jenniferh

I love summer.   I can actually get a workout in because I don’t have to worry about being late for work - and I’m not so exhausted by the afternoon that I can’t go for a walk.  And then there’s the pool - the baby and  I actually spent an hour in there this morning and we’re planning on spending most of the early evening in there, too! 

 I’m sure I’ve gained since my last weigh in, so I’m not weighing in until Saturday.  I’m eating carefully, I’m working out a LOT, and drinking lots of water.  I haven’t had a soda in MONTHS (go me!) but I wasn’t careful for the last six weeks of school. 

We’ll see what the damage comes to on Saturday.

I’ve decided to look for a job closer to home when the contracts come up in March.  I love the job I have, I love the challenge of trying to help the kids who need the help the most, but it is draining and I hate having to leave my house so early to get to work.  I’m applying at my kids’ high school, which is only about a mile from my home, and looking into the daycare that is closer to my neighborhood.  I just think it would make life that much easier for all of us.

Still eating the veggies and drinking the water, but I’m a little bloated because last night we celebrated a bit and we had pizza and I had a beer (oh and it was awesome to have hot pizza and cold beer!)  So today I’m still aiming for persistently following my plan.  No more celebrating for a while.

It took each of my classes about 10 minutes to say that.  Then the students all sat there looking at me for about 30 seconds until someone said, “Where are your glasses?”  So I had to play show-and-tell and show my cool contacts-case to my classes (they hang suspened in the solution in a nifty little cage-like contraption instead of sitting in a puddle of solution in those little flat dishes.)  I felt the love, today - ALL my students were smiling and happy for me while I was telling them how much I love my contacts more than my glasses. 

I did well, eating, today, but not GREAT.  I need to work more calcium into my day, somehow.  Maybe take a yogurt with me for breakfast and a string-cheese to go with lunch.  I did do SUPER with the water - I have a huge water bottle and I had to refill it at lunchtime today (when I usually fill it once, and take a lot of it home with me to get dumped out!)

This evening I’ll be watching Superstars of Dance and jumping on my trampoline for at least 30 minutes.  I meant to go jogging this morning, but I accidentally hit the off button instead of the snooze button, and my kids had to wake me up at 6:15.  I have to leave my HOUSE by 6:25!  But it wasn’t a catastrophe, just an inconvenience. 

Can’t wait for Superstars of Dance!

It’s not really that big a deal, I guess.  I went prematurely gray, I might as well have premature cataracts to go along with it.  Of all the things to happen, a slow-growing condition that is imminently reversable once it gets bad enough to affect my life is actually not that bad of a situation.  This is the part where I thank God for all my blessings (including the people on this site who help me to see more clearly, pun intended).

After going through all the trouble to make that delectable, delicious chocolate-cherry cobbler yesterday, I didn’t even bother to eat any! YEAH!  I’m truly back on track!  And I actually got enough sleep last night to feel like I WANT to work out today!  HELL YEAH!

You know what? This little incident may be the pivotal moment that changes my life.  I had a hard time with eating right just to make the fat go away, because I’m not yet suffering from any of the ill-effects of being fat other than being uncomfortable in my body.  I don’t have high blood pressure or diabetes, and I haven’t had any warning signs that I’m yet affecting my health.  I KNOW those things are right around the corner if I don’t reign myself in and start eating a more balanced diet and exercising.  But somehow the knowing never translates into the doing.  But now I know that if I 1) take the omega-3 capsules, 2) eat a ton of dark green leafy veggies and 3) drink more water, I can slow the formation of the cataracts in my eyes and preserve my vision for a long, long time.  That’s a BIG DEAL for me. 

Breakfast: a strawberry/mango smoothie and a bowl of oatmeal

Lunch: tuna on crackers with a giant salad

Snack: V-8

Dinner: I have no flippin’ idea, but I’ll figure it out.

I’m 34.  THIRTY FOUR.  And my new eye doctor just told me that the problems I’m having with my vision (glare, night-vision problems) are primarily because they are such a light color, but also because I have CATARACTS.

AND I have problems with my right eye drifting outward. 

How the $#@^*( did my last eye doctor not catch this shit? 

She says my last eye doctor should be shot because he didn’t do anything for my eye health, he just prescribed glasses. 

 He didn’t educate me about omega-3’s which I need because I’m female, probably low-thyroid, and light-colored eyes are more prone to drying out.  He didn’t tell me that I needed glare-coating on my glasses because I have light-colored eyes and basically live in a brighter, more glaring world than people who have more pigment to protect the insides of their eyes.  She did say that I don’t have any sun-damage to the whites of my eyes, so the cataracts are probably an injury from abysmally low estrogen levels after the births of my four children and my thyroid is more than likely low since I had my last baby and that is leading to protein deposits which clump in my lenses.

I’m not happy.  I’m really trying not to cry because I went to visit this doctor to try to get contacts for the first time in my life, and I’m wearing them now. 

Being able to sit here and read the screen without frames in the way and baby-smudged lenses is really, really wierd.

I’m going to walmart in a little bit to get some eye-drops (she said I had to use the ones that are like real tears, 3 to 4 times a day) and some UV-protective sunglasses.

I really really really really really want some ice cream.  But I’m not going to do that to myself.  I’m having fish, salad, and pretzel-crisps dipped in roasted-red-pepper hummus.  Then I’m going to buy myself a REALLY PRETTY pair of sunglasses because I’ve never had any.

