Just Keep Swimming

Roughly one more week has gone by and things are going quite well. I am now about 14 days without a cigarette, which is nice. I dropped another pound this week, which adds up to 21 total since the end of September. I am continuing to be more active and make smarter food choices.

Last Sunday, I was inducted into Alpha Chi. That is the National Honor Society for colleges and Universities. To be eligible for induction you have to be a junior or senior and must be in the top 10% of all students at your institution. It is an honor indeed to have been inducted and makes my nerdy academic heart flutter.

I've started collecting grad school applications and brochures so I can figure out where this path I am on is going to take me. I don't want it to take me too far from home - I have so much going on here, but I want to end up in a program that will matter.

That's all for now. Off to cook my spinach and heat up my chicken. Homework will follow dinner and I think a short workout will follow homework.

It's Been One Week Since You Looked at Me...

So, with it having been a little over a week since my last post, I want to assure myself and anyone who may be reading this that I am alive and well. The project is also alive, and quite well.

During the course of this past week, I lost about 5 pounds. Today, is day 10 with no cigarettes. Every day, I have been making my own breakfast and packing a lunch. I haven't been stopping to buy sugar or junk. I've been walking more - not every day as perhaps I should, but certainly more than I was for months. I have even been making a conscious effort to drink more water daily.

I have finally slowed my social commitments so I am no longer running from the pain of losing Flagg, but I am dealing with it slowly, one piece at a time. I am seeing someone in a professional capacity to help me with that. It's nice to be home more, and it gives me a chance to find a routine for myself that I can settle into again. It will never be "our" routine again, but I like the security of knowing every day, I have some things that are constants.

So, that's the brief update before I run out the door to work. I am making changes and they are changes for the better. I am enjoying the benefits, both health wise and financially, of not eating out/ordering in 2 (or even 3) meals a day. I am moving more and I am currently not polluting my lungs with nicotine. All of these steps will certainly help me on the path of being better @ 30 if I can turn them into habits.

If I Can Manage 3 Years Like This...

I will have it made. I packed breakfast and a partial lunch today. I packed both meals yesterday. I went for a 2 mile walk during lunch yesterday. I've been carefully budgeting my money and putting some of it away into my savings account.

My dear friend L was kind enough yesterday to share with me a recipe that she uses and also spent a few minutes showing me the world of SparkPeople. It is a very comprehensive site that lets me do everything I could possibly need to do - for free. I love free.

My goal for the rest of this week is to do some real cooking this weekend. I need to take a lesson from L and buy containers and batch cook. In most cases it takes no more time and effort to cook a larger batch of something than it would take to cook 1-2 portions. Why not do it once and have healthy food easily available to me that I don't have to think about?

Now, to menu plan, grocery shop, and schedule in the time to do the cooking. This also involves buying new containers, but I can do that before the weekend hits. Oddly, I am very excited about this. It's been quite a while since I've done any real cooking. With F being in the hospital for so long and then him passing away, I just haven't had it in me. Time to get back in the kitchen!

Light a Spark Under Your Ass

Today, I woke up and thought to myself, "Self, you haven't been on a scale since two weeks after the man died. You lost a lot of weight those two weeks because you weren't eating. Now you are. I bet it's all come back".

Sure enough, I braved the scale, and I was right. I didn't expect to keep off all the "Depressive anorexia" weight, but still, I am right back where I began 3 months ago because of the cycles of my emotional eating. I haven't been nearly as bad in recent weeks as I've wanted to be, though I have my moments.

This morning I was just fed up though. I'm fed up with dreading the scale. I'm fed up with hating the way I look when I get dressed. I'm fed up with my pants not fitting any more because I WASHED them. I'm fed up with being out of breath by the time I reach the top of the two flights of stairs at the train station. I'm fed up with being self conscious when I take my son to the beach in the summer. I'm fed up with everything hurting because I'm making my body carry more than it is meant to. I'm fed up with being fed up, and I'm angry at myself for gaining back about half of the 100 pounds I lost a few years ago.

Now, I have long been a believer that sitting around whining about something if you're not going to do something about it is a waste of energy and is simply obnoxious. I do have it in me to do something about this and I've done it before. This time, I want to do something about it and just keep doing it without turning my back on everything I know just because less healthy foods "taste better", or are "more convenient", or are "less expensive".

I can find as many excuses as I try to find or I can make it work for me. One of the lessons my Daddy taught me was that anything really worth it is going to take some hard work and dedication. I've applied that to school, so now I am going to apply it to my physical wellbeing.

To that end, I found a bunch of folks raving about Sparkpeople.com and thought I would check it out. It seems pretty comprehensive and very cool. I am going to give it a shot and hope it helps me track all the things I need to track. Let's see if Sparkpeople can start the fire I need under my ass.

A Little Fear Never Hurt

I did something terrifying today. For the first time since I have been working full time, I also registered for a full time course load in school. I will now be working a 40 hour week and trying to hold down 12 credits while still tending to other duties. The things I will be studying and the work I will have to manage are all things I love, and because I have that love for them, I am hoping I will handle it all smoothly.

Typically, about 3 1/2 weeks or so into every semester, I panic, feel overwhelmed, and beg the universe to let me drop all of my classes. I haven't done that in a while now, but that is mostly because after I figured that it happened EVERY semester, I told the man in charge of my life - "no matter what I say, DON'T let me drop these classes". He held me to that. When it happened again, as it was bound to do, he reminded me that I told him this was going to happen. He made me keep going and I succeeded. I'm going to keep going this time too, and I will succeed.

If I survive my January class and all 12 of my spring credits, I will finish the spring semester with only 28 more credits until I graduate. I suppose that makes spring the semester I have to start thinking about graduate school a little more seriously. These thoughts alone are a little intimidating, but if you want something, you can't just sit around and hope it happens. You have to make it happen.

Baby steps it is

I've learned from much experience that when I try to tackle everything all at once, more often than not, I drop everything. What is the lesson here? Small, incremental steps throughout the process. Habits are hard to break and I'm not going to succeed in any of them if I go into this with a black and white mentality.

So, last night, there was a baby step. Sure, I had pizza for dinner, but I had a fairly big salad before hand with a homemade vinaigrette dressing instead of that awesome creamy stuff we all love. I drank water with said pizza and even better - I only ate one slice of it.

Point for me! I consider this at least a small victory in the battle of eating more sensibly, making healthier choices in general, and being smoking hot at 30 and beyond.

The Better @ 30 project

So many things have changed recently. So many things have shaken up my entire life, shifting the pieces of what once seemed to make sense and be solid under my feet. With the loss of my significant other last month and a birthday this month, I have come to this realization: I owe it to him, to myself, and to the people I am left in the care of to continue bettering myself.

To that end, I have decided to tackle a long term project. Will I finish it? I don't know. That's a long way down the road, but I'm certainly going to begin. I call it the "Better @ 30" project because the premise is that I am going to take action now to ensure at the age of 30 I will be better looking physically, in better health, finished with my Bachelor's degree and on my way to grad school (if not already IN grad school), in a better financial situation, and happier than I am now. I cannot say I will be happier than I've ever been since I have known that and doubt it can be topped, but happier than now - certainly.

These things are not small projects. I want to complete a lot of things, I want to make a lot of changes and improvements and it's all going to take work. Sadly, it's not the type of work I always enjoy, and so I'm going to end up slacking at points. I already know that. I've got close to 3 years on this timeline, and it will be very telling whether or not this blog even exists at that point.

If it does though, there WILL be changes and I'm going to be hotter, healthier, and more successful at 30 than I've ever been. Let's get this party started!