WAKING UP

Frustrated as hell.

That's where I begin my week.

I weighed in 2 lbs heavier than I did the week prior. And the week prior was cause for Defcon 2 because I was at THAT weight. Granted, I had just struggled through 2 weeks of PMS hell before I finally FINALLY got the visitor and started feeling better. I was hungry for about 3 days straight. No matter how much I ate I still felt ravenous. AND I HAVE A LAPBAND.

A month or so ago, I had a slight unfill because I was regurgitating nearly everything. I don't know if it was because I was too tight, because I was too stressed or because of hormonal changes, but it was making life miserable and I was participating in maladaptive eating...and to be honest, I really have been doing maladaptive eating for months. I have also been eating whatever I wanted, not exercising, not abiding by the no liquid calorie rules, eating crap (ie; junkfood and candy) and just basically ignoring all the principals that have given me such success with this tool.

I stopped making my health my top priority. What took its place? I don't know. I think laziness, honestly. Cory doesn't require ALL my attention. He doesn't stand in my way of making ALL the right choices and doing the work necessary to get to my goal. When I moved in with him, stopped being lonely, stopped needing to keep myself occupied so I wouldn't feel lonely, sad, overwhelmed, or bored, the desperate need to run everyday didn't continue.

The thing is, I still feel lonely, sad, overwhelmed or bored like a normal person does now and then. But I am not dealing with it the same way I did when I was single. I am turning to food instead. I have to wake myself up and remind myself what I want and what my priorities are. If I don't, if I stay asleep, I'll wake up one day and will have gained all my weight back and then some. This thought TERRIFIES me.

I need to wake up and STAY AWAKE. I felt alive when I was single. Where did my aliveness go? Am I finding that my relationship isn't feeding me or nurturing me the way I want? It's the healthiest relationship I have ever been in. And I feel really happy in it. Am I finding that my job isn't giving me what I need? Well DUH- but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and my skill set is growing, so I know I will be able to control that element when the time comes. Am I feeling discontented because of the lack of change? Because my life has been ALL about change these past many years. Do I thrive on that stress? What is it that I get out of it? Do I get off on playing the victim? I don't think I do.

I am feeling needy most of the time. Time to take stock and look at what parts of my life are empty. If I address these holes, I think I will find that I am less hungry, less depressed and less stuck in discontent. Time to dig back in and do some of this work.

I was going to end this post here, but I just had an epiphany. I got back into a relationship and I totally bailed on myself and my self-care rituals. I don't go get pedicures anymore, I haven't set up my art studio/ girl den so I can actually use it for escape and sanctuary, I haven't been exercising, I haven't been eating right. I have let my relationship and my sleepy "fat and happy" attitude make me lackadaisical in my priorities. I have been so used to my UNHAPPINESS putting me into a sleepy survival mode trance. I didn't even CONSIDER that happiness could put me there too!

WAKING UP NOW. Trance broken. Girl alive and aware. Let's get on with the happy-and stay present for all of it.

PBing is EXHAUSTING...

This week has been pretty good as far as sticking to my eating and staying in my calorie range, AND doing it the way I'm supposed to... drinking no sooner than 30 mins after a meal, protein and produce exclusively for main meals, lots of drinking no calorie beverages, and getting exercise in EVERY day.

Today I had apple & peanut butter for breakfast. It took a while to eat, but I did get it all down. I also had some yogurt this morning. A few cups of tea, some crystal light. Last night I made some really delicious scallops for dinner...garlic, herbs de provence, butter and white wine. They are the tiny bay scallops, so they were already perfectly "me" bite sized. I think I waited too long to eat because I wanted to SNARF that food down. I paid the price for it too. Let's just say I didn't get to keep my lunch down. I think I kept a little down, but it's hard to be sure. Last night I had problems with the last bite of steamed broccoli I had. It caused me to lose all my veggies. I NEED THOSE THINGS DAMMIT! So I had some warm hot chocolate and assumed the "I'm not going to throw anything else up" stance. (which requires I slouch WAY down in my chair almost to the point of lying down, and breathing slowly to try to get the food to dislodge and go on its merry way to my stomach)

