comfymama

Don’t ask me what it was all about. I’m not going to take any pills.

I know it takes time. I know I am trying to do the right things, but I also have long stretches of time where things just do not go right and I regain any losses - whole weeks at a time when there is so much crap going on that I’m working or driving kids from 6 am to 9 pm and there is only time to grab something from the drive-thru all friggin day because I haven’t even had time to get groceries during the week (and then I can put on 5-10 pounds that week, mostly from all the salt!) and then the next week I’ll have a “good” week, exercise twice a day, drink lots of water, eat right, and it comes back off. I just can’t seem to get more than two “good” weeks in a row. If I could just get a solid 10 good weeks in a row, I could probably drop 30 pounds without a thought.

But no, I have 2 good weeks where all the stars align, then I’ll have two or three weeks when I can’t get up any earlier or go to bed any later or I’ll only get 4 hours of sleep, and there isn’t even 20 minutes I can pull from the day to be ME except when I can lock the bathroom door and take a shower. And heaven help me if I forget to lock the door, because then I don’t even get THAT 20 minutes alone! Now, even, I’ve been on the computer for 5 minutes for a “coffee break” and my son is bothering me because he needs the computer for a school thing, the eggs are cooled and I need to decorate them, the laundry needs to be re-booted, and I need to read 3 chapters of a textbook, grade papers, get grades in the gradebook, plan activities for my lab classes next week, iron for next week, figure out what we’re wearing for church tomorrow…

the list just never QUITS.

You know what, though?

They can do their own damned laundry. The teenagers can decorate the eggs. If nobody has anything to wear for church tomorrow, they can wear something dirty or stay home. The grades can wait.

I’m going for a walk.

I’ve been eating WAAAAAY better, I’ve been drinking water, I’ve been walking day and night, I’ve started jogging again, and I’ve been doing isometric exercises to strengthen my muscles; and I’ve lost a grand total of ZERO pounds in three months.

I’m about to do something drastic.

I’m either going to start skipping the evening meal altogether, or I’m going to go fork over $50 for a bottle of Alli and see if that helps at all.

I’m eating dinner for breakfast. 

I had a bowl of oatmeal with raisins for dinner, yesterday - early, I mean, like at 2 or 3 in the afternoon - and I fixed myself a plate of dinner and stuck it in the fridge so that I could have it for breakfast.  So this morning, I had a sloppy-joe, (lot’s of veggies in there!) a bowl of salad, and a little-bitty pile (like 2 tablespoons!) of homemade mac & cheese.   HUGE breakfast for me, because I’m used to eating a bowl of oatmeal OR a yogurt for breakfast.  Anyhow, I think it really kicked my metabolism up a notch, because by 8:30 I was SWEATING, just teaching class! 

Then at lunch I had a cup of Progresso soup - the kind that you can just dump and heat without adding water - with a couple of wheat crackers and some water.  In a minute, I’m having a granola bar for a snack.

I’ll probably have a yogurt and a bowl of oatmeal with raisins when I get home from work, then put my dinner in the fridge, again.  A cup of hot milk before bed, and I’m all done for the day.

 Why?  Because I saw a lady on the discovery channel who lost over 100 pounds without changing ANYTHING except what order in which she had her meals.  I figure if I’m eating healthier, exercising more, AND flip my meals so that I get most of my calories in the mornings instead of right before bed, maybe one or all of those things will make a difference.  God I hope something finally makes a difference, because I am so damned TIRED of how I am.  I’m tired of being tired, I’m tired of being fat, I’m tired of planning my outfits for the week based on what I can zip (or on really bad days, what doesn’t even have zippers!)

We’ll see if this helps.

my husband bought donuts. I had two. And a leftover piece of cheesy-bread from last night.

I need to recover from the carb overload.

Lunch will probably be a slice of turkey and a piece of cheese sliced up on top of a salad.

Back on track by dinner time.

Oh, and we built our raised garden, yesterday! It’s a foot deep - 50 wheelbarrow loads to move the soil from where the dump-truck left it on our driveway. We framed out an 8X10 plot, put down a weed barrier, filled it with dirt, fenced in the square behind the garage where we put it (so the dog can’t get in there) and now we’re ready to plant!

SO I finally got the tuner hooked up and started playing with the media center, and now I can ride my exercise bike in the afternoons, again, while getting a dose of my current obsessions: hoarders and “real” housewives.

