I guess I run now

That’s the goal anyway. We leave at 12:40, and I’ve been pretty good all week. Okay, it helped that hubby & I were sick for most of the conference, so no overindulging, just a beer here or there. And we’re looking back at our receipts & trying to figure out what the heck we ate or when we ate or if we ate. We had Thai the first night, a breakfast meeting the next day, Dim Sum for lunch one day, appetizers (maybe 1/2 a small plate full) at the big publisher’s party, breakfast and dinner yesterday. Otherwise, I remember a bagel one day, some clementines, not much else.

Helps that this particular cold leaves me with little appetite, so even breakfast yesterday, I gave hubby one of my eggs & muffin & left most of my hash browns on the plate. Of course, he hasn’t been eating either.

We’re staying with friends now. Had a lovely night out last night: Tapas followed by something called “Writers and Drinkers,” which reminded me of Feathers. It was held at a big bar in the mission, the writers (one comic) took the stage & read short stories, poems, chapters from their books. Very fun.

The friends are hubby’s, his best man and the best man’s girl friend. They’re hip and cool & live in this awesome loft apartment in the city & I feel like a real yokel when I’m with them usually, Not that they do anything to make me feel that way, but I’ve always been a big geek & living in the Midwest has helped that none. Anyway, she’s tall and cool and thin, but for the first time, even though I’m huge right now, I felt okay about my body around these two thin hipsters. & they’re nice people, really nice people.

& they’re up now…crazy California time zone!

Poking around on folks pages filled with wicked fires & crazy challenges & money saving schemes & mad crushes on hot guitar players & sisterhood awards …remembering how nice it is to be in touch with ya’ll. It has been a really good year, even if I’ve stumbled…headfirst into a vat of chocolate…these past few months.

Feathers, I didn’t post much at the time, but I really enjoyed reading about your workshop. Stay safe now!

Tiny, love the challenge & if I weren’t sick & leaving for San Fran in the morning, I’d have jumped on it. I’m in next week, provided the punishment doesn’t involve nudity! I hope to get in 10 miles walking on the trip, but none of it will be intentional all dudded out in workout clothes walking. Still, many thanks for getting us all back on track (pun intended).

Eryn, thanks for the award. I’m really touched.

Getupnow…love the cartoon & the $100 challenge.

Just back from Lane Bryant. Would like not to shop there, but their jeans (with the new sizing system) fit me nicely, so I figured I’d get a second pair for the casual nights on the trip. Hell, I gotta have something to wear while I lose. AND I WILL LOSE!

& I managed my own challenge on Saturday. Just had coffee, three clementines, and my small portion of quiche. No bagels or pizza & I was in that stupid room from 9-3 with all that food just sitting there! Have eaten the crap out of some clementines though…just finished my fourth of the day now. Love them! I have some packed for the plane so I don’t get tempted by candy or other crap at the airport. 23 calories each…damn that’s good eating.

Okay, Jillian (biggest loser) is screaming at her team now…I just tuned in, what happened here? They had sliders and booze and cigs? Wow, this season is getting better.

Oh, I lost this week…about 3.5 pounds. That was the easy & super recent gain from the two weeks before, so it’s no surprise it came off so fast, although you could’ve knocked me over with a feather when I saw how quickly it came on.

Getting back down to where I was before Thanksgiving & then I’ll map out my plans to get me into the summer & summer clothes at least one size smaller. I hope ya’ll got ideas for many, many challenges cause I need motivation & then some.

Okay, I gotta pack & get back to working on my paper or this is going to be a terrible conference experience.

Ya’ll take care & wish me luck saying no to sliders and booze and cigs in San Fran. Actually, only the booze sounds good these days anyway. With luck they’ll have some clementines.

Oooh, BL weigh in time!

Today I’m giving a podcasting workshop for teachers in our writing project, and then in the afternoon, our project’s leadership team meets. The problem, aside from it being Saturday? Food & lots of it. I’ve been instructed to bring bagels to the workshop, which runs 9-noon. Then we’ll have pizza at the meeting, pizza, just sitting there in front of me all afternoon. ARGH!

So I’ve been kinda sorta back on the wagon less than a week & there’s going to be pizza & bagels, two crusty temptations. I think I’m ready, though. I’ve packed my lite yogurt & granola to fight off breakfast temptations. Maybe I’ll get only sweet bagels & I won’t be tempted at all? Never happen cause I’ll just worry that someone won’t find the bagel they’re looking for, but it could work for 1/2 the bagels. Then for lunch I’ve packed a big salad & the last of the leftover quiche. Funny, yesterday the quiche was what I considered to be an unhealthy lunch item. But by comparison to pizza, it’ll work. & clementines, loads and loads of clementines. I haven’t even check the calories on the little darlings cause I keep thinking the vitamin C might just kill this stupid cold.

