Finding The New Old Me

Yesterday, straight from work, I went out to dinner with my mother-in-law (who is also the owner of the company where I work). We had a really wonderful dinner and a great time talking about not only work and our office culture, but just visiting and getting to know one another a little better. Also: Outback Steakhouse is delicious. I ordered the "petit filet and shrimp on the barbie" combo. It comes with a little loaded baked potato as well. I was more than pleasantly surprised to look up the calories when I got home and see that it came in UNDER 600 calories. Amazing. AND delicious.

However, when I came home I had a momentary moment of "I don't wanna" and didn't get my workout in. (Did you like that? "a momentary moment" - I am a brilliant writer!)

It's amazing the difference I felt at certain points during the day and tonight. I think I didn't notice over the weekend when I was "resting" because I was too busy staying up too late with my mom, my husband, etc. and figured the fatigue was just from being stupid and getting only 4 hours of sleep at night... but this morning, it was a little harder to get out of bed, and this evening when I got home from work it was a LOT harder to motivate to get the workout done. I also started feeling oddly bummed and borderline depressed kind of out of nowhere. I said to Mike, "I don't want to do my exercises... I just want to lounge on the couch while I eat junk food, drink beer and watch tv with you." And thank goodness for my husband, because he said to me, "Well, you can do all of those things AFTER you get your workout done. It'll make you feel better. You always feel better after exercising."

He was super right.

I went and put my workout clothes on and got to it as soon as the baby went to bed. I felt so much better. That weird depression funk - gone. Those junk food cravings - gone. I may still indulge in a beer and some tv with the hubby - but I think those two things are perfectly okay. :)

Another awesome thing? I think I'm already noticing a difference in my body - as in, the way it looks. That's CRAZY! It's only been a week! But I feel like my thighs are already shedding their cellulite and toning up like-whoa, there's a difference in my arms, and my posture is definitely improving. I wish I was seeing more changes in my belly area... but... that will come. It's always the last thing to go. Plus... I previewed level 2 tonight and.. it's all sneaky ab work. The strength is sneaky ab work, the cardio is sneaky ab work, and the ab work.. well... that's ab work, without the sneak...

But as I was getting ready to do my workout, well - remember the other day when I posted about how I've been keeping my room clean and my bed made and all that goodness? I noticed that today... and JUST today... I noticed that I was sort of just throwing crap all over my room/bed again and it looked really messy. I was in that weird depression funk and so the negative inner-monologue started up immediately - "See, I knew you couldn't keep up with it. You're not really changing. You're not really trying to be a new you." (I am so shitty to myself, right?! What a jerk. I would never stay friends with someone who spoke to me that way, yet I am constantly telling myself those kinds of things. Sigh) and so on and so on and so forth... well, I stopped myself. And I immediately cleaned off my bed. Just because my room was messy for one day, didn't mean I would never keep it in order again. Just like just because I didn't workout yesterday, didn't mean I was going to just give up and quit altogether. And I realized: right now, I am working to become the new old me.

I'll explain: Way back in the day, before stupid bad boyfriends and out-of-wedlock children, before moving to the desert and back, before growing older and growing up - I was a shockingly well-adjusted teenager who really liked having a clean room. A clean bathroom, not so much... but mostly just because I hate cleaning bathrooms (which is why that is now Mike's job). That surprisingly well-adjusted teenager also was skinny and fairly active in her everyday life, which is probably how she stayed so skinny. Also eating meals at home (cooked by my wonderful mother) 90% of the time.

So here I am struggling to become myself again. To become a new old me. The first part of that started by working to shed the excess weight, and now I'm working on keeping my environment tidy which seems to really help keep my emotional health "tidy" as well. Now that's morphing into just being happy with myself. Being okay with who I am and working on being a better wife, mother, friend, sister, and daughter. I have a long way to go. The last time I can really remember knowing who I was and feeling confident in myself was when I was 17. It was just shortly after that when some poor decisions were made on my part (after just coming out of a phase of making really really just plain bad decisions), and I completely lost myself. I am really excited to feel like I might actually be able to succeed in being who I really want to be.

So I'm just going to give myself a big pat on the back for fighting that negative inner-monologue, getting back on track with my exercise even though I was really wrapped up in my mini depression, and tidying up my space even though it seemed totally overwhelming (even though it was just a little bit of stuff). Go me!


P.S.
Hooray for my husband cleaning the bathrooms tonight and also vacuuming the whole main floor of the house when he got home from work!