I guess I run now

I’m not saying it won’t be lonely & I’m not saying I won’t be sad, but this long weekend will be not so bad.

It will also be on plan. No carbs, no alcohol, no smoking, no pity parties.

& I’ve already sanded & painted the wall in the dining room that’s had 5 giant unrepaired holes in it since we painted in late August or early September. With hubby here it wouldn’t have gotten done cause he’d want to do it himself & then he’d not do it…for months and months. I love him, but he’s so very okay with living in disorder and I’m so very not okay with it. So now it’s done & I can actually hang up a picture downstairs.

I also put the chair rail back up…he took it down when we removed the wallpaper in the dining room last February or March. Not my best effort, but it’s up & it looks good & it’s done after almost a year of being very obviously undone.

& I went to the nursery & spent some time among the houseplants & flowers. So nice in there! Bought two mini-roses (and they smell!) and a jade plant to replace the 3 out of 4 dead plants in my front window. I should’ve bought some paperwhites as well, but maybe I’ll splurge and pick some up at Trader Joes. The window is so much nicer to look at now that there’s some color and life there.

Now, if I can only figure out how to get the small areas of wallpaper that remain in the entry way off the wall, I’ll be able to paint that room while he’s gone. The wallpaper’s tricky. Most of it came down fine…effort & mess & all that, but most of it’s gone. Then there are these areas where I think they put it up (or stuck it back on after it’d peeled away) with super glue or rubber cement or something impenetrable & strong. Ideas anyone?

After that, we have this hideous fan in the bedroom (our bedroom of hideously depressing wallpaper) & it’d look so much nicer without the crazy and tacky light fixtures & without the scrolls in gold all around it. So I know I can take off the hideous light fixture & I think I found a “universal” fixture that isn’t so ugly, but that should fit. Then I’ll just flip the blades around & voila, less hideous fan.

So it’s a weekend…not a fun weekend, but I’m going to make sure it’s a productive weekend & try to keep myself busy.

Food today
Lunch: desperate for something & away from home, so Boston Market spinach & green beans
Dinner: can’t decide what I want, but I’m leaning towards steak and salad.
Snack: will be jello

For those of you who don’t know, I spent my birthday alone in my MIL’s house, eating take out in front of the TV.

This weekend (beginning tomorrow) hubby has glorious plans: up to the UP house, snowshoeing, dinner with friends, saunas. Sounds like just the relaxing weekend someone we know who is amazingly stressed & not sleeping needs. Provided that overstressed insomniac someone ISN’T me, that is.

Okay, I tried not to get pi$$ed about his weekend away with his best friend, but I’m just so tired & stressed & sick of spending every night alone while he plays Mario Wii that I could SCREAM! & now I’ll be stuck in the house all weekend bored, stressed, not sleeping. Yay! Oh & wondering why he’d rather take this trip with his friend than with me…that should keep me busy.

& no, I don’t have any close friends here that I could go away with for the weekend or even call to go out to dinner. But let’s not let this anger turn into a pity party. Anger burns carbs, right?

I don’t really want him to head out tomorrow with me still feeling this angry and hurt, but I also don’t see anyway around it at the moment. Any ideas for de-angering chicks?

UPDATE: So I guess hubby and I have made up…in that there’s not much I can do about this anyway: he goes, I stay, so WTF, & why not? But what with all the Mario he’s been playing the last few days, he doesn’t have time to hang out cause he has to prep his online classes for the week. So…me, alone, a bottle of wine &…wait for it…popcorn. Oh, perfect Atkins week, why did I give in so easily to emotional eating?

& I guess I need to say this out loud cause maybe it’ll prevent me from doing this, or at least own up to it, but…I picture myself sitting at the bar with a beer & a cigarette & my laptop with this freakin’ article that hubby apparently feels need more global revision (after 5 f&*%ing years of revisions). Seriously, that’s how I see the weekend stretching out before me. sigh.

We’ll see.

