Day 48 - A different kind of craving

Before I get into the actual topic of this post, I want to share my pull-up bar with you. I say, who needs a man?! I only need my drill and my tool set and bam!, pull-up bar installed. I did work up quite a sweat getting this bad boy hung up. Totally worth it! I did a number on my back muscles yesterday...didn't do one pull-up but I strained and strained and my back muscles are on fire today. :) I did some kung-fu sit-ups, but they weren't pretty. Wow! These are some hard-core exercises, people.

On to the meat of today's discussion. I was invited to try a new Indian restaurant with some of my favorite people in the world. Against my better judgment (esp. after the Thai situation), I decided to give it a try. The restaurant MUST have one thing on the menu that would be suitable. Here's how it went down. I ordered the appetizer of grilled chicken and a main course with a description that goes something like this, "Fresh, seasonal veggies served/cooked with cottage cheese and sauteed in spices." I was picturing a bowl of veggies with a little cottage cheese and perhaps with some oil and maybe too much salt. What I got was a bowl of cheese chunks swimming in an oily, spicy sauce. 3 spears of broccoli and overcooked onions and peppers. I'd say 10% veggies, 90% shit I can't eat. So, I picked out the brocolli, dabbed off the oil, ate it. I ate a couple pieces of the cheese chunks, which were very cottage cheesy and probably would have been fine minus the oily sauce they were in. Didn't eat any of the rest. ~sigh~ $10, down the drain. The chicken was over salty but fine otherwise. And, at least it was garnished with some raw green pepper, so I ate the garnish, about 60 grams of the chicken and 3 spears of broccoli. I didn't really go that much off diet, but it was disheartening to realize there wasn't one option on that menu that was even close to PCP healthy. SO, no more eating out for the rest of the project!! Except sushi, b/c I can get a big bowl of steamed, unsalted veggies and fabulous sashimi that's totally in diet.

And, to bring it back to the topic, "a different kind of craving"...what happened here is not that I had an uncontrollable food craving. The food didn't look super appealing and it wasn't hard for me not to eat it. I gave in to my craving for social interaction. Let me just be honest and straight here. I'm lonely, I get lonely. I live alone. I don't have a boyfriend. I crave social interaction and especially crave human touch. I love cuddling and being close to people, and without a partner in my life, I get very, very little human touch. Sometimes it gets difficult, I get sad, I cry. This is life. And, when I get invited out to spend time with the people that I love the most here in Gainesville, saying NO is difficult. I get so little quality time with people that I don't want to say no when I'm offered it, and I am conscious of making others uncomfortable with my picky eating. Especially when I'm so obviously in shape right now...I get self-conscious when I have to explain what I'm doing to a table of 9 other people....most of my peeps know what I'm doing, but last night, one person didn't know and noticed that I barely touched my food. I had to explain myself. And, nobody was judging, the uncomfortableness comes from within me and the worry that I'm pushing away the people I love, which ultimately is silly, because they love me, too and understand. So there, food/alcohol cravings, easy (I've had two cold beers in my fridge since the beginning of this project, have yet to touch them or crave them) but social cravings, my biggest challenge.