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Review of the last couple weeks

It's has been 11 days since my last update - I haven't quite gotten back into the swing of blogging. (Not that I was super consistent to begin with!)

Last time I wrote I had practically convinced myself I had hypothyroidism. Well, I had my physical last week and had about 4,000 (read: 8) blood tests run, and wouldn't you know?! My greatest fears (concerns) were realized...

"Maybe it's your thyroid."

I had a bit of a flip-out a few nights ago Mostly just in my head, but it was bordering on panic.

I realized that I might have some kind of hypothyroidism going on. I randomly stumbled across some reading on the subject earlier and the things I've been struggling with for the last almost 18-24 months match up to the list of symptoms almost exactly.

Gentleness

“Be gentle with your body.”

This is a mantra I need. These are words for Jess to live by.

It’s a battle I’ve been continually fighting with little respite for going-on 6 years, maybe more; to stop punishing myself. To move in ways that are fun, exciting, functional… and gentle.

A Rough Sunday

I had a meltdown tonight.

In cleaning out my closets earlier today, a single silk dress became a glaring symbol of my epic failure at weight loss and maintaining my physical health. A bridesmaid’s dress that I wore in a friend’s wedding when I was 5 months pregnant with Nolan. Granted, it was a bit tight at the time, as I had ordered it before I even found out I was pregnant and hadn't anticipated being 5 months along at the time of the wedding. ...as I was going through and putting together a donations pile, I pulled this dress from my closet and tried it on. I couldn’t even zip it all the way. It barely fit over my hips.

...then I had to just go take a nap. I couldn’t even think about how much I had failed myself.

Welcome Back

I blogged for a long time. I blogged for five years. Wait, no, longer. But I blogged about “lifestyle” for 5 years. I rebranded my blog two years in. I changed the name from, what I felt, was a “clever” song lyric ("sweeping out the bats") when I created it to something more substantial - to something that better represented what I was blogging about: Jess vs. Life

I find myself reflecting on this name now. “Jess versus Life” -- as if life were something to fight against. And I suppose at the time, and even now in many ways, I felt/feel that it was/is. Except that it shouldn’t be. And I don’t benefit myself by thinking of every day as a struggle over an existence I have little control over.

I don’t want to be working against life anymore. I want to be living my life and present in my everyday; present in my body, in my mind, in my work, and in my play. And I want to blog about it.

And so we evolve yet again and become: Jess Has A Blog.

Because I do. And this is it. Welcome to it. Thanks to all of those who have followed me all the way through until now.

My last check-in back in September talked a lot of self-positivity and mindfulness. I’m still in pursuit of these things. I’m just trying to figure out who I am as an adult person and get used to being that person.

I think this me versus everything-else-but-most-specifically-my-weight-and-body-image mentality is what lead me to abandon this blog back in January of 2015. I wasn’t somehow battling against oppression and winning, I was fighting against myself and it was awful. That’s a lose-lose situation. So leaving the blog behind worked out pretty great… until it didn’t. I no longer had an outlet. And without the blog, no matter how much I told myself I would “journal”, I couldn’t keep it up and couldn’t keep myself accountable to it.

Writing is so good for me. It gives me purpose in my darkest moments when I feel like I have none. And sharing my thoughts and feelings accomplishes the same. The blog, it provided both the purpose and the outlet - and I greatly missed both.

So, I think I’m back. I’d be lying if I said, “I’m no longer blogging about health/fitness/weight loss/body image.” I will still be blogging about those things. Maybe even mostly those things, actually. I’m just going to come at it in a different way, from a better perspective.

I ended with a list of goals in September, they were as follows:

• reduce stress
• get back to running for the love of it and to support mental health
• get back to strength training to support running and avoid injury
• continue eating intuitively a wide variety of foods

I have a few tweaks, but mostly the same concepts. As we come into February, my goals will be:

• reduce/manage stress by sleeping enough - regularly
• begin a 5k training program to ease back into running
• practice the body-weight strength program I recently began 2-3 times a week
• continue eating intuitively - not too much, mostly veggies

I'm really excited to get this writing/documenting thing going again and hope you'll stay tuned.

5 Years

This week marked the 5 year anniversary of beginning this blog. While I’m not currently regularly updating, I think about doing so pretty frequently. I’ve been focusing more on pen-to-paper journaling recently and I think it’s been really therapeutic for me, but I hate to say I’m just as inconsistent with it as I was about updating here.

In my last update I spoke all about all the Oreos I was eating in the middle of the day and having not a care in the world about it, about wearing a bikini because it makes me happy and not worrying so much about what other people think about my body, but recognizing that I would have times of insecurity. To quote myself, “There will likely be plenty of times at the pool this summer that I’ll think to myself, who the hell do I think I am wearing this bikini?!” And trust me, ladies and gents, there were. Like, almost every time I went to the pool. But I made myself do it anyway because I am pretty happy with my tan belly and it’s good to get outside of your comfort zone and push your own boundaries every now and then.

I was in a spectacular place with exercise the last time I updated, too. I was regularly hitting the gym and running 3-4 times a week, as well as playing tennis once a week. I was in a good mental place (as late-spring usually puts me!) and on a positive track. That continued through most of the summer, but mid-August found me beginning my annual battle with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and struggling to get out of bed every morning, let alone spending 1-2 hours exercising daily.  I didn’t practice purposeful exercise much in August, though remained generally active. Thus far I can’t say the same for September. I’ve been to the gym twice this month and have done two runs. It’s certainly better than what I’d like to be doing – curling up in the floor and sleeping until April. I do what I can.

I invested in a HappyLight a couple weeks ago, which is a natural spectrum light that mimics sunlight and is clinically shown to reduce the symptoms of SAD. I use mine for about 20-45 minutes every morning when I get to work. I have not yet taken it home to use on the weekends mainly because I’m just kind of forgetful. I haven’t noticed a HUGE change thus far, but it does help boost my energy a little bit in the mornings and that alone is worth continuing to use it. The instructions say it generally takes about 3 weeks of consistent use to start noticing the benefit. So, we’ll see how it goes in the next couple weeks.

So, that’s where I am right now, but I wanted to kind of review the last 5 years and look at where I really am in my life with maintaining health.

In September of 2010 I weighed 205 pounds. Today, in September of 2015, I weigh… 205 pounds.

That’s kind of funny, huh? I just realized that. Ha.

There were 2 years in there where I maintained between 189 and 191. Two YEARS. Directly after having a baby, I might add. But this most recent two years has been rough. My grandfather was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 2013. Coincidentally this is also when I began taking on many new responsibilities at work, as well as stepping into a role that required managing staff. My toddler also turned 2 that year, which we all know is a spectacularly easy age for most children… not. That was a lot. It all was a lot. I sank into a pretty severe depression and I’m honestly not very certain how I managed especially when the following year, 2014, after beating cancer, my grandfather passed away suddenly from a stroke. We also came into a very stressful/busy time at work that fall which only happens once every six years (and continues on for 18 months and which we’re right smack-dab in the middle of right now), and I injured myself running and was in physical therapy for 4 months.

