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.

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. 

Admissions

^ Not the school kind, but the confessional kind.

Since this out-of-nowhere piriformis syndrome thing started at the beginning of this month, I’ve had to reevaluate some things. My recent first session with a Physical Therapist afforded me TWENTY WHOLE MINUTES of peace and quiet to really, sincerely think on some stuff... and maybe doze a little bit, too.

I need to get real about my weight. I need to get real about how much I actually need to lose. I need to be realistic about what I need to do in order to make that weight loss happen. While it's great that I've wanted to "break free of the scale" and whatnot, the fact of the matter is, even if I want to be lenient with myself, I have 30 lbs to lose. If I want to be really real, that number is probably closer to 50. But small steps. I need to get to the 30 mark before I can focus on 50, and the prospect of 30 is freaking me out plenty all on it's own.

Actually, this is all pretty daunting when I consider that it may very well be another month before I can participate is any sort of exercise that isn't walking. I'm not sure if you all knew this or not, but you use your butt muscles to do pretty much everything. So this idea of, "Well, can't you still do upper-body strength training?", the answer is "no" because you have to use your butt muscles to do pretty much everything but bicep curls and tricep kickbacks. No overhead presses, no rows, no chest presses, etc. Leg work is pretty much out of the question aside from my leg-lifts that are part of my stretching routine. I'm trying really hard to not be completely depressed over it.

In the meantime, I started a small dose of Wellbutrin a couple weeks ago and that makes me have zero appetite. So at least the calorie restriction part will be easier for now. Calorie restriction and walking it is for the time being, and all that it is. The scale tells me I've lost 4.4 lbs since starting the medication. I'm cool with that trend.

I took some spectacularly unflattering progress photos last week (9/17/14):

The number one thing we can learn from these photos is: my top is SO MUCH MORE TAN than my bottom and it's kind of silly looking. Also that photo from the back is the best one I could manage of myself, so sorry that it's really mostly just the sun shining through the window.

Also, a check-in on my measurements as of today, 9/26/14:
Weight: 194.6
Bust: 38"
Natural waist: 34.5"
Waist at navel: 38"
Hips: 46.5"
Thigh: 26.5"

On a separate but somewhat related note, beginning around the week of September 8th I started feeling much better emotionally. There were more up days than down, and I had more energy and motivation to accomplish various tasks. By the 15th my sciatica was feeling so much better and I think this had a lot to do with my good mood/mental place. Unfortunately the improvement didn't last (mostly thanks to my trying to rush back into a workout routine), and the last week my mood has been tanking. I had an increase in tightness and pain in my leg during the same time, mostly beginning last Friday/Saturday. This probably has a lot to do with it as I can't help but feel like I'll never be a fully functional human being again.

I find myself getting increasingly angry that my depression doesn't seem to be dissipating despite my efforts to remain active, eat better, follow my cognitive behavior tools, and plan fun activities to look forward to. I'll have a few good days, a couple weeks at most, but I just can't seem to maintain it. It's as if any small stressor can send me spiraling and I can't figure out why that is. I've always thought of myself as a strong person, and this depression makes me feel weak. This injury makes me feel weak. The amount of weight I've gained in the 6 years since my marriage makes me feel weak. And feeling weak makes me angry, but I haven't quite figured out how to channel that anger into motivation and change. I'm hoping this medication can help me normalize a little bit, especially before winter officially arrives. I should start feeling some kind of difference within the next week or so.

I think a big piece of this recent sadness and anger is relation to stress at work, which sky-rocketed last week with the pressure increasing as we've moved through this week. As we approach Thanksgiving (which we normally spend in Arkansas with extended family) it becomes more and more real to me that my grandfather is gone and it's really affecting me. This piece of my general malaise is completely acceptable and understandable. I knew it would likely take me some time to fully process this loss and to really begin mourning. It's unfortunate that there are so many other stresses that are overloading me and kind of taking away from my ability to allow myself to move through the "real" (for lack of a better word) sadness, experience it, and start to let it go vs getting wrapped up in so much of the "everything is so awful for no reason" feelings that stem from the actual depression.

I feel like I had a lot more to say, but whatever that was has flown out of my head. So the big focus right now is on dropping the weight for my health. I've done well with food choices recently and hope to be able to return to some strength training by mid-October. Meanwhile, I'll keep up with my walking, follow my instructions from my PT, and hope for a speedy recover and to never relapse. 

Debbie Downer

Yesterday was a weird fuckin’ day. I don’t know how else to explain. I was pretty “up”, but in this really kind of manic/euphoric/”too up” kind of way. And then I felt happy/excited and numb/neutral all at once. I found almost everything funny or uplifting and sort of glossed over anything else. I went out for trivia night for the first time in over a month and had a great time. But shortly after returning home, I crashed. I crashed hard. I wanted to just sit and cry. I was exhausted. I felt stupid and ugly and fat.

