I've been away from here too long and it has been preventing me from returning. Isn't that strange? I think it is something we are all too familiar with, you the further you get from taking care of yourself mentally or physically, the harder it is to journey back.
So I'm back, I won't talk about the holidays or how proud I was of working out in a different city with relatives determined to make me feel guilty for taking the time. I won't talk about how I've been sick too much during my much needed break, or how damned cold it is in the garage and it has been a struggle to go out there lately.
Instead I'll say hello and state my intentions for this year:

To be positive in all things. This includes self care and a big thing I'm trying on at the moment, being a vegetarian. It feels right but I don't really like labels. If I choose to have a crabcake at some point I don't want idiots breathing down my neck and I'd be lying if I didn't say the people I am most concerned about (and ignoring anyway) are my in-law family. I can just picture uninformed lectures right now and it already irritates me, not really in keeping with the whole positive resolution is it?

"Well, I don't intend to discourage anyone from a goal, but those bad-ass assassin girls are putting A LOT of their time into this. It's not just a matter of emotional commitment, which we all know you have plenty of: there are practical issues as well - I mean, this stuff takes TIME and MONEY and it means cutting out other things from your life. You're married, you have a child, you're in school - you might have to give those up in order to reach that level."

First off I'll say up front that M@rla is one of my all time favorite fitness/weight loss bloggers and that I mean no offense in anything I say today.

This got me pretty down this morning but I have since completely changed my way of thinking around and am not discouraged but instead even more motivated. I felt like I was being told that I couldn't do it and why even try and holy shit how negative can I be some times?
Instead I will fully acknowledge that there are indeed many obstacles to my goal and I do have many added parts of life that I can use as excuses. I have actually spent a LOT of time doing just that over the last few years, angsting over this whole thing to a degree that is ridiculous and yet making little progress. I have mentioned it before but never has it hit home as hard as it has the last few days. I spend huge amounts of energy thinking about why I can't do things instead of expending much less energy simply getting shit done.
Take today for example: I wanted to get up at 5 again this morning like I did yesterday but our son had a fever last night and didn't want to sleep and I am still trying to adjust off cold meds so it just got later and later and I knew 5am was not going to be pretty if I wanted to make it through the day. So I reset the alarm for 6 and did get up after a bit. Our son felt really warm again this morning so I had to keep him home again. Things like this happen but it is my job then to figure out a work around, I knew he would go down for a nap at some point and that would be my chance. Well, as time went on I felt more and more tired and I'm coughing still and I could have easily laid my head down and fallen asleep. Instead I changed into my workout clothes, got him down for the count, and went and completed a kickass workout on the elliptical and chest/back day with weights. I definitely need to up what I'm lifting next time but I still feel like it went well.
I then came inside, took a shower, and sat around for a bit before realizing his nap would last a lot longer (from not feeling well) and I could lay down. I ended up getting a small nap and felt great when I got up.
I know that every day may not work out great for me but if I plan and plan smartly I believe I can be the person I want to be. I'm living as that person from this day forward.
I may go offline until some time next week; for the first time since I can remember I feel tired of being on the computer so I think I'm going to give it a break. We'll see, I could feel differently in the morning when I get up and want the routine.
If I don't return, Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to every body!

I ate a lot last night, a lot of sodium and large portions. I'm not going to feel badly about it thought, it was special and my Hubby made us dinner, the same meal in fact he made for me our first Valentine's. It's been extremely cold for Texas (in the 20s) and working out in the garage just has not been an option. Call me a wuss, I don't care-I am not working out when the bones in my hands hurt from the temperature. However, I will be hitting the gym if this continues, I have an indoor workout option, it's just not nearly as convenient. I would try out the gym's daycare today if John Reid was not sick, he woke up yesterday sneezing, coughing, and impersonating a snot faucet. I am experiencing some of the same (except the cough) but it's not getting me down because I am not letting it. So there germs!
This Sunday I am attending a yoga class with my SIL at 9:30 am. The fact that I am also attending a friend's blow out birthday party at a club/restaurant the night before is not going to slow me down, I am sort of "over" staying up late and drinking. I'd rather remain sober, be able to drive home instead of wasting money on a cab, get to bed at a decent time, and be able to get up and bless my spirit with someone I love. Take that preconceived notion of fun!
Where did everyone go? I miss having something to read when I should be doing other things. *smile

