I'm a lying liar!

I'm sure most of you probably anticipated this.... but: my venture into sobriety lasted all of 48 hours. After a lengthy talk with my husband Friday night (about many different things, not just the drinking thing), he at one point said, "Why are you doing this? I'm sorry if this is rude, but I think it's dumb. It's a total overreaction to one night." At first I was all, "Are you enabling me?!?!", but then quickly realized Mike isn't one to enable anyone about anything and if he truly thought I had "issues" with my alcohol consumption he would have told me a long time ago. He made a good point in that I over-drank, I drove when I didn't have any business driving, and it scared the shit out of me. That's not my norm. I don't get wasted and get behind the wheel. Clearly bad decisions were made and I'm lucky that I didn't hurt myself or anyone else. But Mike made the point that I'm totally capable of limiting my intake when I choose, that I rarely drink to get drunk, and that this "challenge" read more like self-punishment than self-improvement. 

That really rang with me. That's exactly what this was. This wasn't going to make me a happier, healthier person. It was just another thing to torture myself over, to be miserable about. It was dumb. It was dumb because I was lying to myself (and you) about the reason behind it.

So I dropped it. I’m dropping it. I had a few drinks Saturday night. It was fine. I didn’t drink to excess, I didn’t drink to be drunk, it didn’t make it any harder to get out of bed the next morning. I didn’t feel the need to have any more than what I had. I didn’t feel the need to drink again Sunday night. It just was what it was. And it was fine.

I’m a lying liar and I’m not going to quit alcohol for 30 days. I am going to be conscious of using alcohol to self-medicate and be sure to set hard limits for myself if I must drive. If I feel like I’m drinking because I don’t want to feel feelings anymore, well, that’s probably a good night not to drink.

Now, back to our regularly schedule programming: 

I recently returned to two old frenemies, MyFitnessPal and FitBit, for a daily dose of reality. I haven’t done any type of strength training in over a month and my adventures in cardio lack consistency. What’s left? Diet and steps. So I’m tracking it all again. I had gained weight. (Imagine that. Drinking tons of beer and eating whatever the fuck you want while not maintaining a decent exercise routine leads to weight gain. Who would have thought.) Not a ton of weight, but roughly 4 pounds. Clothing still fits the same, measurements are roughly the same, but I’m a little mushier than I was and would like to be.

Okay, let’s be honest: I’ve been a little mushier than I want to be for a while now. And while it’s excellent that I’ve had weeks and sometimes months of feeling really honestly good about myself as a person and the body that person lives in, it all eventually comes back around to feeling like I'm too heavy. And sometimes too big. And really none of that can change without a diet overhaul. And it's easy to eat a bunch of junk all the time when it's not staring you in the face in the form of a food journal.

As I spoke about in last week's utterly depressing update, I've had very little interest in food lately. This (bright-side) has made it relatively easy to make healthy choices since I have zero fucks to give about what I eat since nothing tastes delicious or happy these days. ...not that food should taste "happy"... but... "worth it", I guess. Except Oreos. Oreos always taste worth it. And other cookies... and ice creams... but I just try not to keep too much of that around lately. I've been living off a lot of Greek yogurt, fruit, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, giant salads, homemade vinaigrette, and salmon. Lately it's been very easy for me to under-eat, and I get hungry... but nothing really seems appetizing. Or I can't possibly be bothered to cook or fix myself something because sitting on the couch staring into space feeling sorry for myself is just so much more fun. The above list are all things that are quick and easy for me to make and therefore motivate to eat. Bonus that most of them are healthy.

So, I'm tracking calories/food journaling again and I received my replacement FitBit about 10 days ago and have once again returned to loyally wearing it day in and day out. So far I have yet to become completely obsessed with my step count and have not yet allowed that step count to determine how I feel about myself and my life. Key word here is "yet". I hope I can keep a healthy mindset about it and allow it to do its job in assisting me in my getting healthy process without taking over my every thought and feeling.