Don't know why I am tight today. I am tired for sure. Maybe that's all it takes- get tired enough and my system gets altered /inflamed. I am stressed a little bit about two of my coworkers leaving in the span of 2 weeks. They found better adventures. The stress there is made up of excitement for them and their new lives, a sense of impending doom as attrition keeps us from hiring replacements for them, and the redistribution of work that will have to happen as a result. And WE ARE AT CAPACITY! But I can only do what I can do. No sense in stressing it.

I am really on high-alert internally to make sure I stay WITH myself regarding food. I have rededicated to training for another 5K and I went for my first run last night since maybe October. It's NOT pretty. I am SO out of shape. I used to be able to knock out 3 miles like it was nothing, but I had to run/walk 1.5 miles last night and today I am FEELING it. I feel ashamed for letting myself slip on this. I feel horrified that I have taken a 30 lb step backward in my progress. Realizing that THIS is my reality, not the la-la-land that I have been living in over the holidays is a shock to my ego and my system I think. Hence the high-alert.

So after PBing last night, and PBing not 20 minutes ago, I realize that it is EXHAUSTING having to do that with my food. I mean I am literally WORN out after I regurgitate. Part of it is trying to feed my body and not being able to... and part of it is just the terrible stress that it creates for me internally. Everytime I PB, I am not achieving my goals to get on track.

I think once I get back into my groove and working out and regulating my food intake goes back to being "just the way I roll", I will feel more relaxed, more trusting of myself, and more in control of myself.

INHALE
EXHALE

This is all I can do now. Stay with the breath.

xo
j

My Calendar is Off...But In A Good Way

The insanity of food-a-palooza is finally over for the year. I made it through Christmas without going completely overboard...anything I ate, I sweated off in the kitchen. I basically spent most of Christmas Eve Day cooking my ass off for a 6 p.m. dinner. On Christmas Day, I spent time making Creme Brulees, then cleaning up the mess in the living room in preparation for a 4 p.m. dinner. Don't get me wrong, there were cookies and candies and wine and champagne, but nothing was overdone. So not feeling too bad about the caloric intake of the holiday.

Christmas Eve day I signed up for my next 5K which is 10 weeks away. I begin my training today. According to the lap-band rules, I should expect to be losing 1-2 lbs a week, so if I stay on track for training and eat as I am supposed to, and drink drink drink (water & low-cal liquids-I'm actually abstaining from drinking alcohol for my training), I should be down 15-20 lbs by the time the 5K rolls around. This will be a GREAT relief to me. I feel like I totally FLUSHED all my success down the toilet with this weight gain. It's really sad and disheartening. But, as I told someone before who commented on my weight gain (I WAS PISSED AS HELL, but reigned it in and said:) "Well, I know what to do and I have all the tools I need to help me get the weight off again, I'm confident in my abilities".

And I need to be confident in them because I am the one who did it before-of my own volition and under my own direction I became a runner! I trained myself for my first 10K. That's significant and it shows a great deal of dedication to my health and my goals. I'm WITH me, not abandoning me.

So I begin today with renewed confidence and drive to achieve this goal. I feel good about it not being the "New Year's Resolution bandwagon" sort of thing. It's just a re-dedication to the life-long goal I made to be healthy and happy and have a life that I want! My body hurts from inactivity, my clothing doesn't fit as well as it did- in fact, some shirts I can't get into because my arms are too big... or my bust is too big, and I have been PLAGUED with depression and aimless longing for something... It's been there all along, I had just quit going to that place. The meditation that is exercise & running. I ALWAYS feel good after a run. I ALWAYS feel that my heart is more peaceful, that my anxiety is not an unmanageable monster running my life. This is the right path for me to end/begin.

