I wish this day were over

This day needs to be scrapped or burned or flushed down the toilet - I definitely 100% believe in moment-to-moment choices and not letting one bad moment spoil the rest, but I really want a fresh start....
My workshops were fine, but then at the end my supervisor made a weird comment to me and I've been fixating on it and feeling upset. We were talking about our ESL assessments and she was speaking to me and another teacher and made a comment that I needed to not do everything - that we had to communicate and share the load - and I jokingly said "Yeah, Brittany - haha!" (Brittany is the teacher, who's a friend of mine and who would never not share the load...which is why it was jokingly). And my supervisor said no, that if I took everything on it would be my fault...only it didn't seem so jokingly....Anyway - it was just a funny tone and I didn't know how to take it. And I'm very sensitive and take forever to cool off and probably misinterpret/blow things out of proportion all the time. Which is why I didn't pursue asking her what she meant...
So - the eating confession...
I inhaled a bunch of junkfood in a stress induced stupor between lunch and now. That, in the interest of meeting one of my 2009 goals of full disclosure, included probably 2 servings of potato chips, 2 bags of peanut M&Ms, a Reece's Whips bar, 3 ginger chews, a few bites of strawberry sorbet, 4 or 5 cookies (Pepperidge Farm Brussels or something...), and probably 6 squares of chocoloate. OMG!!! I also had a healthy leftover stirfry lunch, but...whatever...I guess I don't get any pats on the back for that.
Well - there it is - out in the open. And since I don't want to report that again I'm going to try not to do that again. And in an hour or so if I have an anxiety episode I'm going to kick myself but not feel an ounce of surprise.
Ryan will be home in an hour to tell me about his first day. I'm going to zone out and read some blogs and news articles (I think I'll check out BBC, Mother Jones and Amnesty International) until then, then eat with him, exercise, shower, read and sleep early. I always feel like my fresh starts need to begin in the afternoon or evening prior to going to bed to set up the next day well. Here goes...

Weigh-Day

I just weighed in and updated my weight-related stats in my stats section and my tracker which lives at the bottom of this page.
Weight is 165.2 - that's a loss of 1.6 from last week. Since last weigh-in I had 4 days not-tracking at all or being sensible about food at all, 3 days tracking and feeling good about my choices and 4 days of exercise, so I'm happy with a small loss.

Goals for today are to keep focusing on making the right choices in the small moments and not obsess about the big plan or being perfect, to do my weight-lifting at the gym, to do some work and clean some more.

I caught myself, while I was making my tea a little bit ago, starting to calculate "if I lose this much per week, that means this much per month, and I can be at ___ by then and maybe ___ by then...." and then I stopped it, because all that's ever done for me is provide maybe a momentary bit of something like dreamy euphoria and make it sooo much harder to see that 1) my life is only the sum of small, daily choices; 2) I'm in this to change my lifestyle, not obsess about numbers; and 3) to accept myself when my choices are not 100% perfect.

Holding Steady

Well - 3 days down, how long to go until healthy choices feel natural and effortless? I remember hearing that it takes 2 weeks to make a new habit stick, but I've been 'on plan' for 2 weeks plenty of times in the past and...here I am...still battling. I guess it will always take effort, but maybe less and less?

I did fine today, but I had to battle hard through some tough cravings. I had a Van's wheat free flax waffle with a small banana and 12 almonds chopped up on top for breakfast (5.5 points). As always, I felt good after breakfast. I got a bunch of cleaning done - no cravings. I did a Denise Austin yoga abs 10 minute workout.
Then I had a great zucchini and garlic stir fry that Ryan made with that Soy Vey island teriyaki sauce and thai peanut baked tofu and 3 steamed veggie pot stickers for lunch (12.5 points). Kinda big lunch, but pretty healthy. Cravings started pretty much right away after I finished eating. I tried to focus on them - decode them. Part of me thought I was still hungry, and part of me couldn't tell what I was feeling. I knew where the feeling was - stomach area - but I didn't know what it was. It was a little disconcerting to honestly not know if I was hungry or not.

So, I drank an Emergen-C, snacked on 8 cashews (2.5 points), chewed some gum and did a little more cleaning. When I didn't feel better after an hour, I took a 45 minute nap, then got up and went out for a 50 min. walk with Ryan right away (because we were losing sunlight). And then I felt great! Stalling snacking is really important for me. If I give into the cravings there will be a snowball effect. If I can just put them off I usually do okay. Distractions (sometimes being unconscious for 45 minutes!) are key.

