Tamara Shazam!

Just a taste of my Valentines’ Day. The pictures were my valentines to my kids- they each got a Valentine themed lunch or snack, which they were both nuts about, and coupons intended to let us spend a few moments together. My son immediately got the foot rub taken care of. He loves coupons like this and will redeem every one. 🙂

The last one is of a tired teacher sending the husband an, “I’m so glad to be coming home to your arms,” text, and, believe it or not, this is the one I looked the least tuckered in. Valentine’s Day on a Friday during a full moon right before an extended weekend is a rough day, but we were awesome. My kids were fabulous and we had a fun, yet truly educational, day. At the end there was a lot of candy and baked goods, but I have yet to partake. I’m proud of myself and considering staying the course.

When I got home I weighed 208.6.
208.6
I may be walking in a winter Onderland before I know it…
Happy Valentine’s Day, indeed.

Today I came home to see that I finally broke past 210. I feel like it’s been ages, after the Christmas debacle, but I’m back on track! Yeah for warrior week!
I’m feeling much better. I slept like a person in surgery last night- ridiculously deep. I used the meditations as I crashed out and they worked like a charm, along with the exercise and everything. Here’s hoping that tonight is the same! Off to elliptical!

I’ve been struggling over the past couple of days with anxiety. It’s so silly, thoughts will grab ahold of my brain and just hold me hostage. Something will happen- a conversation or interaction of some kind and I can’t get it out of my head. I once saw a meme that said something like:
“Remember that stupid thing you did? Yeah? How about we remember it over and over to make sure you feel terrible and never forget!”

That is me. Like, I have, what I think, is a reasonable conversation with someone and then, later, I start ruminating over it until I find a little kernel of something I said which, in the right (or wrong) context could mean something offensive and terrible. I then consider a million different possibilities in the other person’s perspective which all end with me worrying that this person will end up hating me (or, really, thinking I’m a bad character)because of whatever I said. The next step is always for me to send an uncomfortable text, email or approach someone awkwardly to offer up and explanation or apology. Despite the fact that, without exception, no one has ever taken the crazy version of our conversation, my apologies usually end with me blushing apologetically for looking like a weirdo while also feeling an immense sense of relief at having cleared the air in my headspace.
It doesn’t help that I like to laugh a lot and am not too fearful of many topics of conversation.
I’ve been working a lot on being intentionally mindful about how I’m processing information these days. There is a lot of awkwardness among my working community right now as we are collectively working on becoming a stronger staff. We are being vulnerable and open with one another, and that is so hard for me, especially with my tendency to overthink and over process everything. Being mindful means that I am trying to compartmentalized my thinking and give actual credence only to thoughts that are relevant to the greater picture. To living where I am and not over processing what has happened. I shouldn’t focus more on a small issue that happened at work over something my kids or husband are doing right now. I don’t live at my job- I work to support my family, my life is not all about my job. My job shouldn’t be allowed to infect my nights and time away from work with worries about my students, my parent community or my colleagues. I’m working to look at things with a perspective of common sense and what is normal. I’m working to keep things in perspective. I’m working on mindfulness.

To that end, I’ve been having a hard time of that lately. I had another sleepless night on Monday night that resulted in a half day absence on Tuesday. I can’t do insomnia. I’m way too busy for that, so I came home and thought about how I could solve this problem and came up with a couple of things.
First: I think that exercise is directly related to my anxiety and depression. When I go a day without getting my heart rate up, I find that I have trouble sleeping at night and I often get sad/depressed/sensitive or I get anxious. Or a combination of the two. If I skip two days, the issues compound and, while I may be more tired the next night, I still repeat the pattern. No matter how sore I am, I have to get some exercise in daily. It is tremendously preventative when considering my mental well being.
Second: I found some meditations* on mindfulness, on sleeping and on weightloss. I know, it might seem a little new age-y and crystals around my neck and you might want to ask when I check into the ashram, but I find that having someone guide me through a meditation gets me relaxed and focused elsewhere. While I have my own strategies in place for when my mind runs away with itself, I found these tremendously calming and very helpful at redirecting my thinking when I felt incapable.

Today was a better day. It was good to step back into my routine, even though I yawned a lot today and felt extra grateful for caffeine. Tonight I dragged my buns home, ate dinner, played with my kids then rode the elliptical for 32 minutes. Yep, 32. That’s significant because I meant to only do 30 and accidentally went over. Ha ha! Anyhow, I feel accomplished that I have planned so well. Tonight should be a good night’s sleep and, hopefully, I can put this cycle of insanity behind me.