This came completely out of nowhere. The last couple days, I thought, “All the cardio!! It’s working!! The endorphins are killing my depression!!” I was still down, but not Deep Dark Depression down like I had been the last few weeks and even up to this past weekend. I was laughing more, finding positives in things, being somewhat productive at work. Until I wasn’t anymore.

If I wasn’t so absent-minded, I feel like it would do me some good to track my moods and see if there’s any kind of pattern. If it’s a cycle, or if it’s random. If it’s caused by outside stressors, or just inside thoughts. That’s part of why I’m writing this today. This will at least be a partial documentation.

Some of you may be aware of this phone app called “Timehop”. It accesses your Facebook and shows you your status updates on that day’s date in years past. I came to a very upsetting realization – I’ve been struggling with these feelings for a lot longer than I realized, most of them materializing during my pregnancy with Nolan. While I knew at the time something was wrong – crying everyday for no reason, generally not being interested in anything, feeling like I was losing my identity, feeling alienated from my friends, having to use sick days because I just couldn’t get out of bed – I attributed most of it to my pregnancy hormones, but I took the right steps and began counseling for the first time in my adult life. I thought those feelings of depression and anxiety were stemming from memories of my first pregnancy, which was a very tumultuous, sad, and stressful time in my life. I had normal baby blues postpartum, continued my counseling, and by that summer my counselor told me she felt like I was doing pretty well and I could call if I felt like I needed to come in for an appointment but there was no need to keep anything regularly scheduled.

About 4 months later I started wavering again. I put it off and put it off – making the call, scheduling the appointment. “I have the tools, I can work through this. I just need to eat better and exercise more, do some yoga, write it all down, find my positive affirmations, don’t give in to the automatic negative thoughts. It’s okay. I have the tools. I have the tools.” I started blogging a lot. But not about too much of my personal life, except the story of how I punched my microwave that one time and why. In my blogging I was constantly beating myself up over my lack of “priorities”, talking about being on and off the exercise bandwagon, etc. etc. etc. I’ve always struggled with consistency. Now, whether that’s just the type of person I am or a side-effect of my depression/anxiety, I have no idea.

I think it was finally around spring 2013 that I called my counselor to schedule an appointment. I think my husband told me I really needed to. I think, because I don’t really remember. (My memory has gotten really bad lately. I’ve probably mentioned this before… but I don’t remember. I know this is a very common side-effect of high stress as well as depression. I’m aware of it. It continues to get worse and worse even as my depression waxes and wanes.) The woman I used to see was no longer with the practice – in fact, she wasn’t in private practice at all anymore. It was devastating. I wasn’t interested in seeing anyone else in that practice, though I probably should have just scheduled an appointment anyhow. I told myself I’d ask around for some recommendations and find someone else.

I didn’t actually call anyone else for another 10 months. The beginning of this year. And only after I began to realize that I wanted to somehow be dead a lot of the time. Not kill myself – just not be alive anymore. I mean, I already wasn’t really alive, so what was the difference? Everything is just horrible and miserable, so what’s the point? I’m a terrible wife and mother and a disappointment as a daughter, so really no one will miss me; they’ll be better off without me.

That’s pretty scary. What’s scarier is that in starting with this new feelings doctor, I haven’t ever verbally expressed that I had these feelings. I wasn’t purposely keeping them a secret, I just felt like it wasn’t really that big of a deal. I mean, I didn’t want to kill myself so I wasn’t suicidal, right? That’s kind of how I thought of it. Wishing you would go to sleep and just somehow not wake up the next morning is not the same as actively taking steps to ensure that one day that would actually happen. At least, that’s how I thought of it at the time (and even now sometimes). And then after a couple months I didn’t really feel that way anymore. I don’t know what changed, really. I just felt a little more normal. But that didn’t last very long. Maybe 5 weeks at the most.

With the way I’ve felt lately, it’s probably about damn time that I mention the “sometimes I wish I were dead” at the beginning of this year, because I’ve had moments in the last couple months where I’ve felt that way again. Not everyday, not even consecutive days at a time, but for a morning, or an afternoon, or an evening here and there. I’ve felt pretty worthless mostly, and like a disappointment. That’s not a fun feeling. It’s not an okay way to be.

I’ve been thinking a lot on medication recently. I’ve always been against medication for “mild” depression. I’ve always felt like there are just so many things you can do to naturally work through it. All the things that I struggle to consistently do all the time; exercise, eat right, get enough sleep, meditate/do yoga. I don’t even have an official depression diagnosis, let alone know if what I struggle with would be considered “mild” or not. I still get out of bed every morning and take care of my kids and go to work and clean my house and do my laundry. I still bathe regularly. I feed myself pretty regularly. I still make plans and go out with my friends.

