self.

In the midst of all this school and work, I feel like I've started to lose a lot of the things about myself that I love. The extra weight I've taken on in the past year doesn't help too much with that.

I've noticed that I have stopped identifying as an "athlete" or something who values exercise. I think the idea is still there, I definitely do VALUE exercise, I just might not do it.... at least not consistently.

At the core of all of this turn-around, this life improvement state, I've managed to move somewhat latterally. Sure, I've finally enrolled in school and sure, I'm actually doing well. I've somehow managed not to lose my job in the process and I've also taken the time to shake things up enough at work that some genuine change might happen with the things that have been stressing me out about it.

What's 10 pounds when the rest of that is going on?

Well, it's weight. And it's more than physical weight, it's mental weight.

As I move up the scale, I seem to be creeping down emotionally. I feel less confident, which allows my anxiety to take over more often than it does not. It creates barriers between me and my manpanion. It creates comparisons between me and other women, things I had an easier time ignoring when I felt really great about my body and my health.

I've been trying to recenter. I've been trying to revisit the times I was happiest and try to mentally arrange them to see the factors that must be missing now.

I know everyone says you have to live "in the moment." I'm awful at this, admittedly. I'd love to learn how, but I am such a planner, and ambitious to a fault, that it's dififcult for me not to have my eye on some prize.

The good part is, one thing that I recognize, is that I was happy when I was taking care of myself and being active. Most of my best memories from the past 2 years all involve moving. Cartwheels, square dancing, two-person-bike-races... momentum.

I am experimenting this week, with block-walking. Each time I feel stressed, regardless of the weather, I will suit up and walk around the block. I think the fresh air will help to clear my head and get a new perspective, plus I'm moving instead of reaching for the gelato.

I'm hopeful this will assist in breaking some [bad] habits and building a new one.

chug chug chug.

My posture is still awful, but I have achieved a new milemarker in my return to a healthy lifestyle: the gym.

The gym.

I hadn't set foot inside my gym since August 4th. Between getting ready for school and then being IN school, I didn't feel that I had the time to make for a "real" workout.

But I changed my expectations.

What is a "real" workout?

Why shouldn't I just get there, 12 times at least, to earn my discount. My health insurance isn't tracking whether I spend an hour lifting weights, or put in serious effort on the StepMill. They, like SCIENCE, simply want me to move my body at least 12 times a month.

Well!

I can do that.

This month, November, I pledged to earn my discount again. Today is the 8th and I have been to the gym 3 times. That is ALMOST every other day, which is a good track record considering I was out of town this last weekend, and will be out of town next weekend... and the weekend after. Because I've been out of the "intentional exercise" game for some time, I'm easing back into it. I've started couch to 5k again, a program I've never actually completed despite having run several 5ks. I began at week 1, which I am going to be on day 3 of when I head to the gym later this evening. I'm not as physically out of shape as I had thought, proven by the ease of week 1. This is assuring and encouraging.

I have been putting in little more than 30 minutes at a time in the gym, which - to me - doesn't feel like a "real workout" but my opinion is slowly changing. I am moving more than I was before, even if it's only by 30 minutes, and this is a vast improvement.

On the excusing side, I've started to forgive my insatiable appetite after I learned that your brain uses a LOT of your daily calories. It makes sense, then, that because I am intentionally using my brain - all the damn time, and way more than I used to - I'm hungrier. I suppose this makes sense in the way that if I suddenly started training for a marathon, I'd be hungrier. My brain is the one running this time.

My solution to this, though, is that I need to keep healthier volume snacks on hand. I need to find a good back up for cheese and crackers, ice cream and other not-so-healthy snacks.

I'm thinking popcorn, the best seasonal fruits, and low-cal hot cocoa. We'll see if I can trick myself into snacking well while I study.

What are your favorite healthy snacks?

coast.

I had to call my gym the other day to figure something out with my billing cycle. In doing that, I was surfing around in my online profile and membership information and noticed that I haven't been to the gym since August 4th.

That's a really long time.

