What am I going to do with myself?

I sure as hell don’t know.

I’ve been continually weighing myself on Friday and/or Sunday mornings (depending on when I did my last workout... assuming that I did ANY working out) since the beginning of 2014. Where has this gotten me? Absolutely nowhere other than having a bunch of Fat & Ugly attacks.  

Obviously I’ve really been struggling with consistency. I also began to realize recently that there were some pretty serious control issues going on when it came to food – only not in the way of “I’m restricting too much” or “I’m binging all the time”, but more in a just-stressing-too-much-in-general kind of way. Constantly worrying, “Is this enough? Is this too much? Is this right? I shouldn’t have eaten that… I shouldn’t have had that beer…” and on and on and on and on to the point where I was driving myself crazy and getting anxiety. I was projecting this image/attitude of Everything In Moderation, but really I was flipping out about food and feeling guilty all the time.

So I quit counting calories. I wanted to pay more attention to my hunger cues instead of eating when I was “supposed to”. I have good days and I have bad. Some days I screw my hunger cues up by doing stuff like eating something when I’m not actually hungry for it, because I made it and it’s there and if I don’t eat it it’ll just “go to waste”. And other days I screw myself up by ignoring my hunger cues – I’m sure we’ve all heard the story about Mike’s birthday weekend more than we wanted to by now... Basically, I’m still getting used to this whole thing. But overall I like it much better than counting every piece of food and every sip of beverage I put in my mouth all day long everyday and then obsessing about whether or not I “should” have consumed that particular item.

Back to the scale issue: I’ve been weighing myself. A lot. More than I probably have in over a year. It’s not doing me any good, it’s making me crazy. I’m also taking other measurements, but those aren’t doing much changing due to a) my less-than-stellar food choices, and b) my lack of consistency with any type of exercise. I've been desperate to get to that commitment place, to find whatever it is that motivates me and hold that. I'd like to start meal planning AND prepping. Especially for lunches. Breakfast and dinner, I generally do pretty well with. I’m at probably 80 or 90% with smart choices when it comes to breakfast and dinner. Lunch? Not so much. Not at all. And seeing as I’ve been stalled in this same place for 14 months, and have had the same lunch diet (and weekend diet) for that whole 14 months – I’m thinking that’s where a big part of my plateau issue lies.

Okay, so the scale is a problem, my lunch-food and most weekend-food choices are a problem… and then let’s get down to the bigger/biggest problem when it comes to my mental health: I up and quit exercising for almost 2 weeks. I believe it was something like 11 days, to be exact. I pitched that fit about FBB taking too long and how I had really fatigued myself by treating my body like crap and blah blah blah and so I just quit. I was still getting steps in, yes, I was still spending my usual time cleaning like a mad woman on the weekends (talk about some cardio! Mopping is some legit cardio!), yes. But I wasn’t getting that exercise “high” that keeps me from going to a dark place. And to the dark place I started going. Almost immediately. I have so many notes for my next appointment with my therapist, it’s bordering on… well, actually looking like therapy is a good thing for me at this time. Ha!

But then something happened to me on Monday. We got a bunch of snow here in Virginia on top of some lovely ice, and so work was closed Monday. Because it was frigid, the kids were cooped up in the house all day. We were all going a little nuts. I encouraged Mike to go take a nap since he was being tired and grumpy, so I’m goofing off with the kids and… motivation hit me. With the toddler awake, I couldn’t exactly just disappear to the basement for an hour so I just decided to suck it up and stick a DVD on the living room TV. I went for an oldie, but a goody – one of my Jackie Warner workouts. It was 30 minutes. Yes, it was a little boring. Yes, it was more bicep focused than I felt necessary… but it was SOMETHING. And it felt GOOD.

I recently got on this Instagram kick (shameless plug: GO FOLLOW ME HERE!), and had remembered reading about this 100 day commitment dealie recently… so I decided I’d take a picture and/or video of myself doing some sort of exercise every day for 100 days, starting Monday. So after I finished that Jackie workout, I snapped a silly photo of me holding the DVD case and posted it. What’s funny is that even though I only have like 2 followers on Instagram – I feel committed to doing it. Last night I didn’t feel like doing anything but sitting on my butt and watching True Detective. But I couldn’t wuss out on day 2! I needed to post my photo!! So I did some 15 minute power yoga. 15 minutes is better than nothing. 15 minutes still counts. My heart-rate was elevated, and the relaxation at the end was just what I needed. …and oddly enough, I’m still super sore from the Jackie workout on Monday.

I have no real “plan” for this. Just to do something over the next 100 days. I am going to need the weather to warm up at some point, since that 5k is happening in 5 weeks and I haven’t run since Feb 19^th. Which was a pitiful run – and that’s if I’m being kind to myself. I’d ideally like to run 3 times a week for at least 4 weeks before the race.

DO YOU HEAR THAT, MOTHER NATURE?!? You have roughly 9 days to get your shit together!!

Other than all of that, I’ve been battling both of my children on a regular basis, trying to convince myself that I like my job, trying to carve out more quiet time for just myself sans guilt, have actually played my guitar TWICE in the last couple weeks, and am trying to keep my head above water in everyday life while avoiding using alcohol to self-medicate. I think drinking more than almost anything else may actually be what’s spurning my recent depressive episodes. I’m still in the “testing” phases on that one, though. More on that later.

Hoping to knock out several posts over the next week, so stay tuned!