My band and my weight are really messed up. I hit a rebound weight of 170 last night. It was 169 in the morning and I am not one bit happy about it. My so called guilt free Christmas is no longer guilt free.
David and I talked about our whole family health goals for the year and this whole weight gain over Christmas thing. We both concluded that lack of activity over the vacation contributed as much as the food to our weight gain. Just the one day readout from the pedometer-1860 on a vacation day vs. 5000 on a work day and finally yesterday I wore it while we ran around town and I ended up at 3000. It is interesting the difference between the readings and to note how the lack of activity can add up over time. We discussed solving our problem but didn't really come up with any answers. It is flipping freezing outside (and seems like always inside too). We hesitate to join a gym as we always go for a short period and then waste our money plus the one we would join is super expensive and would do some damage to the money saving goals.
In addition to the exercise failings my band has been weird. tight in the morning (until today) and then loose in the evening. I have restriction OK while I am eating but the food moves on through pretty fast and I am soon seeking out more meals. Yesterday was a decent day at least because when I was hungry I ate least chose somewhat nutritious foody items when I snacked instead of crapity crap. Breakfast-2 inch square of left over fruit cake (I threw away the rest to end the temptation). 2pm-nonfat peppermint mocha and entire bowl of Starbucks Oatmeal (been more than a year since I could do this). raisin bread with cream cheese 3 goldfish, 1/2 cup rice and chicken curry, another 1/2 cup of rice with salt and pepper, 15 pretzel sticks dipped in fresh ground peanut butter.
Today-I was hungry when I got up at 7:30 and went straight for some apple cinnamon cheerios. Now I do occasionally have a yen for cereal (not usually in the morning) and when I do I usually try to eat it. The difference today is most of the time I get in about two bites and soon realize that cereal does not go down well and I have to stop. Today I ate the whole 1/2 cup serving of the things. I guess I am going to have to pay more attention to this thing and perhaps go back in for my fill back. You would think that with an extra 5 pounds on my carcass that I would get tighter not looser. Its a weird weird thing.
I hate Winter!!! I think the seasonal affective disorder is setting in . I am tired and all I want to do i eat or sleep. I definitely do not want to work or get up and move. sigh. I want some sun but right now if we get sun it comes with bone chilling cold. Can I just go back to sleep until Spring?
xxxooo
Living with a lapband after seeing goal is just as much work as getting there. This blog chronicles my journey to qualify for band surgery, my work to goal weight and now living with the band long term. Weight will always be an issue but there is a whole lot of living to be done.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
The goods and an evening of craftiness-
My husband bought me a spinning wheel for Christmas...tonight I took a lesson and now I am a spinning queen...two spools are filled and before bedtime I am going to fill a third.
I finished up the second black fingerless glove tonight so tomorrow is mailing day!! pics to follow:
I finished up the second black fingerless glove tonight so tomorrow is mailing day!! pics to follow:
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Hormone Hell
Apparently my body forgot that I already had my period this month. Instead of ovulation I am apparently having another. Goodness knows what is going on but on one hand the 5 pounds I gained over Christmas are quickly dropping again with some of the water. On the other hand...I am tired because I rolled into horrible sleep patterns while on vacation. I did not eat properly and am worn down and am now full on back to the crazy work schedule an don't have time to deal with the added fatigue, grouchiness, band tightening, and pre-planning a period brings. ....I cannot decide if a series of cuss marks or self-pity is more appropriate here.
On a good note I had a bit of a NSV today..only I am not sure if it is related to my weightloss or if it is related to my continuing maturity or if it is related to the shot of testosterone that i am sure is hitting my system (given the wacky period thing). I have been working on conference presentation proposals for one of the grants I work on at the university. My science counterpart wrote a third one. We spent all day today finalizing the work and doing the always required cutting to make it exactly the right length to fit in the proposal formats. I have put forth at least two full days work on these things. Right before we went to upload them to the system we found out we needed to register for the conference first.
