I guess I run now

I HATE this time of year. My courses are running full throttle: students are turning in drafts & polished projects & revisions & extra credit work & online discussion forums. I’m a grading/responding idiot right now.

Last week as hubby & I pulled ourselves away from grading to head home, & realized that once again we’d forgotten to prep anything for dinner, I complained about all the eating out we’ve been doing. But, hubby pointed out, it’s that time of the semester. I’m eating okay, even out. Salads to open, a couple of nights of the local dive’s spinach pie with a baked potato, curried tofu from Pei Wei today.

Luckily hubby left the office early tonight, leaving me time to finish up stuff while he cooked the meatloaf, green beans, and big salad. Really nice to come home to a hot meal. Ate chicken & broccoli & apple crisp at our friends’ house in Ohio last night. I’m at the point of barely remembering the week here, which isn’t such a bad thing, but I leave for Philadelphia for a conference on Wednesday, so I gotta get back to tracking food before it’s too late.

& yeah, this conference comes at a crappy time of the year, but I have to go every damn year. Okay, complain-fest ends here.

We got back late from Ohio this morning, so no breakfast, no weigh-in. Tomorrow I’m shooting for both. Lunch & dinner I covered above. Tomorrow lunch will be leftover Pei Wei & a slice of meatloaf. Dinner will be a big apple & a large coffee (teaching night). We got a long walk in last night with our friends, & our 1.2-mile walk in tonight.

But let’s face it. This is no way to start over. I need a tape (yoga or pilates) and a routine.

Hope ya’ll are doing good this week.

Okay, bad title, sorry. But this week I’m a little lighter, 3.8 pounds as of Monday…5.2 on Tuesday, but Tuesday doesn’t count: I’m interested only in weekly weight as evidence of overall loss rather than random fluctuations.

Haven’t checked in b/c this week is from hell…again, but I kept track of my food anyway:

Sunday:
Lunch: 1.5 cups bean soup
Snack: 12 pretzels & 1 ounce cheese
Dinner: beef brisket, broccoli, sweet potato, & big salad

Monday:
Breakfast: Grapefruit with 1 tbs brown sugar
Lunch: 2 small slices of brisket & broccoli
Dinner: cheese tortiloni with a cream sauce & tons of onion, tom, & peas (small bowl), big salad

Yesterday:
Lunch: Boston Market: mashed, creamed spinach, green beans, corn bread
Dinner: 1/2 big apple
Snack: 1 cup leftover tortolini

Today:
Breakfast: grapefruit with 1 tsp white sugar
Lunch: guess I should grab a salad
Dinner: unknown (it’s hubby’s music committee & choir night, plus we have to get a lasagna & two pineapple upside down cakes to the church: it’s our church’s week to sponsor a mobile homeless shelter)…an all-veggie night would be good.

Exercise is where ever I can fit it in.

I started the rules 2 years ago to get me thinking about how to lose weight. They include things like sitting down at the dinner table for dinner & turning off the TV…something that’s much easier since we got rid of the TV downstairs & cable everywhere. Looking over the rules, I see that some of them have just become habit, even when I’ve been away from 3fc and not thinking about dieting:

Lunch is always on a bread plate, dinner on a 7-inch plate, and I can’t bring myself to make pasta or rice without cramming it full of veggies. & I’ve always been a veggie nut. When hubby & I visit family we both end up craving salads because we have them with just about every meal & our folks (on both sides) don’t. In fact, visiting family, we can go days without laying eyes on a single leafy green veggie.

So some of the rules are a part of my daily routine now & I don’t even have to think about them. But other rules like water with meals (something I only do if I’m eating out), portion control, crunchy veggies to munch on while I decide how much more I need to eat, & 3 meals a day…these things have fallen by the wayside. & they need to be joined by one fruit a day, 1 hour of exercise a day, and calorie counting. So…back to the rules with the extended rules added in for good measure. That’s the goal for this week; that & a little bit of definitive movement on the scale.

Breakfast: 1/2 grapefruit topped with 1 teaspoon brown sugar (90 cals) and broiled in the oven until warm & sweet.

Lunch: probably going to be a big salad grapefruit was so yummy, I had the other half & a hard boiled egg.

Dinner: bean soup again & a big salad.

Exercise: 1/2 hour walk with the dog

Warning: Bitch Session Below

Always…and forever. Pretty words, unfortunately, I’m referring to the “always…and forever” of housework.

