So yeah, I'm still here and I'm mostly doing okay. Sorry for disappearing yet again, just not a lot to say, I guess. I'm still struggling in various ways, but struggle without progress isn't really fun to talk about, or read about I dare say.
So, what to talk about today? I can always fall back on the old standby...my weight loss efforts, or the lack thereof. Actually I am still plugging along some days, others not so much. I ate an entire box of Do-si-dos earlier this week. BAD. I completely stopped snacking in bed at night. GOOD. I just keep going back and forth and hoping to somehow fall into a longer pattern of good eating and behavior. Sadly, that takes a great deal of effort so I'm not really 'falling into' anything at all! One day at a time, I suppose. One meal at a time.
The one big thing that I am actually succeeding at these day is keeping myself busier. Instead of only doing the necessities everyday, I'm finding bigger projects around the house to keep me busy longer each day, and I figure that will help burn more calories along the way! We have a really small house but I'm finding plenty to keep me working, and when I run out of smaller jobs I figure I'll start painting most of the rooms...frankly they could all use a fresh coat of paint anyway!
Our nice run of weather is apparently over, which is sad but not super-sad since I know it is only a matter of time now before it's back. I LOVE me some spring weather! Getting out for walks in the park is SO much better than the treadmill, and I've learned that my moods really improve when I get some nice vitamin D everyday! Today is cold, gray, and rainy...but it is still a nice day to bundle up in a big sweater and get some laundry done! :)
One more big thing to say: Thank you SO much to all of you who emailed and facebook messaged me last week. I know I haven't responded to everyone just yet, but please know that I appreciate every single one of you and each word of encouragement you sent me! Knowing that there are people willing to take a minute to love on me and pray for me, well, it is amazing. THANK YOU.
Well the weekend did NOT go well. I didn't even make it to the funeral, I was mean and angry and hormonal and just about as ugly as it gets. So ugly that I can barely hold my head up from the weight of the shame and regret that I feel. Seriously, what is WRONG with me? Why do I allow myself to completely lose control sometimes and hurt the ones I love the most?
You know, I'm feeling very much like I'm at a breaking point, spiritually speaking. I honestly just feel like giving up. I can't seem to connect with God. I have no confidence in His love for me. I have very little faith that He hears me or cares about what happens to me. I can't let go of my hurt and confusion over why He allows me to have the debilitating mental issues that I have. I can't find Him in all the ugly that goes on in the world. I can't find Him in all the ugly that goes on in ME. I hear preaching on TV and it all sounds so empty...just phrases and verses that I've heard a million times and never seem to really manifest themselves beyond that. I am a slave to doubt, a slave to anxiety, a slave to anger, a slave to my own self-destructive tendencies.
I just feel like I'm never going to get it. I'm seemingly incapable of faith, of change, of hope or joy. I'm not changed or transformed, I'm not a new creation...I'm still the old messed up dysfunctional me, even after a lifetime of trying to find God. I don't look around and see miracles, I look around and see death and destruction and wonder where God could possibly be in it all. I do not feel cut out to be a Christian and I truly don't know how to change that. I'm sure the problem lies with ME and not GOD, but I truly don't appear to have any grasp on how to let go of whatever is holding me back.
I'm really sorry for the downer post. It was just a really, really bad weekend.
Went second-hand shopping today. UGH. Not only are the prices higher than they used to be, but it is still too early and there aren't very many summer items out just yet. Oh, and my weight gain is more and more noticeable in what size I can wear and how I look in things. YUCK all around. I am feeling very whiny now, and I'm so very impatient to start seeing results.
Not that I'm even doing that great just yet, but that is another story, isn't it?
It is also my PMS week now, and I am lucky enough to share it with my teenage daughter so yeah. Party. We are SO on each others nerves right now! Fun times.
We tried salmon last night and no one really cared for it much. Hubby said it was okay, but the kiddo and I couldn't even finish it. Oh well, now we know! Guess we'll be sticking with chicken breast, chicken breast, and more chicken breast! :)
Okay, that is all I have today. Have a great weekend!
Well, I never did feel better yesterday, in fact, I'm still feeling a bit off today. Oh well, it isn't anything major, and for that I am thankful! I obviously did NOT get a workout yesterday, and my eating was ATROCIOUS. Sigh. Picking myself back up and moving on!