Yah, “real” is in quotation marks for a reason.

I was watching episodes of “The Biggest Loser” on the internet but right when I was getting interested in it, they stopped offering it. So, me being me, I quit watching anything and riding my exercise bike because I couldn’t get specifically what I wanted.

Now, I am walking every evening, I am eating healthy, and I’m drinking water - it’s not like I quit altogether just because I couldn’t have my current favorite show - I just didn’t want to ride my exercise bike without something to take my mind off the fact that I was basically a hamster on a wheel for 45 minutes to an hour.

Enter the computer as DVR.

I found a bunch of shows that cater to my guilty pleasure of voyeurism of the worst kind: watching the train-wrecks that are other people’s lives and being glad it’s not me. Real Housewives of New York City: a bunch of spoiled, selfish, self-centered women running around posing nude for Playboy and Peta, squabbling over who went to whose Labor Day party in the Hamptons, GOSSIP - and bitch about the other women gossiping! Hoarders: that there, my friends, is inspiration to get off my ass and clean my house because if you start to let things slide, look where it could land you!

And I have to say, just watching the shows I really WANT to watch (and having to ride my exercise bike while I do) has made it easy to turn the tv off for the rest of the day. I usually have the tv on all day when we’re home - it’s just background noise - and every half-hour or so, someone will pick up the remote and pull up the guide and see if anything worth watching is on. Usually there’s nothing, so it stays tuned to Fox News or one of the all-music channels most of the day, but sometimes there’s something on there that draws you in, and next thing you know, you’ve been sitting on your butt for three hours watching one piece of crap program after another!

Here’s the part where I re-iterate my goal to myself: By the end of March I want to be able to say that I walked for half and hour every evening and I worked on my strength three times a week.

So far, so good! I walked last night, I did push-ups, crunches, and lunges this morning. I will walk again, tonight, and I will probably walk again tomorrow morning and see if I feel like jogging a block (or half a block, or 10 steps… whatever).

I probably won’t weigh myself until the last day of the month - I want to see results from two weeks of effort, not a pendulum swing from day to day that will throw off my groove.

Two days in a row since we decided we want to get pregnant in October. I’m breaking my goal up into two week increments because I’ve discovered that I can do just about anything for two weeks, and then I kind of give up. So I’m going to set a new goal every two weeks. My goal from yesterday was: By the end of March (in two weeks) I want to be able to say “I walked for a half an hour every day, I worked on my strength three times a week for the last two weeks, and I’m ready to start jogging in the mornings, again.”

April first I’ll set a new goal.

I walked last night, I walked this morning. I’ll walk again, tonight, and tomorrow morning I’ll be working on my strength.

I’ve had my bowl of oatmeal, I’m working on my first glass of water, and I took my vitamin and an Omega 3 pill.

I haven’t weighed myself in a while, so I did THAT this morning - still not setting a short-term weight loss goal, though.

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

I’ve quit drinking soda altogether because I feel like it is pollution. I’ve cut way back on fried foods - maybe 6 times a year we’ll have fried foods - because I’m really tired of polluting my body with a bunch of crap. I gave up candy (CHOCOLATE! I didn’t even eat any of the Valentine’s Day candy my students gave me - it sat there until I threw it out!). I haven’t had a burger and fries in months. I’m filling my plate with salad. I don’t eat cookies. Maybe once a week I’ll have dessert when I make one. All because I recognized that I was trashing my “house” and started substituting fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains for the processed stuff.

Am I ready to give up my coffee?

Not quite yet. Let’s revisit that in two weeks.

So I started out transforming my diet because I recognized that I was bringing in toxic stuff. Now I need to get the exercise going. My husband and I have decided that we are ready to have another child, and I need to be in top physical condition to endure the marathon of another pregnancy.

I went in for a complete physical and other than being overweight, I’m in perfect health - great blood pressure, my lipids are in perfect, my blood sugar is perfect, my mineral levels are great, my metabolic “stuff” is working… I’m just fat and drained of energy because I do too much mental crap all day and not enough physical. My doctor says I did a great thing with my diet, I just haven’t seen the weight budge because I lack the exercise side of the equation. I never really had a problem with eating too much - I haven’t gained any weight in the last 4 years - I just haven’t LOST any of the weight I gained during my last pregnancy.