Here’s the deal, hubby & I have the same freakin’ job, only mine has a wee bit more pressure as I’m 2 years closer to going up for tenure than he is. On average, I do 1.5-2 hours of housework (shopping, cooking, cleaning, organizing, dusting, mopping, laundry, etc) a day & he does (if I’m lucky) 1.5-2 hours a week. But it’s hard to say you’re “fed up” with this arrangement when you’ve been saying that you’re “fed up” with this arrangement for over a year now & nothing has ever, ever changed about it.

So…this summer while we were in the UP, we paid to have someone cut our grass at the house here (cheaper than driving 1,100-miles round trip every week). Now the grass is done for the year, so I’m hiring a housekeeper to come in once a month to do the carpets (hubby’s job & he does them only when we’re having company, so every other month or so), the bathrooms (hubby’s never once done these), the dusting (again all me), the windows (me), kitchen appliances & cabinets (me). It won’t reduce my daily housework at all, but it’ll free up a few hours on the weekend that I could actually use to write &, possibly, give me a shot at getting published so I can get tenure.

There’s part of me that feels creepy doing this…hiring someone to clean my house? We’re not rich, we’re struggling to pay student loans & credit card bills from decades of higher education, lowest pay; but I just can’t do this on my own any more. & maybe if he sees money going out for this every month, he’ll actually recognize how much work goes into this house, respect what’s involved in keeping a house running, & maybe even start pitching in a little. Big dreams…I’m putting a lot on this fictional housekeeper. But I’m going through with it next week. No more threatening to hire someone.

Not so hot.

There was stress a plenty this morning, but that’s no excuse: some people do yoga or go for a run to overcome stress. Me? Well, hubby suggested Indian buffet & I was all about being a “yes” woman. One trip, 1/4 cup samples of the stuff, but there was naan & there were lentil fritters.

Came home & crashed hard in the middle of the afternoon: I’m back on the 4am insomnia kick, which is now 3am, thank you very much daylight savings time.

Made bean soup (a tomato base, but there’s about 250 calories in ham alone the entire pot…I’m guessing about 75 calories per bowl) & we’ll have it with a big salad for dinner.

So:

Breakfast: not

Lunch: miscellaneous veggie & chicken curries

Dinner: bean soup, hard cider, salad

Exercise: just necessary walks around campus.

More on this later, maybe, but it hit me this morning that my life stretches out in alternating patterns of good living and bad living. I exercise, eat right, lose weight, get strong…& then I decide, “meh, not so much.”

For a while I rationalize what I’m doing: I’m a big, beautiful woman; I’m not going to be manipulated into spending every waking hour trying to meet this f’d up society’s image of beauty; I’ll get healthy again when work lightens up a bit. Then I realize that I can’t manipulate my fat butt into my “fat” jeans & I’m picking the closest spot in the parking lot to “save my energy,” as if I’m going to ever use that energy anywhere else. & then I go back to healthy eating & exercising.

So I’d like to break the pattern. But then I know that doing this is like quitting smoking (and I was stuck in a losing pattern with that for years): every day you just have to re-resolve, say “no” until “no” becomes automatic. Eventually, saying “yes” to exercise becomes automatic too…So I’m back in the fight.

& the scale seems to think this is working already. We’ll see where I am on Monday, but there’s been movement in the downward direction over the last couple of days & that’s enough to get me through today.

& I’m looking for motivation in other places as well. None of the shows I like were posted to hulu last night, so I pulled up a movie on Netflix, King Corn. It wasn’t bad, but maybe because we all know that corn is in everything we eat, the revelations were less than revealing. Still, I thought that movie might be a good way to get me thinking about what I put in my body again. I have Food, Inc. on order for when it’s released & maybe I’ll watch Supersize Me again. What am I missing for disgusting food documentaries that will have me running for the produce aisle?

Breakfast: 1/2 biscuit & 1/2 cup gravy (back to measuring)

Lunch: 1/2 container rachel’s cottage cheese & 3 rye crisp crackers

Dinner: marinated steak, broccoli, big salad, mixed veggies with whole grain rice

Maybe I should start watching my starches more closely. I’m trying to eliminate starch at dinner, but there it is in breakfast & lunch.

Exercise: parking in the farthest lot from my building today to make up for last night’s “rock star parking” at the grocery store (tsk, tsk); walk with hubby.

McDs, that is.

Ate just what I’d planned to yesterday & drove right by all the tempting goodies between campuses, but got home around 9:30 hungry, so had an ounce of cheese & 20 pretzels.

It’s a slow start here, but it’s working out, I think. Today hubby made biscuits and gravy (which I managed to talk him out of making last night around 11). I had one, figuring I’d skip lunch. Skipped lunch. Had chicken (1/2 breast) with a peanut bake on it…very moist & tasty, leftover acorn squash, big salad.