I unpacked my spring/summer wardrobe today and I am REALLY in need of some clothes! I never really replaced my warm weather wardrobe after I lost the weight a couple of years ago so I was already short on clothes, but now what I do have is in pretty worn out and sad shape. Off to the thrift stores I go! (Tomorrow, that is!) Whatever I can't find there, I'll look for in regular stores, but I really like checking second hand stores first. Much more bang for your buck and it is pretty easy to find brand name stuff that I couldn't afford otherwise! :)
Oh, and while I am still LOVING the early spring, I have actually found two things I don't love about it. One, the extremely LOUD bird that woke me up VERY early this morning and would NOT shut up, and two, it is warm enough to heat the house up pretty hot but still too early to turn on the a/c so it was really uncomfortable trying to sleep last night. Let me tell you, I am a WIMP about sleeping when I'm hot, which is really weird since I grew up without air conditioning!
At any rate, the temperatures are expected to reach 80+ over the next several days, and today I announced that if I have to, I'm gonna pop the a/c on just for a half hour or so to cool the house a bit before bed if needed. Hubs acted okay with that, but I'm not sure if he thought I was bluffing. (I'm not) His policy has always been no air conditioning before June 1st, but I'm pretty sure I've talked him into doing it earlier every single year! :) He loves me.
This weekend may be a difficult one...I am going out of town for a funeral for my step-niece, who actually died almost 13 years ago. She was only 14 years old (just a tiny bit older than my daughter is now) and she ran away from home, but then she completely went missing. It is a very long story which I started to put here but just deleted because honestly, you guys would think I was making it up, it is just that crazy! Anyway, they found her skeleton last month, and we are finally burying her Saturday.
I wasn't emotionally close to her, seeing as how I was in my late twenties and she was a young teenager, but my mom was her grandma and they were very close. SO, I will be there for my mom and step-family, and I imagine it will be pretty emotional. I'm just so thankful they are finally getting closure after so many years of waiting and wondering. Do I even have to tell you how often I've hugged my 13 year old the past month since they found my niece?? Wow, it is just another reminder how blessed we are and how quickly everything can change.
Well, enough for today, hope you are all enjoying the weather and all that jazz!
Having a bad-ish morning, lightheaded and shaky, which of course for me leads to anxiety and uneasiness. I feel pretty gross, both physically and mentally right now. Here's the thing though, even my bad times are better with this beautiful Spring weather! Never before has it been so obvious that my regular anxiety/depression is magnified in the Winter. Thank God for an early Spring!
If I feel better soon we're heading to the park with hubby to eat some Subway and take a walk. If I'm not, I'll go lay down and take a nap. Either way, it is GORGEOUS outside and that makes everything a tad nicer. :)
So this morning I found out that a Timbit (a donut hole from Tim Hortons) is 70 calories. For one tiny donut hole! I've been eating them occasionally and 5 or 6 at a time. Sigh. No wonder my weight has creeped back up! It truly is the little things that make a difference, both good and bad.
Yesterday was so-so diet/exercise wise. I had a good workout, actually a really good one, a good breakfast, a good lunch, a good snack, and then a bit of a disastrous dinner. Lasagna, salad, and way too much bread. It's okay though, I'm going for mostly good, not perfection. Of course, if my weight doesn't start going back down then I will strive for closer to perfection, but for now I'm not beating myself up over it. Remember, I DID turn down Timbits this morning! :)
My mood was also so-so yesterday. It was SO rainy and gray and I was really dragging, but after my Bible study and workout (hmmmmm....connection?) I felt great for the rest of the day. Sunny and warm today so fingers crossed. I told Hubby last night that I'm finally (FINALLY!) having more good days than bad ones, which is a major relief. This winter was a bad one for my moods, especially February. I was sick and/or in pain the entire month, and my mood was deeply entrenched in a massive down cycle the entire stinking month.
I also turned 40 in February, by the way. Wonder if there's a connection with THAT? ;-)
Oh my goodness, I am crazy TIRED today! Maybe it's the time change, I don't know, but I can not seem to wake up at all. Like, I feel zoned out, kinda zombie-like. Yawn.
At any rate, let me tell you about my weekend! Saturday was pretty uneventful, took my daughter to meet up with a friend and then I popped into Kohls to see if I could find any good clearance stuff. I tried on a bunch of stuff but nothing looked good. One thing I learned though...I do NOT look good in a three way mirror! Flab-city. So depressing, but also a wake up call that I really do need to be doing this again. It isn't just about the 12 pounds, but also a much needed toning is required!
Sunday was a great day, other than being super-duper grumpy before church. It was one of those times when I was so grumpy that I was even saying out loud how stinking grumpy I was. I actually almost went to get donut-holes instead of walking in to church with the family, it sounded like the best idea ever at the time, but I fought the urge and within a few minutes of being in church I was just fine.
After church we got Chinese food, but I think I did really good. I got a child-sized version of chicken with veggies and steamed rice...the chicken is grilled instead of fried and the sauce was pretty light. I didn't eat any egg rolls, or crab rangoon, not even the fortune cookie. Okay, I did have a couple of bites of my daughter's sweet and sour chicken, but I am only human! After lunch we had a few errands to run, nothing exciting, but THEN we got frozen yogurt again! I still got plain and it was good, although not quite as good as last time. (Why is it that things are never as good the second time?)
