For breakfast, Birchie, I eat an egg bake, often with shards of bacon embedded in it. Also plain yogurt. I also eat a home-made muffin with a lot of ricotta mixed into the batter.
I got called for jury duty on Monday. This coincides with my kicking off a project in which six production people in a branch of my company start migrating content off their web platform, soon to be decommissioned, and onto our company's site. (They'll be moving a total of 650 pieces of content, all pdfs or PowerPoint files.) My manager is NOT happy about this. But there's nothing to be done, as I already adjourned it once from January to March. I didn't know at the time that I'd be asked to manage & advise a content migration project that really launches on the first day of my duty. So I've had to arrange for a backup & need to orient that backup.
Tomorrow I have an hour-long training session with about 12 people, six of whom I don't know; an hour-long, tense meeting with a GVP who may or may not yell at my manager & also at me because he has no faith in the production workflow I've redesigned, and two separate hour-long interviews where I'll need to do most of the talking, and where the hiring manager will do all the listening. And a one-on-one with the direct report who melted down.
I will be glad for the weekend. Another ticket to a play on Sunday, Edward Albee's "Three Tall Women," starring Glenda Jackson!
I ended up staying home yesterday. I was simply drained of energy. I slept and sat and did absolutely nothing all day. Today, I feel more rested but the cold lingers on--especially the darn sore throat. I could do without that. I did rediscover my love of Irish Breakfast tea and had four mugs complete with my SIL's honey. Yum.
Thank you, Alice and saef, for more good ideas about protein. It's always good to be shaken out of one's rut!
Allison, do look after yourself. Tea and honey sound very good to me. I'm now in what I hope is the tail end of the flu: the post-viral cough. It's dry and quite exhausting and made worse by being in the cold and damp, talking and laughing. I am very ready to be fit and well but clearly it's not written, yet!
Allison and Birchie, sorry about the prolonged illnesses. DH came back home with a nasty cold - it's funny how I missed him so much for weeks, then he came home coughing and phlegmy and keeping me up all night, and I was ready for him to go away again
Jessica, way to go keeping strong in the work function! I struggle with turning down free food at those all day events; I try to only choose the healthy stuff but it's still not as good as bringing my own food would be.
I read an old post in a fitness blog that I follow, and it said something like "get it over with" in regard to weight loss. At first I laughed - maintainers know well that it doesn't end when you first lose the weight. But her explanation was that the anxiety and mental burden of wanting to lose weight is far greater than that of maintaining a healthy/ideal weight, so why not get to the latter stage as quickly as reasonably possible? It was a compelling idea. It reinforced the idea that either I get comfortable being the weight I am, or I get busy getting to the weight I want. Anything other than those two options is nonsensical.
I was so wiped out on Friday that I thought sleeping would be easy. But I woke up at 2:30 AM, thinking about work, and had to send off a couple emails. I went back to bed around 4 AM and slept some more before really waking up.
This is the first weekend where I haven't been working on something on deadline. I did work a little yesterday, after supper, updating a six-page reference document for our internal website, which is getting an overhaul. But I spent much of yesterday in cooking & catching up on domestic work. I didn't get moving much till the afternoon, feeling somewhat shellshocked.
JZJ, I'm not sure the mantra of "Get It Over With" would work with me. I hear that delivered in a sharp, drill sergeant voice, the one that says, "Get over it!" "Suck it up, buttercup!" "Just do it!" And my response to that tone isn't good. Mainly because my problem is not that I'm lazy or not self-disciplined. Oh no, that is not the issue with me at all.
JZJ, I'm not sure the mantra of "Get It Over With" would work with me. I hear that delivered in a sharp, drill sergeant voice, the one that says, "Get over it!" "Suck it up, buttercup!" "Just do it!" And my response to that tone isn't good. Mainly because my problem is not that I'm lazy or not self-disciplined. Oh no, that is not the issue with me at all.
Saef, I can definitely see how this comes across in an authoritarian way. I respond very badly to dictatorial instruction as well (perhaps because I'm ornery by nature; the one DietBet I tried, I actually GAINED weight). In this case though, I didn't read it that way just because I know the woman's backstory. She was markedly overweight and tired of being lectured by her doctor about caloric intake, high-calorie food, etc. She said "I KNOW all of this, that's not the problem; the problem is doing it". Her post was about that gap between knowing and doing. For her, the idea of "getting it over with" was an act of self-preservation, because the fear and dread of the weight loss process itself was taking its toll, in addition to the physical burden of being overweight.
There is a lot of emphasis on talking and planning by a lot of people in all walks of life. Some people even talk for a living. Most people spend a great deal of time on devices texting or talking. For them this is "doing stuff". It doesn't have much direct effect on their physical world, except maybe to get other people to change things in it.
There is less physical "doing" in general in the world. For me, with regard to weight loss, that physical doing is as necessary as the talking and planning part. And maintenance is even more so due to the tedious nature of doing the same stuff over and over again for the rest of my life with no result other than "my weight remains the same".