Lately I find myself wanting to schedule changes. "I'm going to quit drinking for 30 days!" (lies and fibs), "I'm going to get up and run every morning!" (so far, not happening) "I'm going to sit down and write a whole album's worth of new songs in a week!" "I'm gonna keep a notebook with me and write down positive thoughts everyday!" "I'm going to schedule lots of events to keep myself busy and distracted from hating life so much!"

While my intentions are really good on all this stuff, I also know this is a guaranteed way to make me feel horrible about myself. That's a lot of stuff. And realistically, I will probably only accomplish maybe one or two of those things (or none at all), and then feel like garbage for not doing everything I set out to do in whatever imaginary time-frame I've given myself to do them. (I don't have a time-frame for most of those things, but that doesn't mean I won't feel like I've failed them 4 days from now when I haven't done any of them -- or even a year from now, for that matter, having accomplish 2 or 3 of them.)

I'd like to think I'm trying to take my #365daysofchange challenge seriously by coming up with these accomplishments and activities I've set/scheduled for myself, but it doesn't come from that rational place - it comes from a distraction place. If I can't be happy or "live in the now" or rediscover my joy, then I'm sure as shit going to just keep myself so busy with social activities and "projects" that I don't have time to think about the fact that nothing is fun or exciting anymore. Instead I can just be focused on being busy and stressed out!! Because that's healthy!!

Anyways... so, bonus, I did realize I exercised every weekday last week. I ran Monday, tennised Tuesday, took a good walk Wednesday, ran again Thursday night, with another good walk Friday. I keep thinking to myself, "Maybe you should go down to the basement and lift some of those heavy iron things..." and then I'm like, "Nah, I'm good." I don't know what my deal is there. I've always loved strength training, but for some reason I've got it in my head lately that it "betrayed" me somehow. I'm sure that is partially a scale-weight response. It's also easier to blame the strength training than to blame myself for the inconsistency. I'm sure as the weather gets cooler and the daylight hours shorter (I'll talk more about that in a moment, too), I'll find myself gravitating less and less to my outdoor runs and more and more to the warm confines of my basement and the weights that live there. Right now I want to focus on consistent runs (if for nothing more than the mental health benefits), and consistent diet/calorie deficit.

I haven't done this in a long time, but here are my current stats:
Weight: 195 lbs on 8/2/14
Bicep (flexed): 12"
Bust: 38"
Under bust: 34"
Natural waist: 33"
Waist at navel: 37"
Hips: 44.5"
Thighs: 26"

And photos:

It is almost mind-boggling how quickly I pack on fat. These photos are a major departure from where I was at the end of my 100 day challenge, merely two months ago. Granted the lighting was more flattering from my 100th day, but I have the outtakes from those photos and even the "bad" ones are better than these.

I'm sick of being in the 190s. If I'm not going to increase muscle mass, I need to be closer to the 170s. That's just all there is to it. Pushing my body out of this set point is gonna be tough since I've been maintaining at this weight and general fat percentage level for a while. I'm hoping getting back to basics will get it done, but it may take a while to figure it all out. And some serious dietary discipline on my part.

My main concern at this time, however...  I mean, I don't know if y'all know or not, but winter is coming. And I don't mean that as a Game of Thrones reference, I mean it quite literally. We are just a handful of weeks away from the return to hoodie weather and 6pm sunsets. And I can.not.deal. I'm terrified and am having increased anxiety over the approach of fall and winter. It didn't even get warm here until June. And we've had maybe two weeks' worth of actual hot weather. All and all it's been a pretty mild summer, as my a/c bills can attest. This is a bunch of malarkey. Summer should be hot. And winter snow storms should not linger into April... much as low temperatures of 30s and 40s should not linger on into June. Not in Virginia. In Maine? Wisconsin? Winnipeg? Sure. Not here. No siree, Bob! ...moving to Florida is looking more and more appealing.

30 days

I drank too much last night. This is not uncommon. It happens every couple weeks. Sometimes more often, sometimes less often, but the point is that it happens regularly enough that you would think I’d know better by now.

