Back in action

So here I am.  I'm going cold turkey, or rather, warm chicken, as the thing on my plate may be.  Yes, after six months of hedonism and putting anything within reach in my mouth and working out lackadaisically,* I'm back on the bandwagon.

*This six months of hedonism still involved trying to eat vegetables, regularly taking a multivitamin, training for and running a marathon, and doing a cross training combo of rowing/barre/yoga/rock climbing when I got the chance, but somehow not doing regular two a day workouts makes me feel like a slacker.

So here I am.  Again.  When I "started" this "blog," I was a 24 year old girl living in southern California, trying to figure out how to stay skinny while sweating as little as humanly possible and still eating all the dairy and dessert I pleased.  And now, almost two years later, I'm a 26 year old young woman living in DC, trying to figure out how to lose the weird belly flab I've put on from the drinking and break a 5 hour marathon.  (Yes, I realize this is incredibly slow.)  If I were less lazy, I'd change the title of this blog to "Burgers & Beer & Running & Rowing."  The point, I guess, that I'm trying to make is that when I started this blog, I didn't consider fitness an important part of my life.  It was something I "needed" to do in order to look a certain way.  It's become something I need to do to stay happy and sane.

So fitness I've got.  Food, on the other hand...when I moved to DC, everyone I know was like, "Be careful, you're going to become an alcoholic" and I was all "A girl can dream."  It turns out they were right, and I'm pretty sure I've been to more happy hours in the past six months than the past 26 years of my life.  I am not complaining in the least.  But my pants certainly are.  I would like to return to my fighting weight, as it were.

The problem is this:  I associate losing weight with being unhappy.  Not that the former causes the latter, but that the former is a consolation prize for being the latter.  To me, unhappy=bored=nothing better to do than cook healthy and work out a lot.  Ever since I moved, I've been crazy busy and so very happy with my life, but I've also been using that as an excuse to overindulge.  What was meant to be a month of first marathon recovery and infinite going away parties back in March somehow snowballed into me pretending everything I know about healthy eating doesn't exist.  And while my clothes still fit (ish) and I don't look horrible, I don't want to let this slope get any more slippery.