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.

100 things inside my brain

I’ve had so many topics bouncing around inside my head the last several days. I don’t even know where to start, so I’m just going to write and see what happens…

A couple weeks ago I wrote about my confidence and security in my body, my lifestyle, etc. It’s amazing how quickly/easily things can change! The end of last week saw me suffering through some serious self-esteem/body-image issues. I sat down to write about it about 6 different times and could never get it finished and posted. Some of it no longer applies, but I’m going to pull some pieces out of those almost-updates and stick them in here to try to come up with some kind of a coherent explanation of what’s going on inside my head this last week or so.

First things first: I’ve lost just about all my motivation for exercise/workouts. It’s not just one thing or the other, it’s everything. Lifting doesn’t sound appealing, circuits don’t sound appealing. Running? Nope. Just a little walk? Maybe. But only if it happens in the middle of the day and prevents me from having to do work, y’know, at work. Tennis has still sounded fun and been fun – that’s the one thing I’ve done for purposeful exercise in the last 10 days. But my dad is my usual tennis partner, and I can’t expect him to be available to me every single night. (Or can I? Heh.)

At first I was thinking maybe I just was a little burnt out. Maybe it would do me some good to get a rest week in, focus on getting things ready for our 4^th of July BBQ we hosted for a few friends, take some time to relax with Mike, do some reading, some writing, etc.

That was all well and good for the first few days. By last Wednesday, though, it became clear that I was stuck in a pretty serious case of the I Don’t Wanna’s. I began drafting a blog update, saying how all was not lost, that I could just make myself get the workout in that night, put the damn candy down, resolve to make better food choices and carry on my merry way.

…but then Mike was having a bad day. Work was putting a lot of pressure and stress on him and he was feeling bad about how he handled some things with the kids recently. I didn’t want to add to that pressure by asking him to take on full responsibility for dinner and both kids bath/bedtimes so that I could get my 45 minute workout in before showering and leaving for trivia… so I didn’t. I skipped the workout, telling myself that I could get back on track Thursday evening – which would be better anyway seeing as we would be hosting people Friday night and there would be no workout time anyway. I did tennis Tuesday, so then regular workout Thursday and again Saturday and BOOM! Back on track! Back on program! Back in the game!

Do I really need to tell you that none of that happened? Sigh.

I will give myself some props for getting to bed at incredibly decent hours all weekend, which is phenomenal considering this was a holiday weekend. I even stayed home all weekend. I laid off the booze. I spent a lot of time with my kids and my husband. These were all good things, all positive things. I will say I walked to and from our local farmer’s market Friday, and to and from the little playground near our house Sunday. Not to mention all the cleaning I did Friday and Saturday. I did things, I was active, I just wasn’t “working out”.

Sunday afternoon/evening I started feeling the familiar pangs of depression creeping back in on me. I acknowledged it, mentioned it to Mike, and then went about the evening as normal. Monday morning I woke up feeling pretty decent. My mood seems a little more level today and I’m holding onto that and trying to keep it going. I’ve been pretty up for a couple weeks now, and I’d like things to stay that way. I’ve gotten into a good groove at work, and while I still think there are some changes I’d like to make in my professional life and career ambitions, right now things are feeling quite a bit less hopeless than they were back at the beginning of June. I worry sometimes I’m becoming complacent, but as long as I’m not entirely miserable maybe complacency isn’t so bad, right?

Now to start going all over the place with stuff, since I can’t really decide how to segue…

1) I’ve been on this candy kick for a couple weeks now. At first I was like, “Oh, well, my period. Because: female things. Hormones. Okay, cool.” But the thing about sugar is: it’s kind of addicting. I’ve been consciously trying to scale back on the sugar intake, but I think my recent obsession with fruit hasn’t helped much. Yes, it’s naturally occurring sugar mixed with healthy fiber and vitamins/minerals – but it’s still sugar and I’m still overloading myself with it, processed or not. I began thinking a lot about Primal Eating last week. I read The Primal Blueprint last summer and it all made sense to me. Now, I’m well aware of the recent evidence that’s come out against these gluten and grain-free diets. I’m all about everything-in-moderation because my #1 sabotage trigger is to start telling myself a certain type of food or activity is forbidden. But, with that being said, I also know it certainly couldn’t hurt me to choose leafy greens and vegetables over grain-based carbs more often. So over the weekend I started trying to do that. I bought lots of salad greens and veggies and have made myself big salads the last couple days using just plain old olive oil and white balsamic vinegar for dressing. When I wanted to snack Sunday night I went for the carrots and hummus vs the cheese and Townhouse crackers. Bit by bit I’m going to reign my food choices back in. I entertained the notion of starting to log calories again for a brief moment – I even put my breakfast in yesterday morning. But by the time I got through lunch, the idea of logging everything again brought on some serious anxiety. I don’t know why. Maybe a feeling of “failing” at intuitive eating. I think I still need to leave it alone for now. This wasn’t months of poor eating choices turning into habits… this was 2 weeks of eating more sweets than I probably needed. Not going back to counting just yet.

