An impending Goodbye and a Plan of Action

I actually totally freaked out yesterday afternoon still. Something was not at all right in my head.  For lunch I had to leave the office and I went to a park and just sat outside to try and calm myself down a little bit.  Stress, nerves, that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach.  Impending doom without so much of exactly knowing what is coming.  All not good. Not good at all. I had to literally just keep breathing, I was having a mild panic attack.  Stress is ridiculous.  Not good and ridiculous.  BUT, I needed to calm the fuck down and remind myself that I am only human.  That this too shall pass.  That having an off week is perfectly acceptable.

I mildly freaked out and did NOT want to go to the gym last night which is so not like me in the grand scheme of things. But ultimately by later in the afternoon I was able to calm myself down enough to make it to the gym.  My heart wasn’t in it at all.  My body still felt weak and tired. Exhausted, physically and emotionally but I pushed on.  I decided to warm up with just a 1.5 mile run.  And I slowed it WAYYY down.  So that I didn’t feel like I was going to die.  Just did a 5.5 mile per hour pace and it was fine. I actually felt okay and did 1.5 miles without too much effort and for yesterday that was all I needed.  That’s all my tired stressed body could endure.  Then I did some leg work and then I took a class with Amanda. Nothing fancy but what should not have winded me did so I knew my body was still fighting off whatever infections have overtaken it.  Stress.  After class I was like fuck this, I’m done. I mentally checked out and thus went home.  Like a total of 75 minutes probably and 400 calories burned.  Fine. Good enough.

My body is under undue amounts of stress and I hate it.  I think freaking out about exercise is causing even more stress because I have this lofty goal of 26.2 miles ahead of me and it scares me that I can’t seem to do shit right now. But it’s just not fair to get too upset at the moment given all the factors at hand.  I am officially calling it good and going to regroup upon my return from Vegas.

Today I packed clothes and was seriously going to go to the gym but then life happens as it ultimately continues to happen.   Right around lunch time today I got a text message from my Aunt sent out to all my aunts and uncles and cousins (there are a lot of them, it’s a rather large family) saying that Grandpa is really doing poorly and they are looking for volunteers to take shifts this entire weekend so that he is not alone.  He’s at the point where is not all there anymore and starting to behave very irrationally.  Thus I instantly felt bad because I am literally leaving tomorrow after work and gone until Tuesday which in all likelihood he very well may pass during this timeframe.  I don’t know because no one knows with any certainty but it’s quite a possibility.  I know the stress is killing my mom which just makes me cry. 

I immediately dialed my mom after receiving the text message.  I asked her if she was going to see Grandpa after work tonight (I pretty much knew she was) and she said yes.  I said would it do any good for me to come and see him?  This is pretty much my only opportunity tonight since I will be gone.  She said yes, please come.  So no gym for me tonight as I go and kind of say goodbye to my grandpa.  She told me last night was a very rough night, that at like 10 PM she got a call from my grandpa’s care facility saying that Grandpa had somehow managed to make his way out into the hallway.  (No one really knows how because he is VERY frail and pretty much can’t walk or move on his own) and was literally freaking out in the hallway yelling for my mom.  He just kept yelling for her saying he needed to talk to her.  My mom and one of my aunts have pretty much been taking care of him.  He said he couldn’t call her, he couldn’t get his phone to work so he was just standing in the hall having a temper tantrum calling for her.

The nurse called her and put her in the phone with my grandpa. She told him she’d be there in 10 minutes. He’s close by.  So she went to the facility to see him.  When she got there she had to calm him down, he had quite worked himself up and basically what she could gather was that he was so upset because he wanted to go home.  He didn’t want to be there anymore.  He was delirious and delusional seriously though and didn’t really even know where he was.  He just wanted to call my mom to have her come and get him.  Breaks my heart so much.  Also it was discovered that he couldn’t use his phone to call her because he was trying to call her with the TV remote.  How sad. 

