Weigh-Day

At least I didn't gain :)
Weight today is 165.0 which is down 0.2 from last week.
That's not too bad, really. Since last weigh-in, I only had 1 totally on plan eating day, 3 pretty terrible eating days , and 3 days (2 hrs 50 min.) of exercise. This week was heavy on stress with my 1st observation at work, 2 days of driving to Knoxville for class and the uncertainty about going to grad school (then the added gift of stress I gave to myself by not reading my articles for class until the day before). But I felt like the work week ended well with my spurt of energy and happiness yesterday. I'll try to build on it.

Although last night I was back to the restless sleep and nightmares. I have no idea why - I had a good day, I did eat sugar but it was at noon - hours and hours before I went to bed. I had a glass of wine, but I don't think that could've done it....I had tons of physical activity with the gym and then cleaning the house for hours. I unwinded before sleeping by reading my book (not a scary book) for 20 minutes. It's a mystery!

I've always had vivid nightmares. When I was little they were usually either about enormously oversized gorillas (which I was in no way afraid of in the waking hours) or super-fast freight trains. In both sets of dreams, most of the time, I could hear either the gorilla stomping or the freight train approaching in the pitch black dark before I could see them and then they'd emerge and close in on me. In one very creepy variation of the freight train dream I got on the train and it was decorated Victorian style with a music box playing and girls in frilly dresses playing games on the floor...but not in a cute way...in a very 'twins from The Shining' style. And in a few variations of the gorilla dream I was sad for the gorilla - once I went to visit him either in prison or behind bars because he'd been captured by the circus (can't remember), and in one he'd been killed and there was a funeral procession through town....the street was covered with banana peels and other parts of fruit he'd left behind and everyone was crying.
I also remember a recurring dream in which I was playing board games in the hall with my mother when all of a sudden she'd start counting backwards from 10 (in a very monotone, sort of robotic, unfriendly voice). I'd have to get the game cleaned up and be back in my bed before she got to zero or unmentioned 'bad things' would happen. What was wrong with me?! They sound like anxiety and guilt dreams to me - maybe I've always had anxiety....hmmmm....
For a long time most of my nightmares were pretty genericly about me being chased by a group of guys with either guns or knives and then being shot or stabbed.
Now they're often about someone breaking into my house and hiding inside to attack me.
Well...I don't know...I just wish they faded from my memory more quickly when I woke up.....

Anyway...I changed my exercise tracker (bottom of the page) to a more reasonable 6000 minutes of exercise by my b-day July 18th instead of the 9000 I had before.
I'm going to finish my tea and head off to the gym for my Saturday strength training work out. This will be the first time in a long time I've actually stuck to that schedule 2 weeks in a row. Maybe I'll head to the sauna with my book again :)