Thanksgiving fail

I think the title says it all right there. I only had phone internet this week while we were back home for the holidays, so that is the reason for my hiatus. I really had to force myself to sit down and admit my wrong doings on here but here we are.

So I kept the grazing to a minimum, but I ate tons and tons. Most of the week it was only one large meal a day that we had, but oh my what a meal it was. Lots of starches and sweets. I barely moved all week too. I couldn't even hold out for some massive shopping on black Friday. I look and feel digusting and just all around at a low point. It didn't help matters that this was probably one of the worst holidays I've had recently in terms of family drama. I feel like I need a cleanse of some sort. I need a sauna, some kind of nutritional cleanse, multiple days in the gym and to rid myself completely of negative, self-involved people. All of which seem unattainable to me right now.

I feel overwhelmed, unmotivated and uninspired by life in general at this time in my life. Maybe it's the holidays. To quote one of my favorite movies, Untamed Heart, (I'm a Christian Slater fangirl) "It's not right to feel sh*tty this time of year, but ya know everybody does".

Psycho-analyze this

Two blogs in one night is probably never going to happen again, but as I'm sitting here in our apartment with the windows open and the wind blowing like crazy (tornado?), I feel like I should write again, so I'm going with it. 

The holiday season is very bittersweet for me, mainly for one reason. I don't really get to see most of my family members. With my dad working out of town and moving from place to place, it's hard to narrow down and time and date to spend time with him with all of us girls. There is also the issue of him not appreciating my husband for the wonderful person that he is, but that is a whole other can of worms we won't go into. I haven't spent the last 2 or 3 Thanksgivings with my mom for obvious reasons and it looks like this year will be no exception. 

Without going into the long and drawn out story of my life, let's just say I've spent a great deal of it on the receiving end of a very negative and controlling force. As a child, you aren't able to exactly choose who is in your life and who isn't. I had a lot of freedom to do what I wanted as a teenager, but I didn't have the ability to get away from people who consciously tried to break me down to feeling like I was worth nothing. However it appeared to those around me, to me, it was abuse. Extreme psychological and emotional abuse. I feel like I lived in a household where I couldn't control anything around me. It's only natural to me that maybe food was the one thing I could control in my own home. Meals were always good and plentiful in my house amid the constant chaos. Of course, it was a comfort too. I'm not a "sad" eater, I'm a "happy", "sad", "angry", "excited", "bored", basically any kind of emotion,eater.

Things are a lot different in my life now, although they didn't have to be. I chose to remove myself from that situation and not look back or give it. I'm beyond proud of myself and I know how far I'm come from the child that I was going through all of that. I also know that if someone dug into the issues I have even slightly, a lot of emotions and thoughts about the past would be at the root of it all. That is scary to me. It makes me think that exploring therapy as an option would just be back-peddling. I've dealt with this part of my life by being resilient and rising above it. Turning away and not getting sucked into the black hole of it all has needlessly cost me so much. It's been painful and heart-breaking, but it's something I had to do in order to be the person I wanted to be. Really, it's what I had to do if I wanted to just plain be okay. 

I'm afraid delving back into it would just be another set-back. No, I do not care enough to go up to this person and be like this is what you did to me and blah, blah, blah. Closure, let's be friends--I don't think so. I'm not harboring hate, I just have no interest in it at all. It's like the idea of playing video games. Do I loathe playing video games? No. Is my life missing something because I don't play video games. No. Will playing video games bring something spectacular into my life? No. There's just zero interest. Life is waaaay too short to bring anyone less than spectacular into your life (something I got from Ms. Angela Dawn Huxford) and I'm not about to start doing that now.  Basically if you are less than amazing, you can go on your way and I can go on mine.

So after that rant, I'm torn on what to think about therapy. I do think I need professional help with several issues, but at what cost? Let me tell you one thing: I'd rather have a short life being fat  than have a long life of being thin if it compromises the person I am right now. Period.

Set-back city

I swear my body knows when I'm starting to get a semi-healthy rhythm going. It realizes quickly that I'm working out at the gym and consuming garbage and then BAM! I get sick. Last week was spent nursing a nasty sore throat and lots of coughing and being unable to breathe. My inability to breathe is something that has been an issue for what feels like the entire year of 2010. I can just be sitting at my desk at work and feel like I'm struggling to get enough air. Add physical activity to that and yeah, it's not pretty. I can't understand why this happens to me every single time I try to better myself. Is it psychological? Could I actually be making myself sick over making a change?