I’ve packed the weight back on slowly over the last 1-2 years as I deal with the fall-out from all the turmoil. It’s mostly okay. I mean, I’m not okay with it – but I have to be okay with it. More and more I realize how exhausted I am with the constant pursuit of “health” or “fitness” or “thin” or whatever-it-is I’m telling myself I’m pursuing in that moment or on that day. I can’t live the rest of my life being insane about and around food. And I can’t live the rest of my life punishing myself with exercise to atone for all my “sins” of being “bad” when it comes to food and exercise. Not only “I can’t”, I WON’T.

I have to choose to love myself. I have to choose to love my body, just as it is, right this moment. I have to choose to take care of myself emotionally and physically. I have to choose to stop thinking I need to control my body through food and exercise.

The last two years has been proof that I cannot control my body and shouldn’t see that as a tangible goal. I’ve continually gained weight regardless of my physical activity level and calorie intake. I’ve had weeks and weeks where I ate barely anything and exercised like a fiend, and then weeks and weeks where I did nothing but sit on my couch and eat ice cream. My stress level and anxiety has resulted in a sporadic menstrual cycle which I then worsened by attempting to control it by going back on the birth control pill, which then spurned some of the worst migraines of my life and lead to my finding out that because of my ocular migraines I shouldn’t even be on hormonal birth control at all due to a MAJOR risk of stroke. I’ve been on and off an antidepressant which, though I believe helped me to get through what could have potentially been a terrifying and disastrous winter last year, also affected my already fucked menstrual cycle and lead to some weight fluctuation.

Mostly I have to stop constantly talking about how to control my body (or how you should control yours), stop feeding into the incessant fat-talk that not only my friends participate in, but also my husband and family, and start praising myself and others for things that have nothing to do with our physical appearance. A perfect example of this is to stop saying, “You look great!” when running into someone I maybe haven’t seen in a while, but to instead say, “I saw on Facebook you volunteered for two days with the clothing/food drive for the homeless [or whatever other meaningful event here]. That’s so great! How was that experience?” Because what your body looks like has absolutely nothing to do with the kind of person you are or the things you’ve accomplished intellectually or spiritually – and, oftentimes, nothing to do with the things you’re capable of physically accomplishing either.

So, I’m trying to love myself, which is actually really hard when you’re fighting depression. And it seems I’m fond of attempting these great feats of self-love during depressive episodes, but then I think, well, that’s probably when I need it most. For about the last month, part of my self-love has been practicing more intuitive eating and not making myself crazy by regularly tracking calories. I’ve maintained my weight while doing that. I just realized that now. I was just saying last night, “I’m sure I’m back up to, like, 215 pounds by now.” – but I’m not. I’m exactly where I was when I last weighed myself the first week in August. So, actually, I’ve maintained for almost 2 months. I’m slowly reaching a point where I don’t really think about food anymore outside of, “Should I thaw something for dinner tonight?” I’ve even had several days where I hit the late afternoon and realized I’ve been so busy with work or things at home that I forgot to eat. That’s something I haven’t done since my late teens/early 20’s. The last 5 years especially, everything has been about food – thinking about food, worrying about food, hating myself over food, praising myself or feeling morally superior for eating the “right kind of food”, constantly thinking about how food tastes/what I’ll eat next/when I can eat, etc. I read back through a lot of my early blog posts and I’m blown by how much moral significance I put on my food choices and how much pseudo-science I bought into.

I also see how desperate I was, desperate to just lose the weight, to recognize myself in photos – to find that “magic” diet or exercise routine that would somehow transform me into my 17 year old self again. But if I really stop and think about it for a few minutes… if I play psychologist on myself… I thought that having my 17 year old body back would also somehow provide me my 17 year old state-of-being back, that maybe somehow I could reset my life and make different choices.

That, obviously, has everything to do with the mental/emotional and absolutely nothing to do with the physical. Being 145lbs doesn’t reset the last 15 years of life and 5 years ago I believed it somehow would.

I’m working hard to stop living in the past so often and focus on living my present – in my present state-of-mind and my present state-of-body. To be “mindful” overall. Even with that, probably the largest goal I’ve set for myself is reducing my stress, which means making some really big changes in my life and lifestyle. I fear change in a major way, so this next year will be an exercise in having to constantly push myself outside of my comfort zone in order live my life the way it ought to be lived. I’ve found when “real life” starts to make me uncomfortable that’s when I tend to throw myself back into the "trying to lose weight" cycle. I use controlling my body as a distraction from the things that really scare me. When life gets a little too in-my-face, that’s when I’ll make a big statement about “recommitting” to “the process” – that I CAN lose 50lbs in a year! I CAN increase my lifts AND increase my run miles ALL while eating AT A DEFICIT! …feeling out of control of your mental health, your job, your friends, your marriage, your children? JUST CONTROL YOUR BODY, JESS!

This will be the hardest thing for me; to stay centered and to exercise control over my life choices instead of exercising control over my body.

My short-term health-based goals right now are:

• reduce stress
• get back to running, because I really do love it and it’s the best thing I do to support my mental health
• get back to strength training to support my running and prevent injury
• continue eating intuitively a wide variety of foods

Yes, I Ate Some Oreos Before Noon (and other tales of I Don't Give a F*ck)

I don't know if any of you knew this, but I'm getting older. The calendar tells me I'm now 31 years old and that is so absolutely bizarre to me because I could swear I'm still 14 - or maybe 17 - but, either way, 31 certainly doesn't feel as thirty-oney as I thought it would. I certainly don't feel grown up. I certainly don't see how it's legal for me to be responsible for two little humans. The older I get the more I realize: I have no idea what I'm doing. But what's beautiful about that is, no one else does either! We're all just kind of floating around this planet pretending to know what it's all about, but we don't. And we likely won't. Until maybe just a few years before death. Maybe. Or perhaps we just get to that point and realize, who cares?!

And so that brings us to recent realizations. Let me explain...

So.. I have fat on my body (surprise!)... More than I'd like. More than I probably need. But that's okay. And if I have this fat until the day I die, that's okay too. I am still beautiful. I am still strong. I am healthy according to all my doctors and all my blood work. I completed a Warrior Dash this past weekend and that course had so many awful, awful hills - and while I was not super fast, I was also not super slow. And you know what? I didn't even get sore - we are two days out and I feel totally normal. ...I mean, aside from the bruises. But my muscles? They are not sore. I am not terribly tired. I feel like I feel on any normal day. That's pretty awesome. And my body, my muscles, my heart, my lungs - fat or not - allowed me to do that and to get through it mostly unscathed. My body is a good body. It's certainly the only one I have and I've been thinking a lot lately that it's about damn time that I choose to love it no matter what it looks like. I'm choosing to eat good foods, to exercise, and to watch my caloric intake because I love THIS body and I want it to continue to be awesome and allow me to do fun things like obstacle races, playing tag with my kids, dancing with my friends. I want to live a long time and never spend one more moment of that long life worrying about my body fat or what other people think about the way I look. What a silly thing to waste my time on.

This is completely TMI, but it occurred to me recently that I have a loving husband who likes having sex with me (most of the time, when we aren't thoroughly exhausted from working full-time, taking care of two young children, and generally having to adult - or too busy re-watching all 7 seasons of Mad Men on Netflix - priorities, people.) So, why the hell should I ever care whether or not Joe Schmo out in public finds me sexually attractive? Or if that young women who looks totally awesome in her skimpy sundress looks at me and thinks I have a "Mombod"? Or *gasp* am DRESSED LIKE A "MOM"?! Whatever the hell THAT means...