2) I’m becoming really fixated on aesthetic vs health and it’s driving me to a dark place. I get hung up on the way these fitness professionals/models and athletes look and I wish that were my body. But the thing is I know the strict discipline that goes into looking like that – the bland diet, the hours of training, etc – and I know that I’m not interested in making the sacrifices I would have to make to “get there”. Because the thing is, you can’t look like that 365 days a year every year for the rest of your life. Existing on sweet potatoes, broccoli, and chicken breasts gets old pretty quick. I love food, I love beer, and I love being really lazy sometimes. I also love the way I look and feel in my body most of the time. I’m not sure where this pressure on myself is coming from right now, but it’s making the idea of getting back “#onprogram” stress me the fuck out. I’ve also found myself shying away from my runs because I’ve somehow managed to convince myself that any cardio that isn’t specifically metabolic training is just “making me fat”. Don’t even ask where that came from. The “sweet spot” is supposed to be between 10-20 miles a week before you run the risk of your metabolism being affected negatively (depending on myriad of other factors as well!!) – and I’m not even hitting 5 miles most weeks (or ever). I think this is one of those situations where I’ve over-educated myself and now that education is attacking my psyche. I need to calm down and remind myself what it is I really love doing. If that’s a “program”, great. But the fact of the matter is, I’ve never been good at sticking to a program for longer than 4-6 weeks. #100daysofchange began with doing something a little different every day or every couple days to keep myself interested and active, and I lost that toward the end.  I think I forgot it until now. Maybe I just need to go back to that. Do some strength, do some cardio, do some HIIT/metabolic training, and do it a little differently every couple times to keep it fun and interesting.

3) Weight loss. I made the mistake of stepping on the scale about a week ago. I don’t know why. It was Sunday afternoon (afternoon = never a good time to weigh yourself anyway), I’d been drinking heavily most of the weekend, eating TONS of salty junk food, barely sleeping, and generally not taking very good care of myself. On top of being right in the middle of my period, so natural water retention even without all the other crap. The scale read 199.8. I flipped out a little bit. It’s stupid. It doesn’t matter. My clothes fit and look better than they did 6 months ago, my body composition continues to change and shift toward more muscle mass… 199 doesn’t mean anything. Except, in that moment, it meant EVERYTHING. I think this is where everything started; the avoiding exercise, the persistently in giving in to my sweets cravings, the general lack of enthusiasm for my health and fitness. After all, what’s the point if the scale isn’t moving?

It’s so stupid.

For me, seeing the scale move ceased being “the point” of this whole thing months and months and months ago. But I think a big part of me thought that by being active and eating healthier, by putting in the time and energy, it would continue to move down as the months passed. I haven’t been doing what I would have to do in order to push through the plateau. I’m not willing to at this point. That’s okay. But it’s not okay to think I’m a worthless person because I may teeter right around 200 pounds for the rest of my life. Being 20 pounds heavier than I’d like to be doesn’t define my worth as a human being. But I forget that all the time. It’s very sad, really. I should be kinder to myself.

So where do I go from here? I honestly don’t know.

Here’s what I do know:

• My mental health will suffer greatly if I stop regularly exercising - my day-to-day lifestyle just isn't active enough to drop purposeful exercise
• My mental health will suffer if I don’t continue to focus on a healthy diet
• Feeling sorry myself won’t make me leaner, in fact it will likely have the opposite effect

So, there we go. Good food and a good sweat have to be non-negotiable for me. 

Post-draft update:

I made myself go do some running intervals last night. It felt really good. I'm tired as hell today, but looking forward to tennis tonight and maybe some more running intervals tomorrow. 

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...sort of?