It’s just that sometimes I start crying for no obvious reason, or I feel numb and just sit around and stare into space thinking about nothing and everything. Sometimes when I’m out doing something I know I should be having fun, but I’m not or I don’t care or I’m just bored, even though I know I used to enjoy those same activities.

I know that I don’t want to feel this way anymore. And where I am right now, today, I feel like it might be this way forever. That I’ll never have more than just a couple weeks (a month or two at best) of feeling “normal”. Not even happy. Just normal. I can’t live like that. I need some fucking JOY in my life, man. I need motivation and purpose. I feel like where I am in my head right now I will never find that. I will never love myself as a person enough to make the hard decisions and take the necessary risks. That is fucking terrifying!! I don’t know how to let it all go. And I don’t even know if it’s a matter of “letting it go” or if my brain chemistry is just out of whack.

If there is a pill that can make these feelings even 20% less of what they are right now, that would be fantastic. Sign me up. And this is coming from the girl that had two of what I consider to be the worst side-effects when I was on Prozac for my anxiety several years back; insomnia and “sexual side-effects”. It suuuuucked. But y’know what? I didn’t feel like my airways were restricted and my heart was going to explode out of my chest every time I was out in public anymore. And that was pretty awesome. Now, the difference there was that I also knew it was temporary – I was learning how to identify my triggers and then coming off the meds. Which I did after about 6 months. Sleep and sex went back to normal pretty quickly. I also wasn’t working at the time, so the loss of sleep was not that big of a deal. I could take a nap in the afternoon when James took a nap if I felt like I needed to.

So what is the point of divulging all this information to you, Dear Readers? I have no idea. I’m sort of just brain vomiting right now. Yesterday was really fuckin’ weird and I just needed to talk (type) it out and work through it. This morning/afternoon were rough, but I’m feeling a little bit better now. I did just play 2 hours of tennis, so the endorphin boost may have something to do with that. We’ll see how tomorrow morning is. Tomorrow night I have dinner plans with a good friend that I don’t see very often and I am looking forward to that. Hopefully I can maintain a decent mood and be able to enjoy dinner and drinks with her. That would be super duper.

Conflicting Feelings

This past weekend I flew down to Little Rock to celebrate my other grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary and spend time with friends and family. I had a great time!

So, while the weekend was lots of fun, I am feeling weird about indulging my vices unashamedly the entire trip. I feel a little guilty now, after-the-fact, for the copious amount of beer consumed, the ridiculously late nights out with my cousins and friends, the amount of sugar/refined carbs eaten, and the few cigarettes that were smoked.

Maybe I'm being a bit dramatic. Maybe these feelings are all just the side-effect of too much alcohol and too little sleep, which we all know puts me in a speedy depression cycle. But, really, the bottom line is: there are a lot of things about myself physically, mentally, and emotionally that I still want to change. That still need to change. And I'm starting to wonder how much longer it's going to take me to get there. Time is flying by faster than ever and I feel like I'll quickly run out of "quick fixes" as I age. 30 is still young, but I'm not going to fool myself and act like I have "all the time in the world" to create good habits in place of bad ones or that my metabolism will just magically function the same way for the rest of my life allowing me to "decide" at any time to go ahead and lose the weight, shed the fat, build the muscle, etc.

I've been thinking a lot on changing my diet the last couple weeks. I feel like I eat fairly well most of the time, and there's not really a whole lot wrong with eating/drinking junk while on a vacation or a trip, but I think sometimes I lie to myself about how well I really eat overall... and I'm now having a bit of an epiphany about my expectations for weight/fat loss while I continue to make iffy diet choices on the regular. I'm sure some of you are sitting there thinking, "Well, DUH, Jess." And, honestly, this is something I've known in the back of head for a very long time now - but sometimes it just takes a while to admit something to yourself. Nobody likes to be wrong. But there were some realizations made when it came to food/beverage choices, and one of them was a little terrifying as I realized how wonky I felt after eating a carb-heavy dinner followed by a large amount of dessert on top having been sipping on lemonade all day. Part of me wonders if I might be pre-diabetic. I'm supposed to go back to my doc this summer to have my triglycerides rechecked, and I think I probably need to go ahead and request a glucose test, too. While I think some of this wonky feeling was just in response to heat and exhaustion (the a/c was broken in the room where the anniversary celebration was held, it was 100 degrees outside, plus I'd played nearly 2 hours of tennis, followed by a run, followed by lying in the sun poolside for a few hours before heading to the dinner celebrations), it certainly can't hurt to be proactive on this front.