This is not to say I will never feel insecure about myself again. Of course I will. I am not perfect. My confidence is not 100% intact. There will likely be plenty of times at the pool this summer that I'll think to myself, "Who the hell do I think I am wearing this bikini??" And as long as I can answer myself with a, "You're YOU and you have just as much of a right to a tan belly as Jessica Biel does, dammit!" then we're doing okay in those moments of insecurity.

The fact of the matter is, sometimes I eat Oreos before noon because sometimes a girl just needs a couple Oreos. Eating Oreos before noon does not make me a bad person. Eating Oreos before noon is not equal to being Hitler. Eating Oreos is just... eating Oreos. At noon or any other time of day.

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend - I will drink the beer, I will eat the bratwurst, and I will wear the bikini. And this week? I will go to the gym and Lift the Heavy Things, I will go play tennis with my dad, I will go run a few miles in this hot muggy weather -- and I will do those things NOT so that I am "allowed" to drink the beer, eat the bratwurst, and wear the bikini -- but because I enjoy them and they make my mind AND my body feel good. Just as the beer, brats, and bikini [tan belly] make me feel good.

I am (slowly) giving up feeling scared all the time, worrying about judgement from others, judging other people, and generally wasting vital energy on things that are anything other than pursuing my own special version of happiness. It's time to size up.

3 months, but a world of difference

Dear Readers,

It’s been awhile, I know. I've missed you quite a bit. I've missed writing quite a bit. I've questioned my decision to leave the blog many times, but have been equally exalted by the decision many times as well.

I don’t really know where to start, where to go…

When I left Jess vs Life dormant I had already begun abandoning a lot of fitnessy pursuits. I was not exercising regularly first due to my injury, then due to just plain feeling sorry for myself. I had taken a big step in managing my depression by starting medication, but the medication didn't seem to be doing what I hoped it would do (because, guess what? It’s not magic. Duh.) My relationship with food was… tumultuous, at best. My thinking was becoming more and more disordered, my guilt over eating too many “bad” foods vs “good” foods was leading to more and more binge behavior causing my weight to continually creep up which would then spur a full-blown self-hate cycle… wash, rinse, repeat.

The time has both flown by and crawled since I last put my thoughts down in this place on the internet. Most days I feel like an entirely different person than who I was on January 6^th when I say my brief goodbye here. Here just a few things that have changed in the last three months:

• My pharmacy refilled my anti-depressant prescription with a generic from a different pharmaceutical company just a few days after I wrote my last post. It was like being on a completely different medication. All of a sudden, it was working. Instead of just feeling numb to everything, I actually felt things. And most of those things were positive, happy things!! Yes, there were (and are) some down days, but even that felt good! I didn’t realize how apathetic I had become toward life since starting the medication originally – while I no longer necessarily felt depressed all the time, I certainly didn’t necessarily feel better either. I was very “meh, whatever” – but then when I got the other version of the generic… holy moly. I don’t even know how to describe it. Needless to say, I immediately asked my pharmacy to put a note on my file to order my refills from that pharmaceutical company in the future and have been feeling so much improvement since.

• I joined the gym again at the end of January. I reached a point where I only had one pair of pants that fit and it was breaking me. I woke up on January 26^th and I went to the gym straight after work and enrolled in a month-to-month membership. I’ve gone 4-5 days a week nearly every week since. I’ve managed to keep in a routine despite the bad weather here in Virginia trying its hardest to throw me off-kilter. I made the decision to spend my lunch break going to the gym instead of going out to eat every day – that money now is funneled to my gym fee. This also affords me the workout time without the Mommy Guilt. Lifting weights again has been… I can’t even describe. It’s like breathing again. And I’m currently training to run my second 5k race in April. 

• I eased back into counting calories by simply tracking without restricting. I stopped labeling foods as “good” or “bad”. My daily mantra became “food is food”. I ate whatever I wanted and aside from shooting for at least 100 grams of protein and at least 30 grams of fiber per day, I didn’t pay much attention to macros. Not quite 2 weeks ago I decided to begin eating at a small deficit. My first week I lost 1.8lbs. So far so good. Every day I eat more and more veggies and find it easier to make food choices that make my body feel good and fuel my training. I’m reaching a point where I’m consuming alcohol less and less and therefore don’t have to compensate for that additional caloric intake.

• At the beginning of March I started wearing my FitBit again, and while it has assisted me a bit in seeing where I am with my general activity level outside the gym, I’m beginning to feel less and less like I “need” to wear it and will probably put in back into retirement here soon. …also, it has a tendency to be glitchy, and ain’t nobody got time for that.

• While I haven’t been blogging, I have begun journaling ( or just “keeping notes”, as I generally think of it) my exercise, how much I’m sleeping, where my mood and energy levels are on a day-to-day basis, and how my diet and exercise is affecting my menstrual cycle (if at all). And speaking of that, I’m happy to report that since mid-January I seem to have returned to a more regular cycle which likely means my hormonal health in starting to improve. My recent bloodwork came back excellent, with improvement in thyroid levels, as well as a 20 point drop in my triglycerides which were elevated in January of 2014.

• Although I slipped back into my smoking-if-I’m-drinking habit back in July/August, and then again in November/December – I am so very happy to say that as of 1/1/15, I’m back on the no-smoking bandwagon. I've smoked a total of 3 cigarettes since the beginning of the year, but have felt zero draw to make it any kind of a regular habit again – if consuming alcohol or otherwise.

• On March 3^rd I reached my 365 day mark on my #365daysofchange project.

As I prepared to post that final picture for the project, I found myself thinking, “Well, not really that much has happened in the last year.” But I was wrong. As I started writing out just a few things in the post, I realized: goddamn, I’ve been through quite a bit in this last year and I survived. I may not have hit my weight-loss goal, I may not have fully attained my fitness goals – but I am healthier, happier, and improving. And, really, that’s all anyone can ask for. 

Brief Goodbyes

I'm thinking about taking a break from (or maybe even quitting) the blogging, the researching, the calorie tracking, the exercise tracking, the FitBit-ing. I'm even thinking about disconnecting my Instagram from Facebook so as to no longer bombard my friends (and myself) with my near-daily #365daysofchange posts. I will not be taking a break from and/or quitting #365daysofchange because I feel it's important to finish out that commitment to myself. I've thought about maybe continuing to share things now and then with the friends and family who have decided to "like" my Jess vs Life Facebook page...but even that I'm iffy on right now.

Lately I've been eating what I want without worrying much about calories or macros, trying to sleep more, exercising when the motivation strikes, and playing more video games. I realized over the last couple days, I'm totally okay with all of this. That may seem like a strange statement considering some of the self pity that had been happening on my 365 photos lately. But I realized, I was judging myself based on what I kept thinking I "should" be doing instead of what actually makes me feel good. There is another side to all of this... and that is: I've been struggling with my anxiety a little more and feeling pretty insecure about many different things. As a result I have just about ruined my hair with all the dyeing and bleaching and dyeing and bleaching again... I have a tendency to take out emotional turmoil on my hair - I'm not sure why and I hope to one day grow out of this (as I'm sure my hair does as well). I think some of this anxiety and insecurity is coming from my inner-struggle of the Should vs What Makes Me Feel Better. I'm also certain some of it is coming from some lingering grief. I haven't quite pinpointed specifics, but if I'm messing with my hair color this much there's definitely something going on with me and I'm desperate to shed something or become something or change myself. I'm desperate for absolute control over something - and the one thing I feel like I can always control is my hair. I'm recognizing that and trying to be nice to myself.