My colleague called our boss to tell him that we would need to register and to make sure that was OK. Said boss told her that there would only be room for one of us to go to the conference because he and the other lead organizer for the grant would need to go and one of our other (pain in my side irritating colleagues who rarely does her job) colleagues had already (without permission) registered herself to go to this conference. Well..the two of us were the only two flipping people who had done any work to earn a trip to this conference and we wrote the proposals with quite some effort. Needless to say we were fuming mad.
OK now here is the NSV part-instead of being upset and crumbling into a crying mess or avoiding the whole confront the boss scenario I got mad too!! like really mad..not mad crying or mad sad..really angry mad. My colleague and I marched over to our boss's office and pulled him out of a meeting (I did that part) and I forced him to made a decision. He sent the offending colleague over to check the budget and I responded by saying I could not wait around for that to happen and needed to go off to my other job but if I was not registering to go I would not be uploading the proposals I had written..(like all firm and clearly in one of those I am in control and mad as hell at this ridiculous situation)...
I am sure that many of you will think this is a perfectly appropriate and normal way to handle this situation....but this...was huge for me. I do not and have never confronted well or been able to handle any feelings of anger well. I have ALWAYS cried when I was mad....Whatever the reason...whatever the cause I have been wishing to be able to do this my whole life and hated the old crying thing. 47 has been a very good year for me....:).
wow it just occurred to me that this huge event even happened while having my period and super tired and sick...it was the perfect storm of danger and I did not crack. It has to be testosterone don't you think? Maybe I am growing man bits down there even :)hehe
Crazy...
xxxooo
On a good note I had a bit of a NSV today..only I am not sure if it is related to my weightloss or if it is related to my continuing maturity or if it is related to the shot of testosterone that i am sure is hitting my system (given the wacky period thing). I have been working on conference presentation proposals for one of the grants I work on at the university. My science counterpart wrote a third one. We spent all day today finalizing the work and doing the always required cutting to make it exactly the right length to fit in the proposal formats. I have put forth at least two full days work on these things. Right before we went to upload them to the system we found out we needed to register for the conference first.
My colleague called our boss to tell him that we would need to register and to make sure that was OK. Said boss told her that there would only be room for one of us to go to the conference because he and the other lead organizer for the grant would need to go and one of our other (pain in my side irritating colleagues who rarely does her job) colleagues had already (without permission) registered herself to go to this conference. Well..the two of us were the only two flipping people who had done any work to earn a trip to this conference and we wrote the proposals with quite some effort. Needless to say we were fuming mad.
OK now here is the NSV part-instead of being upset and crumbling into a crying mess or avoiding the whole confront the boss scenario I got mad too!! like really mad..not mad crying or mad sad..really angry mad. My colleague and I marched over to our boss's office and pulled him out of a meeting (I did that part) and I forced him to made a decision. He sent the offending colleague over to check the budget and I responded by saying I could not wait around for that to happen and needed to go off to my other job but if I was not registering to go I would not be uploading the proposals I had written..(like all firm and clearly in one of those I am in control and mad as hell at this ridiculous situation)...
I am sure that many of you will think this is a perfectly appropriate and normal way to handle this situation....but this...was huge for me. I do not and have never confronted well or been able to handle any feelings of anger well. I have ALWAYS cried when I was mad....Whatever the reason...whatever the cause I have been wishing to be able to do this my whole life and hated the old crying thing. 47 has been a very good year for me....:).
wow it just occurred to me that this huge event even happened while having my period and super tired and sick...it was the perfect storm of danger and I did not crack. It has to be testosterone don't you think? Maybe I am growing man bits down there even :)hehe
Crazy...
xxxooo
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Sometimes Super Low-tech Is Better
Last night my mother-in-law checked on her return flight to the UK only to find that they had somehow in the last month messed up her reservation. The airlines story is that they emailed us in november..oh wait no they didn't they called us yesterday..nope we did not receive either message and thankfully we figured it out before showing up at the airport an hour after the changed flight was scheduled to go out. I am especially annoyed because I found and purchased her flights so that she could have a break in Chicago, had an easy trek to the international connection and was the shortest possible total trip time. I paid 200 dollars more for these tickets. What we ended up with was a connection in San Francisco, leaving an hour earlier and arriving three hours later than the other flight. My poor mother in law had to walk at least a mile across the San Francisco airport and go out and then back through security.
