It’s all up to me

I was just reading a fitness magazine and a suggestion was given to help make it through the holiday eating.  Save the splurges for something really special, but if it’s food you have seen in the last 2 weeks let it go by.  If you are only exposed to pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving then go for it, but if someone offers you a sugar cookie during the Christmas season odds are they are everywhere so let them go by.  For me, one special food is my mom’s poppyseed bread.  We only have it at Christmas, so if I let it pass by I will have to wait until next Christmas.  But the other stuff isn’t all that special so it can wait.

I’ll try to apply this approach to the Halloween candy tonight as well.  And tonight might be more of a challenge because my sitter called and she’s sick so I need to pick up the kids right after school instead of having the time to workout.  I still plan to fit in 30 minutes or so but even if I can’t workout I need to stay focused on the eating.

Well, the drama from yesterday is hopefully long gone.  The DHS worker went to my sister-in-law’s house and saw within the first minute that the boys were being well taken care of.  We are going to try to see if there is a way to charge the guy who made the claim with making a false claim.  My guess is we can’t but it’s worth looking into.

On the dieting front, today is Halloween which brings a million temptations.  I only bought candy that I don’t like to eat so if we have leftovers I won’t eat them.  And I am going to allow myself 3 pieces of my boys’ candy.  I would love to say I’m going to get through the day without eating any, and that will still be my goal.  But since I generally have an all or nothing viewpoint I don’t want to let 1 little piece of candy allow me to go off the deep end.

Otherwise the week is going fairly well.  I haven’t been perfect and I didn’t exercise yesterday since I only got 2 hours of sleep the night before but I will be exercising before trick-or-treating tonight.  That will help me to maintain my focus.

Life is never easy.  It’s now nearly 1 am and I’m on the computer instead of sleeping.  Both of my boys have ear infections so I’m up with the baby who just can’t sleep.  I don’t know if I slept much before he got up due to some of the drama in our life.  I’ll try to give a 5 second snapshot just because it’s so completely unbelievable.  And I promise, I am not exaggerating one tiny bit.

It all revolves around my husband’s sister and her pending divorce.  Her husband’s family is crazy and I mean clinically.  There have been harassing/threatening/profane phone calls, restraining orders, lying, etc.  This Sunday during their open house someone distracted the realtor in the basement while someone else paintballed the exterior and smeared grease on the carpet in the living room.  The realtor couldn’t remember enough about the person who distracted him to give a description to the police so they are not optimistic that they are going to be able to solve the crime. 

Then tonight our phone rang and it was DHS.  My husband’s sister is our babysitter (and a fantastic one at that) but a member of his family called DHS saying that she is neglecting and harming our kids.  I explained everything to the intake worker and she seemed to realize that it’s a bogus claim but of course she has to complete the investigation so she’s going to their house tomorrow and to our house on Saturday.  She stressed that WE are not under investigation, the reporter only had a problem with my sister-in-law.  The worst part of this is he is an awful father and there have been issues with abuse in their household in the past.  And we’re angry because he’s using our son’s illness to try to get back at my sister-in-law.

So that brings us back to now.  I’m blogging instead of eating because that is what I want to do right now.  Not even so much due to the stress but due to the fact that I’m hungry.  But the baby is starting to yawn so hopefully he’ll be back in bed within the hour.  And since I get up a little after five it’s going to be a short night.

I promise everything I wrote was true and the sad thing is this isn’t even the half of it.  But I am going to use this as a personal challenge to show that I can make good choices and get through this still

After the official weigh-in this  morning I’m down 3 pounds for the week.  I know I should be happy (especially given the crappy food I ate all weekend) but of course I want more.  I think this week, though, I should finally be able to get on an exercise regimen.  Today after school I have an appt. with my therapist but I should still be able to get in at least 20 minutes on the treadmill; not a ton but enough to keep me focused througout the night.  And then the rest of the week I don’t think there are any obstacles.  I will even have time to workout on Halloween, I just might have to cut it a bit short.  So at least I’m heading in the right direction, my goal for next Monday is to be down to 285.

Wow, what a week.  I am so thankful it’s Friday, although the lack of routine on the weekend is sometimes a challenge for me.  Yesterday went pretty well again until evening when I gobbled up many pieces of the candy my husband “hid” in the cupboard.  I really need him to join me on this diet quest again, we both did very well when we were in it together.  But every day is a new day so I’m going to let last night’s poor choices roll off my back and focus on all of the good I did yesterday.

Yesterday went pretty well until evening.  Best of all my son’s neuro appt. was positive and the doctor said he looks very healthy.  But I stuck to my eating plan all day.  Unfortunately we did not get home in time for me to exercise which threw everything off for me.  I ate a wonderful supper (chicken breast, green beans, tomato) but later was hungry and stumbled upon the candy my husband has stashed.  I didn’t go overboard which I suppose is a victory in itself.