Part of being nice to myself is letting go of my very public health/fitness journey/struggle. Maybe just for a little while. Maybe permanently.

In creating this whole space (the blog, my Instagram, my Facebook) where I shared my thoughts and experiences as a means to motivate, hold myself accountable, and inspire myself as I dealt with my health and fitness goals and lifestyle changes, I'm realizing what I've actually accomplished is creating a space where I constantly judge and put pressure on myself to perform at a certain level, to eat certain foods, to project a certain image, and to accomplish things that sometimes are not realistic - or not even what I want for myself. As a result, I'm constantly disappointed in myself and feel like I'm failing. Every time I start a new program, new diet goals, set personal goals - and every time I stop that program, that diet, do the opposite of those personal goals, it's like a giant shove down the self-hate spiral slide. And not only am I failing myself, but I feel like I'm failing the small group of people that regularly follow this blog.

I'm not helping myself very well. I haven't accomplished even a fraction of what I hoped to accomplish in this project. And I'm certainly not helping my readers. I read back over archived updates and feel like I mostly whine about things that aren't super important in the grand scheme of life and it surprises me that anyone actually reads on any kind of a regular basis.

...now I'm just self-deprecating, which gives you a glimpse into that insecurity I'm experiencing.

I don't know that any further explanation is really necessary. This is my brief goodbye, meant in two ways: 1) a brief post, and 2) I may be back in full-force in a few weeks depending on how I feel. It could be that I realize this offers more of an outlet for me than I thought and is actually doing more good than harm. But I won't know that unless I back off for a bit.

It's been interesting, y'all. And perhaps we'll do it again soon.

Positive Thoughts Week of 12/15/14

I fell waaaay off the bandwagon of keeping a running list of things that were positive and/or made me happy last week. And because of my terrible short-term memory, I don't really remember much of what I did last week. ...so here's what I remember:

• Spending lots of time with Mike - we hung out Sunday - Tuesday and didn't even get on each other's nerves. It was great. (I couldn't tell you what we actually did, but we spent time together lol)
• Trivia! Trivia was super fun and awesome last week. We had a really large group, as well as some folks who came out that can't normally make it. 
• Attended a kick-ass party at an old friend's house Friday night and got to see and spend time with some folks I haven't gotten to hang out with in a really long time.

So, while I stayed up/out way too late Friday night and fell ill Saturday night (which I'm still dealing with -- boo), overall it was a pretty good week for socializing. 

Now I'm just hoping I can recover from this sickness by Christmas and enjoy my holiday weekend. 

...and panic

Okay, now that we're tracking some positive points again.... on to the other stuff!

Beginning Monday night of last week, my panic/anxiety returned almost in full-force. After feeling really pretty good about my job (those of you who know me well know that that is HUGE for me), the stress and pressure started to pile on and I had moments of feeling like I was suffocating both physically and mentally. I kept telling myself I would take a telework day just to give myself some breathing room and a little peace and quiet, but Friday arrived and I had definitely been in the office a full day (and then some) every day. Last Wednesday was especially bad and I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin most of the day. It was the first full-blown panic attack I've had in almost a year. ...then I got a call as I was preparing dinner last Friday evening from my boss (who is also my mother-in-law) telling me that I had fucked up big time. I ended up having to go back into work for about an hour, and while I didn't get yelled at (like I thought I certainly would), I did get the "I'm disappointed in you" treatment. Which is almost worse. This has continued into this week. 

On top of this weird panic and anxiety, my body image is going down the toilet. I had a lot of issues with food and portion control last week spurned by the 10 lbs gain the scale reflected on December 5th after we returned from vacation. I'm not sure if this particular flavor of self-hate is a result of the stress/pressure at work, or if it is its own entity. I'm having a helluva time motivating to exercise consistently, and instead of wanting to take care of myself I seem to be punishing myself with too much food and not enough sleep. And do I even need to mention the inner-monologue? It's bad. I'm sick with myself over the way my body composition has changed over the last year, but that disgust and self-hate isn't helping me to actually do anything about it... it's certainly just making it worse. I'm so unhappy with my body, and while I know that "being skinny" isn't likely to make me 100% happy, I also know that gaining fat and reaching the point where I can't comfortably fit in my clothes anymore will definitely not make me any percentage of happy.

I'm struggling to recenter here. While this week I'm fairing a bit better with calorie intake, I'm still nowhere near a deficit and most days am eating above TDEE - although not by nearly as much as I was before. I did manage to run Friday and this Wednesday (I went ahead and started a couch-to-5k program after realizing it was a perfect "rehab" from my piriformis syndrome), and I've ordered some cold weather compression tights and a neck/face warmer thingie and hope to keep up with the runs despite the cold temperatures. I will say I have been very pleasantly surprised to find I haven't lost nearly as much of my endurance as I thought I would, having not run since August. That's both promising and motivating.

I tried to return to some sort of strength training routine Monday night, but I was all over the place. I can't decide what to do or what not to do; to stick with a bodyweight routine or go straight for the weights; for a beginner program or intermediate; a 5x5 or a more in-depth, complex structured program.

See? All over the place.

Not only was I discombobulated, but I wasn't putting in a whole lot of effort and sort of just stopped in the middle of the whole thing to stretch/foam roll and then go grab a shower. It may be time to consider joining the gym again. This would give me access to treadmills to run when it's raining/snowing and/or just plain frigid outside, plus access to all kinds of machines as well as a massive free-weight area with proper squat-racks, etc. to sort of poke through as I please.

I'm not sure what to do. A few local gyms have free week-long trial memberships, so that may be the best place to start. I belonged to Golds Gym for years and years and always liked it there, so I will probably end up back over there. It's also only 2 miles from my house, so it's convenient. Not much of an excuse to not go.

...now let's talk about sleep and some other issues that will be very TMI (you were warned).

I stopped taking my birth control in March of this year right around the time I began my whole 100 Days of Change thing. I had been having horrible migraines regularly for months and had tried cutting out all kinds of different stuff -- stopping the pill seemed to be the trick. The first couple cycles were totally normal and on-time for me. Very similar to how my body seemed to function as a teenager before I started birth control. ...then something happened. I have no idea what. I don't know if what I'm going through now is my new "normal", or what -- but my cycle is all over the goddamn place. I will start my period anywhere from 20 to 30 days (usually earlier, though), and every month, without fail, I have what I've begun calling a "mini-period" about a week before my real period starts. This is where my period pretends to start for 3 or 4 days... and then abruptly disappears... before reappearing for real 5 or 6 days later. Sometimes I'll even have TWO mini-periods in a month.

As you can imagine, it's incredibly inconvenient, uncomfortable, and frustrating. I have an appointment with a new obgyn (my regular ob is no longer in practice) on January 5th and I'm hoping he can shed some light on what the hell is going on. I guess it's entirely possible that this is just how my body operates when it isn't pumped full of artificial hormones... but it doesn't seem particularly normal to me. Going back on hormonal birth control is not an option for me. I tried that a couple months ago and immediately started having horrible migraines again. Stopped the pills, the headaches went away completely. So.. there's that.