I had Ryan's shepherd's pie again for dinner and a salad with olive and flaxseed oils (1 tsp. each) and a tbsp. of balsamic vinegar (10 points). For dessert I had a cup of hot cocoa with 3 mini candy canes (4 points) while we watched Polar Express (which I really did not enjoy all that much surprisingly). The cocoa was a little too heavy for me, so I think if I make it again I might use 1/2 a package.
I wound up eating 34.5 points (My daily is 21). I hit all my Good Health Guidelines except for the dairy. I used 13.5 WPs. Tomorrow is the last day of my WW week and I still have 9.5 WPs, and after I work out tomorrow I should have 14 APs, so there's no way I'll go over. Tomorrow's weigh day. I'll check in with the progress. I don't care what the number is as long as it's down from last week's 166.8

early Friday update

I know I'm blogging a lot and I'm blogging loooong, but I'm using it as a potentially more public journal (although I'm too new and too newly not-private for anyone to probably be reading this...) & it's helping me, so I'm going with it.
I woke up for the 2nd morning in a row feeling pretty energetic - I think that's from limiting the sugar intake - I think my body hates being overloaded with sugar so much that I would need 12+ hours to 'sleep it off' - literally like a hangover. And it's been setting me up for bad day binge after bad day binge. I'd eat bad, feel to stuffed to exercise, feel guilty about not exercising, get discouraged and want to zone out watching tv, not get my work done, feel guilty about not getting my work done, eat more bad foods, sleep, wake up exhausted and start the day too tired to exercise or fight to make the good choices (tired = bad cravings, for me). So now, I fought HARD to break that cycle on Wednesday and woke up feeling better Thursday. I fought hard again to focus on the small moments and make good choices on Thursday and woke up feeling even better today. I wanted to get a little kick in the pants to keep the momentum going today, so I got up and weighed myself and I've lost a pound in the 2 days I've been having success so far. Yay! Now I'm going to put on happy music and clean the house.

No Excuses

Wow! I actually had two good days in a row. It's very exciting to write 'good days' in my labels.
I can't believe how quickly I can change from feeling just horrible and humiliated and dejected to feeling pretty proud and confident. It's like - once I find that place where I get back on track (literally, I feel like a train that went off the track....and just got scooted back on for a smooth ride) I just snap out of it. I feel like, when I'm not on plan, there's this frantic energy...guilt, food obsession, saddness, humiliation, hopelessness, anxiety...all wrapped up in a depressing ball. When I manage to focus on the small decisions and just build my confidence back up - it's like that melts away...Good stuff!
Yesterday was rough - I was sooo exhausted, I got sidetracked several times, and I got upset by getting sent one of those obnoxious 'we say Merry CHRISTmas e-mails' at work**(see my rant below if you care to), but didn't use it as an excuse not to exercise or to get off plan. Today I was so sore from my workout yesterday. I felt like I had cramps and my arches of my feet were killing me. But I put in my old Step Reebok workout and did all 45 miserable minutes of it. (I DO like exercise, but it's freaking hard! Too many lunges!). I struggled and wanted to quit the whole time, and a few times I had to take a break to gulp water and stagger around the house gasping for air, but I got back on that darned step every time and felt great when it was over.
I didn't have many cravings today either. I ate an apple at breakfast, an Amy's tamale pie frozen thing (only 2 points!) at lunch, a Choco-walla Odwalla meal replacement bar for snack, Ryan's awesome shepherd's pie for dinner (fresh green beans, fresh corn, tofu, potatoes, asiago/parmesan/romano cheese blend baked on top). Yum! A chunk of raw red cabbage (I know, I'm weird - I could almost always eat red cabbage or broccoli...or chocolate). And then I had 1 1/2 Dove miniatures and a small square of Green and Black's dark chocolate for dessert. I recorded it all and wound up with .5 points left to spare :) I didn't even have to dip into my APs or WPs. Good, good day.

Oh! And! I just looked out the window and there's snow on the ground! Good because I love and miss snow. Good because I get a snow day to clean my house, do some reading, sleep and work out tomorrow. Not so good because I really wanted to finish some projects up with my kids at school. Not so good because some of the kids were supposed to get to go see a middle school production of The Nutcracker tomorrow. But...hey....I'm sure they're alright with the trade-off. I won't feel too bad for them :)