We of course found all of this out from a guy on the phone after finally calling him when the computer did not provide any information and it appeared that she had no flight at all to go home on. I think I miss the days when you called a person and received a paper ticket.
Moan two-
I was wearing my freebie pedometer to work again today to see what my half day steps count up to when it went flying off of my belt loop. the battery went one way and the pedometer went another. I wish there was a mechanical one I could get that would not fall apart....some days I love my technology and some days it is just a pain in the rear.
xxxooo
We of course found all of this out from a guy on the phone after finally calling him when the computer did not provide any information and it appeared that she had no flight at all to go home on. I think I miss the days when you called a person and received a paper ticket.
Moan two-
I was wearing my freebie pedometer to work again today to see what my half day steps count up to when it went flying off of my belt loop. the battery went one way and the pedometer went another. I wish there was a mechanical one I could get that would not fall apart....some days I love my technology and some days it is just a pain in the rear.
xxxooo
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Cool Thing You Might Want to Try
I have heard about pedometers in the past and have even put one on a time or two but during Christmas break I tried a little experiment that revealed some information that makes this math nerd's heart go pitter patter...and might even pique your interest a touch.
On one day during vacation I walked 1860 steps. Today on a working day and being mindful that I could add a step or two while I walked around campus and in the classroom while I was teaching I walked 4935 steps. If the pedometer is correct (and as it was a freebie from a Greek yogurt company it might not be). I walked from my car across campus and to the departments other offices twice then went and taught my first class of the term at the community college. They moved my class and it is now a smallish trek away from my office. That is more than twice as much exercise as when I have a day off.
In other news (but related I think) I have now officially gained just under 5 pounds over vacation. Yup I ate and drank well...and I am paying the price for my indulgences. I am going to keep on with the pedometer experiment. It is kind of a low tech way of increasing my activity..not bad for free :)
note---I am lame...the goal prize drawings have not been mailed yet. I am working on the second (and last) black fingerless glove and as I am a batch kind of girl they will all go to the post office together.
the glove making has been fun!! :) I hope you don't look too closely as I can see all of the mistakes and they bug the crap out of me.
xxxooo
On one day during vacation I walked 1860 steps. Today on a working day and being mindful that I could add a step or two while I walked around campus and in the classroom while I was teaching I walked 4935 steps. If the pedometer is correct (and as it was a freebie from a Greek yogurt company it might not be). I walked from my car across campus and to the departments other offices twice then went and taught my first class of the term at the community college. They moved my class and it is now a smallish trek away from my office. That is more than twice as much exercise as when I have a day off.
In other news (but related I think) I have now officially gained just under 5 pounds over vacation. Yup I ate and drank well...and I am paying the price for my indulgences. I am going to keep on with the pedometer experiment. It is kind of a low tech way of increasing my activity..not bad for free :)
note---I am lame...the goal prize drawings have not been mailed yet. I am working on the second (and last) black fingerless glove and as I am a batch kind of girl they will all go to the post office together.
the glove making has been fun!! :) I hope you don't look too closely as I can see all of the mistakes and they bug the crap out of me.
xxxooo
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Filling My Blank Sheet of Paper Part 2
I went back to January 1, 2010 (I love blogging for this reason!-I actually have a record of my dieting life now!). Below is that post-I am adding in bolded bits to discuss my progress and 2011 plans.
Happy New Year and New Decade. After reading Simone's (The Bottom of the Ironing Basket) post this morning I am inspired to plan how I am gong to fill my brand new yearly inspired blank sheet of paper for the second year.
Food and exercise not weight loss: This last year went very well in the dieting department. I would like to continue the weight loss but now start feeding my whole family in a much healthier way. In the last few months we have begun to eat at home more. This has had a tremendous effect on our budget but now I need to view it in terms of health. I also want to get all of use doing more exercise related activities together. I have started getting on my bike (although not often enough). It is time we all started exercising. We did a little geocaching a few months ago and enjoyed it and there is no reason we could not do more.