I must remember to start slowly. I wasn't running a full 3 miles instantly when I started training for my first 10K. I need to remember to be gentle and consistent. THAT will get me results and keep me from injuring myself. I think I will start going to yoga at least once or twice a week as well. It's a nice augmented exercise for me and DAMN does it make me strong!

Well, onward!
xo
j

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Fat Pants...

...Everywhere I go...

The holidays are upon us. There are treats and candy and junkfood surrounding us from all directions. There are evil & deceptively calorically-INSANE holiday coffee drinks being sold on every corner. There's a distinct message of "oh come on- it's the holidays! You deserve a treat!" coming from every television, radio, and store window. And as you walk down the sidewalk towards Starbucks, the holiday lights twinkle and the air is brisk. And you think "It's Christmas Eve! I think I'll have an eggnog latte!" and being at least slightly health-conscious you ask for it cut with nonfat milk. It was delicious. It was satisfying. I went to log it in my calorie program and I wanted to throw it back up. 450 calories for this drink I just ingested. FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY. Jesus-Effing-Christ!

Damage now done, there isn't anything I can do about it. I will be eating some good food tonight some meatloaf and potatoes, maybe a little lasagna, and I will be drinking champagne. I am not going to NOT do this because of this goddamned eggnog latte. However, I CAN choose to exercise when I get home instead of jump straight into cooking. I can afford to take 30 minutes and burn some calories and give myself some meditation time.

It's very frustrating. I really love the "feel" of the holidays... the giving, friendly mood, having something to look forward to and projects (gift making/acquiring) to accomplish. But I am looking forward to the holiday season being done. It's torturous for the food addict who is trying to abstain from overeating and over-indulging and trying to maintain-let alone lose excess body weight.

Looking forward to getting back on track with my goals. I am working on learning to take better care of myself each year. This year I have discovered that if I do not pay attention and I am not mindful of my diet and exercise, I will gain weight. Plain and simple. It is NOT an option to just float through life without structuring my food intake and my exercise at all times. I need to get over this mind-block I have about it being a DRAG... being a pain in the ass... being something that "NORMAL" people don't have to do. Because it's SO not true.

Everyone who has a normal adult metabolism and a relatively sedentary job has to pay attention to these things. EVERYONE. Making myself pay attention and be mindful is a good way of caring for myself each and every day. I need to look at it like that. It's not a "have to", it's a "want to". Because I do want to take good care of me. I do want to live a long life, I do want to live in a body that is strong and lean and sexy. I do want to live in a body free of pain and ailments.

I want to do these things for myself because I deserve it. Hard to remember when you have had 5 hours of sleep, you forgot to go to the grocery store to get fruit, you got stuck in traffic on the way home, and when you finally DO get home, you don't want to do anything but stuff your face and/or go to bed.

It's a journey, and I am an imperfectly beautiful work in progress...

Best Intentions Foiled Again

Challenging day today. I had a late start working. At 8 a.m. I started my workday shopping at Target. Picking up odds and ends for displays I have to make. I continued on to Michaels. By 10 I was on the road headed to Seattle. Got to work, unloaded the shit-ton of stuff I bought, and reloaded a shit ton of prepped displays back into my little trunk. Off I went to set up a display at a branch.

I remembered my xanax. I remembered copious amounts of coffee. I didn't remember to eat. By the time the branch display was finished it was 12:30 and I was completely ravenous. My displays sadly have a candy-land theme this season and so there was a LOT of opportunity to make some REALLY poor choices in front of me at my WEAKEST moment. I only ate a few hershey kisses. No biggie. Returned to my desk at work, got rolling on some other projects and tried to eat some tunafish and cheese on a cracker. A reasonable lapband meal. I think I got maybe .15% of it to stay down. It wasn't pretty. I tried to calm the stoma by giving it hot tea. It calmed down some. I snuck in a few more kisses. I ate a Special K protein bar. I ate another. I ate a snack pack of canned peaches.