Thanks for raising the question of physical 'doing', Dagmar. I read and write a lot as part of my job, but I also 'do' quite a lot in the rest of my life. Or so I think. I could tell you that yesterday I mended and improved the wood shelter that blew over in the recent storms. Or that I made a banana and walnut loaf yesterday evening etc etc. It might do me good, though, to look more closely at how much I actually do, physically, and perhaps to adjust the balance. The result could be a less clogged up mind, and a clearer work and living space. And both of these, for me, would help with weight loss and maintenance.
I agree about the tedious nature of maintenance. Do you think it can safely go on automatic and perhaps fade into the background a little as other things take over? By other things I mean Dagmar's SUP, Andrea's gymnastics, JayZeeJay's ultras (is that right?), Michele's bikram yoga.
Off to do a full body workout in the kitchen with resistance bands and dumbbells.
Last edited by silverbirch; 03-12-2018 at 07:04 AM.
Birchie I have "automated" certain aspects of maintenance by doing things like eating the same foods for breakfast, lunch and snacks so I don't have to count cals or weigh stuff. My exercise component is largely taken care of by my work but I do make a point of adding things other than walking into the mix. I also try to do a routine before sleep to calm myself and try to stick to the same schedule of bedtime and waking times during the week and weekend, as a lot of the sleep studies say this is beneficial. That's about all the automation I have in my life and it's quite a lot I think. Boring but it works.
I also only weigh once a month (no specific day or date) and am not too concerned about the specific number as long as it's in my target range. Weighing all the time drove me nuts!
Agreed, Dagmar. I suppose I think/hope that this 'automation' opens up space for other things to happen. Although, I also suppose that one could become mired in the tedium of it all. Even fetishise it, perhaps.
So good not to weigh all the time if it drove you nuts. I mean, what is the earthly point of sending oneself nuts?
Hey folks, I finally broke through my plateau at 152 and saw 151 a couple of days, but then yesterday I had a sodium-heavy (and calorie-heavy) restaurant dinner and today I'm at 153. I'm pretty confident it's water weight though and should come off in a couple days. This week I have a work lunch that will be a moderate challenge, but I'll need to take a lot of notes during the lunch (it's with a customer) so that should stop me from eating too much. Next week I'm in Toronto for business and will have a much bigger challenge keeping calories in check.
The weather is still cold but I definitely feel like spring has sprung! I hear birds chirping in the mornings, the air is crisp and clear, and I feel ready to get outside and start running again, possibly biking. My bike didn't even make it out of the garage last year. But I'm planning to buy the kids bicycles for their 5th birthday (with training wheels of course) so family bike rides will be in our future. There are a lot of bike paths around my house so it's a good place for it.
This morning when I walked outside I just had a whole lot of memories of morning runs and bike rides when I was doing triathlons. I miss that. I haven't done morning exercise in ages because I've felt crunched between wanting to have time to myself in the evenings, wanting to sleep, and getting to work on time, but then I thought: how did I used to manage it? The answer is that if I run in the morning, and get to work at 8:30 instead of 8:00, then I just have to shave half an hour off my lunch break if I want to still leave at 5. Well, the only reason I need a whole hour for lunch is so that I have time to work out, but if I did it in the morning I don't need to do it at lunch! So I think I might change up my schedule and start doing morning runs again. I need to add back strength training too, but I feel like every time I do it I mess up my wrist, and I don't want to deal with that. I need to find a better way, though I'm not sure what that would be.
I saw something extraordinary yesterday, and that was Glenda Jackson in the revival of Albee's "Three Tall Women." Oh, what a heart-stopper. I go to plays and musicals, and I enjoy myself, but this was something else, on another plane entirely. This is a reason for living & going on.
Birchie and Dagmar, I think that's how my maintenance has turned out. I've automated work breakfast and lunch to be more or less the same few choices, so they're nearly effortless. As maintenance alone doesn't offer the same exciting opportunities for growth and change as weight loss ("A whole new you!"), I've looked to athletic activities for growth and progress. Of course, that opened up a can of worms - I'd be a faster and less injured runner if I could get more weight off. Plus, I was mountain biking Sunday with a slender younger friend, and I couldn't help but think "if I was thinner I'd be cornering better". Etc.
Birchie and Dagmar, I think that's how my maintenance has turned out. I've automated work breakfast and lunch to be more or less the same few choices, so they're nearly effortless. As maintenance alone doesn't offer the same exciting opportunities for growth and change as weight loss ("A whole new you!"), I've looked to athletic activities for growth and progress. Of course, that opened up a can of worms - I'd be a faster and less injured runner if I could get more weight off. Plus, I was mountain biking Sunday with a slender younger friend, and I couldn't help but think "if I was thinner I'd be cornering better". Etc.
We do what we can JayZee depending on where we are in our lives yes? I tried slowly jogging about 4 years ago - used to do 8K per day with my other dog when I was in my 30's - and promptly pulled a groin muscle. No more jogging for my body.
But then I found SUP. I will enjoy doing that with my new inflatable easier to carry board this summer. When that ends I will find something else.
I'm happy to be out there every day moving. Doesn't have to be fast, or graceful, or intense. Just as long as I'm out there . . .
