present2future

ugh! help! i’m trying to solve the problem of comfort eating. i have looked and looked online and i have found lots of articles about why we do it and what happens chemically in our bodies. but the only suggestions i find for dealing with it is to write down not only what i eat but how i’m feeling and then why i’m feeling that way. i do see the value in this but honestly, sometimes life is stressful and even though i can identify why i’m stressed, doesn’t mean i can solve it. sometimes i just need to be comforted. i dont have friends nearby to turn to and i am not dating or married.  I don’t like taking baths. reading helps sometimes but its a distraction, it doesnt give the same chemical boost that eating does.  exercise works and i would love to switch food for exercise but i think it’s unrealistic that i will be able to to that consistantly at first. i need ideas. what can i do to relax at the end of the day? what can i do when i feel unmotivated and bummed in the middle of the day? I’d love to hear all your ideas!

I don’t want to be here writing anything right now. but sometimes the best thing to do is whatever it is you don’t Want to do. It’s been a bad week with sweets. I had a few good days here and there and then the last few i just gave up. I’ve been depressed and stressed. Today I went out and had a good time wandering around a mall. I am not normally a fan of malls, but today was fun. And strangely, my knees didnt give me too hard of a time about the walking.

I haven’t been swimming much. partially because there has been a lot of clouds which in AZ can very quickly become lighting. A couple times I was in the pool I looked up and saw flashes so i hopped out. but i will admit that i was relieved to have a good reason not to swim. most days it was quite a feat just to get up and out of bed. the worst part is, i wish i could report that i’m feeling more motivated or ready to get back on track. but i’m not feeling that way.  i feel like sitting around eating lasagna. i’m going to have my knees x-rayed today maybe i will take the bus over to the library while i’m out. that seems ambitious though. i guess it depends on how hot it is. maybe i will get lucky and the rain will hold.

i just checked the forecast, it’s supposed to be 107 with  thunderstorms in the late afternoon. peachy.

I forgot to weigh myself yesterday morning.  I will do that today. See how much damage i did the last few days. i’m going back to bed for now. listening to the rain. grateful for the rain.

ugh. all my blogs here are boring.

 It’s been a long hard weekend. I don’t have a car which causes me to spend a lot of time waiting for buses and walking. Plus I work outside. normally this is a good thing, i like being outside. but it’s been very hot in AZ the last few days. over 110. and it’s just worn me down. I will say though that july 10th and 11th were good days. i followed my desert rules. I didnt swim because i was so drained from the sun. tonight I had a big dinner and large desert but was overall a good day and I may even feel up to swimming later.  I am feeling a lot calmer since I’ve been easing off sugar. it’s only been a few days so I’m not sure if it will get easier or harder as time goes on.  I would love to hear from other people who have had to quit or cut back on sweets. I hope everyone has had successful weekends!

take care

OK, yesterday wasn’t a great start. I was not supposed to have any sweets for the rest of the day but I did. I had a couple of donut holes in the afternoon and 4 marshmallows at night.  I want to use the excuse that it was a stressful day- which it very much was. but the problem was really that I was weak. I did do A Lot better then I usually do. I usually eat a lot more sweets then that, and that’s a small comfort. but today i’m determined to make it through the day.

In my last blog I rambled on about things I want to change but I didn’t lay out my actual plan of attack or attach any specific tasks to those goals. So this morning my intention was to do that. I came online early today (I have the day off) and have spent some time reading blogs, and checking out profiles. I always love reading profiles anyway (is this a girl thing?) so I really enjoyed it.  I got lots of ideas and inspiration from everyone.

So my original idea was that I was going to count calories as a way of relearning what portions should look like and what should be on my plate. But I tried that in the past and found that while I kept up with it very well for awhile that I either quickly got frustrated or became totally obsessed and let thinking about food totally rule my thoughts. I don’t want either of those to happen. Although so many of you have done well by counting calories that I can’t help but think that maybe that’s really the smartest thing to do. Honestly, the thought of doing it exhausts me. I don’t want to obsess again and I don’t trust myself not to.  In the past few months I tried to make meal plans based on calorie counts. Thinking that I could just follow the meal plan and not have to worry about the calories because it was all built right in. But, that hasn’t worked. It takes a lot of work to come up with meal plans that are vegetarian, no dairy, diabetic friendly (I cook most of my mother’s meals), low calorie and nutritionally complete (or at least reasonably close to complete).  It requires preplanning and being very strict.  It just hasn’t worked. So what do I do? A true low-carb diet would be pretty challenging for a strict vegetarian. And being vegetarian isn’t negotiable for me.  I have done some looking and can’t find a meal plan that looks realistic for me. So, I’m going to make my own.

I think it would be a mistake to make too many rules at once so I’m going to try just making one or two a week and see how that goes. If progress is too slow, I’ll rethink this idea.

So this week, I’m going to go with something straightforward and simple.
Rule#1 Only one serving of desert/sweet treat a day.

This seems easy and for many people totally doable. But for me this is big. I eat deserts/sweets after every meal, often as snacks and two or three times in the evening. it’s nothing for me to eat a box of cookies in a day. When I leave a store or come home at the end of the day I wonder if I’m going to have enough sweets to ‘make it through’. it’s ridiculous.  i’m not counting sweet beverages.  I don’t drink soda or coffee and rarely juice.  So i think I will be ok allowing vanilla milk and sweet tea for now.

I don’t want to start on a Thurday though. But I don’t want to wait either. I am always off work on Monday. So I’ll try that as my day to buy groceries, weigh in and asses how the week went.  I’m going to start Thursday, but continue this same rule into next week so I can get onto a cycle of starting a new rule on Mondays after weigh in.   I have already broken the rule today- i made homemade donuts for breakfast and have been nibbling all morning. I will have to settle for no more sweets the rest of the day. I’m getting twitchy just thinking about it

As I was reading the blogs this morning I came across a comment someone made about creating the life she wants.  I daydream all the time about a different life. I know that my weight and low self esteem are preventing it from coming true. I was going to write more about that today but I have already written so much that I’m going to leave it for another day. In the meantime I’ll just daydream about it.

OH! im going to set a fitness goal as well. (geez this is a long blog).  I’m giving myself until June 20th to swim a mile.

that seems pretty easy, but knowing what next week is going to be like for me I think it’s totally reasonable.

ok, that’s it for now. take care of yourself and have as good a day as possible.

ok, today is my first day of really getting to set up on the site. the first profile i created was a mess and i couldnt access some of the features but this one seems to be fine. over the next few months i want to set up mini goals to help me relearn new, healthy habits.  i’ll blog about those here. right now it seems like a huge job. but so did quitting smoking. and getting my first degree. but i did those and i can do this.  i’m very visual so i like to see lists and pictures. especially to help organize my thoughts.

so i’m going to go ahead and make a list of some of the bad habits i want to fix:

-eating more deserts/sweets everyday then i should

-using food to comfort myself when i have a bad day

-sitting at home for days at a time when i dont have to work

-eating portions that are too large.

-late night snacking

new habits that i want to pick up

-regular exercise.

-daily relaxation

-new ways to vent, relax, comfort myself after a bad day

i expected these lists to be much longer.  tomorrow i will sit down and figure out what i need to do to turn these into actions, not ideas.