In regards to this diet stuff, part of me is still really drawn to the idea of Paleo/Primal, but I also know that it's too restrictive for me to maintain and that could very well end up in a breakdown/quit-everything cycle and derail a lot of progress. I don't want to yo-yo. I want something sustainable. The obvious choice would be to just, y'know, eat sensibly. Eat mostly leafy greens, vegetables, and lean proteins. As I've discussed at intervals for the last almost 2 years, I need to learn how to commit. To make and keep the promise to myself. I'm just not very good at it. I was so excited for #100daysofchange to completely change my life. I mean, that was over 3 months of doing something for my health everyday. And, yet, here I am only a month out (I can't believe it's only been a month - it feels like much longer), and I've completely started slacking off on my "commitment" to doing #365daysofchange. I feel like I've quit holding myself accountable and am almost ready to give in and stop doing it altogether! Except that I know that certainly won't get me where I want to be.

I guess I just still haven't found something that really resonates with me. Aside from diet, exercise has dropped waaay down on my priority list. Spending time with Mike and the kids and sleep have become top priorities, and sometimes I feel like I can't do a workout and get adequate time with my family AND get a good night's sleep all at the same time. This isn't true, but it feels that way right now. I've wanted to try to get my workouts done in the mornings for a few years now, but that's kind of gone down much like I wanted to quit smoking for like 5 years and was only able to actually make myself do so 4 months ago. i.e.: it's not happening for me at this time. So maybe in 5 years, when my kids are older and require less time/energy, I'll actually be able to be that person that does the 6am workout every day without it making me hate life.

...or maybe it'll just get a little easier to get in the evening workout. Whichever.

Really what it all boils down to right now is that I'm being really down on myself and instead of using that frustration to push myself to do something, anything to get back on track with diet/exercise, I'm instead just wallowing in self-pity and talking down to myself in my head all day long. I'm that chick that talks a big talk but can't walk the big walk. I think a lot of my frustration is coming from the lack of result... except that there hasn't been a total lack of result, as evidenced here and here. But even reading back over those (the last from only about a week ago!!), I'm still sitting here thinking, "Who cares? I'm still a fat fatty who can't remain consistent with anything and therefore won't ever accomplish any kind of real goals."

And that's really the rub; I use my physical fitness progress and ability to commit (or not) to these health goals as a barometer for every part of my life and myself. I gauge every aspect of my life by whether or not I'm succeeding at this. I'm not entirely happy or successful at anything else in my life and so I focus a lot of time and energy on "health", and when I feel like I'm failing at that it just serves as a reminder of how I'm failing or have failed at everything else I was going to be or do by this point in my life. 17 year old me would be pretty shocked at how life turned out. But, then again, 17 year old me didn't really know what direction she wanted to go in either -- she just had faith is would all turn out amazing somehow. She thought, I'm smart, I'm talented, I'm pretty; I can do whatever I want in life. Except she/I didn't... So now, instead, I focus on controlling my body - except I'm not very good at controlling it, and it just reinforces all those feelings of inadequacy I've had since 19, when I realized how much I was fucking up my life and felt powerless to change anything.

Clearly I have a lot more going on in my head right now than I realized when I first sat down to draft this update...

So I'm floundering. That's the basic gist. Yesterday I ate well, today has started out pretty well. I had no physical or emotional energy for any type of exercise last night. And I can't make any promises for tonight, either. It's a beautiful day and I will be taking a walk at lunch. Baby steps, I guess.

I'm sure in another couple weeks or month or two I'll be posting about how much I just looove my body and my good habits and how awesome I'm doing -- and then in another month or two it'll be right back around to this slump and self-pity. Maybe it's time to admit there some sort of cycle to it all and there may be a bigger problem. I guess we'll just have to see, eh?

Forgetting the point

I haven't done a workout since Thursday. I had every intention to do a quick 10-15 minute metabolic workout Friday evening, but time got away from me and I headed straight out for Mexican and margaritas instead. I ended up out until 2am. The next day I didn't feel anything close to a normal human being. I spent the entire afternoon at my baby sister's play (which was wonderful, but verrrry long... Pride & Prejudice tends to be that way, I suppose), then headed straight to the grocery story, and shortly thereafter out again to my good friend's 30th birthday party. I didn't come home until 2am. Again. Only Sunday I had to get up at 7am with the kids. Definitely didn't feel like a normal person that day. Not only that, but all day my stomach was all wonky and weird. I couldn't tell if I was nauseated or about to poop my pants. (Sorry for the TMI.) I felt a little better this morning after a good night's sleep, but when I came home from work my tummy got all wonky again. I think I may have pushed it with going straight for some spicy stir-fry for dinner vs sticking with something more bland and easy. Oops.

