This was the most-delicious breakfast I had this morning. The photo's a bit blurry but you get the gist.
I'm a huge fan of an egg-white western omelette with a single slice of american cheese. And if you put that shit on a toasted bagel (a scooped-out bagel so I'm consuming a bit less white bread), I'm in heaven.
I haven't eaten one of these puppies in ages since they are rather high in calories. The bagel alone is a pretty substantial intake of food, but I decided this morning was the morning. I had a craving for one yesterday and the day before, and after not having time to grab breakfast at home today, then venturing to several different breakfast places in the city when I got near the office (it was an indecisive food-morning for me), I finally said eff-it and went to a place where I could order one of these sandwiches. And it was delicious. The bagel was so chewy and yummy and the cheese was so melty and gooey. Mmmph!
Anyway. Next up: more food! ;) It's getting close to lunch time and I cannot decide what to have. So I made myself a second cup of coffee to tide me over while I weigh my options. I'm so indecisive about food today!
I ended up having a great day, food and exercise-wise, yesterday. The lunchtime gym workout and the afterwork gym workout, totaling about 1 hour, 20 minutes of exercise, was time well spent. I got in a nice long run after work and felt really good when it was over. The whole left side of my body has been feeling tight and tense and not fluid, so I had a nice stretch session afterwards and then got my act together to head downtown to my improv show. I grabbed myself (and Kevin) a slice of cheese pizza to fuel us through our improv show and that ended up being all the food I needed for the rest of the day. I had a small handful of nuts when I got home around midnight and a glass of water and called it a night. Felt really good about all my choices yesterday. Plenty of fruits and veggies, plenty of indulgence (pizza!), and came in right on target in terms of calories-consumed. Love it. The scale rewarded me this morning. (My week of trying-not-to-scale-hop ended. I'm back to scale hopping. It's fun to know, either way. I used to like getting graded tests back in school too, no matter what grade I got. I was always intrigued by the results.)
Today is very quiet at work. It's Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of Atonement, and a majority of the people in my office are Jewish so they're attending services and fasting today. In fact, the city itself is quieter overall today. The train wasn't as packed this morning, etc. etc. It's nice. I thought I would have a big expanse of a day to surf the web all day long but it looks as though I'll be able to keep myself busy with work tasks for most of the afternoon. I've had to pick up some of the slack for people who are out today and I feel obligated to get caught up on other stuff I've shoved aside on busier days. So. Blah blah, right?
I came in late today because the train was moving at a snail's pace, because I knew it was going to be dead in the office, and because I could not make a fucking breakfast decision. I ended up being about 30 minutes late. Gah! Not exactly professional, but I'm usually on time, so. And I'm also leaving early tonight because we're going to a Yom Kippur break-fast (even though we haven't been fasting) that our friend's girlfriend is throwing. It's gonna be a great time, I think. I'm really looking forward to it. I even wore a dress for it! (With jeans under it, though, because I could not find any tights this morning - I think I threw them all out when I moved - and my legs are - ahem - unsightly right now.)
The POINT is that due to the big pending feast tonight, I'd love to go get in a workout today on my lunchbreak. But I came in late and am leaving early so I'm not sure if that's exactly wise. It IS dead here and nobody would mind if I was gone so I will probably try to go to some yoga (I desperately need to just do some poses by myself for 20 minutes, I'm so stiff and tight right now) and maybe 10 minutes on my BFF the stairmaster.
A goal of mine this week is to purposefully follow a high-point day with a low-point day and vise-versa. I ate a good amount on Tuesday, yesterday was very light, and tonight will be heavier. Gotta keep the body guessing.
Remember that massage I had last Friday with Kevin? Well, it was to die for and I felt like a new human when I walked out of there. If I could afford to go once a week I would. I felt great all weekend, despite hard exercise and plenty of moving around. Then Monday hit, I sat down at this damn desk, typed and answered phones all day long, constantly shifting around to try to get comfortable, and within a matter of hours of being here I started to feel cramped, tight, sore, and in pain. Like clockwork. It's almost infuriating to me. I tried to focus on sitting up straight and relaxing my neck and shoulders but the pain still comes.
As some of you may or may not know, I went to acting school. And a huge focus of training to be an actor is body work. So we learned (were force-fed) a lot about having good posture, good alignment, and keeping your back and neck long and tall so that you can avoid back pain and the rest of your body (arms, legs, shoulders, etc.) doesn't begin to compensate for your tense body. A ridiculous amount of people's bodily injuries, chronic pain, and even overall (and seemingly unrelated) health problems come from not knowing how to sit/stand properly or how to release tension in your shoulders and lower back or how to align your spine and hold your head on top of your neck in a natural way.
I realize as I'm typing it that I might sound like some kind of weird hippie. But it's a huge part of my life, my alignment. Come to think of it, almost all my friends who went to school to study theater have great posture and always look tall, thin, and confident in their bodies, no matter what their size. Holding yourself up in the way that is actually natural for your spine makes you LOOK thinner, younger, and more confident.
You can tell it's something I think a lot about.
Sometimes I will see another runner, either at the gym or on the path at the park, jogging away looking so hunched over it hurts me to look at them. People crane their necks or pinch their necks back, round their shoulders forward, have tension in their hands and faces when they exercise and it's just the worst thing ever for your body. It's that yoga-type concept of everything needing to be in proper alignment for your body to get the full positive affect of all the hard work you're doing. If you're running, for example, without a long spine, relaxed shoulders and neck, you're almost undoing a lot of the good work you set out to do by going for a run in the first place.
And what I'm basically trying to say is that sitting at this desk, no matter how I arrange myself or my seat/keyboard, is killing me softly and makes me feel like a twisted pretzel at the end of every day. I spend huge chunks of time every day just stretching and realigning my body because BECAUSE OF THIS TORTUROUS PRISON CALLED A DESK.
Thank you.
1 comment:
Hey, thanks for your nice long comment on my blog today. After a great run and a really lovely day, I feel oodles better. And also, remembering that you also regained 15 lbs last year made me feel better -- because I didn't think any less of YOU for it, so why should I think any less of ME for it, right?
Posture -- I'm a musician, and playing the flute and piano and singing always taught me to be very conscious of my posture as well. The past month I"ve had insanely tight shoulders and neck and back -- and I Realized it's because I"ve been working from the sofa every day (I WORK AT HOME, PEOPLE), rather than sitting at my desk in my pretty office. At least there I'm sitting upright, rather than hunched over my lap or the coffee table. So today I actually worked in my office and I feel much better already.
I would also get a massage every week if I could afford it. Someday (I do try to go once every couple of months though).
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