Last week, G & I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. On the day, I got a nice card from him, a card & flowers from MIL, and the cutest voice message from my parents (they took turns: "happy. anniversary. from mom. and dad. we. love. you). That night the 4 of us had an early, quick Mexican dinner, complete with guacamole, enchiladas and margaritas. The boys were a bit wild but it was still fun (seriously, we scarfed our food and left in less than an hour, they were crawling under the table and/or wandering around dancing). But there was no kitchen cleanup!
The real celebration was Saturday night, when we had the sitter and went for sushi and then to a wine bar. The whole thing was over by 9:30 but we decided to head home and not push it---there has been more than one time when trying to stretch out a night out (with more drinks/food) ended up in a stupid fight fueled by wine and tiredness.
The weekend overall was awesome. Saturday was crazy busy. I got 22K steps on my FitBit, and that is in addition to the 60 minute BodyPump class I did in the AM. We were out and about all day. So of course, Sunday, we went nowhere! I managed to do two of the things on my "get 'er done" list: the mending is done, and I weeded the sidewalk in front of the house & sprayed the cracks with bleach. I still need to: post some baby items for sale, send off a ThredUp bag for some like-new shoes & clothes I want to consign (I've never done this, I've heard it sucks but it seemed easy enough to try it), and put chicken wire over my plants to keep the squirrels or whatever is eating my food out (too late, the cilantro and the chard are completely gone---I need to protect the lettuce & the basil). Sunday night there was a music/movie night in the neighborhood, complete with taco truck. So we went to that, but we had to drag the boys away from Finding Nemo halfway through since it was already 8pm.
We have a really busy few weeks coming up. I'm traveling (for the day) to give a talk tomorrow. My parents are coming tomorrow evening & staying until Wednesday. When they leave, they are taking the boys with them, to my sister's. G & I will drive down to my sister's Saturday and back Sunday. Then we have 8 days before we leave on an 8 day trip to visit MIL. We'll come back Tuesday but leave B there until Saturday, when MIL and B will fly home together. MIL will stay for 2 weeks. By then it'll be mid-August and we'll be getting ready for B to start kindergarten!
I'll write more about how that is stressing me out later. I'm missing the pre-K graduation tomorrow because I agreed to the date before the daycare announced theirs. According to B's teacher, G should be able to tape the whole thing, its 5 minutes per class.
Off to practice my talk one more time...
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Aha!
So it took 30 minutes of re-installing My Fitness Pal, adding in the day's calories in/out and comparing to exactly one year ago to figure out the culprit(s).
1) Snacks throughout the workday.
I ate (I can't believe I'm revealing this to the world) 1000 calories between 10:00am-4:30 pm. The snacks I was bringing, to avoid mid-day hungry/hangry just kept creeping up.
June 16, 2014: Breakfast, Salad lunch with a peach, pineapple at 3pm
June 16, 2015: Breakfast, 10am: 2 lite string cheese sticks, 12:30 pm: Salad lunch + full-fat yogurt with berries + pineapple. 2-4:30pm: pistachios and rice crackers, celery/bell pepper mix, grapes
Today I brought my lunch and a container of blueberries and the celery/bell pepper mix. I only ate the wrap I made for lunch and the blueberries so far, and I'm leaving in 5 minutes. I'm hungry now, but walking outside will cure that (its too hot to be hungry).
I am trying (and liking) OMDG's trick of waiting as long as possible to have lunch. That leaves no time/appetite for snacking. It was easy today, a clinic day. I had no time for mid-morning snacks. I didn't have lunch until 2pm. Will be harder tomorrow when I'm in my office all day AND I work out in the AM
2) Decreased exercise?
June 2014, I was routinely logging 15-20K steps/day at least 5 days/week (some of those were from running, which is the only exercise I did back then, 2 short runs + 1 long run/week). I don't know how many I'm getting these days because I haven't been tracking, but I suspect its less. Some of this may be artificial, because the calorie burn MFP gives me for my workout classes seems WAY too low, considering I'm working much harder than I would during a 30 minute run. But I'll use the calorie burn they give me, because that actually would workout in my favor.
