I think I can do this

The beginning of this year has been difficult for me for many reasons, but I'm coming out of the end of it and ready to start again.

On the running front I am up to week 3 of my 5K trainer and still going strong.

Goals for this week:
Watch my calorie intake
Run two more times
Get in at least one round of weight training.

Find something positive to think about at least once a day.

I told myself the month of March was going to be the Month of Hope and being halfway though it now I can see it is and it will be even better tomorrow, despite the snow.

Oh! and to take Vitamin D hoping to stave off the seasonal sadness.

The PLAN

This week's homework is to make "A PLAN."  So, what is my plan? what am I going to do differently this time? What works for me? What doesn't? I think I'm going to need a three pronged attack .. or three pronged strategy.  Exercise....Eating....Stress Management.  The first two I have a plan for...the third one is where I need to focus my mental knife.

Exercise

My hubs has changed offices and so now he has to be at his desk by 6:45 in the am. Not only that but he will probably end up doing shift work as well, which means nights and mid afternoon to the early AM hours.  I used to plan my running (when it wasn't so freezing) on his non-early mornings.  So, here's the plan for January:

1. Walk/Run at least one mile a day on the treadmill or outside.  (Which I have managed to do up until my trip to the podiatrist.  At this point I am only one mile behind.  So, if I do 2 miles today I'll be caught up.)  

2. Two to three times a week I will get in some strength training.  I would commit to more than two but this week sucked my will to live, so I will get in at least 2.  I have a feeling that they might be on Saturday and Sunday....not the best plan but it is better than nothing.

3. I really want WILL get in at least 2 to 3 Zombie 5K trainer missions.  April starts the new 5K season and I want to nail them this year!

I would most definitely like to exercise in the morning rather than in the evening.  When I exercise after the boys have gone to bed I am WIDE awake for hours.  To that end, I will have to make the commitment to going to bed early.  Which I have done before, when the boys were very little (newborn and 3 year old) the hubs was stationed overseas and *it* *was* *just* *me* + a full time job.  I made up my mind that I had to go to bed at 8:30.  Otherwise I was no good for my children or my students.  So, I am committing to getting up early to get my running/walking done.  Strength training doesn't seem to make me unable to sleep, but I'll have to experiment with that one. 

Eating

Today, starts my 2 week induction on Atkins.  I love low carb.  I have been doing low carb for at least 3 years.  Now that doesn't mean I haven't fallen off the wagon several times, but I always feel better when I am eating real food...not plastic-y fake food (yes weight watcher meals...I'm looking at you!)

Breakfast - 2 pouched eggs + 2 lean sausages

Lunch - cup of green vegetables + protein

Snack - string cheese or a handful of nuts

Dinner - 2 cups of veggies + protein

I am going to do my best to avoid sugar free candy.  When I eat it, I stall in my weight loss.  There....I said it...I can't eat it often.  Sometimes...but not a lot.  I also know that when I am tempted to eat it, it is a sign that I am under stress that I am not acknowledging. 

Stress

Sleep - I have a bad coping mechanism for dealing with stress and that is eating or staying up really late.  It makes the situation worse because then I have less sleep and less patience, less rational thought, and less ability to deal with the daily stress and yet I will continue the ugly circle by staying up late and eating the next night.  

Food - The teacher's lounge is a horrible place for food that I can not eat.  I will admit I am guilty of sending things that I can not eat to work with my husband...so his office can get fat and not me.  So I am sure that others are thinking the same thing.  "If I put it in the teacher's lounge it will be gone by the time I get to lunch." So if it is not on The PLAN, it is a NO! At home it isn't that bad, because we don't have that stuff around, or if we do the hubs knows and keeps it hidden from me. 

A Sponsor - I will work on recognizing the itchy feeling that leads to ice cream (sugar free or otherwise) and call someone.  If that isn't available, I'm sure I can talk Liam into taking the dog for a walk.  Twenty minutes of walking usually get rid of the itchy 'gotta eat something to feel better' feeling.

It feels good to lay out "The Plan" I will do...there is no try...I will do this here.  :) 

triggers = T - I double 'guh' - ers

This week’s homework is to deal with triggers.  Triggers are events or things that detour you from staying on track with a diet / lifestyle change.   This is my third year of working on my choices in eating / exercising / diet / lifestyle etc.  Every year I try and look at my triggers and I have had moderate success.  As my sister says, we are far from being “cured.”  J

Emotional Triggers

The biggest emotional trigger for me is stress.  I have thought about this for a long time because everyone has stress.  EVERYONE!  Why is it that some are able to not dive head first into a bowl of nachos and some aren’t.  For me, my trigger stress is what Joe and I call, “Can you squeeze blood out of this stone?” stress.  Other phrases for it could be “The-impossible-task” stress, “The-no-control-over-the-outcome” stress, or the “Are-the-people-in-charge-crazy?” stress. 

I swear, losing weight is like being in AA (forgive me for anyone who has been in AA, all I know about it is what I’ve seen on TV and we all know how accurate TV people are).  In AA, they often say the serenity prayer: 

    God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

I think that I need to make a small card with this printed on it, like a business card, and when I am feeling the Sisyphusian Task Stress (Greek punished to keep pushing the boulder up the hill) I can pull it out and remember I can only do what I can do and I can only change what I can change.