The kiddo had to be back to church by 6:00 for her youth small group, so after we dropped her off hubs and I went for a walk in the park. It was SO nice yesterday and I am just so tickled to have the Spring weather sticking around! It does WONDERS for my moods, let me tell you, but only when it's sunny. Today is rainy and gray and I am feeling blah again. Guess I need that vitamin D!
Dinner last night was Subway, no snacking afterward, so a really good day food-wise. I feel like I am finally finding my groove again, so hopefully this time the weight will actually move down where it needs to be again. Need to get to the grocery store and make sure I have all the good food I need and none of the junk that tempts me!
Well, my brain is still on auto-pilot so I'm just going to leave it at that. Hope you all had enjoyable weekends as well!
So I decided to do a weekly Saturday weigh-in again, even though it's only been three days since my last weigh-in.....and I lost a grand total of .4 lbs! Woo-hoo?
At any rate, I feel like knowing I'll be weighing in every Saturday will bring a new level of commitment, so there you go. I've not done great workouts toward the end of this week, but my eating has been more on-track. If only I could get both going good at the same time, we might be able to make some real progress!
Yesterday afternoon I started feeling pretty yucky and today I'm still a bit off, so I'm just taking it easy for the most part. There is cake on the counter in the kitchen left over from last nights small group meeting (which I missed due to feeling yucky) and I haven't had ANY! No desire even. I am really hoping I can get myself back into the groove I was in the first time around...I completely stopped craving bad food altogether. In fact, whenever I did eat something bad for me, it tasted awful! I just have to stop eating junk long enough for that to kick in.
So anyway, ta-da, first weigh-in over. Hoping next week will show a whole pound lost! :)
Yesterday wasn't as great as the rest of the week had been, sadly. Maybe it was the weather, all gray and rainy and cold, but I just felt blah all stinking day long. I did NO workout, I ate bad for me food in amounts that were way too big, and I felt super crampy and achy.
Speaking of crampy, (TMI alert!) cramps have increasingly been a big problem for me in the past couple of years. Not just the regular ones that come a few days prior to my period, but I get terrible cramps all stinking month long now. They feel pretty much like really bad menstrual cramps, but the fact that I may feel them 9 days into my cycle, or 11 days into my cycle, or simply whenever they decide to come...well...it is frustrating! And painful! Sometimes I wonder if it is ovulation, but for three days in a row? So bad that I have to have a heating pad for hours on end? Is that even how it works?
Moving on! I looked at old pictures of me last night (pre-weight loss) and WOW. Inspiration! My face was so huge and oddly that bothered me yesterday even more than the prior hugeness of my butt. :) I do not want to go back to that so yeah, newly inspired today. I may even dig out an old fat picture and hang it on the fridge. I did that before and lost 40 lbs so maybe it'll inspire me this time, too!
Wanna see one?
I thought this one would be quite appropriate, considering the nastiness I am shoving into my face and how it contributed to the problem! :) I'm thinking this is 2007-ish, by the way.
This is hubby and I at the park on Wednesday. Just putting that here cause I think he's cute. :) Hope you all have a great day and weekend!
Well, yesterday ended up being awesome, so that is basically three good days in a row. Nice. :) Today is gray and rainy, and I'm not feeling quite as 'up' as I have all week, but I'm not 'down' either, just a happy medium, I suppose. Hubs and I just had an argument a few minutes ago so now I'm grumpy, but again...normal grumpy, not depressed grumpy or anxious-freaking-out-oh-my-goodness-grumpy! :)
Food yesterday was 100% on plan, unless you count a very small bowl of frozen yogurt...which I don't! We discovered a new frozen yogurt place near the park we walk in and it was SO good. They put a ton of toppings and yogurt flavors out and you fix your own however you like it and then you pay by weight at the end. All I got was a small amount of low-fat white chocolate mousse yogurt and even that was AMAZING! Hubby got low-fat cheesecake yogurt with crumbled graham crackers and fresh strawberries and blueberries...let me tell you, there are no words. I'll be getting that next time!
For exercise yesterday all I did was a 1.3 mile walk in the park, not even at a very fast pace, but the fresh air was amazing and the sunshine was needed so I think it was worth the trade off!
One last thing: I did a late day weigh-in yesterday (normally I do first thing in the morning weigh-ins before I eat) and I was up to 135! Yikes. I'm going to consider it my new 'before' weight, which means to get back to goal I need to lose 12 lbs. I'm thinking I'd like to do it by June 1st if possible. (It IS possible, but will I do it? That is the question!)
