Thursday, January 12th

Good morning skinny friends ! Liz... hope you had a comfortable night. I'm taking the morning off from swimming so I can do some stretching and feed my spirit in my revitalized room (pictures up on Facebook). I'm going in to school for five hours to do a hearing and some teacher evaluations.

Devon, I love the list approach, as long as I remember less is more. I try to keep it simple and focused, so that it is realistically attainable. I don't want it to be the source of more stress. I try to include one self care item too.

I'm working at living the "less is more" theme, as I try to declutter my home and life. One step at a time !!!

Enjoy your day, and enjoy whittling down your lists.

Good morning

Liz, hope all is well.

interesting discussions lately.  

am working with a toxic colleague and find myself eating my frustrations away.  Apparently our small organization has done nothing right over the past 50+ years.  People have  left work in tears.  

The bosses are going to have to do something quickly or there is going to be a full blown mutiny. 

Awful situation.

 Sorry to hear about the job stress!

Carbon, I hope there is some work relief soon!

123's

I have always been resistant to making formal lists tho my mental lists are miles long so no doubt I would benefit from a more streamlined approach.  I love DianeO's idea of including at least one self-care item on the list. 

Liz, thinking of you!

Time to get moving on that list. 

Hug your health tight today, my friends.

Shel

Liz, thinking of you and hoping you are recovering well!

133.8 today - same. Had a on point eating day yesterday, no exercise (work meeting at lunch and errands in the evening). Did get hungry in the evening but drank a big glass of hot tea and was fine.

Good morning all! Weight 145.6. Good eating day yesterday 910 calories.  Fit*****arge HR said I had 307 steps, which since I was quite active cannot be right. Hopefully it will work properly today.  Trying for 10,000 a day.

Kairk I like your list making, meditation plan. Also, others suggestions for self care daily. Got a pretty daily planner to record weight, food intake and exercise in. Today my goal is to just get to the gym at all and do something.  That would be progress, havent been working out lately at all.  Maybe a class or even just walking/jogging the track and then swimming. Eventually I want to work up to taking the TRX group class (oh, to have defined arm muscles, what would that be like).  Not quite ready to take the plunge-first step to build consistency with exercise then challenge myself further. For self care daily, maybe today I will paint my nails.  Need some color, it's rainy and cold and dark here today.

Flu i****ting my coworkers, starting to be epidemic in this area. Blah!  Washing my hands often, getting good sleep and taking vitamin C so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, been sick enough already this year!

Everybody have a great day and wishes for a speedy recovery!

Thanks guys! I'm waiting to go home now. Not super comfortable but not super terrible. Have had problems with nausea, probably from painkillers, so I will be off them asap. Thank god for zofran. 

What a double edge sword "dieting" is.  I gave up crazy dieting long ago, but even dieting in the sense of creating a calorie deficit means I have to think about what I'm eating.  Be cognizant.  No mindless eating.  Because it's the "little" slips here and there that add to the slow crawl.  If only it were as easy as cutting out the candy bars and real sodas--but I never ever had those!  (not even when I was fat.  I remember a doctor once telling me that I should lose weight by not eating junk food and soda.  Ha!  To think I paid him for that!)  The very nature of the slow creep is that it's just a couple hundred calories over here and there--so it's the things I think are innocent.  Just a couple extra bites of dinner.  That glass of wine.  One small piece of chocolate from the office candy bowl.

But being super vigilant and cognizant about my calorie intake means I'm thinking about food all the time.  Even more than I normally do!  I'm eating the smart snacks that are supposed to keep me from going over and have less willpower later.  But this week it seems like the result has been to do BOTH!  I FEEL like I'm dieting.  I'm painfully telling myself "no" to the heavier items that aren't smart.  I'm getting chicken at a pasta place and wings at a pizza place (because plans fell thorugh and that was the only non-carby thing on the menu!!--except for salads which wreck my stomach and I don't like putting so much volume in my sleeve anyway).  I feel deprived.  So much that I've been pushed to the edge to think about, and eventually cave on the indulgences.  

