We took little pupper-dog in for his surgery this morning, and the eye guy said, "He's all healed up! No surgery!" OMG. I cannot tell you how grateful I was. That saved us stress, worries, and a whole lot of cash. We then managed to get him to the vet for some proper meds for his itchies. He's got the itchies, and we're systematically eliminating causes.
So it was a GREAT and happy morning. Pup was romping and galloping around the parking lots and being ultra good with the doctors, and it actually looked like he was smiling. He's such a cutie-patootie. My smiley guy. He was so incredibly happy today. I love to see him like that. :)
Once we jumped that hurdle, the lack of sleep and a really bad food day yesterday has caught up with me, and now I'm like a tightly wound ball of snappiness. I'm sure it's from lack of sleep. A nap would help me out, but I feel like I can't fit one in.
The plan for today was to just get through the day. As soon as we woke up, we were out the door. Today I have eaten a bowl of cherrios and one 100-calorie pack of fudge stripes. I won't get into what I ate yesterday, but to say I'm a bit nutritionally unbalanced would be an understatement. I'm A LOT unbalanced. I need to even out and stuff myself with vegetables. I imagine that would help my mood as well.
I'm trying something new today. I want to wait until I feel hungry before I eat anything. After my food fest yesterday, I want to recognize what being hungry feels like. It seems like I should be feeling hungry by this point, but I'm not. I think I'll plan out my meal anyway so once I get snackish I'll have a plan. I am going to cook a boneless/skinless chicken breast and pair it with some honey mustard and a wheat bun. I'll have an ear of sweet corn and some asparagus to go along with it. Sounds kinda like a plan!
I think I need to lay down. But as odd as it is at 4:00 in the afternoon, I'm going to take a bath instead. I'm going to relax. And then if I feel like laying down for a nap, I'm going to. Right now I think the best thing for me to do is to put my brain to rest. It's starting to hurt.
The few days I neglected to plan were the days I didn't stay on plan. Not nutritiously on plan, anyway.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were good cardio days at 60 minutes a pop. I didn't overdo it, but made sure my heart rate was elevated and challenged. Last night was tough to stay on the treadmill. I had to force myself to do it. I think all the bad that's crept up this week has me feeling guilty when I try to do something for myself. It's like I start to enjoy my moment, and then realize all the stuff that's going on around me, and I start to cry again and get fearful. I dunno. There's a lot going on in my head that I can't quite bring together. Most of it doesn't make sense yet.
In spite of the events of the week, I haven't gone completely overboard. I haven't eaten any of my standard binge foods, and I did get three days of cardio. I'm thinking I'll do a little today, too, since I nibbled on BF's late-night dinner plate last night. :( shame. on. me. BUT, as long as I do some exercise to counter the nibbling, I won't feel guilty.
I billed out twice this week than what I normally bill out. That will help offset costs for pupper's eye surgery. His eye "appears" to be doing well, and I'm not sure if I should be lured into a false sense of security that he will be able to keep they eye, but I am feeling pretty positive about it. They told us to worry if he started to appear sickly or if it developed mucous or started bleeding. None of that so far! He's bouncing around like kangaroo. I've got my fingers crossed.
Since I slept most of my day away and didn't get out of bed until 11:00 (!!!), I haven't even had breakfast yet. I'm thinking since it's lunchtime, I might just want to start with lunch. I hate that I lost half the day, but when I went to bed last night, I decided I was going to stay there until I felt like getting up. I woke at 7:00 and laid there for almost two hours trying to will myself back to sleep. Now I just wish I'd gotten out of bed at 7:00. lol. I hate losing the day like that. Hate it!
Saturday plan:
Breakfast: Hard-boiled egg and hazelnut coffee. I'm going to eat it as an appetizer for lunch and call it breakfast. hehe.
Lunch: Tuna sandwich on wheat bun. I've missed this the last couple days. My only problem is that I was unable to find the super low-calorie wheat buns, so I had to go with something else that had more calories. I hate that! I've got a cucumber I'm going to slice up to go with my sammich.
Dinner: I've got some ground round in there that needs to be cooked. I'm thinking a grilled hamburger for dinner.... with a wheat bun, of course. I'll pair it with..... heck, I dunno.... I've got some celery in there! That could work. I'll eat my last two kiwis as dessert.