So I set one goal, I feel like I accomplished it by changing the way I eat. Now I’m setting another goal, and I think for this one I’m going to need to be on here, daily, for constant support.

I need to get my body in better physical shape by exercising regularly and vigorously (and drinking enough water!) in order to prepare for a pregnancy in (hopefully) six months.

I’m not setting a weight loss goal right away - I just want to set a fitness goal, right now. The weight will go when my body is more fit, I know that, so I need to focus on what can I physically DO.

It is the middle of March. By the end of March (in two weeks) I want to be able to say “I walked for a half an hour every day, I worked on my strength three times a week for the last two weeks, and I’m ready to start jogging in the mornings, again.” I will revisit this in two weeks, set another short term goal, and maybe start talking about weight loss, then.

Today I’m going to walk and I’m going to do some work with my dumb-bells.

That’s another thing I’m good at doing for others and not so good at doing for myself: helping them solidify their goals so that they can put together a plan and then work the plan to succeed. I’m always stressing to my kids, my spouse, and my students that if they have a goal in mind, they can achieve it if they put their mind to it, but if they have no goal, they will drift aimlessly and probably not accomplish much.

SO.

The important roles I play are child of God, mother, wife, and teacher. What do I want to accomplish in those roles? And what, by the way, does my weight have to do with any of it?

As a child of God, I want to walk with Him. Every day I want to talk with Him and open my eyes, my ears, and my heart to listen to what He has to say to me. How will I achieve this? By being conscious. By trying to see myself and the people around me with His eyes. What does my weight have to do with this aspect of my life? This body is the earthly home of my soul and spirit. If I believe (and I do) that my soul and spirit are the holy part of me that God loves, then I should also believe that I should tend to and care for the body that houses my soul and spirit. I wouldn’t make a mess of my church, so I shouldn’t make a mess of my body. So my goal is to be conscious of what I am doing to care for my body as if I were in charge of taking care of a church.

I think that is quite enough to be getting on with for a little while. Let me work on this aspect for a few days before I try to tackle those other bits.

Just could not get my butt out the door this morning!  It started with hitting the stupid snooze button.  I know better than that!

I had forgotten to take out my contacts before bed so they were all dry and gummy and I had to just rinse them really well and stick them back in… Then the dishwasher was full of clean dishes and there were dishes piled up in the sink, so I had to take care of that… The baby’s lunch box for daycare was not emptied yesterday, so it smelled like sour milk and had to be wiped out before I could cook her breakfast or pack her lunch… The pants I had picked out had a weird stain on one leg so I had to find something else to wear that didn’t have to be ironed… 

It continued like that, one thing after another, until I got to work (five minutes late, thank you!) and realized, “Oh crud, I have to teach for the next three hours before and I get even a potty-break, and I haven’t had anything today but a cup of coffee.”

The good news is that tomorrow is FRIDAY (yay!) and Monday is a holiday.  Three-day-weekends ROCK.  I get to go walking every morning for three straight days!  Love that!

I had picked out a slightly baggy pair of jeans to wear to work today (it’s a jeans-and-t-shirt day for teachers if they bought a t-shirt to support our school library fund) because I don’t think TEACHERS at high school should wear skin-tight jeans.  It just looks bad. 

So my husband comes into the bathroom to get ready for work, and I’m on my way out, and he says, “Those jeans do not do you justice.”  Which is nice - he likes my behind and likes to see it in tight jeans. 

But I told him, “I know - I can’t wear my other pair because they are too tight.”  For the above reason.  Not because they don’t look good - because they look TOO good.

His answer, though?  “So stop eating.”

What?  Sorry, WHAT!?  The jeans FIT - they FIT, OK!??  I’m PROUD of the fact that I look f*cking GOOD in a pair of size 14 jeans.  There are people out there who wish they could get a 14 up past their ANKLES… but his answer to “my jeans are too tight (FOR MODESTY AT WORK)” is “stop eating.”

Anyways  -  I’m supposed to be focusing on the positive, building my self-esteem, recognizing that I am just as important as all those other people that I’m so good at taking care of… I’m supposed to be “eating healthy foods” rather than “not eating.”  But right when he said that, all those positives flew out the window, my self-esteem hit the floor, and I came to work feeling like shit.