Last night I didn’t do so great. We had dinner at the dining room table, which was a move in the right direction: pasta with sausage sauce. Okay, not a good meal again, but hubby made the sauce with extra spicy sausage, so I kept my portion very, very small. Big salad (yum) to make up for all the veggies hubby elected not to put into the pasta, and olives. Then hubby made fudge. Did I mention that fudge has become hubby’s writing-the-dissertation alternative? I could kill him. Why couldn’t he take up running or working out? Then I’d have a workout partner every night instead of a brand new plate of fudge to deal with. I had about a 2 inch square. Probably thousands of calories & dozens of fat grams. So that was my evening snack. Crap!

Oh, hell, I gotta run!

Didn’t write for a couple of days cause I’m battling a cold, not back to a routine yet &, like getupnow, I’m feeling really resistant to coming back the way I was last year at this time. UGH! This might even be my 1-year anniversary!

So I’m resistant, but I’m also thinking that I need to re-read those first blog posts so I can figure out what I was doing back then that worked & repeat.

But I have been walking & have put salads (2 a day) back into my diet. I’ve also been eating lite yogurt with granola for nite time snack. Eventually I need to cut the snack out totally, but for now this works. I know, I know, granola isn’t great fat & sugars-wise, but it gives me that crunch I long for, so it’s working for now unless you know of some substitute? I’m also trying for 1 piece of fruit a day (at least) and hubby & I are back to snacking raw veggies during the day (raddishes, carrots, celery).

I need to make us eat at the dining room table again so I’m not just mindlessly eating in front of the TV. That’s a change I think I’ll make tonight. & eating at the table means I can put out bowls of olives & crudite (without the dip) for between-bite snacking. Sounds weird, but I like the idea of getting all filled up on veggies & then pushing aside my main course.

But dinners haven’t been all that healthy, which means our lunches are leftovers of unhealthiness. Last night quiche & salad, so lunch today is a small piece of quiche & salad. The night before it was corn chowder & salad, so lunch yesterday was…Tonight hubby wants veggie lasagna, which will probably give us leftovers for days. I’ll make the sauce with mostly chicken stock & maybe some lite evaporated milk or skim milk, but the cheese isn’t lite (bought before I decided to step on the scale again). Still, I’m going to try to follow my pasta rule, which is more than 50% of each serving of pasta must be made up of veggies. I think this lasagna will have to be mostly frozen spinach.

So I’m thinking transition these days: okay, dinners & lunches aren’t great, but if I think portion control, big salads, fruit, and healthy snacks, that’s a start, right?

I also need to start thinking about running again & doing some other kind of exercise. Listen to me…I need to start thinking about doing all this. Geeze! Could my verb choices put more distance between me and exercise? I need to run again. Once this cold is licked, I’m back to the treadmill & back to those damn podcasts.

Okay, time to finish up the laundry & get to work!

One word to describe moi: fatter.

Two words: need help.

Three words: lifestyle gone wrong.

Four words: back to square one.

Oh, I could do that all morning, but I’m not gonna. I’m here to get motivation to get on that treadmill or do some pilates…ANYTHING!

The job searches have ended & ended well. We hired two lovely new faculty who will join us in the fall. They were our top two choices, although all of the candidates we brought to campus were amazing & we’d have been fortunate to get just one of them.

During that time hubby & I (and a third editor) got our book to press. We were trying to get it out before this big conference next week & all indications are that we succeeded. But that meant that in addition to the jo search, which tacked a good 25-30 hours onto my work week for the last two months, we were also copyediting chapters, then proofing, then writing the marketing report (ick), then picking out covers (not as fun as it sounds). It was something new every week, so that we’d catch our breath, say “there, done,” and some other task would roll down the pipeline.

But those things are DONE now. I’m caught up on my classes, although not so much on grading, & all I have to worry about for the next week is writing my paper for the conference & nagging hubby to get his written. I worked all day yesterday on class prep, so I’ll have time to work out & now it’s time to exercise, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but here I sit with my coffee & laptop, writing rather than moving.

Clothes are fitting tighter, I don’t feel as strong as I was after the last bootcamp, and my diet is CRAP! It’s turnaround time AGAIN! I’m so sick of this I could scream. I keep thinking that if I get down to my goal weight, it’ll all be so easy to maintain, but then it seems like I can’t even maintain my fattest weight. CRAP! So I’m re-setting the ticker & getting off my fatter ass now.

Wish me luck!