And I REALLY took those two weeks off.  I didn’t grade anything, didn’t PLAN anything… and it’s all catching up to me, now.

I didn’t have time to pack a lunch this morning.  My husband had a hard time getting out the door, so consequently, so did I.  I did eat a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, and I had a packet of instant oatmeal in my desk at school and the Wal-Mart equivalent of a SlimFast shake in the fridge so I had something for lunch.  Not a very appetizing something, but something.

Now I’m trying to break away from the whiney, clingy three-year-old who doesn’t want to get off my lap and let me change into my sweats.  I really need to work out now because I couldn’t this morning.   Then I need to grade tests and create 200 flash cards for my labs to use tomorrow.

At least I’ve kept to my plan of getting my room ready for a sub, just in case, every afternoon before I leave school.  It gives me a measure of peace to know that if an emergency happens, I can just call for a sub and everything will be ok in my classroom.

Off to turn on a Dora the Explorer video to see if that can buy me 20 minutes to work out.

Hormonal weight fluctuations frickin’ SUUUUUCK!

I’m grouchy, sleepy, hungry, and feeling claustrophobic but too tired to get it together and get out of my house.  We really don’t NEED to go anywhere, and if I do leave the house, I’ll just end up wasting gas and spending money on junk at the grocery store.

I’ve jogged on my mini-trampoline for 20 minutes, today, and I want to do some upper-body strength training.  I thought about starting a little fitness challenge for myself for the month of January to see how many “boy” push-ups I can do by the end of the month.

As for my resolutions, I’m moving every day, I only had 1 soda with lunch at my Dad’s yesterday (it was that or beer!) and today when I was craving a bowl of potato chips I had a V-8 instead (low-sodium), and the craving went away!  YEAH!

We’ll be having BLT’s with mustard instead of mayo on 100% whole wheat bread for dinner, tonight, with tomato soup.   And I think the girls and I will go for a walk around the neighborhood.  It’s been a while since the weather was this nice and the baby needs some fresh air.

I disappeared for a while - just too much going on.  I’m teaching, raising 4 kids, my dh is working out of town and is only home on the weekends… Fun stuff!

Teaching is going well - everyone said I’d want to quit by Christmas because “The first year is the hardest!” but it’s just getting easier and easier.  It’s not a SIMPLE job, by any means, but honestly it’s not as hard as my senior year of college was.  College was freakin’ DIFFICULT!  I’ll take teaching, any day!

The diet and exercise, on the other hand…

I’m back on the sodas, back on the chips, off the veggies, not drinking water, and the only exercise I’ve been getting lately is walking around my classroom.  I’ve been completely SUCKING at being healthy.

So here we are, at New Year’s, again, the season of Grand Resolutions.

Maybe I’ll be able to keep mine longer than a couple of months, this time.

I guess I lost my motivation once school started.  Honestly, I started getting serious about losing the weight late in the summer so I could at least be ten pounds lighter by the time I went back to work.  Well, I did that.  And then I stopped. 

 SO I’m floundering around trying to find some other motivation - setting goals, telling myself “I can buy music for every five pounds.”  But those things AREN’T WORKING.  I still hover, 2 pounds away from my mini-goal, and when I jump on the scale every day I think, “Hey, at least I haven’t gained any back.”

I’ve started jogging daily, hoping that I will better.  I’m eating more fiber because of a different challenge.  But what I really need is a REASON to drop another ten pounds.

I may have found it.

If I drop another ten pounds, there is no way my size 14 clothes will fit anymore.  I’m already sewing darts into the waistbands to keep my pants and skirts up, but when I lose 10 more pounds, there will be no quick fixes - I’ll have to either take the clothes apart and reconstruct them or just break down and buy size 12’s.

Could I also be subconsciously sabotaging myself because I had to spend SO MUCH money this summer to get Rachel into band that I don’t want to spend money on clothes for me?  Maybe. 

But now I have a reason to want to get out of those clothes and go ahead and buy new ones.  A teacher I work with is a single mom, with three kids, struggling to live in this economy on a single, teacher’s salary.  Let’s not get back into the debate over whether or not teachers make enough money - I’m just going to flat out tell you that a single woman CANNOT comfortably raise three children on a teacher’s pay.  She also cleans houses in the evenings to try to get her budget to stretch a little farther. 

Well, last week, someone stole her wallet.  Her bank said it could take up to 6 months to reimburse what was taken out of her checking account via a debit/credit card.

She was complaining this week that because of her recent financial difficulties, she hasn’t been eating.  She figures in another month she will need to buy new clothes because her 16s won’t fit anymore.

So here’s the plan.

I’m going to work my ass off to lose those ten pounds as fast as possible, and then I’m just going to park next to her one morning and have her open the trunk of her car.  Then I’m going to take all the size 14 clothes I can’t wear anymore and transfer them from my car to hers.

Pray for us both.  I want to do this for her so badly.

I joined the Phoenix weight loss challenge about getting enough fiber, and I’m starting my own personal fitness challenge.  Any of you who feel up to getting started jogging are MORE than welcome to come join me.  As you will see (Trick-or-Treat Jogging Challenge) I’m starting at the very beginning.  This is not a challenge for marathoners.  This is for people like me who can do the bare minimum and just want to get better. 

 I like the sound of that: getting better. 

Being this out of shape makes me feel ill.  I want to feel better.