Anyway, I worked out on Monday and no other time this past week. I didn't eat badly, but I didn't eat well. I didn't eat much at all until I felt better Friday and had take-out for lunch AND dinner, which I generally make a rule about not doing. It just kind of sickens me to do two meals in one day of meals outside the home. I had Wendy's and Denny's and a coney dog at the parade. Josh and I saw the new Harry Potter movie, talked a lot, enjoyed our community. Why did that all have to include an obscene amount of calories though? Why does any good time for me have to include food?


And here we are starting the week again. Not just any week; Thanksgiving week. I feel like I need to prepare myself mentally for holiday eating. I'm not a huge Thanksgiving food person, but my husband and his mom are putting together quite the spread this year, I must say. Because I'm not a big turkey fan, I usually load up on sides; sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, baked mac and cheese--you see where I'm going with this? If there are several items to choose from I feel like I need to have some of each thing. I don't think this would be so bad if I had a little of each thing and didn't just graze all day and all night long, like we usually do.


So, I need some advice again. What do you do over the holidays to reign in the grazing and over-eating? Any little tips, no matter how insignificant they might be would be a big help to me :)

Weekend Ruts

It's Monday night and I'm definitely coming off of one of my "eat whatever I see/want" weekends. We had a big, greasy, yummy and late breakfast-for-dinner on Friday night. Saturday I went to dinner w/ family and had a big, brown-sugared out sweet potato, prime rib and lots of bread and salad. Sunday was Steak N Shake, 'nuff  said there. The thing is, I didn't eat very much in between those meals. I never stay consistent with that. I will be good about eating breakfast, lunch and dinner throughout the week and then that goes to heck on the weekends when all I want to do is eat yummy food with the family. Skipping meals is bad and it causes me to consume a days (plus, sometimes) worth of calories in one meal. This will be something I try to work on in the future.
I like the idea of eating on a schedule. This is a sample of what I would like to stick to:

8:30am-- granola bar and apple w/ peanut butter
10:00am--yogurt or pudding cup
12:00pm--lunch
3:00pm--snack (insert idea here)
6:00pm-- dinner
7:30pm- snack
NO FOOD AFTER 7:30pm is a must!!

Anyway, I was feeling pretty down about the food choices I made this weekend. I had a crazy and blah Monday at work and I came home to find a gift from a friend that really cheered me up. She put together a book of recipes, advice and a very sweet letter encouraging me to do this. She has done it herself over a steady period of time and really is a model for what I hope to do myself. It was very inspiring and thoughtful to have something like that. I was having a hard time getting my "notebook" together and this provided a start for me, which was something I needed. I'm terrible at starting anything and everything in my life.

Also, I went to the gym with my sister-in-law tonight and got a good 45 min cardio workout in. I always watch everyone on the weight machines while I'm on the eliptical and try to keep how they are doing the movements in my mind so I can go over and mimick them. That never happens. I do not want to look like an idiot, examining the charts on how to actually work the machines. I just stay away from the scary things. Every once in awhile I'll pick up the dumbbells and move them around like I know what I'm doing. Once again, I don't. No one there is looking at me and its completely dumb to think that they are. It's not about that as much as it is that I want to be working the "right" muscles and not hurting myself or just wasting my time. So, I'll be looking into online demonstrations and such, but I need to know what's right for a beginner. And when I say beginner, wow, do I mean it.

That's all for now. I'll be going to the gym again tomorrow and trying to step up the cardio a bit more :) 