I realize that if/when I lose the weight I want to lose, I need to reset MFP and figure out the right amount of food for maintenance, instead of just increasing willy nilly (and increasing and increasing and increasing...). I probably need to repeat this exercise every 3 months of so, to make sure I'm staying on track, its so easy to veer off unintentionally.
1) Snacks throughout the workday.
I ate (I can't believe I'm revealing this to the world) 1000 calories between 10:00am-4:30 pm. The snacks I was bringing, to avoid mid-day hungry/hangry just kept creeping up.
June 16, 2014: Breakfast, Salad lunch with a peach, pineapple at 3pm
June 16, 2015: Breakfast, 10am: 2 lite string cheese sticks, 12:30 pm: Salad lunch + full-fat yogurt with berries + pineapple. 2-4:30pm: pistachios and rice crackers, celery/bell pepper mix, grapes
Today I brought my lunch and a container of blueberries and the celery/bell pepper mix. I only ate the wrap I made for lunch and the blueberries so far, and I'm leaving in 5 minutes. I'm hungry now, but walking outside will cure that (its too hot to be hungry).
I am trying (and liking) OMDG's trick of waiting as long as possible to have lunch. That leaves no time/appetite for snacking. It was easy today, a clinic day. I had no time for mid-morning snacks. I didn't have lunch until 2pm. Will be harder tomorrow when I'm in my office all day AND I work out in the AM
2) Decreased exercise?
June 2014, I was routinely logging 15-20K steps/day at least 5 days/week (some of those were from running, which is the only exercise I did back then, 2 short runs + 1 long run/week). I don't know how many I'm getting these days because I haven't been tracking, but I suspect its less. Some of this may be artificial, because the calorie burn MFP gives me for my workout classes seems WAY too low, considering I'm working much harder than I would during a 30 minute run. But I'll use the calorie burn they give me, because that actually would workout in my favor.
I realize that if/when I lose the weight I want to lose, I need to reset MFP and figure out the right amount of food for maintenance, instead of just increasing willy nilly (and increasing and increasing and increasing...). I probably need to repeat this exercise every 3 months of so, to make sure I'm staying on track, its so easy to veer off unintentionally.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Room For Improvement
But of course there are a few things I want to work on over the next few months:
1) Eating: After realizing I lost 10 lbs, I may have relaxed my eating habits a bit too much. Its not just the weight gain, its also the general yucky feeling I get after eating too many carbs or too much cheese. Especially cheese with carbs. I keep going back on forth on whether to start tracking calories again---it was a lot of work, but it did help me make meaningful---and mostly painless---changes.
2) Attitude: As I nag at B to "stop whining and complaining" I realize i need to model better behavior on this front. I'm just not one of those bouncy cheery types---sarcasm, cynicism and well aimed complaints come pretty natural to me. In honesty, I'm pretty happy with my life, warts (whining kids) and all. I need to let that show through more.
3) Home projects: I have this dress I love that has a small hole in a back seam. I've been meaning to mend it for 6 MONTHS. Did I mention I LOVE the dress? And that the hole is small? I want to set aside one evening/week for taking care of these kind of nagging tasks. This includes selling/donating old baby items and clothes, weeding the sidewalk in front, ironing clothes so I can actually wear them, and other such un-fun, easy to put off tasks. Maybe I can watch Gilmore Girls while I do it.
4) Exercise: this is in combination with #1. Since I don't want to cut back on eating that much, I also want to add one intense workout a week to my routine (I work out 3 days/week when I can). Since G and I rotate mornings, I'll need to add an evening workout. I haven't exercised anytime except early AM for about 8 years so getting myself out there will be the first battle. I've put a Thursday 6:30 bodypump class on my calendar. Lets see how it goes.
Yeah, nothing enormous on this list. Its a good sign, right?
1) Eating: After realizing I lost 10 lbs, I may have relaxed my eating habits a bit too much. Its not just the weight gain, its also the general yucky feeling I get after eating too many carbs or too much cheese. Especially cheese with carbs. I keep going back on forth on whether to start tracking calories again---it was a lot of work, but it did help me make meaningful---and mostly painless---changes.