Snacks: Sugar-free fudgesicle, sugar-free jello, california cuties, or applesauce.
That should do it. I'm planning my exercise for sometime between lunch and dinner. I am weird about getting on the treadmill after I eat at night. I did that last night, and I just felt like sludge.
Have a great Saturday and remember to STAY HYDRATED.
First, I just want to say, THANK YOU, Everyone, for being so supportive and understanding. It really does mean a lot to me. It's been a rough couple of days. I think there's a part of me that wants to pretend everything is A-OK. It's called "Denial." No, not really. Well, maybe just a little. I am trying to stay positive, though, and it's draining the life out of me.
Okay. Enough of that. Something very werid happened to me today. I was supposed to be on-call, but my boss called last night and put me on this assignment today because of a scheduling issue. I wasn't thrilled, but figured it could be the best thing for me to do as far as getting out of the house. It turned out to be a lawsuit regarding a guy with diabetes and the amputation of his feet. So then I started getting sad again. Why couldn't it just be a lawsuit about ANYTHING else?!
Okay. That was the first weirdness. The second part came when I was packing up my equipment. The job ended surprisingly early, and that made me feel good because I had some errands to run. While packing up, the deponent (a doctor) asked what I thought about unsolicited diagnoses. I told him that I thought most people would probaby appreciate the tip. And then............. He told me he thought I had PCOS.
HA! I was floored. He is right, of course. I do. It took years and years and years for a doctor to figure it out, though. And here this doctor (a specialist in metabolic disorders) declares that he thinks I have PCOS after sitting in the same room with him for two hours. How freakin' WEIRD is that?!
Never in my entire career has anything like that ever happened. Don't get me wrong, I would have welcomed it. I could have saved myself a lot of time if someone had said, "Hey, I'm a sleep specialist, and I think you have narcolepsy." It's just as good to have this guy say, "Hey, I'm an endocrinologist, and you have PCOS." People pay good money to get less than that every single time they see a doctor.
So, I had stop and spend a few minutes thinking of how interesting this was. I stopped taking my PCOS meds two weeks ago because it made me feel bad and gave me acne. Once I stopped it, my face cleared up and I felt good enough to exercise. Now this guy tells me he thinks I should get my PCOS looked at. Hrmph.
The whole thing was a good in-your-face reality check in regards to respecting my body. I don't want diabetes. I don't want PCOS. I want to be healthy. Perhaps I should resume the medication. I'm going to keep on as I'm doing, though, until my appointment at the end of the month. As long as I keep eating as well as I have been and keep exercising, I think I'll be okay for another three weeks.
I woke up this morning very early with a nightmare. In trying to describe it to my BF, the only thing I could come up with was that it felt "dreadful" like doom. In hindsight, I'm going to call it a premonition.
Well, it turns out that my sister found a surgeon who will work on my nephew's leg. He's eight years old and, thus far, none of the specialists she's spoken with will go near it. It's very risky. He has an unusual condition and the pain has been with him all of his life so far. It is now so bad that he cannot walk. He's in a wheelchair every day now, and the pain isn't controllable. So, they have to try something. If this surgery doesn't work, they are going to have to amputate his leg.
I've got way too many emotions right now. I can't even sort through them. The surgery isn't minor, and they may have to do it two or three times. There are a lot of risks involved. What if it doesn't work? What if he has a stroke? Part of me just wishes they'd take the leg so he can get a prosthetic and live without pain. All of me hopes the procedure will work, he'll keep his leg, and the pain will disappear.
The surgery is extremely expensive, and they have to go to New York to have it done. We're working on some donation/benefit ideas to help with the surgeries and build a ramp and handicapped accessible bathroom. My sister is an emotional mess. She cried on the phone today, and it was very upsetting. My sister never cries. We just sat there crying together.
Well, you can imagine how sick all that made me. But we can't stop there, can we? nope.
One of our dogs had a fight with a cat brush and perforated his eyeball. The tech said it collapsed the eye. He didn't make a sound. No yelping, no nothing. If we hadn't been watching, we might have even overlooked it. His eye was just watering a lot. We went with our gut and took him to the animal hospital. The specialist won't be in until Monday morning, and he'll undergo his THIRD surgery on that eye. My vet calls him our "medical liability."