I need to find the resolve to stick to the plan even when I can’t exercise because I’m not going to be able to today, either.  My son has his 18 mo. appt right after school and then the entire family has haircuts.  Fortunately next week all of the meetings and appts. are over so I can get back to focusing on me.

Has anyone out there worked out with both Turbo Jam and the FIRM?  I am a huge fan of the FIRM and it has been very successful for me in the past but when I was up in the middle of the night last night I saw the informercial for Turbo Jam and was impressed by the “fact” that you can burn up to 1000 calories in an hour.  I’m always a bit leery of infomercials, especially the “up to” part.  Sure, I can burn “up to” 1000 calories but that also means if I only burn 200 that they haven’t lied.

Just curious.

Today will be a good test of my new resolve.  Our younger son hasn’t been sleeping well and last night was no exception, I have been up since 3:45.  And instead of having a regular day where I can stick to my schedule we are taking him to see his neurologist.  It’s just a regular check-up so I’m not expecting anything crazy to happen but the last time we went for a regular check-up we walked out of her office with a surgery scheduled.  It will be good to talk to her, though, since he has had 2 major seizures and tons of little ones since we saw her in April.

So I won’t have access to my regular snacks and we will be on the road during lunch time.  To account for this I just ate a bigger than average breakfast to keep me full longer.  I am going to pack a ton of snacks in the diaper bag and if we absolutely have to stop somewhere I can always get a burger and just not eat the bun.  Not the healthiest I realize but it beats the alternative.  Then when we get home there should be enough time to exercize before we pick up our older son.  I won’t be able to get in a workout tomorrow because I had already scheduled the baby’s 18 mo appt before I got back on my program but missing one workout isn’t going to sink the ship.

When I was working out yesterday I realized how much I missed it.  I feel so strong afterward and it really is a de-stresser for me.  And I love the little bit of soreness I feel today, it serves as a reminder that I did something healthy yesterday and I don’t want to sabotage it by making bad choices.

Here I am again, starting over.  But this time I feel like I finally have a workable plan in place.  Everything for me hinges on being able to exercise on a consistent basis and the previous plans of getting up at 4 am or having my hubby watch the kids while I worked out just weren’t realistic.  Finally, we decided to pay my sister-in-law extra to keep the kids an extra hour every day.  This way my hubby can pick them up and I will be available to exercise from 3:00-4:30 Monday-Thursday.  This is also my weak time for eating so it will kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

So here are my “new” starting stats:

<>Weight–291, Size 24/26.  My  ultimate goal is to be a size 6/8 and I would guess my weight will be around 150 (I am 5′7″ and I do honestly have a lot of muscle).  But since that goal seems sooooo far away I’m going to break it down.  My first goal is to lose 15 pounds by Thanksgiving with my 2nd mini-goal as being down 25 by New Year’s.  Historically the 1st 10 pounds comes off pretty easily for me so this is something that is do-able.

I also now having things a bit more under control at school so I will be able to devote 5-10 minutes every morning to blogging, it helps to keep me honest.  I plan to spend some time reading everyone else’s blogs as well.

I feel so great to finally have my life under control again.  I’ll talk to you soon,

Brandie

As usual, life has been less than calm in our household.  Our son had surgery last Thursday and it went very well.  It was an outpatient procedure so we were home Thursday afternoon.  Thursday evening, however, he had another seizure.  We were in the hospital from Thursday until last Saturday.  The doctors think he had another major seizure because of problems with his medication so hopefully now that they have modified his meds he should stop having the big seizures.  He still has the little, spacing-out kind of seizures but they don’t put him in the hospital.

Sitting in the hospital I had a lot of time to think and I think we finally have a plan worked out that will allow me to be successful even with all of the chaos in our lives.  I tried getting up early this week and that lasted for one day.  The next night my son was up for 3 hours and I was not up for getting up and exercising when I was exhausted.  I finally feel rested again after 3 nights of ok sleep but I had to accept that getting up early wasn’t going to cut it.

We have worked out a plan with our sitter (my sister-in-law) that she will keep the kids an extra hour every day so I can work out after school.  I can be home by 3:00 and my husband and the kids won’t be home until 4:45 which will give me time to exercise every day.  When I lost 70 pounds 2 years ago this was the set-up we had.  I would come home directly after school and do a tape for 45 minutes and then hop on the treadmill for 45 minutes.  Beyond burning the calories, this is my prime time for overeating so I’m hoping I’ll see results fairly quickly.  If I gain any more weight I won’t have any clothes that fit and I will NOT buy bigger pants.

The plan starts Tuesday because my son has a follow-up appointment from his seizure on Monday.  Since I won’t be able to exercise on Monday I’m going to make sure I get a workout in on Sunday evening; I don’t want to have an excuse to eat poorly just because I didn’t exercise.

I finally feel like I’m getting a handle on things.  Wish me luck,

Brandie