time consuming

Oh man...I'm so behind in my classwork - it's awful - I'm just drowning. It's bad when I'm praying for a snow day to give me a chance of getting my head above water.

I'm so glad I did the detox (thinking of doing it once a month) and I definitely, definitely feel that it's important for me to track the nutritional info of the things I eat, but I just can't spend time on that right now. Not for a few days anyways.
I'm not taking a break from eating healthy things - just from counting it up and writing about it.

I'm still nixing junk food - sugar, refined carbs, pre-packaged goodies and such. We won't be having pizza or nachos on Super Bowl Sunday. I won't be packing granola bars or worse, cookies, in my lunch or snacking on ginger candies or leftover candy canes. I certainly won't be making any unplanned stops at the store for M&Ms and Reese's Pieces. I'm not even going to buy any supposedly healthy frozen meals. I'm just going to eat well, eat mostly homemade things and try to do it intuitively.

Yesterday I had tofu and soy sauce (gluten), so I'm adding those back in. I'm probably going to eat some veggie sausage or burgers and such. My freezer is full of them and I need convenience food right now (otherwise I'm going to wind up eating handfuls and handfuls of cashews). The detox book said that the fake meat products interfere with your body's absorption of certain minerals. Maybe if I just don't take my multi at the same time?
Haven't decided yet about cheese...I love cheese, but it can be too much...maybe a little here and there.

The thing is, I need to catch up to manage my stress. Right now, I'm behind and because I'm stressed about it, I'm getting anxious. And when I get anxious, it takes me sooooo looooong to read and comprehend anything. I have to read everything like, 6 times. If I can get caught up and then a little ahead (snow day? pleeeeease?), I can get back on schedule, get in my exercise, plan meals, etc.

So I may or may not post in the next few days, but I'm going to try to stay offline for the most part because it's too distracting for my tiny, little attention span.

There - now that I said it outloud, maybe I'll stick to it and get this work done already!

A bit of a meltdown, but feeling better

Yesterday I ate some crap. It wasn't the most food I've eaten, I don't think it could be classified as a binge calorie-wise, but the psychology behind it was definitely where I've been in the past when I've binged. I want to detail it because I looove to publicly humiliate myself!
No...wait...that's not why...
I want to detail it because I'm hoping to start having more success, and I'm certain that I'll have difficult moments again in the future, and I want to be able to look back at this entry and think...wow....that sucked but it doesn't have to become an out-of-control downward spiral because look! I climbed out of it! (that's the plan, anyways)

I posted yesterday about a healthy breakfast and feeling tired. I was having cravings. By the time I left work I was plotting a junk-food/Blockbuster run. And here's the run-down of me going to the 'bad place'.

1) I had a dvd to return to Blockbuster (season 1 of Weeds), but instead of going home to pick it up and then taking it with me to check out the next disc (season 2), I went straight to Blockbuster. I didn't go home first because I was worried about how much time I had before Ryan got home. I wanted to eat my junk and watch my junk in private. So - the secrecy is the 1st sign of Unhealthy Decision.

2) When I got to Kroger I went straight for the ice cream and sprinkles. Then I got a cupcake at the bakery section and filled a bag with a scoop of mini-M&Ms and a scoop of Reece's Pieces. The ice cream and sprinkles are no different nutritionally from the other stuff, but here's why one is okay with me and the other is a sign of certain doom.

When I got the ice cream I was thinking about what flavor Ryan would want - I was thinking of eating with him, not alone, so there were not going to be any obscene portions or hiding of evidence. Not the best food choice, maybe, but not something I'm worried about. When I got the cupcake I was thinking "hmmm...is this a wrapper I can stuff in the trash can and hide?", and "Should I get the cupcake with the plastic balloon decoration on top so it looks like I'm buying it for a good, celebratory reason and not just to pig out by myself?" and when I got to the candy bins I was thinking "How much of this did I eat last time when I felt so sick? Maybe (maybe!) I should get less this time.", and "Maybe I should just get a bag of fun-size chocolate things so it looks like I'm buying it for long term, for my kids at school, for a party, anything but for me alone."

3) I don't know how to describe this...but when I was on my way out I was weighing whether I had enough to take home with me....there was something odd about it...in the way I was trying to make the decision about what 'enough' was. I'm still not sure how I decided it was....was it the time it would take me to eat? Was it how full or sick I'd feel afterwards? I don't know...just something off about making a decision about 'enough' that had nothing to do with health or balance. Plus I was again worrying about secret eating and dvd watching time and that motivated me to stop shopping.