This morning after my standard 2 hours of denial, I decided to stop fighting the insomnia and get out of bed. Which meant time for breakfast & an early morning at work. Tomorrow maybe I’ll do the same but with a workout, breakfast, & work. Hell, if you can’t beat the insomnia (and I can’t), why not make the most of it?

Breakfast: ham & cheese omelet
Lunch: egg salad on lettuce
Snack: pepperoni & slice cheddar
Dinner: hot wings with bleu cheese
Snack: sugarfree jello

Pretty much an ideal Atkins day, but the wings are giving me heartburn like no one’s business. I wonder how many carbs are in Tums.

I prevented myself from seeing significant movement on the scale this week.

1. no exercise.

2. 3 gins & diet tonics

3. nuts

4. eating “approximately” 20 carbs a day

5. not eating enough most days

6. skipping both breakfast and lunch

7. treating myself EVERY NIGHT to a mini cheese cake (only 2.5 carbs…4 in the latest batch, but I swear that Splenda still affects my fat-burning)

So…I lost a pound. It’s a pound down, but so many to go that I can’t imagine keeping myself motivated over the long, long, long months it’ll take to lose at this rate. I really need to have a bigger loss this week, get myself out of the 170s once and for all, to keep up my will to go on.

So…beginning tomorrow I will have a perfect Atkins induction week. Tons of protein, 20 carbs a day, no alcohol, no nuts, plenty of exercise, sugar-free jello instead of low-carb cheese cake.

Why tomorrow? Well, I’d already planned tonight for a cheat with some Dreamfields low-carb pasta & 3 oz of red wine. The pasta claims to have only 5 digestible carbs & the red wine has about 2, but I don’t know if I trust the pasta’s claims, so…a cheat.

I’m not unhappy with what I’ve lost so far (and with the whole new/old wardrobe that’s opened up for me), but I know me & I know I need to have a big loss this week to keep the dream alive.

Have a great Tuesday!

I’ve been trying to catch up on work, so not blogging or reading blogs lately. Ugh. Funny enough…or not funny at all…I think the scale will reflect this fact tomorrow morning.

Not blogging means not being accountable, not reading blogs means not finding out how the rest of you are managing to stay accountable.

But I’m making some headway on my todo list, so tomorrow I’ll be back at it.

In the meantime, thanks everyone for the “feel less stabby soon” wishes. My mood is so much better now.

Happy Sunday Chicks!

That’s been my mood these past few days. It’s the start-of-the-semester insomnia, which is crushing me & turning me into a real crank. So I’m going to try to work from home as much as possible until I’m feeling less…in tiny2b’s words, stabby. Probably something my co-workers will rejoice over as I’m sure that even the least perceptive among them has noticed I’m about as friendly as a sack full of cobras these days.

No exercise…no excuses. I mean, I can come up with excuses, but what’s the point? We all know I can exercise & NEED to exercise every dern day.

Food today

Lunch: oops…skipped it
Snack around 4: hand full of nuts, piece of cheese, 4 pepperoni slices
Dinner: brussel sprouts, cucumber salad, roast chicken
Snack: I’m having a gin & diet tonic dagnabit! & loving it. It’s not induction-approved, but it’s no-carbs, so I decided to go for it tonight.
Snack: I’m thinking low-carb cheese cake! There’s a recipe for low-carb chocolate truffles I’m planning to try soon too. That should bring my mood around.

Hope everyone out there’s doing great!

Hubby emailed our friends to let them know I was atkins-ing it & offering to bring the entree, but I’m guessing he didn’t email until around noon yesterday.

So we arrive & I’ve already decided to treat myself to a beer. I’m half-way through the beer when what we’re having for dinner starts to emerge from pots & pans on the stove. Not exactly atkins-friendly: spaghetti with meatballs in red sauce with French bread, broccoli and cauliflower, & apple pie (well, the bottom crust was a pie-crust, the top was crisp). So…starch in the spaghetti, breadcrumbs in the meatballs, sugary tomato sauce, bread, and pie.