There have been reports that he is hallucinating things left and right, like rats in his room. He keeps telling everyone look, right there, it’s a giant rat.  It is beyond sad.  I could hear the heartbreak in my mom’s voice and I instantly wanted to cry.  I told my mom I would come right after work and be there. Not that I can do anything other than be there.  But as soon as I hung up the phone, I let the tears come out of my eyes.  This is beyond heart wrenching to experience.  The pain I feel for my mom as she is losing her father.  The thought of a poor old man so sad losing his mind standing in the hall calling for his daughter because he is helpless.  This is sad beyond anything I can imagine. And I’m stressed and worried. But there isn’t a single thing I can do. I guess but be there for my mom.  Any amount of exercise can wait. One day doesn’t matter, but going to say goodbye and being there for my mom matters so much more.

I can’t help but feel guilty that I’m leaving this weekend but there are simply no guarantees in life or no schedule.  I knew this was a possibility when Grandpa was diagnosed with cancer about 8 weeks ago. I had already booked the trip at that point.  There is nothing I can do, so as mom says we can’t quit living our lives so things will go on as they must.  But I think realistically this whole situation coupled with my body actually getting physically sick from allergies has really pushed me over the top.  I think I honestly need this break/vacation more than I realize. I need to relax body and mind to heal a little.

I’m looking at this as this is the time for me just enjoy myself not care about diet or exercise and then when I return on Tuesday it will be a fresh restart so to speak.  I have finally committed to a training plan.  Asics has an app an I put in all my information and they developed a very doable little plan with 4 runs a week that I can follow. It’s actually easier than anything I would really do on my own so I figure if they say this is supposed to be enough to get me “trained” or able to do a marathon then I am going to accept that.  And if I follow this plan given it’s a real official training plan then I am going to feel better or more capable on Sept 20 when it happens.  It officially starts on Tuesday May 5 with a very easy 3 mile run.  In fact it says I only need to run  13:54 minute miles which is way too slow for me and I would literally never be able to slow myself down to that pace. But it takes some of the pressure off from feeling disappointed if I can’t run 10 minute miles right away (especially after a Vegas vacation!)  So I will ease into it and I feel almost relieved with this training plan. It’s really manageable and I will feel like I am actually working towards a goal.

It even has a printable calendar which I did print and little boxes to check off the runs which makes me incredibly happy!  I love checking boxes off.  I feel like I can realistically accomplish this training plan! And I can even get in lots of lifting with this plan as well so that makes me extra happy. It’s very realistic for me.  This girl has 22 weeks (from May 5) until my marathon and I can totally commit to being in training mode for that long. I’ve got this. And that relieves some of the stress I’m feeling.  Most all of it is utterly realistic and have me running at very normal comfortable paces.  Training for a marathon is very different than training for any other distance.  It’s such a long way to go!

So my Training officially starts May 5. My first of a total of 89 training runs on my plan. 22 weeks. 89 runs.  461 miles.  I’ve so got this!  So that is where my head is at today. This relieves a small fraction of stress. So what if the last 2 weeks have sucked a little. I now have purpose and a goal.  And I can forgive the floundering the last 2 weeks.  Because I am fully committed and invested in this training plan.

I am pretty much just hanging on for dear life now for the rest of today and tomorrow.  I am going to go see Grandpa and then I have to go home and pack this evening.  And then tomorrow I have to get thru work and then after work I load up the doggies and drive to Chris’s dad’s house because we have to wake up VERY early Saturday to catch a flight to Vegas.   I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. 

The temper tantrum in crazy town

 Sometimes I feel like everything that spews out of my mouth is pure garbage and crap. This concept of change and self-love and growth is complete BS when I am faced with a little adversity and seriously my fucked up brain’s first response is destructive behaviors. Is it possible I’ve learned a single thing in 10 plus years? Apparently not.  Apparently the only saving grace in the situation is that even though I instantly resorted to horrible thinking that I can sit here this morning and realize how absurd my thought process is. Perhaps that’s progress?