And I'm back up to where I started a week ago.  It's not a huge deal.  I've been tracking.  But I h-h-h-hate dieting.  Too many years of unsuccessful attempts.  It always caused me to gain more weight!  I know it's really about calories (which, btw I want to go on the record again stating how I think my metabolsim is wrecked.  It is what it is, but life's a b**ch as they say.  My high day was 1600 calories.  And yet I've regained 2 1/2 lbs. this week.  Say what??!!), but the difference is I've been able to feel pretty satisfied, emotionally, physically, etc. over the past 6 1/2 years without "dieting."  Obviously that hasn't entirely worked as I'm up about 10lbs. from a weight I was comfortable maintaining, and the majority of that this year (and unfortunately 4lbs. of it since the holidays).  

I guess I'm just venting that I don't know how to find balance like that.  If I could obsess over every morsel of food I ate and its macros and it worked--then cool.  But ultimately it's keeping me in the same position but less happy about it.  Do you guys find that thinking about your food like this causes you to ultimately over eat?  How do you keep tabs without salivating over food (both that you eat and shouldn't eat) all day??

Hoping this is just a tough first week of reset.  Maybe once I get in the groove it'll be easier again.  Also, as hard as it was to lose weight at 276, it's hella hard to lose weight at 165

Liz, I'm so glad that you are feeling okay! Your surgery was quite extensive, so it's wonderful to read that you are not terribly uncomfortable. 

Diane O, love your purple room! You have a purple massage table, too! Do you have a masseuse that comes to the house? I am envious that you have the luxury of space! You are really putting your retirement together nicely! 

Diane O, thanks for the props! I am keeping it very simple. no more than 3-4 items for personal and 3-4 items for professional. I am making sure that my goals are actually achievable on a daily basis. I agree, self care is a must to include! Having a list on which to focus is helping me get things done and off my plate, which in turn lowers stress level overall. I spent 10 minutes yesterday journaling what I accomplished, what I could have improved upon for the day, and for what I was grateful. Thinking about gratitude was a great way to end the day and trundle off to bed. 

I got to thinking yesterday that I wanted some feedback from you all here about my average daily schedule. Yesterday was a very average Wednesday for me. As I was making dinner as it was approaching 9pm, I got to wondering So here goes:

Up at 6:15, out of the house by 7:15. Teach until 2:30. Leadership meeting until 4:15. Home by 5:00. Cleaned up yard of Doggy Delights while it was still light and it was not raining. Did a few chores and sat down with a cup of coffee and checked a few things on line. Hit the gym by 6:45 and worked out for 45 minutes. After that went shopping for a few staples and stopped at CVS to pick up a prescription. Got home fed the dogs, made a nice dinner. Cleaned up, then made lunch for today. Sat down for the evening around 10:00. Watched a little TV. At 11:00 I watched the beginning of  the news to check the weather and then wrote in my journal. Was in bed by 11:45. So, there you have it. Does this seem average to most of you? Some of my friends think my schedule is ridiculous. I am accustomed to it, so my perspective is possibly skewed. I know I'm busy, but I think it's sort of average. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, put in a grooming rather than a meeting.

I downloaded an app for phone and desktop called Evernote. I like it very much for journaling and list making. It is a free ap and desktop and phone/tablet aps sync via the cloud. I am keeping a notebook for a January Journal and another notebook for the January To Do lists. For journaling it is much faster for me than handwriting. For list making it is a little more work than a handwritten list, but so easy to keep track and record of what my daily and weekly goals are/have been.

I came across a pic from the 2007-2008 school year in my desk this morning. What a difference 9 plus years makes! I think I look younger now than I did then. Having so much less weight on my face makes a huge difference!  Happy Throw Back Thursday to me! 

Edit:  Oops, forgot to mention that I'm down .2 from yesterday. Slowly, but surely! Happy dance! Another .2 and it will be down 7 lbs.