Wednesday night is my popcorn & catch up on TV night…hubby has choir practice. Usually I make the popcorn with oil on the stove & then add the butter to the top. Tonight I bought an air popper. Still have 1 tbs butter on it, but I took a bit of it & hit it with lime & salt and it was pretty good. So I think next week I’ll experiment with different no-cal/no-fat flavorings. I also bought some lean cuisine & rachel’s yogurt & cottage cheese to get me through lunches.

Tiny ran over a mile today on her road to a half-marathon. Hubby & I took the dog for a 1-mile walk around the neighborhood…we usually go 3, but 3 requires crossing an old apple orchard, so we’ll need to start walking before dinner (and darkness) if we’re going to do that.

I’m also going to look into one of those 24-hour gyms where there’s no hassle & they just give you a key to the place.

Good to be back here.

Okay, positive thoughts. Yesterday’s eating was better & if I park in the far lot (pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point in the day), I’ll get a nice little walk in today.

My goal is a 2-pound difference by next Monday. Then multiply that loss by 30 & I’m where I want my weight to be by the summer.

Folks in my dept have started going to weight watchers on Mondays…I’ve done WW before & liked it, but getting back into it? Damn, I gotta do something!

Had a WW yogurt for snack last night

Today is marathon teaching day from hell (with a 1.5 hour commute between classes), so my goal is to eat healthy & not stop for fast food on the way to campus #2.

Breakfast: coffee w/ half and half

Lunch: leftover beef & asparagus from dinner, big salad

Dinner: big apple.

That’s right, I woke to a facebook message from tiny2b this morning, telling me she’s coming back to 3FC to record food/exercise progress & lose again. So…I’m joining her, back on the 3FC bandwagon, motivating to get back on the treadmill, thinking about what I need to get for groceries tonight to make this happen.

That’s one thing that will SUCK about dieting: to make it work I need to be the only person who shops in our house. Hubby is the king of snack foods. This really sucks cause we just got into the habit of him joining me for shopping & even once in a blue moon picking up some groceries himself. So…now that’s going to have to go back to being all me. Can’t have him sabotaging my progress with cookies and candy and pretzels and pita chips and all that other stuff he loves.

Food:

Breakfast: not so much

Lunch: Pei Wei chopped chicken salad

Dinner: spicy peanut chicken (chicken wasn’t thawed, so we’re going with:) marinated beef, acorn squash, asparagus, and salad. It’s a lot of food, but tomorrow’s my marathon teaching day spanning 2 campuses, so I need healthy leftovers to keep me from swinging into fast food hell.

Exercise: going to do a fast mile on the treadmill or the 3-mile loop with hubby & dog if it kills me.

Okay, Nike reinforcement aside, how do I just do it?

I’m stuck. I’ve been posting pictures to fb of my grad school days, not so long ago. & there’s this one group shot where I’m at my healthiest…I was walking, doing yoga, doing pilates, eating right, moving like crazy…and I’m actually really pretty in that photo.

I’d love to get back to that, but that means waking up in the morning, tomorrow morning, and heading downstairs to put in a yoga tape & then hit the treadmill. That would be a start…a little yoga & a little walking & a salad & an apple every day.

Did I just talk myself into doing something to get unstuck? Maybe. It sure would be nice to be that healthy person again.

Yes, I’ve been a very bad blogger. But I so want to be good. Just not quite yet. Ya know what I mean?

We got a slow (and then hectic) start to the semester when our union decided to str…errr…have a “job action.” The kind of “job action” we had was not going to classes & spending hours and hours on the picket lines & in rallies. The majority of our students stood with us on the lines. This is Michigan, after all. And these are the children of auto workers we’re teaching, so…they get unions.

Wasn’t about raises, of course. You’d have to be a moron to str…err…”job action” in Michigan for more money right now. It was about intellectual property rights for faculty, faculty governance, future tenure-line hires, and preventing punitive cuts to our health care…not improvements in any of these areas, just keeping what we had in the last contract. With the exception of healthcare (which we compromised on &, I think, lost ground on), all this is stuff that would’ve seriously affected the quality of education at my university…which is probably why our students stood with us on this one.

Now it’s over (only lasted a week, but it felt like years) & I’m playing catch up and looking at a busy couple of months teaching, traveling to conferences, traveling for research, and writing. I NEED to see my way toward exercise and clean living in those months. Okay, that’s a goal. That & getting back to blogging as soon as I get back from this insane mid-week research trip to Illinois I have planned.

Hope your summer is winding down well (northern hemisphere chicks). Back in a bit…