Let me explain.  Yesterday I was still not feeling well, but perhaps that is also the whole catch 22 thing coming into play.  I have a lot of stress and it’s a never ending cycle, do I feel bad because of all the stress or am I partly stressed because I feel sick?  I am sure they are both feeding into one another.  Either way, I am super stressed that I don’t feel like my workouts are where they should be.  My running has been crap for 2 weeks.  I can’t breathe at some points. My allergies flare up and come and go.  I get winded far easier than I should.  Generally speaking my energy is just drained. This angers me. This is also called being a human being.  A feat that I often think for some idiotic reason I am above.  I must barrel thru and am somehow superhuman and immune to bad periods of times where my workouts suffer.  Reality is a bitch.

So I was not feeling great pursay but I had every intention of going to the gym last night. I had mentally decided that perhaps I should not do cardio, that this was causing my exhausted body too much unnecessary stress and instead I should just lift. That was the plan. I even made a cute little workout plan.  I was getting ready, almost excited and then the shit just hit the fan.  At like 4 Pm I got a group text message from my older sister stating that if anyone had the desire to see my grandpa before he died we better do it soon because he was bad. In really bad shape.  And then this was followed by the idea that our collective parents (this text message was sent to me and my sisters and a bunch of my cousins) were really struggling right now with this and to give them extra love and support because they were hurting. 

This obviously put me in a shitty mood.  It’s heartbreaking and I feel very bad for my mom and aunts who have given so much as of late to their father.  So knockdown 1 in progress.  I felt my body tense up and my desire to move lessen.  Suddenly my head spinning felt worse and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to actually go to the gym.  Knockdown 2 came in the form of about 4:30 PM when my husband started texting me about stupid trivial shit and we ended up getting into a big text message fight which are the worst because most of them are completely avoidable if you’d just speak to one another instead of read too much into a stupid string of words.  Pointless. Plus being super sensitive to feeling like shit already and my grandpa situation it was enough to push me over the edge and snap uncontrollably at my husband.  It was another nail in the coffin and I lost it.  I said mean hurtful things and he said things that hurt the shit out of me.  Probably unintentional but thus in my ridiculously fragile emotional state and extreme body hatred it was all just too much.  As I drove toward the gym at 5 PM, tears streaming down my face and in a rather uncontrollable emotional state I decided fuck it, I’m going home.   So I turned the car around and just headed straight for my house.  I literally had not an ounce of anything to give to the gym as I literally walked in my house and lied down on the ground.  Yes, this is dramatic but this was the emotional crazy town place I was at yesterday.

I was having a mini temper tantrum over life I suppose.  And I suspect lying on the ground is the adult version of the 2 year old kicking and screaming. I wanted to yell at the world and profess how fucking unfair shit can be sometimes.  And the reality is that everything feels massively out of my control and I feel like everything is imploding at once and I have no options.

And enter the fucked up destructive behaviors that are the go-to in such situations.  I have never felt inclined to be a “cutter” you know one of those people who causes themselves physical pain presumably to mask emotional ones.  But I understand the concept.  Because as a means to cope my first thought it punish and torture myself.  It’s really fucked up.  As I lied on the ground in protest to life my very first raging destructive thought was to quit eating. That’s it, I’m such a fucking fat failure that I am going to quit eating from here on out. Starvation diet 101. And fuck this shit, let’s weigh myself.  So I literally willed myself up from the ground and pulled the scale out to weigh myself at 5:30 PM fully clothed, tennis shoes on, on a random Tuesday.  Where does this come from?

