Good luck with the exam, saef. May you overcome the tension of a medical visit with a lawyer present.

Good luck, Saef. Give it your all at physical therapy so you'll be able to show some pain and swelling at the exam!

Yes, as Alice says. Go for it.

Thanks, there was indeed some swelling and a slight edge of pain for the good doctor, who started off the appointment by asking me inappropriate questions about what crosswalk signals I saw -- which my lawyer answered for me. (She was in the exam room with me.)

My lawyer said that the insurance company probably wants to stop having to pay for my physical therapy sessions. She thought from the doctor's words that he would recommend their continuance -- but we'll see.

My lawyer also said that the doctor is looking for malingerers, but I'm hardly that.

Tuesday, a day with five on-camera meetings. Thank goodness for my haircut over the past weekend.

Weigh-in: Post intake, post outtake: 143.6

Today's Meals:

Breakfast: Ham, broccoli and spinach egg bake; home-made banana raisin muffin; strawberries and yogurt
Lunch: Arugula salad, roasted vegetables, almonds, half an avocado, shredded nonfat mozzarella
Dinner: Corned beef, overly cooked mushy cabbage, carrots, celery (because when my weight is low, I've got to eat something SALTY AS HECK!)
Dessert: Bag of Bare Fruit cinnamon apple chips

Today's Exercise:

Front leg raise 3x20, Lateral leg raise 3x20, Side clams 3x20, Lateral leg raise 3x20, Bicycle 3x20, Kickback 3x20 and High knee 3x20.

At the gym: 15 minutes recumbent bike, random hills, resistance at five; upper body weights routine, all the same as on Saturday except struggling with hammer curls of 17.5-lb dumbbells while seated

I understand this very well.

Today is day 3 of no energy drinks. I picked a relatively easy week to try to do this but now I've had a curve thrown at me. Not surprising - life tends to do that.

A difficult former client has shown up again. I won't go into the details of what lasted for over 8 years but I was really hoping I was done with this person. But no. I hope I finally can get this over with today.

I have gotten pretty good at recognizing addictive behaviour in myself. I was waaay over the top with the energy drinks and today proves it. My first thought, after hearing this former client's voice on the phone was "since I have to do this extra thing this afternoon I better get a couple of cans of e drinks to get through it."

I have a long way to go to wrestle caffeine to the ground. And I thought alcohol was hard! But I can do this afternoon without e drinks or extra coffee or tea. And I will try to avoid overeating after this afternoon.

Dagmar (trying to be )

Dagmar, my vice is chewing through entire packs of sugarfree peppermint gum when I get anxious. Best of luck with fighting the desire to reach for an energy drink. I'd probably abuse coffee but too much caffeine makes my hands shake and my heart pound, and ingesting even more gives me a near-hysterical feeling. Are you physically affected in that way, or do you think you've been desensitized?

Wednesday, I'm still alive, after a wretched night's sleep haunted by to-do items from my SEVEN meetings yesterday.

No weigh-in.

Today's Meals:

Breakfast: Ham, broccoli and spinach egg bake; pumpkin steel-cut oats; strawberries and blueberries with yogurt
Lunch: Mixed greens salad, roasted vegetables, half an avocado, walnuts and cheese shreds
Dinner: Lentil soup with more cheese on top
Dessert: Bag of Bare Fruit cinnamon apple chips

Today's Exercise:

Front leg raise 3x20, Lateral leg raise 3x20, Side clams 3x20, Lateral leg raise 3x20, Bicycle 3x20, Kickback 3x20 and High knee 3x20.

Physical therapy: 12 minutes on Cybex elliptical; 4x12 hamstring curl & quad raises; 4x12 adductor and abductor; 3x10 body weight lunges, holding onto two side-by-side examination tables for balance; 12 minutes walking on treadmill, at just 1.5 mph.

Inhuman.

saef I do go into a strange physical state when I've had too much caffeine from coffee - shaking, heart pounding, and breaking into a cold sweat. The energy drinks are that much more seductive in that they don't do that to me but DO give me the adrenaline "high" I think I need to get through the day. Sometimes they make me feel like I'm floating outside my body - very disconcerting.