Then suddenly it hit me. The crazies for chocolate hit me like a mack truck. I was fine for the longest time and then my level of tiredness, hunger, boredom, foreboding of the coming HTML class tonight, and my overall malaise got the best of me. Two LARGE handfuls of miscellaneous chocolates later... I feel ill. I'm pretty sure that I have met, if not exceeded my calorie intake for the day and the ironic thing is that I didn't really eat any REAL FOOD.

I have to get a handle on this. My weight is going in the wrong direction. My clothes are starting to not fit. My coats are starting to not fit. My body is starting to ache. My body is speaking very clearly and consistently to me about what it needs. It needs regular exercise- regular as in EVERY DAY. It needs more water. It needs good, whole, nutritious foods. And it needs regular and consistent rest.

I am trying to handle the emotional hoo-haa that comes with the Holidays. I am trying to get an emotional handle on what is happening at work with the upcoming merger and whether or not I will have a job at this new organization. I am trying to help my one large freelance client get her website to a place that is profitable and can be measured and more useful for her. AND I am trying to absorb as much as I can from this class I am taking. Hating that I can't seem to give it my 100% because I don't have that much to give to it. SO glad I have this book to help me, but I know there are things I am missing and pieces that don't quite make sense yet. And I'm exhausted and have a hard time keeping myself from leaving class early.

So with that large workload of STUFF on my mind and on my plate as regular everyday life, I am struggling a great deal to make sure that my personal needs are being met. How do I get so out of whack? It SURE was easier to keep myself the priority when it was just me and the cat. But I honestly can't blame my relationship for my inability to do ALL these things well. I have to admit that maybe I am taking on more than I can handle all at once.

When I was at the height of my training for my first 10K, the only other thing I had in my life was work and my emotional recovery from my divorce. And the exercise was necessary to work through the emotional stuff. One fed the other. I still had my freelance, but it wasn't all that demanding.

Now I have a man and a house and a household and freelance projects and an ongoing jobsearch and a class to make me more valuable in the marketplace. AND I'm still working on the emotional stuff, the eating stuff, the baggage I still carry around with me from my childhood and past life as a married person. No wonder I'm fucking exhausted.

Tomorrow is another day. And I can make good choices going forward. No sense in beating myself up.

INHALE
EXHALE

xo
j

Candy Candy Everywhere...

I have a really cool job. I don't always appreciate its really tedious, repetitive, irritating and irrational components/management, but I'd say over all, I am quite a lucky girl to get paid for what I do. (wish it was more $, but who doesn't wish that?) The issue is that while I have this cool job, ocassionally it's a detriment to my own well-being. Allow me to to illustrate;

I am a graphic designer for a financial institution and I am responsible for all the visual communications that go out for my organization. I create brochures and posters and billboards and web graphics and microsites and animations. Among my many other tasks, I am also tasked with creating point of sale displays for our branches. This holiday season I was tasked with doing a holiday spin on promoting Visa credit cards...JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER HOLIDAY SEASON PRIOR TO THIS FOR THE PAST 10 YEARS.

So I decided to shake things up a little and go CRAZY with the concept of promoting holiday shopping. I decided to do a Candy-Land themed display with giant "tree" cones with hundreds of pieces of colorful candy glued on them for ornaments. I found giant lollipops, monstrous tubes of taffy and bubble gum, great bins of gumdrops and non-pariel mints & chocolates, I picked up several bags of colorfully wrapped hershey kisses of all kinds. My criteria was, if it looked colorful and would reveal the ethereal child-like wonderland of a display I was going for, I put it in the cart.

After really going crazy with all the candy (over $200 of candy) I hauled my treasures back to the office. I got out the hot glue gun and proceeded to decorate myself silly. And so I did. The trees look amazing, the giant plastic credit cards are glued up on them at an angle, there's garland and sparkly stuff all over the pedestals and tops of the trees, there's giant jars and bowls and cups and glasses FILLED with all the beautiful candy. Willy Wonka would TOTALLY want me working for him.