I am certain that my brain was in unnecessary overload and I wanted to punish myself for my lack of ability at the gym as of late because this is the only thing I have any control over, kind of.  When your world is spinning out of control you are fighting desperately to hang onto any shred of control.  I wanted to beat myself up emotionally to help numb the pain, thus identifying with the girl who cuts to give herself something else to focus on.  Something “real” to direct her attention to instead of the crazy inside the head.  That is the scale for me. So I hopped on, hopped off.  And as I suspected the number was skewed given the irrelevant and irrational factors of the day.  But I wanted to see that fucked up number because I was seriously looking for torture and confirmation of my being a fat cow.  Yup, I needed a reason to tell myself that the starvation diet I was going to embark upon from here on out was a fabulous idea. The scale was a good start.

But once you are full on into crazy town simply stepping on the scale once or twice is not enough.  Oh no, as if for some reason I thought that number was going to magically change I kept stepping on it.  I think this speaks far more to the mental agony I was feeling because I kept wanting to punish and re-punish myself.  There you go, all your hard work over the past two years, who fucking cares, look at that fat ass number on the scale.  Yup, mental torture.  And why on earth was I doing this to myself?

Because for a few moments in time I had allowed all of the negative voices to win out. The voices that told me I was actually a failure and not good enough and would never be good enough.  I had let my fight with my husband crush my self-esteem on top of already feeling less than stellar about my abilities given my lack of performance at the gym.  I was already hyper sensitive to feeling like a failure because my body simply is not doing what I ask of it.  Because running seems so hard that even doing 3 miles right now is torture and I mentally panic about running even 13.1 yet alone 26.2.  And this doesn’t even touch the pain I am feeling about my grandpa and mostly my sadness for my mom and aunts as they are dealing with this. 

And in a nutshell the end result was this most fucked up 30-60 minutes of thinking.  That If I could somehow control my own actions the rest of the uncontrollable situations in my life would be less relevant. I would focus on this scale and my fat ass and the rest of the pain would seem less important. Replace one pain for the other.

I actually lay there thinking why on earth is my first response to starve myself? Because this is the most horrific form of punishment I can think of? Because there is clearly some loose screws in my brain that naturally want to go to this crazy place.  If I ever needed confirmation that I consider depravation and the scale as the truest forms of my own personal hell I have it.  Confirmed.  The scale is an okay tool, it’s an inadamate object that does nothing by itself, it is simply a tool for measurement that is harmless if used properly.  Clearly somewhere in my past I have abused its power and it is all messed up in my head.

I was grasping at imaginary straws hanging on to a sinking ship.  Anything to shift the pain.  And then I went numb.  That kind of numb that can only occur after a psychotic break down where you have simply felt your limit of feelings and you have nothing left. I had gone thru my “steps” of crazy town.  Insanity, denial, pissed, bargaining, and now numb.  Knowing fully well that weighing myself or declaring myself a starvation diet was not the answer.  That all of this was simply the convergence of a very trying time in my life and I needed to back the fuck up.

I didn’t want to be alone. Aside from fighting with Chris and feeling pissy with him, he was also at work. He had to work the late shift so I was alone at home. I got in my car and drove the less than a mile to my mom’s house.  I knew she needed me too. As I went in, she had been crying.  She is very close to her father.  Always has been.  We’ve known this part was coming for about 8 weeks now. He was diagnosed with cancer and we knew he was going to go downhill. It was inevitable.  But it doesn’t make it any easier.  My mom has been going thru so much.

She looked at me and said, “I knew this time was going to come, but I can’t help it, I don’t want my dad to die.”  What do you say to that? My heart broke for her.  I generally don’t do good with death or situations like this.  But I tried. And my heart hurt.  This woman, who means the world to me, was in so much pain.  I try to put it into an ounce of perspective.  If I was going thru this situation with my mom that would be it, game changer. I couldn’t imagine.  So I just hugged her. She hugged me extra tight back and said I love you so much.  It’s VERY hard. And I wanted to cry.