Food Triggers

I was thinking about these on my run this morning and although I am far from being ‘cured’ I feel like this is the one area that I have made some head way.  I do not keep a lot of “bad” food choices around the house and the ones like my Achilles’ heel (ice cream) is not allowed in the house.  There is a bowl of candy for the boys on top of the fridge.  I am pretty good at not touching it.  This year I had to throw out some of last year’s old Halloween candy! That is a milestone! A Non-Scale victory (NSV) for me.  Now, to be clear there isn’t any chocolate in there from last Halloween, but there is candy.  Four years ago that bowl would be filled and drained, filled and drained, even the “meh” candy would have been eaten long before it could have gotten stale. 

Trigger Sponsor

This is my last AA reference for the day, I swear! I need a good Trigger Sponsor.  Someone who will not let me have “just one bite” …. Would anyone say to an alcoholic, “Oh, you can have one drink” because when I am in Sisyphusian Mode one bite is the slippery slope to 3 servings of ice cream with all the trimmings!  I think a good sponsor would say, “What is stressing you out?” and then “Will ice cream fix that?” and without the Dad Tone say, “How about a walk instead.” (My secret goal is to suddenly turn into one of those people who are stressed and go for a run!) J

Today on the last day of 2013, I am going to go through my pantry and fish out any hidden food and purge it, it wasn’t for the kids anyway…it was for me! And ask my sister to be my sponsor.  Then I can be hers but I haven’t had to field any crazy phone calls from her…so…hmm…

What are your triggers and what is your plan for dealing with them?

Day 1 - again...attempt number 3,492

Question of the week: Why am I even dieting?

It would be so much easier to just eat what I wanted to, not get up in the morning and exercise, and keep buying larger and larger clothing.  I can see easily falling into a self made trap of sitting on the couch, watching TV and eating handful after handful of what ever I wanted to eat.  It is easy.  It is comfortable. It feels safe.  I don't have to face what is bothering me when I do this but it has ugly ramifications.  Self anesthetizing myself with food is an old habit. 

Why do I want to change?

  1. I don't like the way I feel 

  2. I don't want to wear tight jeans 

  3. I want to run again

  4. I don't want to pass these habits on to the boys

  5. I don't like seeing the scale inch up and up and up

  6. I want to not be in the obese category anymore

  7. I don't want to feel guilty anymore

  8. I want to feel normal in my own skin rather than slightly itchy

  9. I want the outside to match the inside 

10. I don't want a muffin top that feels (to me) like a cake top

11. I don't want to feel tired

12. I want to be a good model for my children

13. I want to run the entire 5K without stopping

14. I want to get rid of the monkey on my back that whispers ... "one bite...what could it hurt!"

15. I want to feel strong

16. I don't want to be afraid

17. I want to know why I feel afraid

18. I don't want to feel disengaged

19. I want to be around for as long as the universe has planned and not curtail it by my choices

20. I don't want to feel heartsick anymore

2 weeks to go and almost there!

We have 14 days left until our March 25th weigh in and a couple of things happened.  My sister had two weeks where she was surrounded by really non-diet food and gained some weight.  She calculated that she would have to eat 1200 calories a day to lose the weight she had gained/needed to lose to meet the 25th of March deadline.  So, I told her I would do the 1200 calories a day, My Fitness pal says I should be around 1450 to lose a half a pound to a pound a week.  Oh My Goodness, the first couple of days I was STARVING.  But the results have been pleasant.  So, as of this morning I have only .6 pounds to lose to make my bet.  OH Yeah!!!

Then, I decided to take my 2 days off of exercising consecutively, I took Monday and then took Tuesday off...and it bled into taking Wednesday off...and then Friday off....egads! The Exercise Trap; when you are exercising on a regular basis you feel WONDERFUL and then when you take a couple days off (my limit seems to be 2 days in a row) and then I want to become a sloth and BFFs with my Tivo remote.  When I exercise, no I didn't say if I said when, I will have only exercised three times this week for only 20 minutes each.  Which is really sad because I was going on a 4 week streak of 5 times each with at LEAST 45 but more like an hour of experiencing!

So, my goals for this week are to get back to exercising and try and lose at least a pound so that I will be under my goal and have a little bit of buffer.

3 pounds down + 3 more to go

I have 22 days left until the March 25th quarterly weigh in.  Recently my sister and I decided that we would do a side bet...hmm...I guess it isn't a bet per say but rather a extra added something.  We decided we would exercise 5 days a week and if we could make 5 YAY if we couldn't at least try for 4.  So I dusted off my Hiit (High intensity interval training) or Cross Fit journal and decided I would do 15ish minutes of that and 45 minutes of tread mill at least 4 times a week and 5th exercise could be one or the other or both depending on how my body felt like I could handle.  Well, I immediately gained 4 pounds....bleck.  That was 3 weeks ago.  Last Monday I gave myself a goal of loosing 2 pounds because I need to lose 2 pounds a week to get to my weigh in requirement otherwise I will owe a political party $100 ....not good.

The results = 3 pounds lost oh yeah!

This week's goal (with 22 days left) 2 pounds and exercise 5X this week.

If all goes as planned, by next Monday (with 14 days left) I will be at my weigh in weight which will give me the last 2 weeks to get in a couple of buffer pounds.  I do NOT want to what happened on the New Year's Eve weigh in to happen again.  For days I had my 3 - 4 pound buffer and then on the day of the weigh in I was up 4 pounds...STRESSFUL!

Here's to hoping that the adage "counting your chickens before they hatch" doesn't come true in the next 22 days! Murphy go find someone else to play with!

3 Year Anniversary!

Yesterday was the 3 year anniversary of this blog / this diet pact.  Wow! And for some disappointing news...yeah...I was up to 200.3 this morning.  pffft...