on hold/holding on

I'm in the final few weeks of this semester. I'm sick again. I've been having anxiety spikes after cutting my meds for that in half. I'm having a super rough time with my final papers. I haven't been bingey, but haven't been great either and the only exercise I've been getting is through cleaning and walks.

I've made a decision. I swear I used to be able to multi-task, but the degree to which I keep getting derailed from my routine and goals this year and the frequency with which I'm getting sick is freaking me out. My body is clearly sending me messages that I need to simplify and prioritize. So, I'm putting grad school on hold indefinitely after I finish my final papers over the next 2 weeks.

I've known that I'm overwhelmed, run-down, stressed out and pretty much losing it for months now, and I finally decided that I couldn't just push through and ignore it. I sat down and thought hard about my priorities and what I want long and short term...what's really important and what I'm willing to sacrifice to get it.

What I came up with is this. My top three priorities are my kids at school, my health and my family, friends and daily life...like keeping organized, keeping the house clean - just the baseline things that are essential for me to have a reasonably happy existance that involves the people I love.
My fourth priority is my future growth in terms of education, career, and other development. This includes grad school, going for my NBTS certification, and other 'optional' things that I sometimes think are essential like spending time on crafts, learning new skills, etc.

What I realized is that I have been letting the thing that's fourth on my list of priorities prevent me from doing well the things that are in the top three. That's just silly. Doesn't make any sense at all.

So, until I feel that I'm doing my kids justice, my health is under control and my daily home and family life is supported by a stable, healthy routine, that 4th priority is going to have to wait.
It's a big load off to finally have made that decision. It's a difficult and emotional one for me since it's been so long in the making and I was so proud to finally be on my way to those goals after crashing and burning as an undergrad and gradually working my way back through straight A's in my first Master's and in my ESL certification. But I know by the sense of peace that I've had since I made that decision that it's the right one.

The next few weeks are going to be difficult and hectic while I finish this semester up, but as soon as it's through I have at least 3 months, even if I do decide to go back to UT in the fall, to focus on those priorities. With the summer off from work and school, 2 of those months will be without the daily work schedule. I, of course, will need to work to get ready for the next school year, but I won't have to be anywhere specific at any exact time to do that work.

I'm going to focus on diet, exercise, greening our lives (composting, gardening, making cleaning products, cooking from scratch, etc.), learning Spanish, reading some books on teaching reading and writing, making unit plans for next year, researching ways others school systems have improved ESL parent involvement, and reading, reading, reading. I'm really excited. This will be the first summer I've had completely off - no work, no school since I started teaching besides the summer my dad died which was, of course, hectic and un-relaxing in its own horrible way.

If I get rehired next year at the same school I've been at for the last 2 years (it's always up in the air with ESL) I'll be so thrilled. I drove by the site where they're rebuilding our school and it's an easy bike ride no more than a mile from my house. How awesome would that be to ride to and from work every day?! I'm so hoping that I get to go back there and really work on strengthening my ties with the parents and other teachers now that I'll have made the time to focus on that.

I'm so ready for this shift. It feels good to know I'm stopping fighting myself and starting to do what's simplest, healthiest and best for me right now. I just have to keep telling myself to push through these papers and that the sooner I finish them, the sooner I can get started on this new path. It's super difficult to push through when you're sick and burned out, but I know I can do it and it will be so worth it to get to this new place.

turning it around

Wow. This week was fantasticly horrid. Bingey and stress-filled and just bad. I was worried about classes at UT and stressed about it all week. Monday's class was fine even though I wasn't prepared. Thursday's class was a huge, anxious train-wreck.
Ug. I don't want to talk about it.
Every day I'd feel sick at the end of the day and feel SURE that I would turn things around the next morning. And every morning (Tuesday through today - Friday), I'd fall apart before noon.

