January Musings

It's been a rough month, one that started with promise and is ending with promise. In the middle, lots of roller coasters.

Exercise -- thankfully, I've got this. I have a dog who doesn't take no for an answer. I can't be too tired or too cold or too lazy. He needs to walk. So walk we must. Typically we get in two miles every day. I've also added strength training with some DVDs. And started the Couch to 5K program. Week 3 was in the books today.

My goal of 1,000 miles for the year is off to a great start. I set a goal of 85 miles for the month. I hit just under 104 this morning.

Cooper -- Last Saturday was, would have been, whatever…it was Cooper's third birthday. I spent the day feeling sorry for myself. I was sad. What makes it hard is that I'm so close to where he lives. Or where I think he lives. Thirty miles…that's it. I'm 30 miles away from where Tekisha was last living in New Jersey. I've thought about taking a drive, but for what?  To see that she's not living there anymore? To see that she is and to see her with her daughter but not him? Or to see her and to see that she did end up keeping him? I'm not really sure what I'm hoping for, and so I won't be making the trip to Washington, NJ, no matter how many times I think about it.

Food -- I haven't seen much success on the scale even though I have worked out as much as I have. There has been a lot of mouth hunger, a lot of binges, a lot of eating my feelings. I literally have eaten 12 hershey kisses, one after the other, and would have no satisfaction of them. I would eat them so fast that I wasn't really tasting them.

My mind has been working overtime trying to figure out how to get back the strong mindset when it comes to food. And in the process, I've felt the eating disorder brain creeping back in. So I did the smart thing and met with a nutritionist.

Marge calmed my fears, gave me very attainable goals for the next two weeks and two days later, I'm feeling almost like I have a handle on it.

I'll continue with the exercise as I have been. I will weigh myself three times a week. This was a tricky one that we had to negotiate and talk about. In a study of people who have kept 30+ pounds off for five years or more, one of their reasons for success was they weighed themselves daily. I used to do that. In fact, I used to weight myself two, three, fours times a day. i don't want to go back to that. So we both felt that three times a week was doable and safe.

I'm going to try a new vegetable, which I actually did tonight for dinner. I'm not a big veggie eater and I'm not an adventurous eater, so while this doesn't sound like a challenge for most; for me, it is. I bought some cut-up butternut squash at Wegmans today. Did not have to make a huge commitment by buying a whole one and then trying to figure out how to peel it, how to cut it. It was already done for me. (thank you, Danny Wegman)

I need to learn to add more colors. My roasted veggies were carrots, butternut squash and some sweet potato slices, mixed a little bit of sweet onion. All pretty orange, but I had vegetables with my dinner.

And we talked about my vulnerable times -- mid-afternoon and after dinner. Sometimes it's the simplest things, the why didn't I think of that. And to solve this, that's exactly what happened. My snacks have not been filling enough. Why does yogurt have to be reserved for breakfast? Why can't I have a second smoothie?

I don't know why none of that occurred to me. But it makes sense. When I have been having a sugar-free pudding for my snack after dinner, when my sweet tooth hits…now I'm having a "dessert" yogurt. Tonight, it was dark chocolate raspberry Greek yogurt. Protein. Sweet. Takes care of my sweet tooth and fills me up longer. At work, I'll add a smoothie for mid-afternoon.

I started a challenge group on FB with one of my Baltimore friends. The girls in the group are great, supportive. Some, I think, will become friends outside of the group, for cure. And as we're ending our first month, they are posting their successes. And I feel like I've wasted a month. And I could let it get me down or I could let it motivate me.

I'm letting it motivate me. I want to get to the end of the month and be glad that I didn't give up, that I didn't give in, that I didn't waste another month.