And I know based on what my sister and my mom were sharing with me that we are literally talking days before he passes. It could be today, it could be this weekend which brings me to other elements of guilt.  I will be gone this weekend. I won’t be here. And I’m fighting with my husband. And I do feel like shit. And my body is simply rejecting all of this. Allergies, death, stress. Oh, should I try and pack for said vacation? Don’t even think about it.  Should I really be working out more? Yes, my insane brain tells me. Because I’m just not working hard enough. I’m just not doing good enough, because I am simply not enough.

And that is all how my crazy train brain works in crisis mode. And at 8:30 PM, sitting on a chair at my mom’s house my body finally wanted to give out.  It had had enough emotional abuse and I told her I was going home because I could think of nothing I wanted to do more than sleep. So I went home, took some sleeping pills and put myself to bed.  Because it was just one of those nights.

Perspective in the morning tells me this.  I am going thru a lot right now and I need to be kinder to myself. My body is feeling the effects of the stress I am dishing out.  And I need to ease up on the negativity towards myself for not feeling 100%.  So what if my workouts have been less than stellar.  It’s not forever. So what if running has been unusually difficult for me. Doesn’t mean I’ve lost it.  Get thru this part where your body is fighting off allergies and stress and things will return to a normal status at some point inevitably soon.

Get thru this week, just manage thru and then go to Vegas and relax. Let your hair down, enjoy your life.  Whatever is going to happen with Grandpa is going to happen and it’s completely out of your control. Love the people that matter to you. Hug them. Tell them you love them. And live your life.  When I return from Vegas I can really get into my marathon training and get back to running and exercising and making a consistent solid effort.  I can’t belittle myself for my actions this week.  This is survival mode. And honestly I’m not doing too horribly all things considered.

Tonight I plan to go to the gym. Especially since I did not go last night. I need to keep my emotions in check a little better today. I am not super human and having some off workouts is perfectly acceptable. It’s normal. It’s human!  Allowing stress to get the best of me is also human.  I may not like it, but it makes me a real life living breathing human being.

I can’t exactly explain with 100% clarity to anyone why the convergence of these issues resulted in my mini psychotic break down last night but clearly it was how my body was going to handle it. Self-punishment is pretty much my go-to.  But thankfully no real harm done.  Weighing myself obsessively for 20 minutes ultimately doesn’t really damage me. The negative self-talk is retarded but I am able to put it into perspective when clarity returns to my brain.  Obviously I can’t starve myself and have no such intention. 

I am human. I make mistakes. My brain copes the way it copes and I move on. Now imagine if I didn’t have better coping mechanisms how someone with similar brain thinking can end up in all sorts of trouble. I’ve done that before in my life and I really have learned how to cope much better on the back end.  I’ve let the crazy train lead me to some pretty bad dark places. I’m learning.  Despite it all, I am learning.  I will take this whole evening as proof that I am learning from past mistakes. Doesn’t mean the tendencies for destruction aren’t there. I don’t think they are ever going to go away but ultimately it’s how you deal with it that matters more.  It’s in the coping that proves that progress is occurring.

I deserve self-love. Probably in this difficult time more than ever. I am still and forever more a work in progress.

Motion Sickness on the ground

I thought I was feeling better yesterday and for the most part just walking around I was but then I went to the gym after work and suddenly my body went into freak out mode.  It’s like at every turn my body was struggling not only for energy but for breath which just sucks.  I am not used to any sort of struggle like that. The best I can equate it to is that I really must be still be sick and fighting against my body.

I started running. I put it at a 6.1 and I ran for 15 minutes. It was horrible. I was fighting every second of it. Trying to hang on for dear life.  But I felt like I couldn’t breath and my heart was going to explode. Not a good feeling at all. Actually not a feeling I am used to at all. I paused the machine. I had to bring my 176 bpm heart rate down.  More importantly I needed to catch a good breath.  And then I started again, this time slower.  I was bound and determined despite what my body was telling me that I had to get in a 3 mile run.  I just had to.  So I pressed on for another 8 minutes or so until I felt like if I didn’t hit pause on the machine I very well might pass out. So I paused. Drank some water, let my heart rate come down and then started again.  This time I finished up the 3.1 mile run but it was literally horrible. Yes, it was 3.1 miles in like 33 minutes.  Not great, but not awful awful.  But how I felt was awful awful.  It’s that whole inner ear/fluid in my lungs most likely.