Needless to say, there was no workout happening tonight. For the last weeks or so I've felt a little more up emotionally, but a weekend of junk food, alcohol, and lack of sleep quickly had me nosediving back down into downsville. It was all I could do to make myself bathe this evening, let alone put in 45 minutes of strength training.

I had an attack of "Get Your Priorities Straight" this afternoon and began beating myself up over a) not getting any purposeful exercise in over the weekend, and b) completely throwing myself off my normal sleep schedule when I know how important that is for maintaining my mood. I wish I could say it was because I was just having SO MUCH FUN I couldn't POSSIBLY SLEEP!! But really it was just because I was a little drunk and not making very good decisions for myself.

...that is not to say I didn't enjoy spending time with my friends this weekend - I did. But it wasn't anything that required my being awake until the wee hours of the morning, and I couldn't have gone home to bed at midnight and still had equally as awesome of a time.

I also smoked two cigarettes this weekend. I was/am really disappointed in myself, but I also need to realize that this doesn't mean I can't move forward and continue not being a smoker. I can and I have. I didn't go buy a pack of cigarettes. In fact, it didn't even occur to me that I could do that until I just wrote that. But I don't want to be a smoker again. I'm pretty solid in that feeling and decision. It's okay. There will be hiccups, and I can allow myself this slip-up and move forward realizing that it didn't make me feel good physically or emotionally and remember that the next time I think it might be a good idea to light a cigarette.

I had a moment earlier this evening where I thought, "I may as well just give up this #365daysofchange thing -- clearly a year is too long and I can't keep it up. I had a good run with #100daysofchange and I should have just left it at that." But that's just silly. I had a weekend of poor choices. It happens. I forgot the point of the whole idea; the point is to learn how to be a happier, healthier human being within my normal everyday life. Normal everyday life includes poor choices sometimes! But those few days of poor decisions and choices does not define the last 119 days, nor does it have to define the next 246.

I guess I still haven't quite figured out this whole "grown-up" thing yet. I guess I do still have some priorities to get straight... and if I'm going to be really honest with myself (and you), this was all probably a bit of a subconscious response to my husband telling me last Wednesday morning that if our youngest was going to decide to get up at 5:30am everyday (which he had been doing for 5 days in a row since switching from a crib to a toddler bed), then it was probably time to start sacrificing some things to be able to go to bed early enough in order to wake up rested at 5:30am with him. I flat out pitched a bit of a fit and was like, "You realize that would mean I would have to go to bed at like 9:30pm EVERY NIGHT and give up EVERYTHING I ENJOY DOING?!"

This, of course, did not go over particularly well. We didn't fight about it, but only because I decided to just end the conversation. I was pissed and felt like it was all incredibly "unfair". So what did I do? Well, go out all night all weekend, of course! Because that's how mature adults handle things!

...so, yeah. I didn't even realized that until I was writing all of this out. That was pretty stupid, considering I've been perfectly happy and fine coming home around midnight at the latest whenever I've gone out recently. And you know what? Nolan decided he'd start sleeping until a normal time again yesterday. It was just a normal adjustment for him and it looks like we'll be okay moving forward. Looks like I don't have to learn how to be a super early morning person just yet and can spend some of that extra time in the evenings thinking about what I want my top priorities to be in order to feel happy and satisfied in life.

Mental Importance

I touched a little bit in my 50 Days update on the importance of cardio (walking/running) and maintaining my mental health. I want to go a little deeper into it.

My motivation and energy have been really low this week and last, and I’m kind of teetering on the fine-line between Worn Out and Depressed. Stress has been very, very high for me the last two weeks and I’m having a hard time managing it. Getting a run in probably would have helped me immensely in this area, but our weather has been a little wonky here in Virginia and I’ve used that as an excuse big time. Not to mention, the 5k really, really wiped me out and the last thing I wanted to do last week was run. I’ve been wondering if I’m maybe in a bit of an overtraining cycle, which with my current stress level wouldn’t be difficult at all to have reached. This could explain my random weight gain despite good nutrition/plenty of exercise, my interrupted sleep, and recent exhaustion no matter how long I’m in bed.  