Now, sleep. I've known for over a year now how important sleep is to me personally and how I operate mentally and emotionally. That's not even considering the scientific fact that sleep is what helps to regulate all the most important hormones in your body. I got pretty good earlier this year about regularly getting at least 7.5 hours of sleep. Sure, there were nights here or there where I got less - but they were few and far between. Lately I seem to have decided sleep is not important. I'm averaging about 6.5 hours the last few weeks and I'm starting to notice the affects on my daily mood and general functionality. As I get back into running and attempt to find some sort of strength training I can stick with, I realize more and more how important sleep is going to be if I want to be at all successful in changing my body composition, let alone any kind of successful weight loss.

And this is where we begin to harp on priorities - which may seem to be my most favorite past-time on this blog.

I need to get my priorities straight. Either exercising regularly, recovering from that exercise properly, and getting enough sleep to have the energy for the exercise in the first place and to recover from it once it's been done is my top priority OR getting drunk, smoking cigarettes, watching television, and staying up until 2 or 3am every Friday/Saturday/sometimes Wednesday night is my top priority.

Now, I'm trying really hard not to default to my usual black-and-white thinking on this issue. Getting enough down-time and sleep in order to assist in my get-healthy efforts is important, but spending time with my family and friends is also something that is almost equally important to me. As an extrovert, I thrive on my social interaction. To cut myself off from that is generally a big red flag that my depression is swallowing me whole -- and to inadvertently get cut off from that social interaction fuels my depression and anxiety big-time. That being said, there's no reason that all of that socialization must be in the form of imbibing alcohol and/or staying up late. There most certainly is some balance that can be applied. ...I just have to tell that voice in my head that says, "You're missing out" to shut the hell up because it's time for bed, damnit. 

At this moment I'm sort of in a "I give up" place with food and calories. If I keep stressing over it it's just going to fuel binge-like behavior. Better to focus on getting enough rest/sleep, embracing to motivation to exercise when it comes, and managing my stress levels.

So, that's where I am, Dear Readers. ...now, if only I can manage to update this thing more than twice a month...

Positive Thoughts Week of 12/08/14

Wow, okay, so... I really only have a couple positive things to report for the week of 12/08/14:

• Schedule an appt with a new obgyn to talk about my crazy irregular periods and what might be causing this
• Had a real open and honest session with my counselor since I started getting deep into my body-image and self-hate issues - I'm really looking forward to my next appointment
• Finally had my doc's office fax me my full blood panel numbers showing that (in January of 2014, at least) my lipid panel looks pretty damn impressive aside from slightly elevated triglycerides, which I'm think may probably just be genetic
• Had the opportunity Saturday night to spend some time with old friends we hadn't hung out with in far too long 

Now that I read over those, I realize those are some really BIG positive things, so it's okay if there's only a few of them. 

..I know I've been saying this for weeks, but I'm working on a draft (my 9th in as many days, btw), and hope to have an at-length update posted soon. 

Positive Thoughts Week of 12/01/14

I've decided to reboot my Positive Thoughts series. I began writing things down last week. I meant to post these on Monday of this week, but the rest of 2014 continues to fly through my fingers like so many grains of sand... (poetic, eh?)

Positives week of 12/1/14:

• First things first, Thanksgiving vacation was great. We did so many fun things with the kids and with family, and I am so super thankful to have gotten to spend so much time my cousins - especially getting to bond a bit with my cousin Katy who I get to chat with or spend time with very often!
• My sister Lillie was a HUGE help on vacation with our kids. My kids and I are super lucky to have her.
• Sleeping in one's own bed is awesome.
• Even though I've been MIA a bit on the blog, I've been writing a lot. Both on my laptop and by hand. It feels good.
• Mike and I have spent lots of time together just talking about things, which we don't get to do very often.
• Wednesday of last week was the happiest I've been in years. There's was nothing special happening, just the usual stuff, but I was in a spectacular mood and that was the most amazing feeling.
• My whole weekend was spent hanging out with new friends and it was great!
• Despite the hangover, I was able to get lots of chores and errands done on Sunday and generally be a productive member of society.

"No Excuses"

It's a phrase that Jillian Michaels is very fond of - and that lots of my friends and bloggers and folks within the health/fitness community have grabbed onto for dear life. 

"No excuses."

A lot of the time when I see people throwing this around, posting inspirational memes featuring it, or sharing their gym check-in or weekly progress photo splattered with this text, I think to myself, "Well, actually, there are ots of very real and serious excuses for why someone may not be able to workout/diet to a certain intensity." I sort of brush this mantra as a bunch of malarkey, going along my merry way doing the same things over and over that aren't particularly working for me when it comes to the realm of get-fit/get-slim. 

Mike and the kids and I just returned from our almost-annual Thanksgiving trip down to Arkansas. The weather was beautiful this year and we did lots of fun things along with spending time with friends and family. We took Nolan to his first movie (Big Hero 6), went to the zoo, hit the Museum of Discovery (super fun, we will definitely go back!), celebrated Nolan's 3rd birthday, spent a few afternoons at the playground, took walks, etc. Keeping so busy, I hit my or exceeded my 10,000 step goal everyday and slept hard almost every night. With all this keeping busy and visiting and Thanksgiving-ing, calorie tracking fell to the wayside. We ate a lot of home-cooked meals at my Granny's house and went to a few local mom-and-pop restaurants, both of which are not easy to track accurately. Tuesday-Saturday I did zero calorie tracking/counting. 

(I promise this is all going to be relevant in a minute.)

We got back home Sunday afternoon, we just wanted to get home as quickly as possible and ate a LOT of fast food for breakfast and lunch to avoid stopping to extended periods of time on the final 360 mile leg. We were also exhausted when we got home. And starving. We ordered out for dinner... and then Mike and I decided Dairy Queen was in order for catching up on The Walking Dead. Talking about some seriously poor food choices. I decided to log the calories anyway - to get back "on track"... I hit 3500 calories for the day and I'm sure I missed at least a couple food items. 

Now, while I was in Arkansas doing my thing, not counting calories, eating whatever I wanted, I had several moment of, "This calorie counting thing is a bunch of crap and I'm so much happier this way! I can totally just whatever I want forever and be fine!" But Sunday showed me that, no, I really can't. Monday was a similar experience. Back at home, back to work, and not a completely out-of-the-ordinary pizza dinner at my in-laws, which included some ice cream I ate but didn't really want. After getting home I decided to have some bread and olive oil and a little bit of fruit... aside from my morning oatmeal, the best food choices I made all day. I still went over my calorie target by a couple hundred. I couldn't motivate to do my workout, although Mike and I took a walk at lunch. I've completely fallen off the bandwagon with my #365daysofchange updates. I feel like I'm lying to myself and my followers because I'm not really working on any type of real, honest "change" right now. 

Bear with me while I shift into reverse for a moment and revisit what I said a couple paragraphs up: I'm going along doing the same things over and over that aren't working for me in my efforts to lose weight/fat. 

This realization hit me like a ton of bricks today. I've been harping on myself for months years about "commitment", "motivation", "drive", and "willpower" - but really what it boils down to is this: I'm never going to change my habits and my lifestyle by doing things I don't really enjoy and can't get excited for. I can't keep restarting the same workout programs and/or diet strategies when I'm consistently falling off within a few weeks or months. Something obviously isn't clicking for me if it's so easy for me to just drop it all and not have a single care to give about whether or not I get back "on track". 

