It’s been nice knowing you. After months of my husband good-heartedly challenging me to do the P90X, I’m finally taking the plunge. It might very well kill me, but I’m tired of this lack of motivation and spinning in circles. I need forward motion. I need something to shake my tree a little. So starting Monday evening, I’ll be P90Xing my ass off. Hopefully literally.

I’m also going to try to continue increasing my running program, which on some days is going to mean twice daily workouts. The last time I tried twice daily workouts it ended with me having a total meltdown on the elliptical at 5:00 am. I totally reserve the right to have another meltdown and quit with a colossal hissy fit if it ends up being too much. I anticipate that by happening Tuesday morning.

I wasn’t going to talk about starting this at all in case it was an epic failure, but I figured that 1) letting you guys know what I’m up to would keep me honest and more motivated to stick with it so I didn’t have to tell you later I quit, and 2) I can’t whine about not being able to move my arms if I didn’t tell you I was doing this in the first place.

Photoshop is pissing me off. The photo at the left looks completely different on my blog than it does in Photoshop. In Photoshop the colors are really vibrant, the pink is bright and glowy. Here, not so much.

I’m also having trouble with printed photos turning out underexposed when they were perfect on screen. While I’m learning more about Photoshop all the time, I have no idea what could be causing this. At first I thought my print problem was a screen calibration issue, but since I’m looking at the same photo on one screen and seeing differences that can’t be it. Here is a link to the same photo in Flickr, which on my screen is much more vibrant than the one at left. Can I be having two separate issues: one of screen calibration, and one being a difference in the way the blogging software processes colors?

Weights and measures. In preparation for starting the P90X, we finally took my “before” pictures and measurements. It’s not really “before” since I’ve lost almost half of my goal weight already, but at least I’ll have a starting point for the P90X. Seeing those pictures was hard. It’s easy to get caught up in my partial success and forget that I still have a long way to go. It’s motivating, at least!

It’s Monday – have a great week everyone!

2010 in Review

I have no reason to include this photo in this particular post other than his awesomeness.

2010 was a year of change for me, and some of it has been really, really good.

We got our butts moving and made the change to a more healthy lifestyle, including a gradual switch to using more organic products than not.  We’ve been really successful with this one.  I’ve managed to lose and maintain the loss of 5o pounds, and I’m currently training for a triathlon.  I now swim, bike, and run at least 5 days of every week.  More importantly, we feel a lot better.  After detoxing our bodies from so many of the chemicals and preservatives, we really notice the difference if we try to go back to some of those foods.  I am so much stronger physically, and more emotionally even and balanced, than I was at this time last year.

We’ve started to make a financial paradigm shift in our household and so far it’s been reasonably successful.  We’ve cut out things like cable and a land line telephone that we don’t need and hardly used anyway.  Making the shift to organic foods and household products is definitely more expensive for us, but we have also worked to reduce waste.  We use up leftovers as much as possible, and try to buy only the produce we think we’ll use because that’s the biggest waste offender in our house.  It spoils so fast!  The other counterpoint to the cost of organic eating is the savings we make because we are less willing to eat out since we’re now at the point where we notice that the difference in how we feel is directly linked to how we eat.

While I didn’t stick with my Project 365 because I just couldn’t do that and the new fitness program, I do think I’ve made some improvements in my photography skills.  I still have a long way to go, but it’s something I really enjoy and I don’t mind putting in the work.

I had to have my knee fixed after I tore it trying to be all Billy Blanks with the kickboxing.  It’s all better now and I’ve learned that I have to keep it moving and stretched a lot or it starts to get angry again.  Who knew I’d have a Jillian Michaels knee that screamed at me every time I blew off exercise after knee surgery?  If you did know and didn’t tell me, you’re dead to me for FIVE WHOLE MINUTES!

We had a “homemade” Christmas this year with my family, and it was a lot of fun.  It will be even better next year because we didn’t give ourselves much of a head start this year.  Overall it was a great experience and one I hope we continue.  I love the idea of putting thought and effort into something that you make with your hands to give to those you love.  More on this later, including pictures.

There have been friends who have chosen to exit my life this year, and new friends that have warmed my heart with their generosity of love.  It’s always sad when people decide to distance themselves from you, even moreso when you don’t know why, but I do feel incredibly blessed in the friends that I have.  I am not someone who makes friends easily because I find it really difficult to open up to people, so I am especially grateful to have such great girlfriends who have really been there for me in some of my darkest times this year.  The magic of the internet has introduced me to so many wonderful people that I can’t name you all, but I hope you know who you are and how much you are loved.

What’s in Store for 2011?

I don’t do resolutions, I just set goals.  To me that seems different somehow and less destined for failure.

We will continue on our healthy path.  I’d like to lose another 50 lbs, but more importantly I want to feel like an athlete.  I want to finish a triathlon.  I want it so much I don’t think I can explain it, or even why except that I like to challenge myself with things that are hard and, for me, a sprint distance triathlon is hard.  I will move onward and upward from there.  I’d also like to participate in some road races this year – definitely a few 5K races but I want to move on up to 10K pretty soon.  It will take work, but I think I can do it as long as my  crankenknee holds out.