*I found this as the easiest link online, but I got the freebie through the iTunes as an app. Now I’m trying to decide if I want to buy more. They are expensive but I like them!
***
I feel frustrated because wordpress published this draft and deleted my final publish copy. If this version seems like a lame article, let me assure you it was way better before that annoying-ness happened. Grrrrr.

I’m so happy to report that this morning I awoke to find myself weighing in at 210.8! I’m finally back at the weight I saw on December 24th. You would think I would have learned my lesson in 2012 when I gained 20-something pounds and had to spend the next several weeks burning it off. Then I did it again this year too- when I went from 210-227 in two days over Christmas. I spent almost six weeks getting rid of that 17 pounds! I hope I never see them again. Here’s hoping I can sail on past 210 and have an excellent warrior week, starting today!

I celebrated the return to 210 with 40 minutes on the elliptical followed by a solid altitude rich walk that is about 1.8 miles and the last .8 climbs 350 feet. With my goal to gain some footing on the virtual Grand Canyon I very intentionally chose that walk. It’s a pretty awesome workout. I love the way it works out my thighs- the backs of them have that delicious sore/achy feeling that implies a good workout. I also was able to get enough steps that I beat my Hawaii race! My mii is now the proud owner of a Hawaiian shirt. H ha! While I hoped to get to my weights today, I decided to forgo them. I’m tired from a lack of sleep last night. I’ll hit them had tomorrow since it looks like any working out will be indoors. Why, you ask?

It started snowing tonight!

What is ‘this?’ When the scale starts to trend in the right direction. A few days ago I was freaking out because I weighed 217- a full two pounds higher than my diet bet weigh in!

Back at 212 though. Phew. That feels better!
Now to continue the trend…
Maybe this time I can make it under 210!

I beat the Diet Bet! Woot woot!
They aren’t pretty, but here are the official before/after shots from the bet:

I am not used to being able to see a very big difference until I have lost 30-40 pounds, so color me amazed that I can actually see the ten pound difference! It is weird to be small enough that a miserly ten pounds makes a difference. WEIRD. It looks like my Christmas cookies and fudge were chilling out around the booty and thighs because that is where I look smaller to myself.

I have committed to doing another bet next month, but I’m not sure that diet bet is for me. It became a bit stressful at the end. It was funny, because when I started diet bet I felt all smug that I had PMS water weight AND holiday blitzkrieg pudge. Little did I think that on the other end, thirty days later, I would have PMS water weight again. That was unnecessarily stressful, having to factor that in. We will see how it goes next month, but I’m not going to get all crazy. (I’m not sure why my confidence is waning for the February bet- maybe I’m worried that January was a fluke?!)

More than anything, I just know my body’s weightloss patterns. I tend to have an amazing month about every third or fourth month where I lose 10-15 pounds, then a few months where I lose 4-6. I just hate to set myself up for failure… We’ll see what happens in February. My goal is to hit 200 by my son’s sixth birthday. I’m 13 pounds and seven weeks away… I think I can…

We ran today with the dog. We love the dog, but she can be difficult on the runs. Either she pulls us really fast and I wear out or she fights it and tugs back. Rarely does she just agreeably trot alongside us, unless she is off leash (which she is good at but it’s frowned on and illegal in our neighborhood). Anyhow, I didn’t want to exercise today- it seems like that is my theme lately and I’m not loving it. I especially didn’t want to do cardio on the elliptical- I like it, but I like the view on a run much better and it seemed boring to elliptical today. Anyhow, once I’m in the run or the workout, I’m fine, but I dread it until the moment I actually do it and mid run I feel elated and high and wonder what was the problem anyhow? Do you want to know what makes a run feel a lot better? When you get your third best time ever, quite on accident! I PR’d my third best mile today, thankyouverymuch. I suppose it was a very good thing that we brought our puppy along, now, in retrospect.

Do you ever have one of those days where the one thing you don’t want to do is exercise but when you get home you do it anyways and afterwards the very accomplishment of it makes you feel more proud than the time you ran over five miles without stopping? Yeah. I’m having that day.

This is me in my indoor workout gear consisting of a nightie and sneakers. And if you’re wondering, I call those ‘Martha Stewart Poses’. I try to keep it classy here, at Lj House.
I am proud. I spent 30 minutes (and not a second longer) on the elliptical at a solid 130-138 BPM and did enough arms reps to fill 20 minutes. Abs too, for eight minutes. That might sound wimpy, but those eight minutes are brutal on my abs and make me cramp up from time to time!
Anyhow, cheers! Tomorrow is weigh-in one for Diet Bet. This afternoon I weighed in at 213.5, so I think I should be fine if I do the weigh in after work/school tomorrow at the same time. Finally feeling confident again. Phew!