Well in this I would say we were the most successful. We hardly eat out and we have drastically improved the quality of food we eat. So much so, in fact that David ground some fresh organic turkey and beef on our own (insuring the best quality meat we can get at this point). I grew my yearly garden and ate out of it even preserving some of the vegetables. There is still room for progress. We still eat way too many sweets and need to shift to eating less carbohydrates and more protein as a whole family. I now consider myself a bike rider and exerciser. I now miss activity. I have stayed at home a lot over the Christmas holiday and was just asking David today to hook my bike up to the trainer that is sitting collecting dust in the garage. Grace, David and I rode on our area trails and roads but have more room to activate our lives.
Budget: We have been crap with our money. We have separate bank accounts and I have paid attention to mine but never the bank account that gets the day to day expenses. Yesterday I went though it and found that we make stupid amounts of transactions the fill up pages with 2.00 here and there. We also have some expenses that need attending to (verizon was one big one!!). David and I think we can cut some expenses on our cell phones and eating out. I think I can tighten up grocery expenses. We have a less expensive store near our house that annoys us so we have not gone opting for the more expensive but less crowded store. We are gong to bite the bullet and put up with people standing in aisles to save the money. We are also going on a budget with a weekly allowance each in cash. Hopefully this will cut down on the starbucks with a card runs. David and I want to visit the UK in the summer and I want a new couch. Hopefully stopping the frittering away of money will make those two goals more easily attainable.
The budgeting has been up and down. We have months where we are excellent and others not so much. I managed to get my new couch but we could not afford the summer trip to the UK. We are hoping this summer will be the one. We dropped cable and changed our phone plan. We dropped our cell costs and then upped them again (so hard to resist fancy cell phones). Our grocery budget is much improved as we take care to eat in and buy good foods but save them in the freezer instead of letting them go to waste. We can still improve on this area! We are not very self disciplined when we want something and we do not set a good example for Grace and need to be mindful of the messages she gets from us.
Work: I have to decide what I want. Do I want a tenure track job? Do I want to take on several part time jobs allowing more flexibility at home? Do I want to retire (and am I willing to make the sacrifices necessary for that?). Can I even decide what I want given the children I have who need me to pay for their college tuition?
Again progress but no decisions. I changed jobs, I ended up working three part time jobs mostly because the opportunities presented themselves to me. Retirement still entices me but I don't think I can afford the help my daughters with college tuition if I am not earning any income. I had a great part-time summer and really enjoyed it. I really do not know what I want to do when I grow up still. sigh...definitely need to keep working on this one.
Time: I need to learn how to plan and execute my time in a more organized way. When I am working I need to work. When I am home on weekends I need to stop work from bleeding over into family time. When I am spending my leisure time I need to spend it mindfully and give my daughters and sometimes husband :)...my focused attention not a quick glance and comment from behind a computer or away from the TV or from the kitchen or or or.
Again-improvements here. I took weekends off and did a much better job of separating my leisure time from my work time. What I have still failed miserably at is to stop letting myself be distracted when I am working. I spend a lot of time getting nothing done it seems. This definitely needs work still.
Arts and Crafts: Sewing the pajama bottoms made me realize that I miss my arts and crafts time. Since 1999 I shifted my focus from leisure to starting and finishing a Ph.D. I have finished that and I need to refocus at least some of my time on things I like to do. Grace would love to sew and craft with me and I need to make the time to sew, quilt, knit, and bead. The good news is that I have a decked out sewing room in which to do this. All I have to do is go in there and get started.
I have really improved in this area. The time off I had during the summer and this Christmas break were largely spent crafting and pursing non-work passions. I have knitted, painted, sewn, ridden my bike, ridden a horse, gardened and volunteered to write for my local paper....definitely an expanded creative life.