I keep having that feeling like if I move to rapidly in any direction my head whooshes and I am going to fall over. It’s like motion sickness being on solid land.  It’s been going on for days.  I asked Amanda if light headed and dizziness were curable with any particular foods.  Not really. She said she pretty much guessed it was my allergies wreaking havoc on my body.  I concurred.  After I did my 3.1 mile run I headed to the weights for some upper body work.  I did a mismatch of exercises and they were all much harder than they should have.  I felt drained and tired.  I felt like an idiot honestly. It is NOT supposed to be this hard for me. My stamina is so much greater than this.  I was just pooped.

So after about 45 minutes of this I finally decided enough was enough and called it good. I had burned 500 calories and this was all I was going to be able to reasonably accomplish in one night.  I wish I could get over this horrific feeling already. I felt great amazing on Friday night and that was about it for a week solid.  I can tell I’m off my game. My head and heart want to be in it but my body is objecting.  There’s not much else I can do at this point but keep plugging along and do what I can do.  Someday I will get it back. Someday I will feel good again and I am looking forward to that day. Geesh.

For now I am just plugging along anyway for this week until next week and after I return from Vegas so that I can focus on really diving in and accomplishing some goals.  This week is sort of a throw away anyway.  So for that reason I am experimenting with foods and my diet and really trying to focus my energies on that instead of exercise which is proving to be much more challenging for me than it should be.

Everything I really know and everything one reads and everything that I have ultimately experienced in 10 plus years of yo-yo dieting tells me that any sustained weight loss or improvement ultimately comes from diet.  Exercise is the icing on the cake and very important for your overall well-being and for me my mental health but ultimately change comes from food intake. 

Clearly I might be one of those girls that once a week needs a cheat meal.  Or else I spend one day/evening binging.  If I would just suck it up and allow myself one bad meal things might go smoother the rest of the time. Actually I’ve slightly always known this about myself.  You can’t take the fat girl or rather food lover out of my system completely. I still need to feel like I can have those things.  But I don’t mind eating healthy most of the time.

For some odd reason this morning none of my Smart One’s or Lean Cuisine breakfast things were sounding good at all.  And then all of a sudden my brain had a hankering for oatmeal. Like somehow low sugar Quaker Oat Brown sugar oatmeal was the most delicious thing in the world.  It just sounded amazing. And it freaking was!  It’s funny how if you don’t have something for a long time rediscovering it proves to be crazy amazingly good.  I honestly felt like I was indulging in a wonderful treat.  I of course had to add some crunch with some slivered almonds.  Yummy! And it was so freaking good and I felt so satisfied so ultimately it is possible for me to eat good for you stuff and feel happy.

This is a good thing to learn for myself.  Of course all this goes out the window come Friday when I embark on my Vegas mini vacation.  BUT, hopefully I can retain that feeling upon my return.  I’ve got goals to crush. I’ve got marathons to plan for. Okay, one marathon. But I’ve got a lot of half marathons to run.  Actually May 10 I have a half marathon in Eugene.  Yup, I will be running the weekend I get back from Vegas which slightly scares me.  Won’t be my prettiest time but I will do it.

I actually weighed myself last Thursday and I intend to weigh myself this Thursday and we will see how that goes. Once a week is highly enough for me. Actually it might even be too much honestly.  Makes me such a nut job and focus on all the wrong things.  It’s truly better to focus on the positive happy things, the small changes that I make that make me the best/or better version of myself.  The scale is arbitrary and retarded and I’ve always known that. BUT it’s so hard not to give it significant power in your life.  We’ve learned to judge our whole self-worth and existence on a stupid number.  Back peddling from this mentality takes years and years of self-control that is only marginally successful at best.