This week, thanks to work issues, rain, and crazy wind, I didn’t get ANY walks in until yesterday. I’ve come to realize how vital these lunch break walks are in keeping me from murdering people during the workweek. I also ran a couple miles last night. Well, “ran”, intervals really. Mostly walking. I’ve been reading a lot more about heart rate training recently, and tried to focus mostly on proper recovery from my “high” intervals - which sometimes meant walking longer than I would have liked. I still finished the 2.3 in 30 minutes, so it wasn’t a terrible pace, and if I keep it up I’ll get better/faster and able to recover more quickly. On a bummer note: my shins are bothering me a bit this morning even though I did my shin-specific stretches post-run. On a positive note: I felt much happier last night and today (so far) than I have since my 5k. Anecdotal evidence (y'know, and a crap ton of scientific evidence, too) shows that walking and running help elevate my mood and regulate my depression, anxiety, and stress. Now, if only I can convince myself how important this is come November when the weather gets frigid... perhaps I should go ahead and start saving for a 6 month pass to the local rec center's gym? Or for my very own treadmill?


This week was supposed to be my big “return” to strength training, but I’ve been flailing a little bit. This is not to say I haven’t been working out, I definitely have. But I am kind of all over the place and haven’t really put together a program to work on yet. I’ve also realized recently that I should really put some focus on making sure my form is correct before adding any heavy weight (duh moment, I know), and this might mean a few weeks of bodyweight training. This is where my lack of patience kills me. I really need to maintain focus on long-term goals and quit being so "right now" with everything. Something to work on, for sure.

I feel like I have a lot of reevaluating to do over the next few weeks regarding how I want to move forward after #100daysofchange is over. I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s seemed to work for me as far as fat/weight loss in the past, and I’m wondering if it might be beneficial to give some things another shot and see what happens. I’ve been having a tendency to get caught up in this whole idea that just because I’m 30 now, all of a sudden my entire biological landscape has changed – but clearly it hasn’t. That shit doesn’t just happen overnight.But it will change over the next 10 years, dramatically, and I need to create and cement good habits now in order to maintain my health for, well, the rest of my life.

Cement good habits and... stop over-thinking everything. I get so caught up and I think sometimes I create additional stress for myself, which does not help me in my training/fitness goals in any way, shape, or form. Something that is probably going to help me with chilling out: my FitBit up and dying last night. That’s right. I just charged it a few days ago, but before bed last night I realized it wasn’t lighting up anymore. I went and stuck it on the charger… nothing. I cleaned the connectors, nothing. I did a hard reset -- 2 quick flashes showing full battery power, then nothing. This morning I couldn’t even get it to reset. It’s dead. I’m not sure how I want to proceed… I can’t afford to replace it right now. Our home HVAC is being replaced next week, and that is obviously not cheap. A new FitBit seems like a bit of a frivolous expense. I downloaded the free app, Argus, to my iPhone as a replacement. I’ll see how I like it. So far it’s draining my battery pretty awesomely, but I might be able to live with that… maybe.

I probably shouldn’t have downloaded Argus. I probably should have just been free from a fitness tracker for a while to just see what happens. (Magic! Maybe magic would happen!) But then the other part of me is like, “I’m gonna be in Disney world next month, and I want those 40 BAJILLION steps counted, damnit!”

Y’know, because if technology isn’t tracking how many steps you’re taking… then clearly you haven’t taken any steps.

Hey, I don’t pretend to understand my own distorted logic.

The last couple days I’ve stopped logging calories throughout the day (again). Before bed I put everything in and see where I am, but mostly I’m just eating as I feel I need to. I’m trying really, really hard not to slip into the mindset of: If I’m not counting calories, calories aren’t really being eaten and I can eat ALL THE JUNK FOOD.

Are we noticing a trend here? If steps aren’t tracked they aren’t happening… if calories aren’t tracked then they aren’t really consumed…

It’s hard being me.

Overcoming Myself

Last week I began drafting the following post:

"Well, if I said it once I've said it a thousand times: 2 weeks into regular exercise and a slightly better diet, and I am feeling about 100 times more positive about life. It's like I can see my depression chillin' just slightly behind me, waiting for me to acknowledge it - but I haven't felt the need to invite it to curl up in my lap and consume me. I'm just like, ‘Oh, hey, what's up Depression? Yeah, I can still see/feel the stress and sadness in my life... but I don't need to dive into it right now. 'Cause EXERCISE, MO' FO'!!’ 

Or something like that.

 I’ve been spending more time with my husband, reading more, watching less TV, cooking more regularly, drinking alcohol only a couple times a week, and smoking only occasionally. I am definitely concerned at how long this will all last, as I feel like every January thru March looks like this, and then April and warmer weather roll around and it puts me into “party” mode – wanting to stay up, socialize ALL THE TIME, drink! With drinking comes smoking! And by October I’m right back where I started. I keep repeating to myself that it doesn’t have to be a cycle, that this can be a real and lasting lifestyle change. It’s all up to me. It’s my choice.
 Hey, maybe this is just a manic phase. That's entirely possible, too. But I'm going to attribute this upswing to the outdoor runs I’ve managed to sneak in on the two (yes, only two) days that it was in the upper 40’s here – plus the other 3-4 days a week I’ve been either lifting weights or doing some yoga. That's right. I’ve worked out 4-5 days a week for the last 2 weeks. I’m also especially proud of myself because I managed to keep up with all this exercise even after a 48-hour bout of sickness AND have worked around social plans. Since the weather has turned bitter cold again, I’m hoping to get up to the local rec center on the weekends to knock out some runs on the treadmill. 