He had two similar surgeries last year to repair an ulceration and he doesn't see very well out of that eye, so whenever something doesn't seem right, we panic. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the injury, it has the potential to go south very quickly. Ideally, he would have had the surgery today. It's going to be a painfully long weekend. BF is overcome with grief. This is his baby.
I'm not sure how I'm going to get through my workday tomorrow. This would be one time where I'd rather be on-call so I can crumble in private. Unfortunately, it feels like I have to be the one who isn't crumbling because that's what everyone else is doing. But I just want to cry and cry and cry and cry.
There is this ball in my chest that is so tight. I feel like if I let it out, crumbling would naturally follow. So, instead, I just keep choking it back. Even my jaw hurts. I've got it clenched so tight, it's a wonder my teeth haven't all cracked and fallen out.
I apologize for this post. I generally try to keep it upbeat, but if I start to seem out of sorts, this is why.
I managed to get groceries yesterday but had no plan for the day beyond that. As a result:
I ate very little most of the day and burned more than I ate in my 60 minutes on the treadmill. (This was around 2:00).
I went to work on an almost-empty stomach (had a handful of tomatoes) and while setting up the conference room, I found the stash of candy. I ended up eating 7 little mini candy bars between 7:00 and 8:00. Ruh-roh. I added all that up at TDP, and found that I was still left with over 800 calories allowed for the day. Cool.
So I go and pick up BF and we do the unthinkable.... we go out for barbeque. Yep. So after guestimating and adding up my fries and sandwich, I was outside of those 800 cals. It was still under 1500, though, so it wasn't too, too bad.
I'm very sleepy this morning. I'm supposed to be dressed and ready for work, but I'm still in my pajamas and my hair is still wet. I am just too lethargic to finish getting ready, and my tum-tum hurts from the amount of food I ate at 9:00 p.m. last night. I hate how my body feels right now.
So I'm here to make my daily plan. My grocery shopping included a few too many processed convenience foods in the form of box dinners, but I really want to firmly root the idea of portion control, and I think that could be helpful on occasion. Last night should have been one of those occasions. hehehe. If I can wake my sleepy butt up and get my act together, this is the game plan:
Planned meals:
Breakfast: Bran flakes, skim milk, and hard boiled egg.
Lunch: South Beach chicken/cranberry/walnut salad with pita crisps and jello, and some cucumber slices, and cherry tomatoes.
Dinner: Tuna sandwich and wheat bun (still lovin it) , and 2 kiwis.
Snacks: Banana, yogurt.
That's it for now. I'm going to try to get some housecleaning done before BF wakes up. My work schedule hasn't left me much time to keep things organized, and it's starting to get out of my control.
Dinner with BF's friends was fabulous. They are a very nice couple with great kids, and I had nothing to be nervous about.
I should have come up with a "food" plan, though, instead of wasting all that time being nervous. That was a delicious spread of food, and I nearly ate myself sick. I started small and reasonable, and then I tasted it...... I couldn't stop myself. Thankfully, almost everything was fresh vegetables and herbs from their backyard garden. Although I ate a lot, most of what I was eating was vegetables. Very delicious vegetables.
I think nerves had a lot to do with my public binge. I was letting everyone else talk while I savored ~everything~ that was (and wasn't) within reach. Y-u-u-u-m-m-m. I'm pretty freakin' horrified at how much I ate in front of these people. But, hey, they wouldn't have prepared it if they didn't want me to eat it, right?
After we sat and let dinner digest, BF and I headed home around 9:30 and hit the ice cream parlor for sweet treats. BAD. I'm regretting that part because it wasn't worth it to me. I didn't enjoy the ice cream as much as I did the rest of the evening. I didn't "need" the ice cream to make me feel better. I already felt pretty good! It was nice to be social with another couple for a change.
My job assignment tomorrow isn't until 6:00 p.m. It looks like BF and I will be riding to work together. lol. That will be a first. I'm happy to say that I'm caught up with my work for the moment, which means I'll be able to exercise without guilt any time I want to from the time I wake up until the time I go to work.
