Step AWAY from the food

I cannot say that I had a good week. I did very well for a couple days and ate what I should eat. I had 2 great days as snow days. I had a late start on Thursday but I felt the need to eat crap. Hubby and I ate out on Wednesday and Thursday night. Not good. I was a little stressed at work but also feeling good since I was getting my work done.

Fast forward to today. I got all my cleaning done this morning. Baby slept for 3 hours this morning and 2 and a half this afternoon. I had to wake her for lunch and dinner. She is a sleepy little thing right now. I was avoiding work and really wanted to go out and about. I resisted the urge to go shopping at Babies R us. I am pretty proud of that. Here it comes...Wait for it... I then went into the kitchen and made coleslaw for dinner tomorrow night. (We are having my parents over for dinner and the Super Bowl.) While there I happen to glancec at the family size bag of chips that I bought ot have with dinner since my dad has to have chips with everything. I am sure you have already guessed what is next...

I ate the entire BAG. I then logged on the WW and realized that I spiraled out of control when I stopped journaling on Wednesday. I have not listed anything on the blog since then either. I put the chips in, ordered Sushi for dinner, and I will brush myself off and get back on the horse. I have already planned what I will be eating tomorrow.

Snow Days

I love snow days but...I am so lazy. Well not totally lazy. I have been getting school work done. I dumped all of my USB drives and disks onto the computer and I am getting it all together based on subject and area. This is something I needed to do and I am finding so many useful ideas and things I did not realize I had.

I did not however exercise. It is amazing the excuses I can come up with when I am home all day.

• I can't exercise after I eat.
• I need to shower.
• The baby might need something.
• I am working on stuff that is more important.

I waited for Ed before I cooked dinner. This was certainly a mistake since then I was hungry and munched on crackers and peanut butter and cream cheese with him. I know that I need to stick to my routine even when I am off. If that means dinner without him then so be it.

Otherwise things went well for a snow day. I got some stuff done and I delat with a teething baby. She is not too bad just not totally herself either.

What a good day

I can say with confidence that last week was not a good one. I was not feeling good about myself nor did I make good decisions. I did however, document everything I ate on the blog and on WW online. I also posted a blog entry almost every night. And I exercised many evenings.

Today I did well. I ate only what I was suppossed to. I also walked past the Krispy Kreme donuts in the media center 3 times without taking one. I went into the office and past the M&Ms about 3 times and never took one. I was in the assistant Principal's office and looked at her jar of Milky Way and did not take one. I stayed in my room during the staff pot luck lunch and worked while I ate my lunch from home. I did not give into temptation.

I was actually quite proud of myself and my choices today. I know that avoiding the staff luncheon sounds extreme but I was soooo not feeling social. I stayed in my classroom and took the time to get some work done. I do not feel so behind and hopeless now.

I weighed in this morning at home and it was not good news. I think this had to do with my bad choices over the weekend. I can remedy that this week by remaining on points. The hardest thing lately has been water consumption. I drink soda all day. Caffeine free, diet but still soda. I need to work on drinking water or non carbonated beverages so I can see if it makes a difference.

Stress and food

I eat when I am stressed. Not only do I eat but I eat crap. Well not total crap but definitely more stuff than I needed.

I have a case at work that is irritating me. I feel like I have given my professional opinion as have others and it is not being listened to. I understand the desire to have your child do something other than we are suggesting but I feel for this child. I think he will be overwhelmed and it just makes me sad. I feel so stuck. When I went to talk to the assistant Principal about my feelings I immediately opened her cookie jar and ate 2 milky ways. Why? because I am anxious about the whole situation.

Then I am feeling like a horrible teacher right now. I have not been getting the planning I need to do done so I am flying by the seat of my pants. I am getting done what needs to be done but barely and not in a very good fashion. My assistants do more teaching than I do. I spend my planning on message boards and checking out the Internet.

I think some of it is a transition from just me to me and baby. She is the best little baby that I could ever hope for. She sleeps all evening since she does not sleep at daycare. This afternoon I exercised and then cooked dinner. I made mac and cheese and ate about 15 points worth. It was tasty but I think I buried my anxiety in comfort food. I then spent about 45 minutes playing on the computer. I just need to learn some time management.

The one thing that I can say is that when I dieted a few years ago when I was overwhelmed and very anxious, I got ultra organized. I think it helps me to have control over everything that I can. I am able to let go of things I do not have control over. For instance, I am cooking at home more since I made 5 weeks of meal plans. I also made corresponding shopping lists. That has helped that. I need to make a routine for the week of what I need to get done. I think this will allow me to have that one or 2 nights that I can scrapbook or cross stitch.

This has become a very long winded post. I have a lot to do over the next few days. Kids have a half day tomorrow and I can use that time to play catch up and plan. I have no kids on Monday so I can get some work done then to. I plan on putting my headphones on and ignoring everyone.

I got it all done

It is 8 pm and I have gotten everything done I wanted to do this evening. Wow. It is always rough when you work and need to fit everything onto a few hours in the evening. Ok not a few hours but you get the point.

I came home and unloaded the dishwasher while baby watched from her highchair. Made her cereal and fed her while checking message boards. I exercised using My Fitness Coach on the Wii for 15 minutes. Little Miss cooperated and played on the floor until the last 5 minutes. She fussed but as long as I made faces she was fine until the end. I put her to sleep and then cooked dinner. After cleaning the kitchen here I am. It is so nice to be done early.