I’m not really sure how to start this one off, so I’m just going to kind of brain-vomit here for a minute:

It seems that the more depressed I get over certain aspects of my life, the more positive I get about my body image. I don’t know how to explain it really, but I’m struggling so much with making some major life choices and am adhering more and more the mantra of “life is too short to be miserable” – and while this isn’t magically dissolving my depression since I haven’t actually made any decisions yet, it has made me realize that being overly fixated on my body image and being unhappy about how I look is ridiculous. The fact of the matter is, I like my body just fine. It’s a pretty good looking body. It’s a pretty well-functioning body, too. 6 months ago, when I went for my first physical/check-up since I was a teenager, I was a healthy person. And in the last 6 months I’ve made several BIG changes that are only adding to my health: quitting smoking, eating out less often, drinking alcohol less often, getting 7-8 hours of sleep regularly, and being more active and/or exercising on a daily basis.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t still things I want to change about the way I look – there are. But I’m learning how to let go of those aesthetic (and scale weight) changes as my main focus and putting more emphasis on how things make me feel and how they affect my physical (and mental) health. Am I going for a run because I feel like I have to in order to eat that pizza/drink that beer/have that ice cream, or am I going for a run because it makes me feel good/clears my mind/boosts my mood? Am I doing strength training to get “awesome abs”/”toned arms”/”dancers legs”, or am I doing it because it makes it easier to lift my toddler/boosts my metabolism/makes me sleep better?

More and more I’m doing my chosen type of exercise for the health benefits, not the what-my-body-looks-like benefits. And the fact is, my body composition will change as I continue to do these things and one day I may wake up and realize that doing things for my health has also improved my body aesthetic – but that is quickly becoming just an added bonus and not the main purpose of all this time and energy I put into fitness.

…as far as counting calories goes, I’ve all but given it up. I will still log my food – sometimes daily, sometimes just a couple days a week - but I don’t really stress over the calorie count anymore. I’ve raised my “limit” to TDEE, and I’m making sure my protein and carbs are where I want them to be. Probably the biggest change for me and my relationship with food is now when I eat “junk” or sweets I make sure to ask myself after the first bite if I really want it. If that first bite isn’t as delicious as I want it to be, more and more I’ll choose not to eat any more of it. I’m maintaining my weight while my body composition continues to change, and that’s okay. I’m happy here. And thank goodness! It’s hard enough dealing with all this depression, stress, and anxiety without the added pressure of hating my body all day every day. I was in that place over the winter and it was pretty terrible and crushing. I’m working really hard to maintain this body positivity while wading through the rest, and it feels so wonderful to give myself a break from the abuse and negativity.

Now for something completely different:

#100daysofchange will soon be coming to an end, and I’m kind of freaking out about it. It’s been such an amazing tool for me and an excellent way to hold myself accountable. Thank you to everyone who has been following (and participating) in this little project! I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve decided I want to extend this challenge for myself. I want to make this a year-long project. I’m still coming up with a tag for it, but it may be as simple as #365daysofchange or something similar. I’ll be sure to make the announcement once I’ve made up my mind.

Things I learned from vacation:

• I do much better in a warm climate
• I do much better spending the day in the sun
• I do much better moving all day long
• I sleep much better when I move all day long and get plenty of sun
• It’s much easier for me to wake up in the mornings when I get plenty of sun/exercise and am looking forward to my day
• I eat better and less often when I’m active all day – it’s easier to pay attention to hunger signals vs cravings
• I want to work for Disney
• I wouldn’t mind living in Florida in order to work for Disney
• I like the way I look
• I like spending time with my kids when we are having adventures and are busy
• I don’t need television/Facebook/beer when I’m having adventures and keeping busy
• Television/Facebook/beer probably contribute to my depression more than I want to admit
• I didn’t miss my real life one bit for the entire 8 days I was gone and I feel like this speaks volumes about my life, my job, and the people I choose to surround myself with and that exhilarates and terrifies me all at once

 I don’t know that I’ve ever had a better vacation. I spent 6 days wandering Disney World and the surrounding area, in the hot Florida sun, with a 30lb backpack on (full of bottled water mostly), half the time also toting my 35lb 2 year old, and with my whole family in tow and it didn’t bother me or annoy me once - except maybe the 2 hours of excruciating back pain I experienced Wednesday evening. Some stretches and a hot bath took care of that well-enough and I was able to enjoy the rest of the week without incident. Even with the back pain I had a great time.

