Tough week

Ugh! It has been a rough week. The anniversary of my dad's death was Tuesday, and while I think I am mentally prepared for it....yeah well. I was actually really good almost all day. I planned a bike ride and weight lifting in the morning, and then I hung out with Jim. So far so good. But as the time got closer and closer to the actual time of his death I felt myself losing ground.

I had choir also that night which normally wouldn't have been a trigger, but it being the anniversary and Silent Night being my dad's favorite Christmas carol....again lost more ground. Fought tears off and on throughout the rehearsal.

When I got home, I was alone. Jim was at work, and Nate stayed at my mom's. Normal past behavior would have dictated a full on binge. I was a bit nervous because I came home hungry. However, I had a small container of soup and some crackers and called it good. I was extremely proud of myself.

I acknowledged my sadness, watched a sad show on TV to give myself a "good" reason to cry, had my soup, then went to bed feeling still sad, but also strong. I am not sure that I have ever done that before. I don't always give into a craving to binge, but I know that I hardly ever give myself permission to feel. So I will call the day a success.

The rest of this week has been pretty blah. Nothing exciting to report regarding my eating or exercise. I weigh in tomorrow, and I will try to blog tomorrow regarding the results :)

Why am I so mean?

I woke up this morning with a migraine :( Ugh! I crawled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom to grab the Excedrin Migraine. That stuff is a miracle worker for me. I went back to sleep for about 30 minutes and it was gone except for the lingering nausea. I had big plans of exercise today, but not feeling well put the kibosh on that!

So...what do I do when I don't feel well and I can't exercise as planned? A small anxiety attack. Logically, I know that missing one day of a scheduled workout won't undo all the good that I have done. However, missing a day due to not feeling well is scary. That is how things started in March, and we all know how that ended up for me.

I am trying really hard to breath, and to take care of myself inside and out today. I can be pretty mean to me. Things that I would never ever ever say to anyone else because it's so rude I say to myself without a second thought...sigh. Therefore, I am trying really hard to give myself a break and realize that tomorrow I am going to feel just fine. I will get a great workout in tomorrow :)

On to some more pleasant news....my mom and I rode 19 miles yesterday on our mountain bikes!!!! It was fabulous!!! We did great, and I can't wait to do it again :)

We are trying to come up with a Thanksgiving menu that is yummy yet fairly healthy. I have been researching some side dishes but may just stick to the tried and and true.

Head still hurts...so I am signing off for now.

I have my head in the game

Yesterday was weigh-in day :) I lost another 2.5 lbs. That makes it 15 lbs in 6 weeks!!! I am thrilled with my progress. It is difficult some days to stay on track, but it hasn't been impossible. It is pretty exciting to be this mentally "in the game". I haven't felt like this for a couple of years.

I am not even nervous about the holidays coming up. We have made a Thanksgiving plan, and I will do most of the cooking. I will make the actual meal a very healthy meal. The sides will be tasty yet low in calories. We did decide that we want pie. That will be my splurge. I LOVE pumpkin pie. My only little feeling of anxiety is if I can only eat one piece of pie....we'll see :)

This is the week that I will start upping my bike mileage. I am ready...I think. Sometimes our normal 15 miles is relatively easy, and sometimes it is still mentally challenging to get through. We are only going to add a couple extra miles so it should be okay. I will let you know after tomorrow :)

I don't have a whole lot to say today, but wanted to give a weight loss update. I am sure that I will have more to talk about soon...I almost always do :)

I needed a do-over today

Today started out as one of those kind of days. I have been sleeping until 6am or so lately (sometimes later *guilty pleasure*) but today I wanted to get up a little earlier. I set my alarm for 5:30 so that I could get up and study for a little while before Nate got up. So how did that work for me you ask? I rolled over and turned the alarm off...oops.

About 30 minutes later, Jim started talking/moaning. I opened my eyes and listened for a minute. His talking was getting more and more frantic and he started yelling the word NO! I thought he was dreaming. After a little bit of listening, I tried to wake him up. Long story...short....he had one of his episodes where he passes out and his body temperature plummets. It was short-lived today (thankfully). We have no idea why this happens, why it goes away so quickly, and have no prediction of when it will happen. This is the second time this year. Usually I call the ambulance and he gets taken to the hospital. Today I just treated him the same that the doctors do..minus all the tests. We never get any results, and his cardiologist has flat out said that unless it just happens to happen while they are watching....they may never know what causes it...sigh.