I am so sore from exercising. I did not really notice it through the day but this evening was really bad. When I get up from the couch my legs scream.

As an aside. I feel like I am not doing the best that I can do in the classroom or at home with my daughter. This is in part due to my addiction to forums and facebook. I am trying to limit the amount of time I spend on them. It is so hard since it is much better than working.

My Fitness Coach

I worked out today. My legs are killing me now but at least I did it. I am not sure how I can arrange my evening to be sure I can work out and still eat at a reasonable hour. Meredith and I got home at 4:15ish. I fed her and then we sat together on the couch until she fell asleep. I put her in her crib and then went to workout on the Wii. I got in about 30 minutes. I was unloading the dishwasher when she woke up. Then I had to juggle her and cooking dinner. She is a good baby so she sat and played in her high chair and watched me cook. Even so, dinner was not until 7:30. I just have to figure out how to tweak my afternoon routine to get the workout in and get dinner cooked.

The Wii Fit is a good workout but really can get monotonous. I bought My Fitness Coach after reading some of the reviews online and on the WW website. It is a basically a DVD workout that adjusts based on answers from you on how you are doing. If you say that a sectionw as no sweat she makes it harder next time. I can honestly say that I can feel my workout from today in my legs. I did 15 minutes of the My Fitness Coach and then I did a 10 minute Free run with the Wii fit game. That is putting the remote in your pocket and running in place or around the room.

I feel like I really accomplished something today by working out. Oh boy that was one of my tasks for today. I was supposed to give myself credit. Way to go me. I also ate everything sitting down. I read my reasons this morning and once at work.

Tomorrow my goal for The Beck DIet is to eat slow and be mindful. This is really tough for me. I might have to take a few days on this one. I eat very fast. I always have. Really it is like I inhale and it is gone. Someone must have stolen my food as a child because I eat like someone will take it. When I had my daughter it got even worse. I would eat really fast so that if she cried i could attend to her and not have to worry about dinner getting cold. My husband, on the other hand, takes forever to eat. Not sure how I am going to accomplish this goal but I am certainly going to give it my all.

New Site address

Just a heads up that I changed the site address. It was too long for me to type when I wanted to use it for anything.

It is now http://susanteaches.blogspot.com/

Caramel Latte Damn Starbucks

I had 33.5 points today when I should not go over 31. That means I am using my weekly allowance. Oh well, 2.5 of my weekly allowance is not bad. There were times in the past when I would use all of them in a night. Whoa. I know what the problem is.

Meredith had her 6 month appointment today and I was going past the Safeway. She was zonked out so I took her and slipped into the Safeway to get the WW yogurt they did not have the other day. Of course there is Starbucks calling my name. I went and got a venti caramel latte. I considered the smaller one but where is the fun in that. Sad to say that I did nto really enjoy it. I enjoy the latte that I get at my regular grocery store. SOLUTION: I can only get a latte when I am doing the regular shopping on Friday afternoon. If I am in Safeway getting something else then I need to remind myself that I am getting that treat on Friday.

As far as the Beck diet goes my tasks were to:
Eat 100% sitting down (done)
Read ny list of reasons to lose weight (done)

I only read my list of reasons once today and I think I would be better served if I read them before each meal or rough patch in the day.

Tomorrow's tasks are to eat everything sitting down, read my list of reasons, and New skill: give myself credit for something that I do during the day. This is a big one since most of the time I focus on how I have to give up stuff and I ate something I should not have or I was "bad." This will be a hard skill.

Before Pictures

So here they are...My before pictures. I am about 6 foot tall so I can have a little more weight and not look totally disgusting. Of course I can barely stand to look in the mirror. I weight *gasp* 241 lbs. My measurements are....Best left for another day.

I topped out at 280 when I had my daughter and I was back to my prepregnancy weight within a couple weeks. That was 235. Since then I have gained 5 or so lbs. I have 4 pairs of jeans that fit and not dress pants. I wear jeans every day to work and try to look as professional as I can. I just feel yucky.

My Reasons to Start

This is the reason that I am trying to get my health and weight on track. I am so afraid that my bad eating habits will be passed to this little one. I need to get them under control before she starts to really be influenced by what I am doing.

Right now I feel so out of control. I am eating with wild abandon, I spend way too much time on the internet, I am not effectively managing my time, and I am generally stressed.

I realize that I have a million and one excuses. I keep resetting the starting date on WW online. Every time I eat something I shouldn't I reset my weigh in date and say, I will start tomorrow. That gives me permission to eat whatever for the remainder of the day. A few days later I do the same thing again.

My hope is that this blog and using some of the cognitive behavior therapy techniques in The Beck Diet Solution will help. This is the last time I will say "I start tomorrow!"

So far I have completed days one and two of the program. I listed all of my advantages for losing weight. I put them with a picture of my number on reason and posted one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, one on the front door, and one in my purse. This is something that I am supposed to read a few times a day too remind myself of why I am doing this. I also committed to WW. If that does not work I will resort to the South Beach diet.

For tomorrow Day 3...I am to eat eerything sitting down. This will cut down on mindless eating. For instance, I often walk through the front office at school. I stop at the secretary's desk and get a handful of Reese's pieces or M&Ms that she keeps there. I am eating and walking and talking. Before I know it I have eaten a couple handfuls or more.

I know I can do this. It is not like I am even hungry. I am armed with my advantagee cards and a meal plan for the week.