I’m also going to continue to work on my photography skills.  I really love it, and it suits me more than other modes of artistic expression I’ve taken on in the past.  It fits into my lifestyle better.  Cakes take over my whole world – figuratively and literally – when I work on them, so while I love making them for people I love they are a huge undertaking when you are working on them from a very small home kitchen.

I’m attending BlogHer ’11!  I am stepping way outside my comfort zone but I feel pretty good about it, especially since I get to spend time with my childhood best friend.  Neither one of us is going to tell you how long ago that was.  If you’re going I hope you don’t mind if I attach myself to your leg so I’m not awkwardly trying to look all nonchalant.  Because I totally will not be.  Nonchalant, that is.

I will do more sewing this year.  I enjoyed using my sewing machine to make gifts this year and I want to use it more.  I need to be comfortable enough that the enjoyment starts to outweigh the frustration, because right now it’s too far in the opposite direction.

This space is going to get a total makeover, maybe even including an new URL (don’t worry I will notify you well in advance!) because I have completely outgrown the floatingprincess/princess buttercream persona and I’m ready for some change.  I just have no idea what that is yet, so stay tuned.

There are more changes coming our way this year, because what is life without change?  I’d much rather slap 2011 on the ass on 12/31 and say what a great ride it was than float along the status quo.

Have a happy New Year everyone!

It’s been 35 days since I started my fitness program, and I’m not going to lie – it has been hard.  It has also been rewarding.  I feel better.

I like being in control of what I eat and how I move.  Well, I’ve always been in control, I know that.  But I haven’t exercised that control for a long time and it feels good to do so now.

I like getting up from the table feeling satisfied and yet not weighed down by the amount of food I’ve eaten.

I like knowing I’m eating foods that will fuel my body instead of putting it into a coma.

I like that I can now do 50 minutes on the elliptical in a row, when I could only do 20 minutes when I started – and even that 2o minutes was a real push.

I like that I had to buy new weights because mine became too light.

I like that my stomach doesn’t hurt from all the soda I used to drink.

I haven’t had any alcohol in 35 days and I no longer miss it.

I haven’t strayed from my plan, though I have made modifications.

I like all of that, and yet it’s still hard.  I don’t expect that’s going to change, and that’s ok.  I’m not afraid of the hard stuff.

How ‘bout dem bullets!

Buggin’:  This weekend I dug out my Bodybugg, blew off the dust balls and cobwebs, and hooked it up again because the little bit of OCD that I have loves to keep track of calories burned vs. calories taken in.  It’s really great to have a visual to look at that keeps you on track with your targeted calorie deficit, and I’m enough of a geek to really dig that kind of stuff.  You get used to wearing it really fast and you just wear it all the time, except in the shower.  It measures the calories burned by body heat, sweat, and movement.  I had always heard that you can’t trust the calorie counters on treadmills and elliptical machines because they always way overestimate the calorie burn, so last night I decided to see if my elliptical was even in the right ballpark.  I downloaded the bugg so I knew my starting point and jumped on the elliptical.  When I finished 40 minutes later the elliptical said I burned 407 calories.  Right away I downloaded the bugg again and did the subtraction, and sure enough, it was dead on at 407 calories.  I don’t know how the elliptical did it since it has no idea how much I weigh, but I’m glad to know it’s accurate.  And also?  How freaking cool is that?

Quitter: I really hate being a quitter when I’ve started something, but I had to leave the Project 365 I started at the beginning of the year.  At this point in my life I have to do the fitness thing, and quite frankly that consumes most of my free time.  I am over the big 40 hurdle and it’s only going to get harder from here, and things were so out of control I felt I had to dedicate my full attention to it or end up getting around in a scooter for the rest of my life.  I asked a member of the group who had expressed an interest before to take over the admin functions, and while I’m sad at not having finished this project I know it’s the right thing for me right now.

Big Life: I am in love with Kirstie Alley’s new show, Kirstie Alley’s Big Life.  It’s funny as hell.  Hubs hates her assistant Kyle; he calls him a flapping wet douche bag, which is itself pretty funny.  It’s a fun watch, especially when her assistants bust her chubby buddy Jim going through drive-thrus to scarf cheeseburgers on the sly.  HIGHlarious! Plus I love that she’s not afraid to look completely unairbrushed and fresh out of bed on national TV.  That takes some balls and Kirstie has huge ones.

Dat’s all folks!  Have a great rest of your week.

*Obligatory Disclaimer: No one gave me a Bodybugg to try and this is not a paid review.  I bought it with my own very hard earned dollars, although if someone wanted to send me the new model I wouldn’t kick it out of bed.

