Defining ourselves

I really enjoyed that pot-luck. My office outdid itself.  I just love having little bits of lots of different kinds of foods. Heaven is filled with appetizers.  In a way it was a good day to go nuts---it was a flat out hungry day--the kind of day where I could easily eat 10 full sized meals plus snacks and still not fill up.  Usually when I get like that it means something physical is going on and I tend not to gain weight. I sure hope that was the case yesterday.

Today is the honors lunch--am I hoping for a nice reasonable meal? Are you crazy? I want rich, gourmet yumminess with a dense chocolate dessert.  Oh dear. I don't think this problem is going to go away unless I move to some wretched country with no food at all.  Meanwhile, I at least have wellness time today--so I'll hike up the hill to the gym and lift a few weights. It's the least (in every sense of the word), I can do.

A couple of interesting ideas about how we define ourselves and how powerful that is have been coming my way.  First was a story from my anthropology textbook. An anthropologist was studying some tribe and one man keep telling him how poor he was. The anthro started collecting data with the help of this man on the material possessions of the tribe and it turned out that this man was actually quite well off.  This left the man with a problem--he had to change his entire way of thinking of himself. In the end he refused to do it. He continued to be "poor" because he had this problem with his father in law and this or that other issue.

Another story from a friend was of a lady she knew who was told by her doctor to stop eating salt. So she stopped eating bread--"because bread has salt" but continued to eat potato chips and doritos!

OK---in what ways am I delusional? And can I be willing to reframe my own attitudes? This is not so easy. For example, when I was young I really was super tall for my age, easily a head taller than anyone else in class. I didn't even out until high school when every one else finally caught up.  Now, I'm a dead average 5'7. But I still feel tall. I work with a guy who is over 6 feet tall and even some of the women are taller than I am. No matter. I feel like the tallest one in the office, even though I don't like feeling that way and even though it's factually untrue!

There are two things I think I can really work on changing. I've always considered myself as "bad at sports." But that isn't necessarily true. I have no experience with sports is much more accurate. How do I know I'm bad at sports? Yes, I have a painful history of striking out, or being last, but what would you expect from someone with no experience? I want to explore the world of sports a little and not from the work-out weight-loss side. I always weigh sports down with the "I'm supposed to be exercising" element.  NO! I'm going to approach it from the fun side. Try batting cages, or archery or basketball or skeet shooting or whatever, simply because it's fun and I'm missing out by not exploring that. I'll have to think about how I want to approach this so I don't forget it. One thing I do want for my birthday is a basketball--there's a court across the street. I used to like just messing around and trying to make baskets. I also used to like hitting a tennis ball against the wall--I can look for a good wall. I'm going to treat this like I treat reading. I read constantly, not because I'm trying to improve my mind, but because it's fun. Ditto sports!!!

The other thing I can say is that I like to eat healthy foods. This is true. It's also true that I like to eat unhealthy foods and great quantities of both, but I can focus on the fact that I do indeed, like to eat healthy foods. It's fun to hunt for receipes, I love Hungry Girl.  I can build on this.

From here on out, I am a person who likes healthy foods, who is exploring the world of sports. Thought! I work at a university for pete's sake! There is a huge recreational office with free classes in all kinds of stuff all the time!!