I thought to myself this morning, “Starting today, no more alcohol for 30 days.” Then I immediately came up with all these reasons why I “can’t” stop drinking alcohol for 30 days. Which then immediately made the rational side of me say, “This is exactly why you need to give up alcohol for 30 days.”

I mean, I’ve been saying for months (if not years) how much I’d like to just be a morning person, to get up and go run in the mornings before work, etc. A big reason why I have a hard time in the mornings (aside from just not really being a morning person) is that if I have more than one alcoholic beverage it makes me about 90% more likely to stay up later than I’d like to (if I were sober), which in turn makes it 90% more difficult to get up at my usual time, let alone an hour or two earlier in order to do exercise. I’ve also been known to say things to the effect of, “Well, if I could just give up beer I’d drop a ton of weight, I’m sure!” While that may not be entirely true since I’m sure I’ll just replace beer with soda or something equally as calorically damaging, it certainly couldn’t hurt. And I know for sure, 110%, that's something that will certainly lower my triglycerides... which, btw, I still haven't gotten checked. I'm waiting for my new insurance to start September 1 and then I'll schedule the appointment.

I feel like this isn’t making as much sense as I want it to, but basically it boils down to this:

• I’m not drinking often, but when I do I’m drinking to excess and it’s unnecessary. 
• I’m feeling like my socialization shouldn’t be solely based on and revolve around drinking alcohol. 
• I want to be able to have one or two drinks and enjoy them versus feeling like I have to drink because “it’s what I do” or some other such nonsense.

I’ll be honest, I am totally terrified of this idea and am worried I won’t be able to do it – mainly because I just have that personality that the moment you tell me I can’t do or have something, that’s the only thing I want to do or have. But I’m giving it a shot anyway. It shouldn’t really be that big of a deal seeing as I rarely drink more than once or twice a week anyway – at least, that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.

*takes deep breath* Okay, so, beginning today, August 7^th, 30 days no alcohol. I got this.

Staying on track

This morning I woke up feeling like I didn't get near enough rest - and the thought of hitting the gym after work was less-than-pleasing. I already had my gym bag packed and ready to go, thank goodness because I was running HORRIBLY late already. I threw it in the car and headed to work with my breakfast-to-go in tupperware.. out into the 18 degree morning. The high tomorrow is estimated to be 26, with a low of 12.

IT'S NOT EVEN WINTER YET, MOTHER NATURE! GET WITH IT!!

This kind of cold coupled with the 4pm sunset is really wrecking havoc on my being-happy-and-motivated-ness.

Once I got into work and woke up a little bit I was feeling better about heading to the gym - only to realize that we made plans with my parents straight after work to go to this "festival of lights" thing out in Gainesville-ish, which is almost an hour away. We realistically probably won't be back home until 7 or 8pm and then I'll need to get James straight to bed. Basically this all means that if I want to try to go to the gym I probably won't actually get there until close to 9pm.. and I just don't think I'm willing to go that late since that will give me NO wind-down time after work/family stuff before it'll just be time for ME to go to bed. So my plan is to do what I can of the core workout I did with the personal trainer last week at home before bedtime. Or maybe I'll do one of my Jackie Warner 15 minute workouts. I am definitely going to try to do SOMETHING. And then definitely hit the gym tomorrow afternoon.

I did not even have the time to hop on the scale and take measurements this morning so I will be sure to do that tomorrow and give updates on that!

Stats for yesterday, 12/12:

• total calories: 1871 - muuuuch better than Saturday's totals. Plus, with the exception of a Lean Cuisine for dinner, I had ALL whole foods yesterday. I was quite proud of myself and felt 100 times better after eating all those fruits and veggies!
• no workout - my day consisted mostly of sleeping on my couch recovering from the 3am night.
• 3 cigarettes
• 12am bedtime
• $0 spent

Goals for this week:

• workout at least 4 times this week - at home, at the gym, wherever. Just get it done.
• get to bed by 11:30pm
• 2100 calories or less a day
• no more than 6 cigarettes a day
• no more than 3 alcoholic beverages per outing/get-together

Calorie overload - and the Tale of Two Wines

Yesterday was our good friends son's birthday party, so off we went for an afternoon of pizza, birthday cake and all-around good fun!