Today was going similarly, but I decided to change course midway through the day.
I showered, put on make up, got dressed and drove to Nashville where Ryan was attending the ASCE (civil engineering) conference. I hung out with other adult humans which is a sadly rare occurence these days, cheered on teams and ate a salad for dinner.

I have a pretty unpleasant stomach ache right now even though I finished my peanut M&Ms 11 hours ago - I can't believe it's my first one of the week - I totally deserve it. But, I feel really good about stopping the badness and confident about tomorrow.

I'm going back to Nashville to get my hair cut and colored and meet up with Ryan and his engineer friends again. I also need to get some work finished, clean up and get a bit of exercise in. I'm going to start cleaning right now - at least the kitchen - so that tomorrow morning I won't have hours of work to do.

WW drop-out

Just dropping by since it seems I haven't posted in more than a week...
I've been reading and lurking but not feeling talkative.
The way things have been going these past few months, it's no surprise that I've been off plan, but I am trying to do positive things in other ways like schoolwork, work-work, getting organized, making a budget, etc.

I don't know why I've been struggling so much.
Yesterday I was soooooo exhausted all day after sleeping ~6 hours (not enough for me, but still, the extreme level of exhaustion was a little silly). I set my alarm to get 8 hours last night but overslept and got 9 - it was like I just was physically incapable of budging into consciousness. Then I felt sort of dizzy and woozy and distant and just crappy for hours until this afternoon. Not sure what's going on, but right now I feel short of breath and just blah so I know I need to need to need to crack down on getting my health on track - this isn't even about the scale right now although that's one measure of whether or not I'm doing healthy things for my body.

So - I'm dropping out of Weight Watchers because I never use their tools, don't follow the plan and don't need to pay them for me to sit on my tush and whine.
I think it's a fine plan that does work and did work quite effortlessly for me (to the tune of -18 pounds) for 2 1/2 months before I fell off the wagon in truly spectacular fashion. That was October and I haven't picked myself back up yet, so it's time to move on.
What I'm thinking is that if I'm on plan and tracking my food or counting something about what I'm eating or looking up nutritional values of food, it could just as well be through a free site like SparkPeople that gives me detailed nutritional info as through WW which only gives me points info. Plus, when I did that detox week and tracked everything through both sites, it did concern me that I could be eating so clean and healthy and mostly under 1200 calories a day and still come in at or above my daily points allowance.
I'm not knocking WW, but I just feel like it's not for me right now.

I had good intentions today, packed all my food and gym clothes, but then got so busy at work that I didn't have a bite to eat until 2 PM and was too low energy for a workout.
I left the food that I didn't eat in the fridge at work, so I just need to pack another salad for lunch tomorrow and try again to have an on-track day.

We have a 2 week spring break coming up next week and the week after, and besides attending an ESL conference the first little bit of that, I'm going to try to take the time to reformulate my daily operations around here. Ryan's mom is visiting that first weekend, and mine may or may not be popping in sometime, but that's all good.

I'm still thinking that the way to go for me is focusing on clean, organic-when-possible, whole foods. I'm also considering switching from birth control pills to "natural family planning" and going off my allergy meds and just using my neti pot and keeping the house super clean, etc. I feel like my body is more unhappy with me than it usually would be from just not eating the best and I want to eliminate as many variables as I can in trying to figure out the exhaustion and such.

I'll try to be around more regularly, but it's not easy to get motivated to post stupid decisions, whines, binges, and that sort of thing. I'd be much more prolific if I were having more success.

Eating machine

Ummm.....ummmmm....well, I don't know what to say. I have no excuses. I don't know WHY I can't seem to get out of this cycle...I've been eating everything in sight pretty much ever since I finished my detox, and the scale really, really, (OMG!) really showed it today. I'm almost back up to 170. I'll post my official weigh-in on Saturday, but it won't be pretty.
It's not because of the detox that I've gotten back into this pattern - I didn't have cravings when it was over. It was just that I seem to do better with structure and when I take that away I fall apart. Someday, hopefully, I'll be able to be more laid back with food, but apparently not now.