When I got in the car, I opened my bag of M&Ms and Reece's Pieces and started eating - paranoid (bad sign #4) that the people in other cars were looking at me and thinking what an oinker I looked like!

When I got home I ate the cupcake, stuffed the wrapper and balloon decorations (yes, I bought that one) in the trash and then took out the trash because it was too full to conceal the evidence (very bad sign #5)

I finished the chocolate while watching my dvds and sank into the couch. When Ryan came home I was feeling off (hmmm...wonder why).... We had a healthy dinner of bean and veggie tacos and hung out for a while and everything was fine, but - long story short, he very reasonably and sweetly suggested that I help him clean up and get ready for bed so I could catch up on my sleep instead of watching my 3rd Weeds episode, and that somehow triggered a complete hysterical, crying, meltdown with me wailing incoherently about just wanting my free-time to do nothing before starting back with grad school Thursday (something I have huge anxiety about...for another post). So - I got that out of my system, sat outside for 10 minutes to cool off, went back in and apologized profusely for being psycho and thanked him for not throwing me in a cold shower.

And, I've felt better since. (except that I feel pretty bad about putting Ryan through that)
We had a good talk about how I've taken on too much and how I'm just going to try grad school this semester, but if I really can't do it and stay balanced after a month I'm going to drop a class and that's that.
I didn't even touch the ice cream or sprinkles.

In a very silly sign that I've been watching too much sports TV, I woke up with the song the NFL has in their commercials for fantasy league football - "You Had a Bad Day" - Daniel Powter (you know..."you had a bad day; you're taking one down; you sing a sad song just to turn it around") And decided to interpret that to mean that I had just had a bad day but shouldn't let it ruin the week - not that I need to turn the playoffs off this weekend.

Anywho...Today I've had a low-fat blueberry yogurt for breakfast and some leftover tofu, kale, rice and veggies stir fry with peanut sauce for lunch. I think I'm going to have a Clif bar now so I'm not too starving when I get home to exercise. The plan is to do my Cher step aerobics which is the most likely exercise to keep my mood up. That and to not take anything out on Ryan no matter what I feel like inside.

Oh - 1 more thing - my work started a biggest loser competition today so I signed up and weighed in with all my clothes, shoes, sweatshirt, jewelry, etc. on. I was at 168. Just one more incentive to keep pushing through.

UPDATE: I did have the Clif bar; I did my step aerobics video and a 10 minute abs; I had eggplant lightly breaded in Panko, steamed broccoli with lemon and parmesan, and cheese tortellini with pesto for dinner and about 1/2 a cup of part Chunky Monkey and part Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt for dessert. So - I feel pretty good about today and I'm going to go read a bit and get some sleep!

Feeling motivated

I'm not going to pretend my eating was great yesterday - again I slipped up in the afternoon with chips and had ice cream after dinner. And dinner was leftover Indian take-out.
I was too exhausted to exercise. I'd only had a total of 8 hours of sleep over the previous two nights, so I tried to catch up last night, and I'll make another attempt at exercise today.

I'm trying to make some changes to my blog. I keep seeing all these great looking 3-column blogs and I want one too! So I poked around online and found a site that gives step-by-step instructions for changing the html to make a 2-column blog a 3-column one. Step-by-step is important for me because I know nothing about the matter. Anyway...I like the colors and the proportions, but I lost the picture that was behind my header and I can't get my gadgets to appear in the left column on the white background. Green's okay - not white. So I'm going to work at that some more when I have time. And by 'work at' I mean browse the internet looking for sites that can give me step by step instructions how to fix it.

I'm feeling particularly motivated today for a few reasons. I realize I have a doctor's appointment next week, and I will be sooo embarassed if I weigh much more than I did last time I was there in October. Last time I had lost 14 pounds from 176 to 162. Now I'm bordering on 167 and that's on my bathroom scale first thing in the morning without clothes! So...I realize 10 days isn't much time to fix the damage, but I certainly don't want to make it any worse. Secondly, Christmas is right around the corner and last time I was 'home' in Chicago over fall break in October I was doing really well. I had lost 18 pounds. Come to think of it, that's where I got OFF track. So - it's pretty much the same thing as the doctor's appointment - it just feels back to see someone while you're in a rut, when the last time they saw me I was at such a high point.
And third, I'm really starting to FEEL the weight. The past few weeks, I knew the scale was moving in the wrong direction, but I didn't feel terrible. This week my pants are tighter, my left knee is getting sore again, and last night I woke up pouring sweat with my heart pounding. I don't remember having any nightmares, so that freaks me out. I don't want to ruin my health.