The party was definitely a success as far as the kiddos were concerned - and the adults too for that matter. After all the presents had been taken out of their box and assembled and batteries installed, we all settled in for some grown-up time with drinks and the promise of delicious dinner... courtesy of Steve's frier.

That's right. You read that correctly. Dinner via frier.

This is where it all starts to go wrong... lol

Evan and I head out to the grocery store to pick up things to fry - what a shopping trip! Shrimp, scallops, bacon to adorn the seafood, spinach and artichoke dip, cheesecake bites, etc, etc, etc. Oh. And I picked up 2 bottles of wine. One red, one white.

We get back from the store and I proceed to fix some bacon immediately in a skillet (well, actually it was a soup pot.. you don't get popped as easy that way. heh)... most delicious bacon EVER. Had about 4 or 5 pieces of that.. and then some FRIED bacon-wrapped scallops... and some FRIED shrimp... and then... cheesecake bites.

And all of that would have been just fine, albeit not incredibly healthy... but the kicker is that I then proceeded to drink about 7 glasses of wine.

And that is the story of how my calorie-intake for yesterday climbed to 3220.

I KNOW RIGHT?!

I'm incredibly disappointed in myself, but I also know that this is in NO WAY the norm for me. I probably haven't consumed that many calories in one day in almost a year - I think even while on vacation the highest my calories count got to was 2600. I don't have any desire to sit around stuffing my face with bacon and all sorts of fried foods every day - or every weekend either, for that matter! But this was definitely a HUGE hiccup in my general "good health" journey, not to mention the fact that I have no business drinking 7 glasses of wine in one evening. :-\  I said a little bit about cutting out alcohol in my post yesterday and I'm realizing more and more that I definitely need to do that if I can't start controlling my intake better.

So here are the staggering stats for 12/11:

• total calories: 3220 - it makes me want to throw up just looking at it. lol
• calories burned: 150 - we played one of those Wii dancing games, so I'm giving myself a LITTLE credit there. 
• lots of cigarettes.. lots and lots.. *dies*
• 3am bedtime *dies again*
• $0 spent thanks to Evan purchasing the groceries for the frier-ganza!

Okay, so here's to starting a new week with lots of exercise and good food decisions! 

Oh, drinking..

Last night hubby and I went out with a group of friends for drinks and karaoke.

Wine is really expensive at bars.

Beer is not.

Michelob Ultra is my friend.

Mango margaritas are not.

Stats for 12/10:

• total calories: 2210 - yes, that's 110 over my new limit of 2100. This is mostly thanks to the lunch at WENDY'S I had yesterday... yes, after I posted that big long thing about how I rarely eat fast food anymore. lol But it was definitely the mango margarita that put me over so much. I would have still been okay without that. 
• no workout - didn't make it to the gym which is okay.. I was so sore from my personal training session I'm not sure I could have really done much anyway. I'm still hurting today, actually. Ugh. Thinking about doing a little bit of yoga to stretch out before we head out for a kiddo birthday party. 
• 5 cigarettes - the booze kills me every time, man! EVERY TIME. I gotta cut that shit out... the drinking AND the smoking. I know I keep saying that but, ugh, I love drinking. lol  The last time I quit drinking I replaced beer with cola. Whenever I'd go out I'd order a coke instead of a beer.. but I HATE HATE HATE diet coke (plus artificial sweeteners are SO BAD FOR YOU), so I feel like calorie-wise that's not really gonna help me much. Although I guess I could use it to like "wean" myself off the alcohol for a bit... I dunno. We'll see about that. 
• 1:30am bedtime
• $20 spent ($0 left for the week/$63 left for the month)