So I had coffee this morning. After mentally struggling yesterday and drinking herbal tea instead and feeling like crap all day and even skipping class for the first and last time, I went to bed at 8:30 again and slept much too much and I got up, walked in here, and headed straight for the Nesc@fe and kettle. I hate the idea that I am attached to something and that despite my best efforts it gives me headaches if I miss one day, and yet I am thinking trying to go off it during school time that I need to be up and alert until way past my preferred bedtime is probably one of the dumbest things I've attempted.
On the topic of weightloss: I mentioned a while back that I was switching to fitness instead of weight loss as a focus, and I trundled along and made no comprehensive explanation of that, and in fact went somewhere far away brain wise. I'm coming back because I've finally effectively beat my brain about, lost my confidence, been sick, and now I'm starting again.
Official month later weigh in: 146. Last weigh in: 145.5
In case clarification is needed, that is not muscle but rather flabby flab flab. I've avoided mentioning numbers because I don't want to be looked upon as someone that needs to shut the hell up, the thin girl that complains about her ass, etc. I have never been hugely obese but I have been the biggest girl through years of school, picked on etc. (I don't think that ever leaves you totally) and then somewhere around the age of 18 or 19 I started packing it on, the exact number is vague and unknown because I was a big avoider and had never tried to do anything about my weight before. When I was 17 I remember going to the gyno for an exam an weighing in at 151 and being fine with that, and my mother thinking that was way too high. I thought she needed to get a grip. I am roughly 5'7" so while 151 is not "ideal" (put in quotes for a reason) it's definitely just fine. She would be horrified if I told her that memory as she would never dream of acting like that now, I'm not sure why she thought it was acceptable then.
Anyway...I digress. I must have been somewhere in the 180s, possibly a bit higher before my first stab at losing weight. I knew absolutely nothing, and when I asked my sometimes critical mother how she stayed so slim? Her answer: I drink a lot of water. THANKS, that was so helpful. The store she worked at sold stuff called Melt !t, which was basically the same as the other more famous stuff that I can't think of the name now-you ate nothing three hrs before taking it and you took it going to bed. Tasted awful, but I lost 5 lbs taking it and changing nothing else. In my mind I changed nothing but reality is I wasn't eating cheese fries at 2am every night anymore. Becoming a tech really put my eating/sleeping habits in the crapper, along with being poor and sometimes eating nothing else besides various Ramen noodle concoctions. Come to think of it I lost a little bit before and then lost the five with that but I couldn't tell you how I did it.
I joined gyms off and on from '99 onward but never went regularly enough. It all seemed too hard-I always got put on the stair climber thing, and not even the one with the revolving stairs but the really cardio intense thing with the two pedals you step back and forth upon-I still hate that machine. My cardio endurance has always been crap, as a child I was always the chubby red faced kid at the end of the class that would come straggling in during the fitness challenge bullshit. The shitty gym teacher wouldn't even wait on me, they'd all be back inside when I would come up feeling like puking and miserable beyond words with embarrassment. Wow, I still hate her, thanks for giving me such a crap idea of what exercise had to be like.
I'm a chatty kathy today eh? This is getting way too long, there's so much more to say...okay so I got rid of the last horribly bad for me boy, then started hitting the gym regularly around the same time but maybe a bit before, that I met me current hubby. I would do 3 full body workouts with circuit weight machines and 5 days of cardio, jumping from machine to machine doing ten minutes on each. So 30 min on weight training days and 45 min on days with no weights. I changed that to coming home and wogging intervals with our dog on the 45 minute days. This was not always perfect or consistent but I made real progress and I think back to that now and it makes me tired. I went from who knows what size down to a slim and trim 10 and yet because the scale never changed past 160, I thought it wasn't working. HOW FRICK FRACKING STUPID. Grr, makes me mad, and it makes me mad that I still pander to this way of thinking. Long winded story short, I'm about to go back to that way of life, more lax on food and kicking ass on exercise. I can cut before shorts/swimsuit weather hits again and hopefully help my poor metabolism and muscle mass out a bit. I'm afraid to start that until I have daily access to workout equip. though and with our one yr old that has been so hard. So, fitness, shape, clothes fitting, and no more obsession with the scale. I didn't even own a damn scale and no matter how tempting that is I'm not sure if I could get rid of this one now. Hmm. It's a thought.