WARNING: VERY GROUCHY 'WE SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS'-EMAIL RANT...getting it off my chest....
**I just don't see that issue as being about faith - #1 - it's very divisive and confrontational, #2 - I kind of see there as being 2 Christmases - there's the religious Christmas and the commercial Christmas. They're not the same - lots of secular people 'celebrate' the commercial version just as an American cultural tradition, and the religious version means a lot to a lot of people...so I just think the whole argument about one corporation saying 'Merry Christmas' and another carrying stock for Kwanzaa and Hannukah and saying 'Happy Holidays' is less about religion than consumerism...and why (as this email said) does government not publicly favoring one religion over another 'take away our faith' (that's absurd! faith is personal...) and why do you feel that words like 'inclusive, sensitive and diversity' are "used to intimidate' you?! A lot of people dismiss those terms as PC b.s. but I take them very much to heart. As a teacher, the last thing I would ever want is any child to feel at all outcast or singled out because their personal, home-life/religion is not the majority and is therefore completely shunned. I think religion should be taught at home and at church and diversity taught at school. Schools shouldn't (and in my experiences, don't) prevent religious practice. Silent time is allowed for prayer...But, we shouldn't be seen as 'sponsoring' one group's faith. When I was in Chicago, I felt everyone was represented. Now, in the Bible Belt, it's all Santa and the music teacher even has a bulletin board up with a manger scene and a quote saying "Unto us a child is born". This would never fly if the school wasn't majority Christian. I really think it's inappropriate. We should cover holidays as cultural study and use the season as our focus. Everything doesn't have to be Santa and Christmas trees...there's so much we could do with just winter as a theme. For example, I have decorations up in my classroom - there's a Santa and reindeer window cling, and Christmas stocking garland, but there's also Hannukah garland and most of the stuff is neutral (snowflakes, snowmen, Nutcracker, penguin....kids love it...they don't need me to push religious content on them...I've seen Jehovas Witness children stay out of school around holidays like Halloween and Christmas because the schoolday is so overwhelmed with this stuff...it just makes me sad)
#3 WHY was I sent this in my work email? Talk about inappropriate. #4 - The person who sent this to me is a fellow ESL teacher - someone who should really take to heart the effects that subtle instances of hegemony can have on the psyche of minorities....anyway...this issue just pushes my buttons...just one of those things, I guess. Arg!

beating the afternoon slump

I decided that since I keep falling apart healthy lifestyle-wise in the afternoon that I should pay really close attention to what was happening in my mind and see if I could just focus on small moment to moment choices to beat the PM cravings, and then write it all down to see if that would help me in the future.
I noticed that I started to feel the first hints of cravings pretty early. I finished my lunch -Amy's black eyed peas, rice and veggie bowl and I wasn't hungry, but I was craving something sweet.
I had classes to teach all afternoon, of course, so I didn't have any opportunity to run out and get snacks. I decided that I was going to exercise when I got home. Iniside my head I was thinking 'but I'm so tiiiiiired' and 'I dont' waaaaaanna' (whine whine).

Earlier I posted today about being motivated by health scares, my upcoming Dr.'s appointment and Christmas with my family. And I have to say...when I was feeling iffy about exercise and wanted to just stop and get a bag of M&Ms or something equally unhelpful, my health didn't seem like a big motivator (it's so intangible...seems like I could 'start tomorrow' and that wouldn't make a big difference), and if it was just the idea of being fat when I see my family, that's nothing new and I don't know that it would've helped me push through either. But the idea of seeing my doctor having gained the weight I'd lost really pushed me. Maybe because she's not a friend or family member...I don't know. Maybe it's because it goes on my patient file...my 'PERMANENT RECORD'. Ah! But the part of my brain that kept reminding me about that appointment seemed to work.

When I got home, I wanted to take a nap, but I knew when I woke up I'd need to eat and then I wouldn't be able to work out for a while...which means I probably wouldn't at all. So I changed into my workout clothes. Then Ryan came home and he wanted to return our movies from Blockbuster online to the store to exchange them for others. He just finished finals today and needed a break. I hadn't finished watching one of them, so instead of working out right way I told him we could finish watching it together. We did and half an hour later, I really didn't feel like working out.

I didn't give up though - the voice in my head kept nagging and yelling.
I argued back that I would just put on music and clean the house - trying to convince myself that that would be enough activity. But I knew it wasn't really the goal Id' set, so I compromised (with myself) and put the music on while I jumped rope. Jump roping is hard! I went in spurts (jumping then walking and dancing) for 15 minutes and then my mom called. We talked for almost an hour and normally I'd give up my exercise after getting sidetracked that long, but I didn't. I went for 15 minutes more, then did a 10 minute abs workout, entered the update on my exercise ticker, and felt really good about it. I like to see my little runner move on down the street.

I had a healthy dinner - butternut squash soup, broccoli with lemon and 1 tbsp. cheese and a slice of Great Harvest Dakota bread (the multi-grain kind with seeds), some olive oil and nutritional yeast. I had ice cream for dessert, but I feel okay about that because it was a reasonable portion and it was at dessert-time - not a binge - not all day. Baby steps.
I could've had more...I could always have more Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra. But I decided to chew a stick of gum instead. Problem solved.
And now I feel satisfied and proud of myself. I think I can build on this little bit of momentum.
And I think blogging about it will help me, when I look back on it, to know that it's possible to push through cravings and to make good choices - that I really will be glad at the end of the day.

I also logged onto my Weight Watchers account for the first time in a few weeks and entered my weight from last Saturday. I entered my points and activity. In addition to my lunch and dinner (above) I had a package (2 bars) of Nature's Valley peanut butter granola bars. And I had a bit of roasted red pepper hummus and Lite Wasa crackers (6) while watching the movie.
All in all not too bad. I'm allowed 21 points per day. I added 4 activity points and ate 33 points. (that 'reasonably sized' dessert was 11.5 points...I don't even want to know how many points what I would normally eat would add up to....yeah.....not good) So I dipped into 8 of my weekly points. I don't care. I tracked. I was honest. I tried. I feel alright.