Part of me thinks maybe I should just delete MyFitnessPal and Fitocracy and Runtastic and MapMyWalk and all the other zillions of health and fitness related apps I have living on my phone that drive me bonkers and make me feel guilty and wrong in how I live my life and the action I choose to take throughout each day. (Run-on sentence alert!)

Sometimes I wonder if I am even capable of just letting it all go. 

The other part of me think that I am just making excuses. And there should be No Excuses. Just do it. No pain, no gain. And all those other cliche fitness mantras. Just baked the four pounds of chicken every Sunday. Buy and bake ALL THE SWEET POTATOES. Prepare ALL THE FRUIT and ALL THE SALAD to snack on. Get ride of the Oreos and the Danish butter cookies and the ice cream. Say NO to the weekly ritual of eating a Blizzard while catching up on Walking Dead, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Modern Family, Gotham, or any of the other 37 television shows I "have" to watch!! ...say NO to watching so much goddamn television! Stop wasting so much time on social media! Say YES to funneling the eating out money and beer money and Dairy Queen money to a gym membership. Say YES to finding a group of gym buddies to motivate and inspire me. Say YES to earlier bedtimes and earlier wake-up times to fit in the run, the circuits, the HIIT, the heavy lifting. Say YES to taking care of and loving myself and my body so that I can be healthy and live a long time with my husband and our beautiful children. 

Why is that all so hard to say yes to?

Why is it so easy for me, as I sit here typing this up, to be putting together counter-arguments in my head? "You've gotta live life, Jess. You've gotta have fun. You've done so much better about going out and how many drinks you have each week. You love trivia and that group of friends and those 2 beers you have with that delicious brick oven pizza every Wednesday. Why should you give that up? And your tv shows... that's something you and Mike do together a couple times every week, something that guarantees you'll make time for each other. That's important, too, right? Not to mention the kids... if you're gone to the gym around your work schedule everyday, when do you spend time with them?"

Obviously some of these points are slightly exaggerated - have we all met me before? Exaggeration is my biggest talent. Obviously an hour at the gym isn't going to ruin my relationship with my kids. And giving up some television isn't going to ruin my life or my marriage. But this is a great example of the battles that rages inside my brain on a daily basis. I have this person that I think I want to be, but I can't decide if I really actually want to be that person. It seems that I if I really did want to change and become this other me, maybe it would be easier to make the right decisions to put myself on that path. Do I not because I'm I'll lose friends? Maybe. Because change is scary? Most definitely. 

I also have to ask myself if I'll regret the sacrifices later in life. ...but I can't imagine I could regret reversing a path toward heart disease or diabetes or cancer. I can't imagine I could regret living to an age as a healthy, able-bodies individual vs a sick person. 

Earlier this year, as I approached my 30th birthday, I kept having these attacks of mortality. It was what drove me to start my #100daysofchange challenge. And yet, those attacks have fled - here I am wondering to myself, why can I not grasp my mortality? Why am I feeling lately like I have all the time in the world to create good habits and get healthy? Most importantly, why do I look at my kids' crappy eating habits and, at least for James, total aversion to any type of physical activity and think to myself that it's okay because they are young and have all this time to change those bad habits? Why can I not commit the time and money to getting them involved in something active even just a couple times a week? 

It just really isn't all that hard. And, yet, I guess I'm just selfish because my own health and my family's health never seems to be at the top of my priority list. I'd say maybe it's the depression, but I wonder if that's an excuse. "No excuses." 

Here we are in December already (when did that happen???) and I don't know how I'm going to move forward into 2015. I don't how to reset my life goals and get a grip on the path I'd like to pursue. I have some serious thinking and planning to do. When I will have a few hours or days or peace and quiet to do that, who knows? 

Deciding to get back to updating this blog twice-weekly could be a great first step, so I guess we'll start there. 

Slowly Returning

Two weeks ago I decided not to be injured anymore. This week I'm deciding to return to exercise. Last week my physical therapist officially discharged me from her care. While I’m still having some tightness and soreness, it’s nothing I can’t live with and it’s not really limiting my mobility or normal daily activities anymore. She told me I could return to normal exercise, but to take it slowly.

I better heed that advice because, let’s face it, I’ve pretty much given up on being physically active in any way outside of just normal everyday stuff you are required to move around to do and PT sessions. When I first began physical therapy, I was still walking briskly and for a couple miles at a time a few times a week in an effort to make up for the fact that I couldn’t run/jog. Around the second week in October I pretty much gave up on that and decided my twice-weekly PT sessions were enough. My feelings of “I’m just going to be hurt forever” definitely fed into this and I’m not sure I really did myself any favors buying into the negative self-talk. Then again, it was right around this time that I started noticing real improvement in my injury, so I could also make the argument that the actual rest did my body good.

Regardless, I’m way out of a normal exercise routine and coming up short on motivation.

Those of you who follow my little Instagram #365daysofchange experiment have probably noticed an obvious drop-off in my activity. When I was no longer able to do the type of exercise I wanted to be able to do, it began to drop lower and lower on my priority list. I also felt incredibly self-conscious about the fact that I was mostly posting about going out for drinks or dinner or simply wallowing in my self-pity over my injury. The challenge or experiment or whatever you want to call it was supposed to be about maintaining daily exercise and activity, not only for my physical health but my mental health. A rest day was supposed to be time for me to meditate or practice some gentle yoga, to bring myself back into focus and relieve stress – maybe plan out meals or just spend some time doing something else I enjoyed. I haven’t been sticking to any of these guidelines I set for myself, I’m not longer inspiring myself and I find it impossible to believe my laziness and self-loathing is inspiring anyone else at this point either. I’ve considered just giving it up several different times, but then I feel like that’s just one more thing I can add to my list of things I’ve never completed/half-assed. So I keep chugging along, making sporadic contributions.

Meanwhile, I sit here and mourn my drive and motivation and wonder if I can blame the shorter daylight hours. The last two weeks have been pretty dark for me emotionally. That depression seems to be creeping back in and I’m not sure if this is just a side-effect of my lack of exercise/physical activity, the approaching holidays and the emotions surfacing over my papaw’s death, if this means I should contact my doctor about maybe increasing my antidepressant dosage, or if this could be yet another negative side-effect of my decision to go back on birth control about a month ago.

…or all of the above.

And speaking of being back on the pill: this is my first month back on and my migraines have already returned full-force, I’ve been nauseous practically all day every day (especially in the afternoon), and generally just feel pretty gross and ill. Not to mention in researching my side-effects the other night, I found that because I’m prone to ocular migraines regardless of being on or off hormonal birth control, I should not be on any type of birth control that contains estrogen as this can greatly increase my risk of blood clots and stroke regardless of age/health. Isn’t that just super? Mike and I chatted the other night and have decided those risks and the side-effects aren’t worth it and we’ll return to using non-hormonal forms of birth control for the time being.

I consider myself incredibly lucky to have such an understanding partner.  

So amidst all of this emotional and hormonal turmoil, I’ve done a lot of thinking about how I want to proceed into getting back on a regular workout schedule… and what I’m going to do about my calorie intake.