I know I said I was just going to focus on a couple things at a time and put off making diet a main focus, but I don't think I can do that without regaining everything.

So - I'm going to go back to recording what I eat. I made a weekly meal plan layout for myself, and I'm going to be really good about preparing my meals the day before.

Today's been fine so far. I packed a banana for breakfast, lentil soup and veggies for lunch, a falafel salad for dinner and nuts, crackers and an apple for snack.
I've had through lunch so far plus my multi-vitamin- no cravings (this is usually when I'd start having them). My body is sick of junk and doesn't want it right now.

I've had a sore throat for 2 weeks and I think it's related to being congested. I think the congestion could be linked to the sugar consumption - too much clogs me up.

I'm just not ready to NOT make this a focus and I'm caught up in work and school, so I'm getting back into focusing on my diet earlier than Sunday or next week or whenever I was planning to because it's soooo necessary. I can't regain everything. I don't want to start from zero. As much as I fail, I just need to keep picking myself up, dusting myself off and trying again. Someday it'll stick. Maybe today! :)

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!

Blech...still sliding

I need to stop making promises when I post. It's getting annoying to read them back to myself.
So, Wednesday and Thursday both started really well in terms of diet. I had my yogurt, raspberry and Ezekiel cereal for breakfast both days and a big salad with healthy oils for lunch both days. Wednesday I had baked tofu on top, and Thursday I had garbanzo beans.
But I had not exercised the day before, I did not get enough sleep, and I did not get enough homework done to manage my stress level. So - I hit 1 out of 4 of my goals that are essential for having a successful day. Why on Earth would I be surprised that I slipped up?!?!
I get into trouble in the afternoon for some reason. I need to figure out why that is. I have no cravings the whole first half of the day even though, yesterday anyway, I was completely exhausted. I actually felt more energetic after noon, but by 3 I was buying M&Ms and Reese's Pieces at the grocery store. And Wednesday I was at Walmart picking up something else and wound up with a bag of mini Mint 3 Musketeers, marshmallows, a Hershey's bar and a bag of Smartfood popcorn. I ate a bunch, got disgusted with myself and threw the rest away.
But since I'm eating healthy in the AM and feeling more awake in the afternoon, I don't really think it's related to an energy dip. I'm not starving in the early part of the day....Hmmm....
I also don't have cravings at night - I feel really unwell if I eat within a few hours of bedtime. So I just need to do something about ~2-6PM and that should be fine. I'm going to look into this though. There has to be some reason I only fall apart in those hours. Maybe if I eat a healthy carb snack, go to the gym, get home and shower, make dinner and clean up, I can fill those hours and sidestep disaster. Maybe studying right after work is not good for me because study-time is prime snack-time as well. I guess I'll find out after finals, because right now I have no choice about when to study - study-time is all the time.
My goals for today are to get a lot of studying done and to not eat junkfood. That simple. I don't feel like I can manage anything more. I need to cut myself some slack but not completely fall apart until after finals are over on Monday. I feel completely confident that I'll have a better time getting back on track next week. We'll see though.

1st everyday post

I don't know why I said I'd start posting everyday before going out of town for Thanksgiving. Now I'm back and ready to be accountable. Today, I didn't get enough sleep, I'm way behind on my final papers for school and super stressed out about it, and I haven't exercised yet, but my diet has been good so far.
I had plain, lowfat, organic yogurt with fresh raspberries and 1/2 cup of Ezekiel flax cereal for breakfast.
I just finished a big salad with baked tofu and my standard dressing (2 tsp. olive oil, 2 tsp. flax oil, 2 tbsp. vinegar, basil and black pepper).
I drank my tea in the morning - trying to stay hydrated.
I took my multi-vitamins.
So far so good.
I can't wait until next week when finals are over - I'll feel like it's a new start and a fresh chance to manage my schedule the way I want it to be, not the way it needs to be because I procrastinated.