Summertime rolls...

This meme is my new most favorite thing ever.

Anyone get the reference from this post's title? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I've been off the weightlifting bandwagon for a lot of the summer. There are all sorts of reasons for this, some good, some not-quite-good, such as:

• For those who have been playing along at home, you know that I work at a farm ministry, and while my job is predominately a desk job, one could imagine how summertime kicks things into high gear around here. 
• I got into yoga, and then yoga took over my life to the point that it pushed my weight training out. 
• The first half of the summer we had no a/c, which means I didn't get a good night's sleep until early July.
• Travel, man, travel.

None of this really matters, of course. I'm either ass-in-gym or I'm not. My body doesn't really care that I have a cooking class to teach, or a yoga retreat to run, or squash to harvest. It don't know nothing about that.

I'm not really interested in beating myself up about this either. I mean, it's done, and the results of slacking off about the gym are a mixed bag. I did awesome things. I slept. My weight held pretty steady, but I suspect I traded in a bit of muscle for fat. Okay, so noted. Yoga may not be weightlifting, but it has its own lessons, such as:

And who I am is someone who prioritized work, kids, family, travel, and sleep over weightlifting for most of the summer. Okay.

That said, I did learn something very surprising while off of the gym. I found that it pretty seriously affected how I ate. Not what I ate, but how I ate it. As far as what I ate, I pretty much stuck to autopilot, plus the occasional redoubling on tracking my food intake. I've been doing the macros thing for a while now, and I'm reasonably clear on what my meals oughta look like to keep me happy and not hungry. Autopilot is probably the main reason my overall weight didn't go up (much) over the summer. But if I stuck to autopilot eating, which was resulting in weight loss during the winter, then what gives? Why did I stagnate, and even regress a bit?

Here's where the weird gym effect comes into play. When I'm in gym-mode, my attention is focused on feeding my body what it needs to excel--to kill sh*t in the gym. I want to enjoy my food, but also maximize my macros to fuel an awesome body. And fortunately, food I enjoy and food that fuels an awesome body overlap significantly.

When I'm not ass-in-gym, though? I don't have an awesome body in my sights. I'm not saying I dislike my body when I'm not in the gym, but the focus of my eating shifts. I'm less diligent about hitting my macros. I'm less worried about my overall energy. I'm more willing to have maybe just one more piece of pizza. It seems that often people think of working out (and hence burning calories) as licensing them to eat more. But for me it's the opposite. When I'm working out, I am loving my body, and I want to give it the best, and the most appropriate, food. When I'm not working out? Meh, pizza. And maybe some cobbler, cause yum. And if I don't have as much pizza and cobbler as I want, I feel deprived. However, when I'm in workout mode, choosing to not have as much pizza and cobbler is one more way of honoring my body and its needs. 

So I'm gonna do some radical embracing of who I am and stuff, and get my behind back on the bench. It's time.