I got through the grocery run without buying any. This afternoon's meeting might not happen anyway - this person likes to cancel or pretend they were "busy" and didn't hear their phone when I called to see if I could stop by. I'm not a fan of these types of power games but I have to see this one through because of possible blow back to my reputation as a dogwalker.

Never work for crazy people. Walk away. I will tell myself this if I get such a client again.

Dagmar

Yes, time spent with people is far more exhausting than time spent alone working on text.

I've now begun interviewing job candidates. I volunteered to speak with some people that aren't really qualified for the job, only because they are internal candidates, and I wanted to give them an idea of what skills they'd need to become truly viable candidates. My manager often talks about "telling our story" to the rest of the company. It's like doing PR work for our department.

There are long-term gains there, but in the short term, it eats up my time and energy.

Thursday, interviewing two job candidates on the phone, but with just one on-camera meeting, and that with my direct report, the one who's struggling.

Weigh-in: Post intake, post outtake: 144.3. Up, naturally. Because I can't have nice things like 143 lbs.

Today's Meals:

Breakfast: Ham, broccoli and spinach egg bake; pumpkin steel cut oats; blackberries and yogurt
Lunch: Mixed spring greens salad, roasted vegetables, almonds, half an avocado and some ricotta cheese on top
Dinner: Steak, steamed asparagus, roasted butternut squash and sauteed mushrooms
Dessert: Bag of Bare Fruit cinnamon apple chips (my second-to-last bag!)

Today's Exercise:

Front leg raise 3x20, Lateral leg raise 3x20, Side clams 3x20, Lateral leg raise 3x20, Bicycle 3x20, Kickback 3x20 and High knee 3x20.

At the gym: 20 minutes recumbent bike, the difficult one, resistance at five & random hills; my usual upper body weight routine, upping to 27.5-lb dumbbells for rows and for chest flys, but dropping to 15 lb dumbbells for hammer curls.

Hanging in there... barely...

Tonight is our "night event" for the book fair so I'm here for approx 14 hours. Ugh. Tomorrow we "close" at noon (I say "close" because it's a mad rush at the end and we're lucky to close at one)-- then we have to pack it all up. After that, I have all the financials to do and try to turn the library back into a library for Monday. Somewhere I need to make plans for my classes next week.... Still plowing through some of the Read-a-thon stuff too.

Dd brought me lunch today-- sweet-- but I'm puffed way up from all the sodium. I think we'll get sushi tonight-- more sodium. I'll be majorly detoxing next week!!!

Probably going to see PUPPIES on Saturday!!!!! Cannot wait!!!

Friday, and it's snowing hard on the first day of Spring.

I've got just one interview, and I've handed in the document that Oracle is going to review. But I still have some minor things to catch up on, even though I'm yawning at my desk.

No weigh-in

Today's Meals:

Breakfast: Ham, broccoli and spinach egg bake; pumpkin steel cut oats; strawberries and yogurt
Lunch: Mixed spring greens salad, cold asparagus, walnuts, half an avocado and some ricotta cheese and Craisins on top
Dinner: Meat from an overly salty and dried-out grocery store rotisserie chicken, steamed green beans, steamed broccoi and a sweet potato
Dessert: Bag of Bare Fruit cinnamon apple chips -- the last one

Today's Exercise:

Front leg raise 3x20, Lateral leg raise 3x20, Side clams 3x20, Lateral leg raise 3x20, Bicycle 3x20, Kickback 3x20 and High knee 3x20.

Physical therapy: 12 minutes on the elliptical, with resistance upped; 4x12 leg raise/hamdstring curl; 4x12 abductor/adductor; 12 minutes high-stepping over small orange cones.

I'm going to have to start weighing myself more often. I knew I'd been putting on weight but now I am up over 140 lbs. and it's time to reign things in. I'm not going to set a new higher winter weight for myself. Time to get back down into 135-138 range.

For me calorie counting has always worked. So I'm doing a modified version - I'm not logging everything I eat but will trim back the snack and the carbs at dinner cals.

Tonite I'm packing my own carefully counted out bag of pretzels to the movie we're going to see. No other snack tonite and no carbs with dinner.

Dagmar