2) Attitude: As I nag at B to "stop whining and complaining" I realize i need to model better behavior on this front. I'm just not one of those bouncy cheery types---sarcasm, cynicism and well aimed complaints come pretty natural to me. In honesty, I'm pretty happy with my life, warts (whining kids) and all. I need to let that show through more.
3) Home projects: I have this dress I love that has a small hole in a back seam. I've been meaning to mend it for 6 MONTHS. Did I mention I LOVE the dress? And that the hole is small? I want to set aside one evening/week for taking care of these kind of nagging tasks. This includes selling/donating old baby items and clothes, weeding the sidewalk in front, ironing clothes so I can actually wear them, and other such un-fun, easy to put off tasks. Maybe I can watch Gilmore Girls while I do it.
4) Exercise: this is in combination with #1. Since I don't want to cut back on eating that much, I also want to add one intense workout a week to my routine (I work out 3 days/week when I can). Since G and I rotate mornings, I'll need to add an evening workout. I haven't exercised anytime except early AM for about 8 years so getting myself out there will be the first battle. I've put a Thursday 6:30 bodypump class on my calendar. Lets see how it goes.
Yeah, nothing enormous on this list. Its a good sign, right?
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
39 and Feeling Fine
This post is two weeks late, but its been a crazy few weeks. We went to the beach with my family the week of Memorial Day (my birthday was that week) and while G did come with us for the first few days, I was solo with the kids the last few days and had to do 2 flights home alone. I was all ready to jump back into work Monday and realized I had jury duty. So I rescheduled things to the next day figuring I'd be there all day. Well I got out at 1pm, but not until I was picked to be a juror on a week-long criminal case. So that was exciting (it was actually quite an experience, I may write about it---no specifics---later). I had to cancel my clinics, work late into the night or early in the morning, and made it through the week. Sunday I got to the airport early in the morning for a conference---I'm heading home tonight. I haven't spent a day in my office (a few hours here and there, in the evenings, but not a full day) since May 22nd.
As a (quite belated) birthday gift to myself, I decided to write a list of the things that I've accomplished and are going well in my life right now.
As a (quite belated) birthday gift to myself, I decided to write a list of the things that I've accomplished and are going well in my life right now.
- I've gotten physically strong. The strongest I've ever been. I'm really proud of that! I guess I'm not genetically made to get much stronger (I've hit a plateau, that I can't seem to break out of) but I'm satisfied with where I am.
- I've completely turned around my shopping habit. I did not buy one stitch of clothing (or any non-consumable in fact), for myself from January 1st-June 5th (a personal record). I did spend some birthday money my dad gave me on a few things last week. I debated this, but my parents and G insisted I spend it on myself. I mostly bought workout clothes (I have 3 pairs of non-tragic workout gear and wanted to add a 4th workout each week), a set of summer PJs and 2 tops for work that I brought with me to the conference. I have money earmarked for a pair of grey full-length pants, but I couldn't find any. I may go looking once in the fall (all the stores have now are cropped pants) but I have no plans to buy anything else until January of next year
- I've completed most of the other "money smart" tasks I set out for myself this winter. I've also been tracking spending on YNAB and Mint (we fell of the wagon for a while but just hopped back on)
- I've done some new-to-me stuff at work---starting a sub-specialty clinic, started two different clinical research studies, will be starting completely new lab techniques. There is a lot that I need to be doing that I haven't quite done (grants, papers, duh), but while I'll focus on increasing those, I can still be proud of what I DID do.
- I'm starting to care less what other people think. I'm still not where I want to be with this, but on the not-giving-a-shit scale, I've definitely gained a few notches. This has also made me way less shy to talk to strangers. I was chatting up a storm with my fellow jurors and was the first to offer my opinion on the verdict. I speak up at our case conferences and division meetings at work, too. Not too much, I am the last to want to prolong a meeting to hear the sound of my own voice.
- I'm confronting things with therapy. Just going and being honest at the first meeting was really hard and I'm really glad I did it. I actually haven't gone in two months but need to make an appointment soon. I was making some progress with dealing with my anxiety.
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