Shockingly, I rarely looked at my phone except to use the camera. I only touched my computer once. I only posted to Facebook once (outside of linking my #100daysofchange photos through Instagram). The only tv I watched was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for 30 minutes each morning while fixing breakfast for my family. I didn’t talk about work. I didn’t talk about any personal drama. I didn’t feel stressed out or depressed or anxious about anything (other than roller coasters). Because we stayed in a condo and not a hotel environment, I still had to do laundry, fix meals, tidy up, do dishes and all of the normal chores I would be doing at home. The major difference being I didn’t have to go to work every day. The other major difference being that I was, y’know, IN DISNEY WORLD. I’m not sure which might be more significant… but I think it might be the work thing more than I realized. Anytime Mike tried to mention anything I would immediately feel like I was going to throw-up. Unfortunately that’s not an exaggeration.

I’ve got some thinking to do and then some planning, and then some more thinking and planning. Some reflecting might be beneficial as well.

Tonight I’m back #onprogram with my strength training and hopefully my back will cooperate. It’s still a little sore, though not painful that it had been for those few hours last week. I’ll just have to be mindful.

Regularly Scheduled Programming

I went through some serious mental shifts and changes about certain things over the weekend that have led me back around to putting together a regular training schedule and recalculating calories.

My FitBit bit the dust last week. I still haven’t been able to figure out what the deal is (and I still haven’t emailed customer service to see if they’ll replace it – for free). I spent 2 days using Argus, but the battery drain on my phone became too much of a hassle for me. So right now I am fitness tracker free!  It’s weird and is taking some getting used to. I’m finding it difficult to stay in the mindset that uncounted steps are still steps and still count toward total daily energy expenditure!

Okay, so no fitness tracker... and THEN, I pitched a fit and didn’t count calories over the weekend. Stepping on the scale Saturday morning to see “195” glaring back at me pissed me off. Logically I know that my junk-food-Friday (within calorie goals and macros, though – IIFYM my ass) had everything to do with it (high sodium = water retention), but I threw a temper tantrum over it anyway. I ate plenty of fruits and veggies (and 7-layer dip) over the weekend, and didn’t give totally over to that voice in my head telling me to eat all the candy/chips/ice cream because uncounted calories don’t count… and then last night I decided, well, maybe I should just run my numbers using a TDEE calculator online suggested by the EM2WL community and go by that for a bit. So I did. New goal: 2250, no eating back exercise calories. So don't be surprised when you see all those "1" calorie burns coming through from MyFitnessPal.

Now, of course, I’ve picked a terrible time to do all this since we leave for Disney in about 2 weeks – and those 8 days of travel will completely throw everything out of whack. While I know we’ll be doing a TON of walking down there, it’ll obviously be a rest-week from any strength training (outside of hauling Nolan around) since we’ll be super busy and probably exhausted. I'm getting a little concerned that we may end up feeling like we need a vacation from our vacation! But I'm excited nonetheless. :)

So the program that I'm following is specifically geared toward fat loss, which is really what I need most in my life right now. I got a lot of my tips from GirlsGoneStrong.com, as I love, love, love Molly Galbraith and Jen Sinkler! For next several weeks (except Disney), I'll be doing straight strength training 3 days a week, Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) 2 days a week (I'm choosing to do these after my arm/leg workouts, but they can be done on separate days), and 2 days of Moderate Intensity Cardio (MIC - keeping heart rate between 120-150bpm for 30 minutes). The schedule I have set up right now is for Monday-Friday, or taking Thursdays and Sundays off. I'll probably bounce back and forth depending on what's going on in life.

It would seem that this schedule might interfere a bit with the purpose behind #100daysofchange, since the point of that was to do something physically active every day. Well, I've already thought of that, and I've been making so many changes in my life outside of physical activity. On my "off" days I'll take a leisurely walk, maybe talk about a healthy meal choice, or do something good for my mental health (yoga, meditation, journal, or garden, for example). I end up doing this a few times a week anyway just because sometimes life gets busy, so nothing will really be all that different - and most of those things are physically active anyhoo.

I started the program last night and got some arms and MRT in. Today was supposed to be my moderate cardio, but the weather is completely screwing me over there. It's only 46 degrees right now. What the hell?! AND rainy. I'll probably play some Just Dance on the Wii... or run circles with my toddler playing "monster". Either will do.