Then...Nate got up and was SUPER cranky. Really kid?! This morning you have to do that?! Ah well...got him off to school and Jim was sleeping again. I didn't want to leave the house with him sleeping just in case he needed me...so...I could have blown off the whole exercise thing today. In fact I felt justified in doing so.

But...after some thinking I decided that I would feel better if I got my heart pumping in a good way rather than the adrenaline rush of the morning fiasco. I jumped on the treadmill, and did 60 minutes of pretty intense walking intervals. I felt so much better after. It improved my mood exponentially!

Still kinda have some residual fear with Jim...I want to go watch him sleep :) But...usually after an episode he is good for several months or longer...so I just have to cross my fingers and pray that he is okay.

Swiss Rolls have 270 calories!!!???

I had a great talk with Jim last night. He has always supported me in my healthy journeys. And he has supported me when I am soooo not on that journey. I have learned after 20 years with him that he loves me no matter how I eat, how much I weigh, or if I exercise or not. He is a great husband in that respect.

After 20 years, he has developed a bit of a belly. (All of my good cooking :) ) He doesn't feel comfortable anymore in his skin...so last night we had the talk....

me: If you counted calories just for a few days, maybe it would be an eye opener in how you are eating.

him: A little Debbie Swiss Roll is 270 calories!!!

me: And being diabetic, eating less carbs will probably make your doctor happy.

him: A sleeve of Ritz cracker is 560 calories..that's not bad.

me: Because you're a man, if you just watched what you ate for like 3 days, you'll probably lose 10 pounds.

him: 243 carbs/day!!!! That is what this website thinks I should have?! This is going to be hard.

me: It always is...at the beginning. But you'll feel much better and healthier very quickly.


So....we'll see how this goes. For the last 5 weeks he has been eating an incredibly healthy dinner, it is just the rest of the meals that need a little work. Plus snack time needs some help...but I am happy to have a partner in my home to do this with and it will make us all feel better :)

He doesn't want to exercise yet, but I am hoping that he will get that bug as well. He has ridden his bike a few times with Nate and I...so maybe.

Hard day

Saturday was a pretty rough day for me. I was having a hard time with the big picture concept of this journey. As I have said before, the big picture is overwhelming to me sometimes. It just seems like it is going to be a long, difficult journey. And every once in awhile it seems just too difficult.

Saturday was one of those days. For about four hours Saturday afternoon, I was this close to throwing in the towel. It was a scary place to be. I had a lot of negative self talk that went something like this:

You won't succeed anyway, so you might as well eat donuts.

I don't want to count every calorie that I eat for the rest of my life, so I might as well stop now.

This is just too hard, and I don't want to do hard.


Sick, huh? Fortunately, it did only last about four hours...but those four hours were hell! Once I made and ate a very healthy and filling dinner I was okay again. And I have been fine ever since. I noticed though that my hardest days are days that I haven't exercised. That's a problem all in itself since I have to have a rest day every now and again, but I need to figure out my head on those days.

So that's where I am at right now...back on track but a scary day that I almost couldn't deal with. I am proud that I did not give in to that little voice, but I would like to work on that voice disappearing or at the very least getting quieter.

Almost Binge

Last night was the closest I have come to a full blown binge in the 5 weeks that I have been on this healthfulness journey. It was a bit scary, and I am nervous for tonight.

I believe several things led up to my night. First and foremost, I did not eat breakfast yesterday. By the time that I got home from my bike ride I only had an hour before we picked Nate up from school and it would be lunchtime. I figured that I could wait. I did...but really was too hungry to have done that.

Second of all, my lunch was not substantial enough. I had a frozen meal and a few tortilla chips. I should have tried to make that a better meal.

Thirdly, I had not thrown all of the evil Tootsie Rolls away the other day. I dumbly thought that I could "handle" having a few in the house as a treat now and again...obviously I was wrong.

The things that I did correctly last night:
1. Counted every calorie that went in my mouth!

2. Stuck to eating mostly nutritionally sound food (except for those damn Tootsie Rolls).

3. Went to bed before I could do any horrible damage.

I still ended up under my calorie allotment for the day, but only because I had ridden 15 miles in the morning.