So although I am not going to call these New Years resolutions in a sense they are. I have always had a simple resolution in the past. It was lose weight. I never really planned how I would accomplish the weight loss goal and until I got the lapband I had very little success at it from year to year. Something else I have noticed this year is that with the weight loss goal getting accomplished I have other personal failings rising to the surface that I am now paying attention to. A lot of those listed above contributed to the vicious circle of weight gain and failed weight loss. I am hoping this blog post and additional off post planning will help me succeed and truly making changes in my life.
On a final note: I had a horrible dream last night that I lost my restriction and discovered that I had really not changed any of my habits at all and bounced right back to my original weight in rapid speed. I am really afraid that this is correct. I am planning on making broad changes to how I live my life in 2010 to insure that even if I have glitches with the band my lifestyle changes will at least temper the damage that could be caused by band blips.
I think that this goal setting is effective and that I was right when I said that I had always made resolutions but never really thought about or planned how I would accomplish them. This year I changed how I lived...really pretending to be the person I wanted to be. It has been effective and will continue to do so as I decide exactly who I am and want to be. The biggest difficulty I find is part of who I want to be largely involves my family and if they are not on board with the plan it is very difficult to 'make' them change. I will continue to work on my own stuff but I would like to get my husband to work with me on some of them (not sure if this is even a good idea much less doable).
So the broad categories:
Career-Need to figure it out!
Time-Still problematic. I can now take time off but need to work effectively and in an organized way.
Budget-still need to work on this one.
Family fitness-good start refinement needed.
Craft-excellent progress. I need to keep making time for it.
Happy New Year and New Decade. After reading Simone's (The Bottom of the Ironing Basket) post this morning I am inspired to plan how I am gong to fill my brand new yearly inspired blank sheet of paper for the second year.
Food and exercise not weight loss: This last year went very well in the dieting department. I would like to continue the weight loss but now start feeding my whole family in a much healthier way. In the last few months we have begun to eat at home more. This has had a tremendous effect on our budget but now I need to view it in terms of health. I also want to get all of use doing more exercise related activities together. I have started getting on my bike (although not often enough). It is time we all started exercising. We did a little geocaching a few months ago and enjoyed it and there is no reason we could not do more.
Well in this I would say we were the most successful. We hardly eat out and we have drastically improved the quality of food we eat. So much so, in fact that David ground some fresh organic turkey and beef on our own (insuring the best quality meat we can get at this point). I grew my yearly garden and ate out of it even preserving some of the vegetables. There is still room for progress. We still eat way too many sweets and need to shift to eating less carbohydrates and more protein as a whole family. I now consider myself a bike rider and exerciser. I now miss activity. I have stayed at home a lot over the Christmas holiday and was just asking David today to hook my bike up to the trainer that is sitting collecting dust in the garage. Grace, David and I rode on our area trails and roads but have more room to activate our lives.
Budget: We have been crap with our money. We have separate bank accounts and I have paid attention to mine but never the bank account that gets the day to day expenses. Yesterday I went though it and found that we make stupid amounts of transactions the fill up pages with 2.00 here and there. We also have some expenses that need attending to (verizon was one big one!!). David and I think we can cut some expenses on our cell phones and eating out. I think I can tighten up grocery expenses. We have a less expensive store near our house that annoys us so we have not gone opting for the more expensive but less crowded store. We are gong to bite the bullet and put up with people standing in aisles to save the money. We are also going on a budget with a weekly allowance each in cash. Hopefully this will cut down on the starbucks with a card runs. David and I want to visit the UK in the summer and I want a new couch. Hopefully stopping the frittering away of money will make those two goals more easily attainable.
The budgeting has been up and down. We have months where we are excellent and others not so much. I managed to get my new couch but we could not afford the summer trip to the UK. We are hoping this summer will be the one. We dropped cable and changed our phone plan. We dropped our cell costs and then upped them again (so hard to resist fancy cell phones). Our grocery budget is much improved as we take care to eat in and buy good foods but save them in the freezer instead of letting them go to waste. We can still improve on this area! We are not very self disciplined when we want something and we do not set a good example for Grace and need to be mindful of the messages she gets from us.