elephant in the room

So far in this blog, I've explained a lot of my reasoning for why I'm wanting to start the journey to get healthier and lose weight, but not what I'm currently doing now to begin this process. I wonder why I haven't mentioned this, hmmm. Let me tell you how well it's going so far...
This week was a crazy busy week for me at work and I did not go to the gym at all. I wasn't getting home until after 8pm from a 12 hour day and I just knew I wasn't going to throw the gym in there too. I'm not beating myself up over it, which is unusual, but instead I'm accepting it and telling myself yeah that sucks but tomorrow is a new week. A much, much less busy week. I can hit the gym next time at least 3 days. My current goal is to get in the gym at least 3 days a week for 45min-1 hr workouts. I've got a notebook of some sort that I'm going to fill with exercises, routines, advice, etc that I can keep with me for various reasons. I want to have a chart to fill in what days I complete what and for how long. I'm not counting the calories I've burned and I'm NOT weighing myself. Screw that. I won't be seeing scales anytime in the near future again. That feels very liberating. 
I also want to have a place for recipes, a food journal, advice from friends, etc. I want to plan out family meals a week at a time. I've found that if I know what I'm having for dinner over the next few nights, there is less opportunity to eat junk and I'm less anxious when I have a meal to look forward to. 

We went to the store on Sunday and these are a few things we picked up:
--grapes, string cheese,ritz crackers, apples, bananas, butterscotch pudding and granola bars all to be eaten for breakfasts and/or mid-morning snacks.
--tuna, deli meats, lean cuisines, 80 cal instant potatoes, hot dogs, stuff for salad and some nasty pre-grilled chicken patties that I just can't force down, all to be eaten during lunch 
-- meatloaf, stews, crab, salmon, marie calendars lasagna, taco salad to be made this week for dinners.


I did go out to dinner with co-workers one night this week for business and had huge portion of chicken parm of which I only ate barely half of. Not because I wanted to or didn't have the room for it. I was among professionals and I didn't want to look like the piglet of the group. Especially when they all had much smaller portions and couldn't finish half of their meals without being "stuffed". When we got up to leave, I did feel nourished, but not full. This is one of my biggest problems ever. When I eat a meal I HAVE to feel full, very full before I'm satisfied. I took the rest over to Josh while he was at work, but I seriously considered taking it home and finishing it. And guess what? I was mad about it. Not super mad, not mad for very long, but I was mad that I didn't get to finish my good meal. For those of you who like to dissect "issues", there's plenty for you right here to go nuts over!


As you can see, my food options during the day are lacking. I usually get in a very tasty dinner, courtesy of my husband who is a fabulous cook, so really it's my lunches that usually suck. I'm so disheartened by the lackluster choices waiting for me at home that I order take-out or go to the drive-thru. Granted, I only do this about 1 time a week (due to not having the $) but I'm so sick of frozen lunches and tuna every single day. I have an hour for lunch and it is the quickest hour of the day by far, so everything I eat has to be made in 40 min or less if you don't count the 10 min I take to get home and 10 to get back to the office ( I like to be early getting back). 


So far, my notebook is empty. I have lots of ideas of what to put in this thing and still nothing. It's taking the step to compile it all and organize it into what I want. It's just another way to put off getting healthy, right?  Lazy, right? None of that negativity is going to help me do this, no matter how true it may be. I've got to get up and get moving.

Inspiration

There are a ton of reasons why I want to lose weight and get healthy. There's no reason not to want those things.In the past, it's been that I wanted to be a hottie. Plain and simple. After spending the majority of my life being the "friend" to many of the guys I've wanted to be in a relationship with, I've always carried the reality with me that it didn't matter how good of a listener I was, how interesting, how genuine, sweet, cool, whatever...I just didn't have the goods to make a romantic interest anything but platonic. I've never had the delusion that physical attraction doesn't matter. It's incredibly important. I for one, have never been attracted to bigger guys. I've always had a thing for the most unattainable sort: skinny, long hair, mysterious, usually a musician, you get the picture. Don't get me wrong, I have had a few guys fall for me. I have broken some hearts, people. They were always the hearts of sweet guys I just wasn't into though.  When I met my husband, I experienced for the first time in my life a mutual attraction on all levels. I experienced for the first time truly falling in love. I thought I had fallen in love before once or twice, but no. I had been the queen of unrequited love, but not true love. True love is something experienced by both parties involved.

Now I'm not saying I wouldn't have a good laugh if I lost a bunch of weight, saw a couple of those old friends I was in love with and them think I was "the one that got away" or something along those lines. Who wouldn't enjoy someone from your past realizing too late what you always knew back then. That they totally missed out on what might of been the best person to walk into their lives! In saying that, being a hottie is no longer my primary concern. Except if it comes to being a hottie for my husband, of course.