To hopefully help myself stay on track, I’m registering for my first 5k which will be just 2 days before my 30^th birthday!”

I was feeling incredibly upbeat, energetic, I was doing better at work, I was motivated in all areas of life, etc. I had an appointment with my counselor and was feeling like I didn’t even need to be there because things were awesome and I had figured out what my problem was and I just needed to be smart about exercising and eating better.

Then the weekend came… and went, and I realized the secret might not be exercise or eating right (although these things are obviously important in a million other ways and are contributing factors, I’m sure) – but for me, the Big Secret is probably sleep. All the sleep. All the time.

I had been going to bed between 10 and 11pm almost every night the last couple weeks. It was so much easier to get up with my children at 6:30am when I wasn’t staying up until 1 or 2am. (You can just call me Captain Obvious.) But the biggest proof that it might be sleep more than anything else was this most recent weekend, where I got significantly less sleep than I’d been getting (think those or 1 or 2am bedtimes of the recent past). It sent me into a tailspin. I may or may not have cried myself to sleep Monday night. (Hint: I totally did.) I started feeling overwhelmed with job-work, housework, and Mom Duty, I started in on myself for not doing a “real” workout even though I did 30 minutes of yoga and had run 2.25 miles the day before, I started flipping out about having to work the next day, etc, etc. At first I thought to myself, “See? This was just a manic phase – you’re not really better.” I was crying because I it was like, oh no – I’m going to be miserable every day again and I don’t think I can live like that. I’m so tired of being miserable. I’ve been so much happier. I don’t want to be like this. Then I started to realize how little sleep I got over the weekend and how busy I had been and how active I had been… and I realized, oh shit. I’ve exhausted myself and this is now my emotional response. I’m not sinking back into a depression that I have no control over – I have absolute control in this moment, in this situation, to just get more sleep.

The good news? I can generally make sure that I get the amount of sleep that I need in order to keep my depression in check. The bad news? This means a pretty significant adjustment of my social-life. It means if we go out for a drink on a Friday or Saturday night, I probably won’t be staying out much past that 11:30/midnight threshold. And you definitely won’t be seeing as many random weeknights of being up/out until or past midnight. This may put a little bit of a damper on my interaction with some of my friends – but maintaining my mental health is way more important to me right now than late-night socialization. There may come a time in the not-so-distant future where my work/life balance will be a bit better and less stressful and I can once again survive and function perfectly well with a later bedtime – but that time ain’t now, unfortunately.

So, now that I figured out that crazy puzzle – let’s move on to this 5K thing… and this turning 30 thing.

The fact that I’m about to be 30 is hitting me a little harder than I ever thought it would. Hey, but what better gift to give myself than a healthier lifestyle? And hopefully focusing on that will keep my thoughts away from, “What have you done with your life? What are you doing with your life currently? YOU COULD BE SO MUCH BETTER!”

Man, my inner-monologue is such an ass.

So, I signed up for a 5K since I all of a sudden fell in love with running at the end of last summer after being someone who hated running for most of my life. I never understood how my dad found solace on his runs until 5 months ago. It’s like a safe-place for me now. Maybe that’s part of getting older?  But it’s not just running, it’s all my workouts. I’m really thankful for that. It makes it a lot easier to continue motivating to get the exercise done, to get the workout in, to make it all fit into my full life.

I’m regularly running about 2 - 2.5 miles when it’s been warm enough to get out, and lately I’ve been averaging about a 15/min mile including a walking warm-up and cool-down (and some walking in the middle to catch my breath!). That would put me at about 45 minutes, give or take, for a 5K (3.2 miles). My goal is to come in a little under that. Maybe 40 minutes? I’m not trying to win anything, I’m doing this for me. I may hate it. Who knows?! It’s only a $30 registration fee and it’s something I want to try, so I’m going for it. I’m hoping by the end of this month it’ll warm up enough that I can get out 2 or 3 times a week and build up my endurance/speed before the race on April 13^th.

Okay, so now that I’ve figured out the best way for me to fight the funk, and I’ve rediscovered my love and motivation for exercise, I guess it’s time to post some pictures which I am very unhappy with. I may have only gained 4-5 lbs over the last couple months, but it looks like almost all of that was fat. Super.