Work: I have to decide what I want. Do I want a tenure track job? Do I want to take on several part time jobs allowing more flexibility at home? Do I want to retire (and am I willing to make the sacrifices necessary for that?). Can I even decide what I want given the children I have who need me to pay for their college tuition?
Again progress but no decisions. I changed jobs, I ended up working three part time jobs mostly because the opportunities presented themselves to me. Retirement still entices me but I don't think I can afford the help my daughters with college tuition if I am not earning any income. I had a great part-time summer and really enjoyed it. I really do not know what I want to do when I grow up still. sigh...definitely need to keep working on this one.
Time: I need to learn how to plan and execute my time in a more organized way. When I am working I need to work. When I am home on weekends I need to stop work from bleeding over into family time. When I am spending my leisure time I need to spend it mindfully and give my daughters and sometimes husband :)...my focused attention not a quick glance and comment from behind a computer or away from the TV or from the kitchen or or or.
Again-improvements here. I took weekends off and did a much better job of separating my leisure time from my work time. What I have still failed miserably at is to stop letting myself be distracted when I am working. I spend a lot of time getting nothing done it seems. This definitely needs work still.
Arts and Crafts: Sewing the pajama bottoms made me realize that I miss my arts and crafts time. Since 1999 I shifted my focus from leisure to starting and finishing a Ph.D. I have finished that and I need to refocus at least some of my time on things I like to do. Grace would love to sew and craft with me and I need to make the time to sew, quilt, knit, and bead. The good news is that I have a decked out sewing room in which to do this. All I have to do is go in there and get started.
I have really improved in this area. The time off I had during the summer and this Christmas break were largely spent crafting and pursing non-work passions. I have knitted, painted, sewn, ridden my bike, ridden a horse, gardened and volunteered to write for my local paper....definitely an expanded creative life.
So although I am not going to call these New Years resolutions in a sense they are. I have always had a simple resolution in the past. It was lose weight. I never really planned how I would accomplish the weight loss goal and until I got the lapband I had very little success at it from year to year. Something else I have noticed this year is that with the weight loss goal getting accomplished I have other personal failings rising to the surface that I am now paying attention to. A lot of those listed above contributed to the vicious circle of weight gain and failed weight loss. I am hoping this blog post and additional off post planning will help me succeed and truly making changes in my life.
On a final note: I had a horrible dream last night that I lost my restriction and discovered that I had really not changed any of my habits at all and bounced right back to my original weight in rapid speed. I am really afraid that this is correct. I am planning on making broad changes to how I live my life in 2010 to insure that even if I have glitches with the band my lifestyle changes will at least temper the damage that could be caused by band blips.
I think that this goal setting is effective and that I was right when I said that I had always made resolutions but never really thought about or planned how I would accomplish them. This year I changed how I lived...really pretending to be the person I wanted to be. It has been effective and will continue to do so as I decide exactly who I am and want to be. The biggest difficulty I find is part of who I want to be largely involves my family and if they are not on board with the plan it is very difficult to 'make' them change. I will continue to work on my own stuff but I would like to get my husband to work with me on some of them (not sure if this is even a good idea much less doable).
So the broad categories:
Career-Need to figure it out!
Time-Still problematic. I can now take time off but need to work effectively and in an organized way.
Budget-still need to work on this one.
Family fitness-good start refinement needed.
Craft-excellent progress. I need to keep making time for it.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Happy New Year One and All
Well the clock has ticked to midnight and I am going to bed. For the first time ever we had a quiet evening at home with no guests, no parties. I enjoyed it a lot! David made a plate of cheeses for dinner and Cinda brought over a few pastries she made today to take to her party.
Last year I wrote down my new year's resolutions and I, for the most part kept them. I am ruminating on next years...I think they will be much the same but I am quite pleased at our progress and will do a proper job of reflecting and projecting tomorrow! This quiet leisure at home stuff is exhausting :)
xxxooo
Last year I wrote down my new year's resolutions and I, for the most part kept them. I am ruminating on next years...I think they will be much the same but I am quite pleased at our progress and will do a proper job of reflecting and projecting tomorrow! This quiet leisure at home stuff is exhausting :)
xxxooo
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