I've been in school, I've been working, and I've been slightly active. I ride my bike (sometimes... not as often), I climb stairs, I walk to the market, and I go dancing with my manpanion, but I have gained back everything I lost during the couple of weeks when I was working hard.

I'm still at the weight that I've maintained for the last year.

I need to get to the gym.

What would you do if you only had 30 minutes to work out?

Whew.

I haven't had the time to update, really.

Between work, which is really picking up, and school, which is steadily crazy, and my semblance of a life, which is sporadic at best, I've been scheduled out.

With "life" being super hectic, I haven't been focusing on my goals. I have been cooking for myself, however, but many times skipping "real" meals and opting for too much of a tasty snack. SmartPuffs, specifically, have become a major crutch. Luckily, even when I eat the whole bag, it's still equivalent to a "normal" healthy meal in the range of calories, though it does not put much nutrition into the mix. It has some protein.... sort of.

I have a healthy bag of excuses, all of which are acceptable to me, but are enabling me to continue down the path of stress eating - a habit I still haven't been able to squelch in the dozen years I've been working on it.

WHY is food so powerful? Why is it so comforting? Why can't I just take a hot shower instead of inhaling a bag of delicious cheesy curls?

Well, I can.

I'm simply choosing not to.

...though it doesn't feel like a choice when it's happening.

I feel like I don't have the TIME to choose to do something else. Where I'd opt for a brisk walk in our newly chilly MN weather, I honestly can't spare the half hour, because I need it to read and take notes on a piece of the chapter that I need to understand, or I need to edit a paper, or respond to a reading.

I'm halfway through my first semester of college, and I've gained about 2 pounds, but it's the same 2 pounds I've been losing and gaining for the last year, I'm just not really losing it again these last 3 weeks.

A couple of holidays are coming up - which is always dangerous for us Westerners. Halloween involves tons of cheap and readily available candy, and Thanksgiving means a GIANT meal, many times over.

Halloween is less terrifying. I'm not a very big fan of chocolate, which rules out most of the leftover fun-sized treats that coworkers pawn off on the office. As long as I don't buy any thing (Swedish fish, for example), I should be good.

Thanksgiving, however, lasts about 3 weeks. Between one side of my family gathering on the 19th of November for a weekend at my sister's cabin, Dinner with my Dad on the actual Holiday, and a weekend at Paul's family cabin... I have a lot of strategizing to do.

Everyone contributes something, so I can control the health factor of my own dish. I chose stuffing, which is typically the scariest thing on the table (for me). However, there will be pie. Dozens of pies. Pumpkin pies, which are my Achilles heel. SO DELICIOUS.

What do I do?

Failed Relaxation

Yesterday's #30daysofgood challenge was to RELAX.

It sounded like such a great goal, one I could easily accomplish in small increments. However, I wasn't able to accomplish it, and that fact alone has been bothering me.

When I received my email from GOOD in the morning, stating the days intent, I immediately found a space in my schedule and entered in time for a walk. By the time that task rolled around, there was simply too much else to do.

I ended up running around like a chicken with my head cut off all day, and when all the work and (most of) the homework was done, I was cooking dinner for myself and my manpanion while he did his homework and we both scrambled to get enough done so that we could square dancing.

Now, I could try to fit square dancing into my RELAXation goal, but square dancing isn't all that relaxing. In fact, it's pretty good exercise. There's a lot of bouncing and twirling and more bouncing. Some day, I'll have to wear my HRM to a square dancing night so I can report back an accurate calories burned count.

There are, however, some ways in which I can tie square dancing into my RELAXation goal. For one, it was social. I saw a few friends I hadn't had time to schedule in, and we caught up. I also got to get in close and be swung around by my manpanion, something that - while not relaxing at the time - provides a sense of relaxation during this transition period of becoming adult students and losing a lot of the time (which was still infrequent) that we could spend together. So, having time to be close to him to carry with me when there's a large gap is extremely relaxing.

Also, I got so tuckered out by dancing around for 2.5 hours, that I fell asleep instantly upon hitting the pillow, and I slept like a baby.

So hard, in fact, that I slept through my alarm - something that hasn't happened to me in about 5 years.