Baby steps. Just keep taking those little baby steps.  It’s the best you can hope for. And for the love of God I wish I could quit comparing myself to others.  That’s a whole other freaking battle unto itself.  I can’t ever be like anyone else because they aren’t me. We are made the same way. And yet… oh and yet…  someday I will wake up and just be beyond thankful to be exactly who I am, where I am at.

66% Ain't Bad

Well I’d say I had about a 66% successful weekend and that is a statistic that represents my 2 out of 3 ain’t bad mentality.  Basically I managed wonderful Friday and Saturday on track with food and exercise and then totally lost it yesterday. BUT that means in an entire 7 days I managed 6 incredibly on point days and only fucked up 1 day, so is that really a fuck up?  I think I call it progress actually. 

Thursday I felt like yucky poo and slept the night away. Friday I felt amazing, was totally on point during the day and then went to the gym after work and boy was I like a completely different person.  Seriously.  My Friday night workout was totally amazing and on point.  Wednesday night I could barely run at a 5.7 speed on the treadmill, my nose was running snot and I was dying (lungs were probably on fire) and that is when it occurred to me I was sick.  I felt so weak and defeated and hate the fact that running 3.1 miles at a 5.7 speed was torture.  Friday night reminded me that I am not a failure, that it was probably sickness and I have not suddenly lost my ability.

I got on the treadmill to warm up and started at 6.0 and that felt easy so I went to 6.2 for a few minutes and even that felt easy. Eventually I went to 6.5 speed where I ran for a bunch of minutes before finishing out at a 7.0 sprint pace.  The key to all of this was the entire run felt easy and breezy and exactly what I needed.  3.1 miles in 29 minutes and I felt light on my feet.  Thank heavens everything felt so good. I have to admit after my terrible last week I was having some self-doubt.  But that run put things into perspective and made me smile.

I felt great and ready to kick some serious leg day ass.  My mom actually met me at the gym for the workout.  I had a fairly intense workout planned.

And I was going full force on this one.  I needed a solid happy workout.  I pushed thru and really put out the effort. It was not easy. It was hard. But it was worth it.  I think we spent about 1.5 hours doing this. So at the end of the day I had done a total of 2 hours and burned 800 calories.  But most importantly I felt like I really had put out the effort that I was looking for.  High is the right word honestly.

I came home, showered and Chris was already making delicious dinner. Ground turkey and all the fixings for burritos.  Fresh avocado whipped up into a guacamole and beans and cheese and everything yummy.  Friday night was absolutely perfectly on track.

Saturday I got to sleep in, snuggle my doggies, enjoy my life.  We woke up and were going to take the dogs to the dog park. Which we did, but we didn’t get far before it just started to downpour on us.  My old doggie does not like rain. She is a princess and hates to be wet.  We had to go.  So we really didn’t get in a great walk.  About a mile or so.

Chris was ready to chill, I was in my workout clothes and decided that I should just go to the gym, all by myself.  So I did a solid 30 minute 5k run and then went thru a series of upper body exercises.  Didn’t plan anything out just did it on the fly.  Just me. I would just pick to exercises, rotate between them and did 4 sets.  I did a bunch of different things.  But I was eager to get home to my family.  So I finished up the entire session at about 90 minutes, 550 calories burned and headed home.  It was nice out so we decided to try round 2 with the dogs, over to the school by our house where we always walk the dogs.  Another mile and a half walk.  Nothing too fancy.

I did eat a little more than I should have in the evening. BUT I tracked it all and had the extra calories burned from working out so I finished up around 1700 calories consumed.  A little high but I am calling it a success all around.  But then yesterday hit and things really went downhill.  Not sure but Saturday night I was having a very hard time sleeping and when I would sit up I would feel crazy light headed like I was going to pass out. Something was very off in my body.  I was getting hot and cold chills all night. I even got up and turned on the air conditioner at one point because I was burning up.  Then I was freezing.  We slept in until 10 AM which is very rare for us.  And I just felt awful.  I didn’t want to do anything. 

