realize that it will all be there EVERYDAY. Its nothing special that you need to be wasting time experiencing FOMO for.
Step 2
It seems like a great idea at the time, but think about how you are going to feel post food coma and post realization of #sweatpantsareallthatfitsmerightnow and you are incapable of going out in public for fancy outings, because leggings are NOT pants, and Lululemon can only take you so far. Trust me, I’ve tried. Some of those attempts have been all out failures.
Step 3
Up your water intake. The fuller you are before you hit the lunch line, the less inclined you will be to grab a ton of everything on the table. Stick to good items that will keep you feeling satisfied like a handful of almonds or other good fats and proteins, and stick to entrees that have whole food qualities, and less grains and starches. Grains/starches = full for a second, hungry later, and turns into sugars later, and eventually skinny-fat. NOBODY got time for that.
Step 4
Put yourself first. Go to the gym. Its OK to skip or postpone drinks with the girls or yet another bad online date occasionally when you have no other option for workout time. You’re only hurting yourself by letting yourself slide, and as everyone knows, its a dangerously slippery slope into becoming a lazy shapeless blob that feels horrible from the crap TV dinners and depression of feeling your worst. VICIOUS. CYCLE. STOP. Now.
Now get up, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and do something about it. Your future self will thank you later.