I somehow managed to get up, get ready and get out the door, making it to work 17 minutes later. That makes me feel like a champ. Of course it helps that I was able to drive to work, and I'm only 3 miles away from my office, but still.

As for the food intake, I didn't have time to track my dinner last night, so I'm not quite sure where I ended the day. I need to enter a new recipe into SparkPeople's recipe builder and determine the exact calorie content, but when I tracked my last food, I still had 800 calories left to hit the BOTTOM of my goal. Pair that with square dancing and I'd assume I came under that.

Because I overslept, I didn't allow myself enough time to eat a real breakfast, so I grabbed my coffee and a banana and ran. Not without packing a pear and a hardboiled egg for an emergency snack when I inevitably become ravenous around 10am.

The evening is packed with homework, but I've rescheduled my walk into the late afternoon and I'm going to try to put some priority into this. I haven't been very active (save for square dancing and riding my bike), and I feel the need to allow my muscles to MOVE.

We're having a crazy Indian Summer here in Minneapolis, are you still playing and working outside?

first weekend on track.

Sunday is drawing to a close. The sun has already set here in Minneapolis and a new week begins tomorrow, signifying the end of my first week keeping my eye on my eating habits.

I have to say that it went splendidly. Even though I encountered a potential roadblock yesterday when I accompanied my manpanion and his 4 year old son to a 5 year old's birthday party at Grand Slam. This place is like a more active Chuck E. Cheese, so.. it could have been worse.

I made time in the morning to be sure to eat a healthy and filling breakfast while I studied. I selected my fail-proof Scottish Oats with a dab of honey and some almond milk. Picking at this around 9am kept me sated until around 2:30pm when we finally ate. This was one mistake: I should have brought a healthy snack along, because after bouncing in a castle, hitting 65 mph baseballs (seriously! I played baseball on a boys team as a youngster), and Dance Dance Revolutionizing without eating since 9am, I was starving. The party was serving pizza (eeek) and I managed to stuff 3 pieces into my mouth before I decided that I was full. I had, however, been full since the first slice as I don't care for pizza very much (I know) and I don't typically enjoy melted cheese (I KNOW).

I tracked each slice, and also the small square of cake I decided to indulge in, which really was hilariously small. The moms in the group looked at me like "Who are you kidding? What are you trying to prove?" but I carried on with my extremely comical bite of cake. It was exactly how much I wanted and it tasted better because of it.

After such a heavy lunch, I was feeling a little sick as I studied into the night over at Paul's house. Around 7:30pm, he brought me the most perfect plate of food to ensure I still ate something, but intuited that I wouldn't want anything more than exactly what he brought me, which was essentially what I'd been dreaming about the entire time I was reading about Perception and the Senses (Psychology).

Red and Yellow Peppers, Pluot, Kiwi, Rice Crackers with Brie

I hadn't really communicated with Paul much about my decision to keep a stricter eye on my food, especially because last week's decision wasn't really a decision to DIET, or restrict anything I was eating... yet. I just wanted to develop the habit of tracking all of my food intake again, which is something that correlates with healthier eating for me. I'm proud to say he noticed on his own. Just look at that dinner he brought me! It was a perfect accompaniment to an afternoon of heavy eating and because he provided such a healthy meal, even with the cake and pizza I still came in under 1600 calories for the day. That's without counting any of the calories I bounced off at Grand Slam.

I'm really looking forward to this week and reinforcing my habit of tracking all of my food.

Are you looking forward to anything in the upcoming week?

truckin.

I'm still truckin' along. While I never expected to form habits in such a short amount of time, I've lost sight of my goals OFTEN this week, but somehow always manage to draw myself back in quickly, which is a very nice change.

A friend of mine posted about Good's 30 Day Health Challenge. It's not a diet, it's not a pledge to exercise daily, it's simply an email - every day for 30 days - to remind and instruct you to do something healthy. They mentioned something about naps.... so of course I signed up.

Now I'll have some new daily tasks throughout October, and perhaps some of them will be so wonderful I'll add them to my current goals (of posture and food tracking).

Speaking of October, it's going to be CROCKTOBER. More about that later.