So now that I am SURROUNDED by candy, I have to wait until I actually go out and install the displays next week. My issue is, the chocolate. I don't have a problem leaving all the other sugary fruity candies alone, but if there is chocolate and I can see it, it wants in my mouth. Over the past several days that this project has been going on, I have done alright... I take a handful of whatever flavor kisses I want and put them in my little green 4 oz bowl and I nibble on them. I haven't polished off a whole bag or anything. But it's stressful to be surrounded by all this "booty".

(I have to point out the obvious (or not SO obvious) irony of the booty. I mean, I eat the chocolate/ candy surrounding me and my ass gets bigger... it's a brilliant connection, no?)

I have plenty of healthy options around me. I have tunafish in my bottom drawer along with oatmeal packets, rye-krisp crackers, little cups of canned fruit, zingy-flavored almonds, coffee and sugarfree mocha making mix. I am prepared for such an emergency when I am surrounded sugary fattening treats and I am trying to keep it together. And it helps some.

But it doesn't keep the chocolate quiet. It's like a drumbeat from a jungle tribe of cannibals on the other side of the deserted island I'm stuck on. I know they are there, I know they are eventually coming for me, and I know that over all, they likely mean me harm.

I guess the upside is that I have power over my choices. I can choose to put in ear phones, crank up the volume on my ipod and drown out the beat of the little demons of deliciousness. The upside is that hershey kisses won't chase me with little spears, and I won't end up with my head on a stake, at least not at the hand of tiny pieces of colorfully wrapped chocolates.

____________________________________________________

Post-Turkey Day Update

Turkey day was calorically uneventful. We didn't cook. We went out to Black Angus. Altho I did start the day with a piece of pumpkin pie for breakfast (which makes an EXCELLENT breakfast, by the way), I had a lot of coffee, a little shot of baileys in one of the cups, I ate some taco innards on tortilla chips, and a few animal crackers. I had a martini in the afternoon. Then at dinner I had four grilled garlic shrimp on wild rice, and a bowl of baked potato soup. I ended the day with another piece of pie. I doubt I stayed under my 1200 calories, but I didn't go crazy over the top either. Tonight I have another opportunity to do so, assuming my band behaves itself. Right now, it's arguing with me about the cracker I just ate. We shall see.

Scrambled Eggs, Bacon & Pudding???

Well, I started the morning out feeling pretty good besides being tired. Got some coffee in me and drove to work. My girl Valerie called and we chatted for a good 45 mins while I drove. I got into work and realized I was terribly, ravenously hungry. I went next door and got a serving of scrambled eggs and 3 pieces of bacon. Not a bad breakfast. Historically, I have had issues with scrambled eggs, but in my past several encounters with the egg, we have gotten along just fine. There were no skirmishes in the stoma. There was no bickering among the digestive parts and the egg.

Today was a different story. And I tried REALLY hard to ensure that all parties remained calm and collected. I ate with my tiny Barbie fork. I chewed excessively and swallowed slowly. I even had hot tea standing by in case some trouble broke out. Well, apparently the egg was in a mood this morning because my system fought back with a vengeance. Stomach instructed: "EVERYBODY OUT!" Even the hot tea- the peacemaker.

It was an unfortunate event that occurred during what was supposed to be a nourishing and protein-giving, hunger-satisfying little mini meal.

After the smoke had cleared and several cups of hot tea were sent in for damage control, I resorted to sugar-free pudding. Apparently, the breakfast of Champions. And boy, do I feel like a Champion. Ugh.

The End

Credits: I'd like to thank the lapband, stress, very little sleep, stretching myself too thin on a daily basis, hormones, and of course eggs- without whom this whole saga would not be possible...(unless it was bread)

Author's note: I am currently enjoying my three hour old bacon and finding that my stomach has decided to make peace with the pork. Good Stomach, GOOD.