I immediately passed my remaining bottle of beer to hubby & did some “how not to offend” calculations. Took a small bit of the pasta & red sauce & didn’t eat a bite of it (just pushed it around my plate like a cranky 6-year old). Ate the meatballs & loaded up on the veggies, ignored the bread. But the pie was my friend’s special creation that he talked about all through dinner. So, unlike his skinny wife who told him to basically drop dead when he offered her a piece, I felt like I had to try it. He cut me a big honking piece before I could say “a sliver please.” I ate & enjoyed it. Gave about 1/3 of it to hubby to finish for me.

Okay, so a carb nightmare, but something good may have come out of it.

On the way home, hubby said, “not exactly a low-carb dinner, I guess they didn’t get the message.”

I said, “it’s fine, I can get back into fat-burning again.” (thinking: ugh!)

About twenty minutes passed & I heard him chuckle next to me, so I asked him what was funny & he said, “the carb thing.”

I said, “okay, but it’s no big deal, really.”

& he said, “no, I mean you have this huge plate of spaghetti & you serve bread on the side?! It seems like a lot of carbs.”

So I asked him if he was thinking of going low carb & he said he was wondering if he could do it! So…the trick now is for me to not bring it up again & just let him ruminate on the carb-tastic meal we had & figure out what he wants to do.

Lunch: jimmy johns unwich
Snack: stress, tension, and aggravation
Dinner: hand full of nuts (must stop doing that!). Home too late & too tired to make a real meal, so omelet with little onion, pepper, & cheese

Not as much as I’d like, and I’m really missing my 3.1 from last week, but any loss is a move in the right direction.

Eating at a friend’s house (in Indiana) tonight. We’ll get on the road soon. They know about my diet, so hopefully lasagna won’t be on the menu (lol), but I am planning on having a glass of wine or a beer. It’s been a couple of weeks on induction, so I’m ready to let loose for a night.

Lunch: meat out of 1/2 stuffed pepper, leftover spaghetti squash (gee, that’s a really leftover veg)

an unscheduled one.

Yeah, the kettlebell did me in & today I’m feeling it.

Last night I decided that kettlebell & runs would have to be on alternate days since the kettlebell wore me down, but now I’m wondering how to run on days when I’m recovering from the kettlebell. Oh wel…I’ll figure it out.

Lunch: 2 eggs, 2 sausage links, 1 & 1/2 slices tomato
Dinner: (early, starving) 1/2 stuffed pepper, green beans, cucumber squash
Snack: handful of nuts (bad) & later peppermint decaf tea & a mini cheesecake

Exercise: (see above)

Weight: weigh in tomorrow & an unofficial weigh in tells me it won’t be good

So I’ve been calling it a kettleball when it’s really a kettlebell. Oh well, whatever it’s called, it kicked my butt this morning.

I wanted one of these things because kettlebell lifts were always one of the hardest circuits during bootcamp…the hardest being “wall ball” (throw a heavy medicine ball against the wall over your head, catch it as you move into a squat, throw as you emerge from the squat & repeat until you pass out or throw up), but wall ball wouldn’t be good when the walls are drywall & plaster. So kettlebell it is.

I did the warmup (about 6 minutes) & a 9-minute routine (workout 1) on the DVD, regretting my decision to get the 10 pound kettlebell rather than the 5 pound one the whole time. Finished up with 20 minutes of pilates & decided a run would be better in the afternoon. Yeah, I’m a wimp.

Food:
Lunch: 2 eggs & cheddar cheese chip
Dinner: hubby’s bringing home some kind of meat, stuffed peppers, leftover green beans, cucumber salad

Exercise: 15 mins with kettle; 20 mins pilates; walk/run 21 mins (walk .05; run .55; walk .2; run .2; walk the remaining 21 mins); 20 minute walk with hubby & dog.

Have a great Saturday chicks!