Today I went to my office to drop off some work stuff and finish up some things and got into a situation where I let myself get too hungry without having a plan. I contemplated getting something at the deli or grabbing something on the way home, but, instead, I packed up my stuff, went home, and had a tuna sandwich. Quite an accomplishment! I do eventually need to find something else to eat, though. Someday I'm going to run out of tuna!
My office left me off the schedule today so I could get some work finished, which means I could wake up without an alarm. So nice!
My body feels overcome with anxiety this morning. I've got so much work to do. I'm meeting a couple of BF's friends tonight, and that makes me nervous. We have no food in the house, so I can't make anything to bring with us. So I'm not sure what to do, and it's making me freak out a little. I wish BF would wake up so I could talk to him about it. I could send him to the store to get a few things while I try to finish my work.
This anxiety is getting in the way of my daily planning. When I stop to think about what I need to focus on accomplishing today, my stomach knots up and my head starts to feel light.
First things first... I need to get some of my work finished and eliminate that stressor. It should take me three or four hours to finish what is due.
I just did 60 glorious minutes on the treadmill and followed that with a delicious tuna sandwich on wheat and some savory saffron rice. YUM. I actually feel... SATISFIED! Satisfied and accomplished.
My body wanted to break out of the parka of fat and start running, but I had to get control and say NO, NO, NO. I jacked up the incline and sweated out my illness, though. It was hard to get on the treadmill feeling sick, but I just had to do it! I'm so, so, so glad I did. Because my entire dinner was burned off before I even ate it! Isn't that a wonderful feeling?! I feel wonderful!
Last week I said I wanted my pants to be smaller by Wednesday of this week, but that may have been a very ambitious goal. The only thing that feels smaller on me are my hands. When I clasp them together, my fingers feel less bloated. I don't care too much whether my pants are too big on Wednesday or not. Sooner or later, they will be too big. "When" that happens isn't such a big deal. I'm just very grateful to be in a positive place!
I've done a lot right this week, and I want to celebrate and be proud of my accomplishments. It's taken a long time to get back here, and I'm very happy I finally made it!
QOTD: Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity, but in doing it.--Greg Anderson
I'm still not feeling the best this morning, but perhaps if I ignore it, it will just go away!
Goals for today:
Work like mad and accomplish great things! lol.
Drink my water. I have my straw ready. That always helps.
Treadmill so I can keep my heart happy.
Eat on plan.
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Planned meals:
Breakfast: Tricky since we're out of almost everything. Bran flakes with soy milk and a cup of hot tea. Maybe a yogurt if they haven't expired.
Lunch: Tuna sandwich on wheat bun. I have a lot of tuna in the house. Three cali cuties. This lunch is boring me to tears, but it works. Maybe some soup or a wedge of laughing cow cheese and a few crackers.
Dinner: Prolly a micro-meal. I'm trying to clean out the fridge and freezer before buying new food. Sticking to that budget! I'm not sure the micromeal will cut it and I'm not sure if BF will be home for dinner. What I'd really like is a grilled turkey burger.
Snacks: I've got a grapefruit in there I need to eat, so that's on the list. I've also got a few pieces of celery and some frozen blueberries. Blueberries sound interesting. I'm going to get those out to thaw. I've got some whipped-free topping as well to go with it. Yum.
Actual Meals:
Breakfast: Bran flakes with soy milk and a WW vanilla yogurt.
Lunch: Lean Cuisine flatbread sandwich and 6 crackers.
Dinner: Tuna sandwich and saffron rice.
Snack: Blueberries and whipped-free topping.
I've gotta go for now. My workload is giving me anxiety, and I can't think! I just wanted to get my food list down before it got too late in the day. lol. More later!
I had the pleasure of having lunch with Tatumsmom, Bridget, and Bethany yesterday. It was great! We were there like three hours. hehehe. Everyone was really wonderful, and I left feeling inspired and motivated to do better and keep up with these awesome runners!
Today we had brunch with BF's mom at Perkins Restaurant (yeah, I know). I haven't felt quite well since. Actually, I didn't eat too poorly because I didn't feel so well BEFORE we got there. Not sure what the problem is, but it could be the heat and the cramps. All I want to do is tuck myself into bed and sleep. My stomach is so nauseated.
I'm signing off now because it's Sunday and my hours to avoid my work have passed. It's now or never!