What I ended up doing was sitting on my couch watching TV pretty much all day, fighting my body.  Back to that whole yucky sickness thing.  I was good 2/3 of the day and then finally I cracked around 4 PM. Like consumed a shit ton of stuff.  Okay, probably about 2500-3000 calories worth. I tracked most of it. I didn’t measure everything so it was somewhat a guess.  But I am just going to call this my high calorie day and move on.  I really felt like crap most of the day. Before I started eating the food that made me feel less than well.  I just felt like crap from the moment I woke up.  Stupid body.

So today I am back at it, 100%, just trying to be healthy and eat well and exercise.  Realistically the notion that any amount of weight loss or health is derived from 80-90% nutrition is not lost on me.  I exercise because I love it and it helps tone my body and makes me feel good about myself, but the true change comes with what I eat. I am trying to be more mindful of that.

I am going to work had Monday-Thursday this week to maintain my health but then I know things are going to go askew this weekend.  I leave for Vegas on Saturday morning early.  Friday after work I am picking up my dogs and driving them an hour to Hillsboro where I am meeting Chris after work at his dad’s house. We are spending the night at his dads because we have to wake up early to get to the airport and it saves us some time to already be in Hillsboro, closer to the airport and not have to drop the dogs off.  So basically Friday night I will already be in vacation mode.  Then Saturday I’m going to Vegas, which turned out to be an awful weekend or the best depending on how you look at it.  I guess that big world boxing fight is Saturday and Vegas is going to be insanity.  It will be interesting. I am not going for the fight but apparently everybody else and their brother is.

Saturday we aren’t even staying on the strip.  We are going for Supercross motorcycle racing which is way off strip at Sam Boyd Stadium so we are staying Saturday night at a hotel in walking distance of the stadium.  This might help keep some of the crazy Vegas fight night at bay.  Then we wake up Sunday and will take a taxi over to the strip where we are staying at the Luxor hotel.  Sunday night we are seeing a Cirque du Soleil Ka show and then have tickets to a late night comedy club, the Laugh Factory.  We have all day Monday to do our thing and then Monday night have tickets to Cirque du Soleil Beatles Love show.  We’ve seen Beatles love 3 times already, this will be our 4^th time, but it is my favorite show in Vegas and I’m ready to see it again. Plus I should tell you all the show tickets were free with the game I play myvegas.  I play it online on Facebook and I have the app as well.  But basically you earn coins that can be redeemed for real prizes. 

Basically when we get on strip on Sunday I have free buffet tickets for breakfast/lunch and dinner both Sunday and Monday.  And then we got the free show tickets.  And also my Luxor hotel room was free too from the game.  Both nights.  Pretty crazy actually.  This is why Vegas is a super cheap trip for us typically.  Lots of comps with the game.

We wake up on Tuesday morning super early to fly home.  We have a 7 AM flight and then are back in Portland by like 9 AM.  I don’t think I am going to go to work.  Chris is going to work his normal late shift, but I will probably pick up the dogs and go home and just chill a little and then go to the gym where I am going to have to transition myself back in nicely since it will be days without exercise and eating well.  It’s going to be brutal. 

But life is meant to be lived, and taking a 3 day mini vacation with my husband is part of the things that make my life worth living.  It is part of the reasons why any of this matters at all. Being able to go and live my life and enjoy it.  I would never go and try and restrict myself.  I want to kick back, and drink and laugh and smile and have a great time. And eat free buffets J 

When I get back from Vegas I am really going to try and crack down on my eating, although I’ve been doing pretty good this past week and can’t imagine cracking down more than that. But anyway, I am going to get serious about my training etc. 

With that said, tonight I am not sure what my plan is, but I will most likely run 3 miles and then do some sort of upper body workout freeing up tomorrow night for another intense leg day.  Got to love the life of a gym addict. Eek.