For the last month I’ve been pretty steadily dropping weight. I had one week where I stalled, but I’m averaging a little more than half a pound a week – which is fine. According to my FitBit estimated burn and my MFP logs, I’m in a 500 calorie deficit right now without even intending to be. Over the last couple weeks I quit worrying about my macros because it was driving me nutty. The only thing I’m really focusing on is my fiber intake. My medication can really ‘cause problems with my gut if I don’t eat enough fiber. We’ll just leave it at that.

So, I guess you could say I’m intuitively eating. I recently joined a Facebook group called “Eat the Food” that I stumbled across through the fitness community I dabble in occasionally. I’m really enjoying being part of the community so far and it’s really making me rethink my relationship with food and weight loss. Right now I think it might benefit me most to put the focus on the exercise – which I’ve had to do a few times in the past – and not worry so much about whether or not I’m eating at a deficit.

While I’m enjoying seeing the number on the scale move again, I’m also disappointed to find that I’ve lost a lot of my strength. Doing simple things like carrying the groceries in from the car, or hauling laundry (and toddlers) up and down the stairs just aren’t as effortless as they once were. I’m trying very hard not to let this discourage me too much since the only thing that will accomplish is my putting off strength training even longer as I buy into the “what’s the point?” mantra. I’m trying very hard not to let that happen.

My goal for today is to do some kind of strength training, no matter how brief. It will also be hard to keep myself from charging right into the whole thing and causing my injury to flare up. I’ve just got to take everything slow and steady. 

Personal Essay

I miss horseback riding and playing piano. I miss falling asleep reading in the afternoon. I miss going places and learning things and being surrounded by people who liked going places and learning things. I miss knowing who I was and the certainty that I would be happy in my life.

I miss sitting at the top of the stairs and listening to my parents argue, but never being scared because I knew how much they loved each other and that it would all be okay tomorrow.

I miss softball practice with my dad on summer evenings.

I miss summer on Lake Norrell and learning how to ski. I miss how much my arms ached from grasping the tow bar.

I miss life before men. I regret trying to grow up so fast. I miss my confidence in myself. I miss the hope I held before graduating high school. I miss learning how to drive stick on a 1974 MG. I regret my infidelity. The grass was never greener and I’m sorry. I should have swallowed my fear and left for school.

I wonder how I continue to be so blind in my own decisions. I wonder if it wasn’t obvious or if I chose to ignore it.

I wonder when I lost my voice. I wonder when you stopped listening.

I wonder when it became appropriate for my spouse to be in charge of me instead of my being in charge of myself. I wonder why procreating set a rule that I would have to no longer be a person, but only a mother. I wonder if anyone I know has their priorities straight. I wonder when it will stop feeling so oppressive.

I miss being ignorant of others’ judgment of me.

I wonder when family ties went from being important to being viewed as unnecessary.

I wonder when it became inappropriate to expect someone to both love you and respect you. I wonder if love even has anything to do with it. I wonder if I bring this upon myself.

I clearly overlooked important traits and convictions when it came down to how I would live my life and who I would spent my time with.

I sacrifice happiness every day.

I miss when I thought it was just my brain that was broken.

There was a day I woke up and realized things like divorce, abuse, and tragedy didn’t just happen to “other people”.

I wish I believed in something. I wish it was possible to believe in something. I wish it were possible for you to not ruin it for me.

I miss having purpose. 

Deciding

I’ve decided to not be injured anymore.

That’s not to say that I’m magically healed. I’m not. I’m getting there, but likely still have another month or two before I’ll be back at 100%.

But what I mean is, I’ve decided to quit letting it drag me down. While I didn’t think I was really feeling so much that way anymore, some recent time to sit quietly with my thoughts and feelings has revealed otherwise. I’ve recently fallen back into some bad habits (outside of food/fitness stuff) which I’m now recognizing as a desperate grab for some kind of control over my life. For the last several months I “controlled” my exercise and food (although definitely more so the exercise), and when my back/leg started hurting I lost that. While I’ve been consistently in PT twice a week it’s been really difficult for me to look at that as “a workout”, even though that’s exactly what PT is.

Unfortunately I’ve reached a point where I can no longer afford to continue sinking money into physical therapy. I’ve struggled a lot with this over the last couple weeks – part of me felt like, “I’m on the road to recovery, they’ve done what they can do, I can’t keep spending the money”, while the other part of me said, “You’ve made such improvement in the last two weeks – surely just a couple weeks more and you’ll be almost back to normal. It would be a shame to quit now and delay your recovery!”

Well, that’s been almost two weeks ago now and while I’ve continued to improve, I’m not “almost back to normal” and my budget can’t take the strain anymore. I don’t even know what the real total will be at this point since my PT’s office hasn’t billed all my visits yet – but the few visits they’ve already billed the insurance, I’m looking at a remaining patient responsibility of over $600. I can no longer ignore the financial strain of continuing to go.

I’ve considered checking out either a chiropractor or massage therapist as an alternative, but I’m not fully decided on that factor. I hope that may be a bit cheaper (I know the massage would be, anyway), but I can’t be 100% sure until I start making some calls.

In the meantime, I have one more PT appointment scheduled for Thursday which I’ve decided to go ahead and attend, and I’ve decided to recommit myself to regular exercise. I did all right those first few weeks about continuing to walk almost daily, but then I started feeling sorry for myself and that all fell off. I guess not “all” – I’m still regularly walking on my lunch break. But my lunch break walks are quite a bit different than my more fast-paced, get-the-heart-rate-up walks I was doing in the evenings. I’m also healed to a point where I can do some strength training. I can do push-ups and even a few squats without pain. I think I may have even regained enough flexibility to do a little gentle yoga. As long as these activities remain pain-free, there’s no reason I can’t regularly start incorporating them into some sort of normal exercise regimen.

Getting back to exercise will be my main focus right now. I can’t even begin to tackle food. I’m more out of control with what I’m eating than I think I’ve ever been in my entire life. This is new territory for me, this level. I’ve considered ditching the calorie tracking (for the millionth time over the last year), but I’m also self-aware enough to know that this is me just trying to justify poor choices by not having to consistently SEE those poor choices reflected on my food diary. One thing I know about myself, though - if I’m putting the work into my body with exercise, it makes it 100 times easier to make better food choices. I’m hoping by putting my focus on the exercise, the food chaos will come around. In the meantime I’ll continue my daily tracking regardless of how often my macros are out of whack or my calories are above the goal line.

I know I’ve probably said this before… several times… but I’m hoping I can allow myself to take this as an opportunity to take things easy, start back at “beginner”, build a good foundation, and prevent future injury and burnout. While even the thought of starting from the beginning is frustrating to me (LIFT ALL THE HEAVY THINGS!! RUN ALL THE MILES!! EAT ALL THE PROTEIN!!), I need to use this whole experience as my “ah-ha” moment. It’s been hard to learn from all of this instead of just being angry and hateful toward myself. It’s been hard to not have the distraction of “the workout routine” from all these things bouncing around in my head regarding my life and my family and my goals as a human being. It’s been tough, but it’s also been good in a lot of ways.

So this is where I am, Readers. This recommitment also applies to this blog and a return to regular updates. As usual: stay tuned.

Whoops!

Oh, hi! Hey! Uh, how are you? I'm just over here plugging away and trying not to be overwhelmed with work and life and have sort of forgotten that I have a blog that I was pretty regularly updating for several months there.