I am trying to learn from this little diversion. I didn't exercise today...it is my normal day of rest :) I did have breakfast, and just ate a decent lunch. I am making a chicken for dinner along with squash so that will be a pretty low cal dinner.

And tonight? Well, I am going to make some sugar free, fat free pudding. Plus make sure I eat an apple or other fruit before I go for the "junkier" foods. I also got rid of the last of the candy (not that there was much left after last night). I am hoping that I am setting myself up for success tonight. Last night scared me. And I really don't want to repeat anytime soon.

12.5 pounds!

Today was weigh-in day! Another 2 lbs gone...woot woot!

I have a confession to make though. I got on the scale yesterday and was up a pound. I thought about freaking out about it...but then thought about what I had eaten throughout the week. I never went over my calorie allotment in a day, but I did eat out in restaurants A LOT this week. Analyzing that, I figured that I hadn't made a mistake in counting calories, but there was probably a TON of sodium in all that restaurant food.

Sodium=water retention=weight gain.

Instead of throwing in the towel, I figured that if I drank a ton of water that maybe I could counteract the scale. Guess what?! I did :) Love water..woohoo! I actually felt better by drinking so much water, and I did get the scale to move in the "right" direction.

It felt good to be realistic about the scale. I had told myself before I even got on the scale this morning that if it was still up a pound that it was okay. Life happens. And this week life was in full force with Halloween and Jim's birthday. Life is always going to happen. I can't deprive myself of the things that I like forever, and I won't. I will make better choices most of the time so that I can enjoy those fun life moments.

I really am working on my emotional response to food, the scale, stress, and all of the other things that happen. I am feeling healthier towards it most of the time. It is definitely a work in progress, and may always be that way...but just for today...I feel good about myself :)

Disgusted with the image

I normally cook dinner rather early by almost any one's standards. With Jim working nights I like to have a family dinner where the three of us can sit down (most nights) and talk about our days, etc. That being said it is usually still light outside when we eat.

We are very much like Seinfeld's parents and eat at 4pm on the days that Jim works. On the other days, since we are used to eating so early, I still have dinner on the table around 5pm. Still light out is my issue. Halloween night I cooked dinner a bit later. We spent the day getting ready for trick or treaters, and by the time we were hungry it was dark. And so by the time we ate it was dark outside.

We sat down at the table, enjoying our meal, when I caught a glimpse of myself being reflected in the window. Ugh! I spend my days living this healthiness journey only to have it torn down in a brief second of recognition. I know that I am very overweight. I don't deny that, but I do view myself as smaller than I really am...sad but true.

So when I saw myself, I was disgusted. Really disgusted. I hate that I am this big again. I see myself so differently sometimes. I see myself as a physically strong woman, but a work in progress as well. I just wasn't aware of how much progress I still had to do. When I get dressed in the morning, I never look in a mirror. I throw my clothes on and start my day. Now I know why I do that.

I know that I am moving in the right direction (now that the Halloween candy is out of the house), but it is still startling to see how far I have to go. I wanted this post to have nice morally high ending, but there really isn't one. I don't like what I see so I don't normally look. When I think about 12 years ago running the Tucson marathon I see a girl that was having a hard time stopping weight loss from happening. I know that I never fixed the emotionally issues that accompanied my overweight-ness, but I sure wish I would have stopped the weight gain before it got this bad again.

Candy is EVIL but was it a success?

I had made a plan last week to eat absolutely no Halloween candy at all. Yeah that didn't work out so well for me. Tootsie Rolls are evil. Really.

On the plus side, I did actually count every single calorie that I ate in candy. That was hard to do. Especially today. I just ate a bunch of Tootsie Rolls and my instinct was to forget that I ate them. Basically hide the fact that I ate them. That, though, is the old me. The new me held herself accountable and wrote down how many of those damn Tootsie Rolls that I ate. 200 calories worth. Really?! I could have had something a whole lot more nutritious and filling, but nooooooo.

However, while I am not proud of how many I have actually eaten in the last 3 days I am proud that I held myself accountable for each and every calorie. That really is something that I would never have counted. I would have eaten as many candy bars as I wanted, and then said that I that I screwed up the whole day. Which then would have led me to grab the bag of chips or more candy. Sooooo....all in all I am counting Halloween as a success.

I told Jim earlier to pick out what he wanted of the candy that is left, and when I am finished typing this I am going to throw everything else in the trash. Yes, it is a waste of money. However, my health is priceless.