January 12th, 2014 - 194lbs

Really super attractive, right? NOT! Oh man, I am so unhappy with these that I almost don't want them on here... but how can I see my progress if I don't have an accurate depiction of where I'm starting? I'm always bummed that I don't have better photos from my start in January of 2012 - so here we go.

Since 1/13/14 I’ve been doing a mix of things. I’m regularly doing yoga 2-3 times a week, and I’ve been sort of modifying the Starting Strength program and goofing off with lifting, and throwing in some random dancing around in between sets, etc. Many of you who are friends with me on Facebook see this come through from MyFitnessPal as “some lifting, some jumping around, some stretching” – and that’s basically all it’s been.

The last few days (which also could be attributed to not-enough-sleep), I’ve been feeling really down about my 14-month long plateau/fluctuation from 189 – 194lbs. I’ve eaten at all kinds of different calorie levels throughout the last 14 months, from 1600-1800/day to 2400-2600/day. My diet has also varied from primarily at-home cooking, eating “whole” foods to eating more processed/restaurant foods and back again. I’ve tried several different exercise/lifting programs. No loss, no substantial gain. My body composition has changed quite a bit, but not as much as I would have liked and my estimated body fat percentage is still a good 8-10% higher than where I want it. Basically this all boils down to the fact that I’ve been lax in my commitment to weight and fat loss. I’ve been unwilling to cut out my favorite foods and I’ve been hesitant and sometimes flat-out unwilling to really push myself during exercise. On the former, I’m still unwilling to completely eliminate my favorite foods – which is not to say I couldn’t stand to cut back further on some of the junk I like to indulge in, I absolutely can and should. However, I do solidly believe that the bigger problem is the latter – the unwillingness to put in the hardest work no matter how uncomfortable it is. I feel like this is changing for me, though. I feel like over the last week or so especially, I’ve been much more willing to push myself and challenge myself – to tell myself, “You CAN knock out those last two reps”, “You CAN run all the way to the mailbox at the top of the hill”, instead of “I’m just so tired/out of breath/uncomfortable, it’s okay if I stop here.”

It might sound stupid, but I’ve also taken to pumping myself up before I exercise – saying to myself that I’ve got this, that it’s gonna be awesome and feel great, that I’m strong and can get it done, etc, etc. Sometimes out loud! My husband enjoys that… and by “enjoys” I mean “enjoys making fun of me”. But I don’t care! It seems to work!

Another change: the last few months I’ve been keeping a fitness journal. I keep a notebook with me while I’m lifting and record all my weights, reps, sets, etc. along with how I’m feeling physically and emotionally. I also write in here whenever I go for a run or do some yoga and record how those made me feel. I’ll try to record if I’m running on too little sleep, or was feeling particularly hungry or had a lack of appetite, etc. This is where I record my measurements every couple weeks. All the things! Pretty much the only thing health and fitness related that doesn’t get written in this notebook is my food journaling, which I obviously do on MyFitnessPal.

Okay, so since I got all down on myself about lack of body changes and feeling stuck, I decided to revisit “The Female Body Breakthrough” by Rachel Cosgrove. Some of you may remember when I started this program back in 2012… twice. I never finished it, and I can’t promise or guarantee that it’ll get finished this time, as it’s entirely possible that I’ll get bored and move on to something else in order to maintain my motivation to keep up with regular exercise.

I restarted the program last night after spending the last several days obsessively trying to figure out what I was “doing right” the last time I had a decent run of steady weight loss. The two times over the last couple years that I had significant drops were when I was goofing around with FBB. Why not give it another shot and actually push myself and put some real effort in this time? So I did the first “base phase” workout last night and HOLY CRAP! My fitness level has increased EXPONENTIALLY since the last time I did this. It made me feel so good that I could do every move without needing to modify, and also that I was able to get through the 3 sets instead of just 2. The only thing I still don’t love about the program is the fricken 15-20 minute “warm-up”. It seems excessive. But I’m hoping once I get more familiar with it, it’ll go a little faster. Overall it took me about an hour to get through Workout A. This is only about 10-15 minutes longer than my ‘some lifting, some jumping around, some stretching’ goof-off routine I’ve been doing the last few weeks – and, as I said, the more familiar I become with the routine and the less I have to stop to look at the book, it may be faster. I see people on the MFP forums talk about how it only takes them about 30-45 mins, so there you have it.

This week is my fourth week back in the regular exercise game, so this weekend I’ll take new measurements (I took some a few weeks ago to see where I was from November, but never posted them – oops!) and new pictures. I already have a feeling that the new pictures are going to be much better than those above.