It's not that I don't have things to talk about - I totally do. I just can't seem to put my thoughts together. I currently have six drafts sitting on my dashboard. SIX. I just can't seem to pull anything together and wrap it. This may mean you'll see some discombobulated psuedo-half-updates coming through over the next week or so.

Please bear with me.

I also am aware that I've completely dropped the ball on Positive Thoughts. I'm not sure how interesting you as readers found that, but I know it was helping me. This is not to say that I've been feeling particularly negative lately, I've had a much easier time staying positive about things -- which is probably why is hasn't been a priority to write those things down as often. I'm not sure if I'll continue with that installment. We'll see.

Please stayed tuned and give me a chance to get back in the groove!

Okay, okay, okay...

Goddamn, I've been all over the place lately. I've begun drafting no less than three updates over the last 10 days and haven't managed to get a single one up here.

If you read my last quick and dirty post, you know I've been under quite a bit of stress and worry lately. Adding to all those stresses and worries, which I don't think I mentioned, was this looming hard deadline at work. October 15th. For those of you not in finance/accounting, this is the final tax deadline for any business that operates on a calendar year. Work has been very, very tough for me. There has been lots of crying in the bathroom, lots of threatening murder, lots of tension, lots of short-tempers, lots of going to bed without my husband (because we work together and he has had to put in an ungodly amount of overtime - I'm a little "luckier" because I act in more of a support role for these deadlines). 

It's over now. Thank GOD.

So for the last couple weeks I've begun struggling a lot with body image again. (Shocker!) I've been doing quite a bit of stress eating, and these last few days, stress drinking. All I wanted to do last night was staying up drinking beer all night. Fortunately, I'm a responsible adult, so I didn't do that. But I did stay up until after midnight watching television.. because maybe I'm not totally an adult. 

I'm digressing... so, yes, feeling down on my bod, eating all the tiny candy bars at work because of stress, feeling very defeatist and playing a lot of the "you'll never be where you want to be with your weight/body composition" monologue in my head. The fact that I'm looking at likely another month of PT for my piriformis syndrome, helps NONE. ...but my physical therapist's office is connected to the gym I used to belong to. I spend roughly 30-40 minutes in that gym doing my various warm-ups and exercises for my PT. I realized today, man, I miss the gym. And it occurred to me: this is where I restarted my weight loss/health gain journey after Nolan was born. I also realized that I just happened to be wearing the same t-shirt I wore on that first day back at the gym. And so this happened:

Top: 01/25/2012
Bottom: 10/16/2014

The locker room has been remodeled since that first photo, but that's the same mirror at the same gym. 

I've said it once, I'll say it a million more times: PICTURES ARE SO IMPORTANT TO TRACK PROGRESS!!! To be honest, lately I've felt like that body in those top pictures. I've felt like that for a few months now. It's been a long time since I've truly been proud of my progress. I get locked up in this mindset of "It's been four years, it's been four years..." Yeah, it's been four years since I realized, "Well, damn, I got fat.", but I never cut myself a break for going through a pregnancy during those 4 years. I grew a person inside of my body beginning 5 months into this journey. So, really, January 25, 2012 was my real start date. And there has been progress. 

Yes, this injury is setting me back. Yes, the recovery will still take me weeks (maybe a month or two) more. Yes, it's been a struggle to not be completely and totally depressed over the whole thing. But the reality of my situation is that I will fully recover. I will be able to return to heavy lifting and running and doing whatever the hell I feel like doing for fitness purposes! It may not be until January, but I will get there. I will, I will. 

Now that I've essentially given myself a pep talk on my body image, we must address the food thing. 

When I first jumped back on the weight loss bandwagon after Nolan was born, I was eating roughly 1400-1800 calories a day. I was losing weight doing this. I was sometimes going to the gym, but mostly just walking. A few times a week. Inconsistently. I was at probably 40-45% body fat. This is probably why I was able to eat almost nothing on some days and still feel okay. My body had plenty of fat stores to pull from. 

After a while and after beginning some strength training, I upped my calories. My weight maintained higher than where I wanted it, but my body composition began changing pretty drastically. At some point over the summer of 2013, I was likely under 30% body fat. I could "afford" to eat more. 

Last fall when my grandfather became ill and began his battle with cancer, I sort of told diet and exercise to kiss my ass, began sinking further and further into the depression I'd already been battling for several months, and I began eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it and would occasionally do a workout or take a walk, but mostly didn't exercise at all. I told myself I was "taking the pressure off" - that I was just going to focus on Be Healthy, Be Happy, Be Active. Which, in reality, became: Lie To Yourself, Lie To Yourself Some More, Deny Deny Deny! 

Thanks to the TimeHop app, I've realized I spent nearly all of last Oct-Dec sick. Something was not right. But even with the amount of junk food and the lack of exercise - I maintained my weight. I think I maybe gained a total of 3 pounds over the entire winter. We're talking from October until March-ish... possibly April. That's nearly 6 months. I began #100daysofchange in March, starting exercising daily, and started making an effort to be a little better about my eating but was off and on about tracking. When I did track, I was hitting right about 2500/day. This may have been slightly higher than maintenance, but not by much. And certainly not since I got serious about exercising daily with my #100daysofchange challenge. 

...and then something happened. The more I increased exercise and kept my calorie intake at "maintenance", the more I gained... until September 3rd, 2014 when I stepped on the scale at my doctor's office and saw "199" staring me in the face. A little over a week later, on the 12th, my own scale at home first thing in the morning and totally nude read "199.8". 

I freaked out a bit and dropped my calories under 2000. I lost 4 pounds in 2 weeks. And haven't lost anything further since despite trying to remain as active as possible (regular walks, my PT workouts, etc.).

What I have been forgetting, though, is that my muscle mass isn't what it was, say, last summer. Or even last October. My body fat percentage is likely close to 33%, which puts me firmly in the "obese" category. Finding a calorie goal that is a realistic deficit is going to be difficult now. And it may mean just being hungry. 

I just don't do well with hungry, y'all. 

So I've been doing some research, because that's what I do when I need to know more about something and feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Unfortunately, there is a lot of contradicting information out in the world regarding diet. I've bounced around on a lot of different things. But because I like to eat plenty of things and because I also likely to eat everything from salads and salmon to french fries and Blizzards, I started looking into If It Fits Your Macros. I ran some numbers for myself using their calculators and was honest in marking myself as "overweight". This puts me right around 2,000 calories/day. TDEE minus 15%. But, more importantly, I need to be hitting my macros of roughly 50% carbs, 35% protein, and 25% fat. This will be the part that will take some getting used to, but I've stumbled across some tools to help me out. 

(As a sidebar real quick: my husband has recently started an exercise program and has finally become interested in trying to track food/make sure he's eating enough of the right things to fuel his fat loss while maintaining his muscle-mass. While I'm incredibly proud of him, I'm more proud of myself for making it very clear to him that I was struggling enough with my own food issues and could not exert the energy to meal plan for both of us outside of dinner. I pointed him in the right direction and am hopeful that he'll start taking it seriously and making better choices overall.)

So that's where I am. I am fat, I am injured, I am frustrated, I am hungry, I am confused. But I am still learning and trying. Sometimes that's all you can do. And you can't get to Success if you don't first start with Try.