I have come to the point in my life where I am ready to be a mother. I know the thought of having children at my age makes some of my college friends visibly shudder, but it's true for me. I've felt the emotional change for about 2 years now and I feel like I am fully ready at this point. Financially and physically, nope no way. Mentally and emotionally, check. Josh and I both want to have a big family. He has 2 brothers and a sister, and they are all pretty close. I love the idea of having 3 or 4, including my stepson. I have gone through most of my life knowing exactly what kind of mother I will and won't be based on my own experiences as a child. I'm not at the point where I feel like I can now live up to my own expectations in that department. I know I won't have perfect kids. I know I won't be able to protect them from everything or prevent certain unfortunate things from happening in their lives. One thing I can at least try to do, is give them the tools to be healthy. I want my kids to want to eat fruits and veggies and play outside instead of being consumed by TV and videogames. I'm a big believer in the idea that you can't expect your kids to do/not do something if you are not a living example of what you are teaching them. I cannot be fat and lazy and not expect my kids to be the same way, in a nutshell. Or maybe worse, be so embarrassed by me that they treat overweight children (or anyone different from them) badly, which I absolutely will not tolerate for one second. My kids may be a lot of things one day, but I will not have mean children.

I am also concerned with how dangerous it would be for myself and my child to get pregnant at the weight I'm at now. I most certainly would have a high risk pregnancy and that scares me to death. What if I, simply by not taking care of myself properly, actually caused my baby to be not well? How selfish is that? I'm not on board to even want to risk that. I'm somewhat lucky in the sense that my weight has not caused a lot of medical issues. I have perfect blood pressure and cholesterol levels. I'm not diabetic. yet. My asthma is noticeably the worst it's been since I was very little. I could have all of these medical issues in an instant.

My dad was our playmate growing up and still is for my 10 year old sister. He would always get down on the floor and play with our toys, chase us, play hide and seek, all the fun stuff that tires you out fast. I wonder if I could do any of that with a child. I think so many parents don't actually play with their kids anymore and I don't want to be like that. My weight would be the one thing that would hold me back in that area.

In all, I'm making the change for myself and my future. Even in typing that out I'm doubtful of myself. I haven't felt an enormous difference within myself from all the other 400 times I've tried to make a change. There hasn't been something that has "clicked" for me yet. But, as a good friend recently told me, I need to be taking baby steps here. Slow and steady wins the race:)

Excuses

I made it to the gym 3 days this week. That is an amazing feat for me. I hated just about every second of it, like usual, but I went. For me, exercise would be just fine if it was enjoyable in the slightest. I have the wonderful advantage of having a free gym with lots of great machines and a track just down the block from where I work and it's free even. Just one of the benefits of working for a university. You think I would just jump all over the chance to utilize this service, yet I do not. Here are my excuses,er, reasons:

1. It's very overpopulated by students (granted they aren't bopsy little blondes like in the old IU days, but still)
2. The machines I want to use are rarely available
3. Most of the time I have to go alone (although having my lovely and motivating sister-in-law with us some of the week helps tremendously with that!)
4. Most of the time I have to go at the end of the work day when I'm tired, cranky and just want to be home
5. I get so unbelievably bored out of my mind 5 minutes into anything I do at the gym. Even with my jammin' Ipod.


And lastly and most importantly, I hate to be out of breath and I hate that my body just will not move the way it should. I hate the way it just screams at me when I try to push it. In all, if the act of exercise didn't have the majority of all of the above, I'd probably love it! At this point, I'd settle for a workout routine that doesn't bore me to tears. I tried Zumba for awhile and really enjoyed it. I went steadily for most of the time, got sick one week and missed and just couldn't get back to going regularly again. Now, it's too expensive. This is the problem I'm running into with most things. Weight Watchers is great, but it costs money, Zumba is great, but it costs money and finally, eating healthy from what I've experienced is super expensive. I need to find a way to eat right and workout for very little cost to me. Any ideas? Send them my way! I'd really like to know how others find a way around loathing exercise.

Enough with the excuses. Physical activity is just something that we all need to have daily in our lives. Period. If it means I need to make a little checklist of things I can do each day like park in the farthest spot away from my work building and take the stairs every time, then that's what it's going to take. I'm going to put a booklet together of some sorts. Something I can take to the gym with me to look at and check off things I've done as I go. I need some help to fill that baby so I'm going to be researching over the next few weeks to build it up.