I just need to remind myself that consistency is important (especially with diet), and start looking at things in a long-term perspective (where will I be in a year? What about when I'm 40?) and working toward goals that will benefit me in 20 years just as well as they're benefiting me today.

50 days in and so many changes!

So, here I am at the 50 day mark, halfway through my #100daysofchange! The biggest thing I’ve gained from this experiment so far definitely has to be the improvement in my attitude and mood. There have still be been bad days, but they are becoming few and far between.

In the last 50 days I have:

Done some form of exercise/physical activity every day

Made an effort to sleep at 7-8 hours every night

Quit smoking

Cut back drinking

Stopped drinking caffeine

Stopped taking birth control in order to regulate mood and get rid of increased migraine frequency

Inadvertently started spending more time at home with my husband and children

Started playing guitar/writing music again

I haven’t had a migraine in weeks. I have only “broken” and smoked 2 cigarettes since March 8^th. I will use an e-cigarette on the weekends when I’m drinking, but even that I find myself using less and less. Sometimes it’s enough just to hold it. I found a major, major, MAJOR connection between sleep and alcohol intake with how depressed I am/was. If I sleep at least 6.5 hours, I’m okay. Anything less than that and I feel really depressed for 2 or 3 days. Similarly, if I drink 4 beers or less, I’m okay. Anything more than that and I feel really depressed for the next day or two. COMBINE lots of alcohol and less than 6.5 hours of sleep? We’re looking at a whole week of feeling pretty severely depressed and the desire to slip back into bad habits.

I think quitting caffeine has helped with my migraines quite a bit, and going off birth control may be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for my physical and mental health. And, no, I’m not trying to have another baby. Various other forms of birth control are being used CONSISTENTLY, and I’m tracking my basal temp and cycles in order to avoid high fertility days completely. While I think recognizing how important sleep is when it comes to my mood, the lack of faux hormones has also had a big impact. I feel more in control of my emotions overall. This could all be psychosomatic, but I’ll take it regardless.

So far I’m really enjoying this journey. I still haven’t found my “thing” when it comes to diet/fitness and that equaling weight loss, but I think I’m starting to realize that shouldn’t even be my focus in this whole experience. I recently have been questioning myself regularly regarding my feelings of disappointment on the scale not moving (or not moving in the direction I want it to). Do I enjoy the exercise I choose to do? Yes. Does it make me feel good to eat more things like fish and veggies? Yes, absolutely. Do I feel comfortable in my body and the clothes I choose to wear? For the most part. I still have “trouble areas” that I feel negatively about, and I still have days that are filled with Fat & Ugly attacks, but overall I feel okay with how I look. So if I’m happy, healthy, and comfortable – why should weight loss even be an issue? I don’t know the answer to that right now. “Because I want the scale to reflect my hard work” comes to mind, but the scale is a terrible judge of how hard someone is working to improve their overall physical and mental health. This is one of those pieces of information that I know to be true and yet still have a hard time believing for whatever reason.

So I still struggle with scale-weight, and I still struggle with calorie tracking. These past two weeks I’ve been wanting to jump back on the quit-calorie-tracking train. It’s starting to really stress me out again. I put myself in a 400 calorie deficit from what I found to be my maintenance number and I’ve upped my exercise significantly. I initially lost a few pounds, but now I’ve gained those back. A couple people suggested that since I increased my exercise (and therefore TDEE), I might need to be eating more. WHO KNOWS?! I try to following what my FitBit shows, especially on high activity days, but I just don’t really know what my true TDEE is. These are all estimates. So, it could be WAY higher, or WAY lower. Although I think if it were too much lower I’d be gaining a lot more weight than just a few pounds over the course of 2 months… It’s such a pain in the butt, and this is why I sometimes feel like I need to just leave it alone. My most successful adult weight loss came from doing strength training regularly (though lazily – not pushing myself or upping weight, etc.), slacking on cardio, not counting calories but eating most my meals at home (and mostly packaged, at that), and indulging in beer and bar food 2 or 3 times a week. Go figure. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s like I need to unlearn all these things I’ve educated myself on in the last year or more. So I’m a little stuck there.

Overall I’m really proud of how far I’ve come in my lifestyle changes in the last 50 days, but there are obviously still things I struggle with and things that I still need to work on.

Enjoy some (slightly blurry) progress photos from April 13th:

Here’s to the next 50 days!

What am I going to do with myself?

I sure as hell don’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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