There are a lot of things I hate about this getting fit business, like getting up before the butt-crack of dawn, pain, all the planning involved, aches, giving up diet coke…did I mention aches and pains?  But there are also things I love about it and I have to focus on the love part in order to get through the day, so here you go:

• I love the feeling of accomplishment/self-satisfaction that goes along with sticking to your guns and not wavering from the program, even when it’s really hard.
• I love working up a sweat.  I don’t know what it is, but I love that moment when I’ve worked up enough of a sweat that it trickles down my face, down my neck, and onto my chest (no, this isn’t porn – stop that brown chicken/brown cow music right now!).  I guess it’s a sign that I’m really working hard and it makes me push even harder. (hey!  Still not porn here – stop that!)
• You know that moment when you’re at 17:45 on the elliptical (or treadmill) and you think you can’t possibly make it to 20:00 minutes because you’re going to die right now and your legs are going to fall off and really, please God, just make it stop?  And you keep going anyway and get to 20:00 minutes…and then push on to 25:00 minutes just because WTF was with that whining back there at 17:45 anyway?  I love that.
• I love pushing through barriers.  I love it when I can add 5 or 10 minutes to a workout that I couldn’t do the day before, or finding out I can do exercises I couldn’t do before.
• I love buying new, heavier weights because it means the ones I have are now too easy for me.
• I love that I can lift a lot of weight.  A lot of girls don’t dig on lifting weights because they’re afraid of looking bulky.  I know that’s not going to happen because girls just don’t have enough testosterone to build bulky muscles without chemical help.  Muscle burns calories so more is better than less.
• I love calluses, blisters, and scraped and bruised knuckles on my hands.  They mean I’ve been working hard, and I’m proud of these hands that can do so much.  When we were kettlebelling together a friend told me “blisters are your bitch hands dying,” and I’ve never forgotten that.  Whether it’s from kettlebells or boxing, my hands are definitely not pretty or girly-looking, but they are most definitely functional.
• I love not being full to the point of feeling like I’m going to burst.  Ever since I stopped with the sodas that “I’m full” mechanism has turned back on in my stomach and I can once again regulate how much I eat.  It feels great to not have that awful bloated, overly full feeling.
• I love the way my legs feel the rest of the day after a morning elliptical workout.
• I love to hate my elliptical machine.  I’m glad I got off the fence and spent the money on it last Christmas.  My gimp foot appreciates that I’m not trying to use the treadmill, and it actually feels a lot better than it has in a long time.  I really waffled over that decision because it was not cheap and I was afraid it would sit unused, but it has been worth every single penny.

So there you have it, my list of things I love about getting fit that doesn’t have anything to do with losing weight.  It helps to remember these things when I am so tired I can barely lift my head off the pillow in the morning.

What do you love about getting fit?

Dear Body,

Some people write a letter to their body in order to express their love for it, and all of it’s parts.  It’s a form of self-affirmation, and it’s really a great thing to remind yourself what you love about yourself instead of focusing on the negative.  Building up instead of tearing down.

This isn’t one of those letters.

See, we’ve had a hard week.  As you know, we started a new fitness program that is really intense and it’s time for a little recap to see how well we did.

Brain – You were GREAT!  You stayed in the “zone” all week long, never faltering, never even once reaching for just one of those chocolate mint sandwich cookies stashed in our desk drawer at work.  You got us up every morning and talked us through each workout, encouraging us when we needed it and browbeating us when we needed that more.

That said, there are a couple of your parts that need a little talking to.

Body Clock – I would really like to know why you insist on waking us up at least an hour before the alarm goes off.  It doesn’t even matter what time it’s going to go off, you are consistently an hour early.  Have you noticed what time that is when you wake us up on our new schedule?  It’s 3:45 in the freaking morning!  Knock that shit off!

Thermostat – There is no other way to say this, you’re just backasswards.  Two minutes into a workout and you’re already so hot the poor face looks like a tomato.  It’s 50 degrees in the garage where we’re working out!  Why do you have to heat up so damn fast?  People think we’re going to have a stroke for fuck’s sake!  And then after the workout?  Two minutes and we’re shivering to the point we have to huddle under a blanket.  What the hell is that?  We’re not even going to talk about that middle of the night thing you’re doing, all I can say is that I now understand spontaneous combustion.  Get your shit together, man!

Arms – I love you.  You are so strong you barely even broke a sweat this week, let alone got sore.  You are such a pro at the weight lifting that we’re going to have to kick it up a notch this week with some heavier weights and probably the kettlebells.  I know, they’re not on the plan we’re following, but sometimes you have to think outside the box to get things. done.  Good job and keep up the good work!

Boobs – Well, what can I say about you?  You just kind of hang around.  Good job not poking us in the eye when Billy made us do those jumping jacks.  If you could keep that up, that would be awesome.

Belly – Oh how I love to hate you.  There is just so much of you.  But you did really well this week.  You rocked out those sit-ups like nobody’s business and you could have rocked out many more.  Don’t worry – you will get your chance.  I do want to take this moment to personally thank you for not doing that stabbing with a hot poker thing you usually do when I get hungry, or you get cranky for whatever reason.  I stopped drinking diet coke, through great personal hardship, just for you and you paid me back with interest.  So thanks for that, it was actually really awesome.

Butt – You, my great badonkadonk, did pretty good.  You got a little cranky with the aerobics and the elliptical, but mostly you did ok.  We’re going to see about challenging you a little more so that you look nice in a pair of jeans, so maybe next week might not be so easy.   Prepare for shrinkage!

Legs – There’s always someone, isn’t there?  The one bad apple that spoils the whole bunch.  What a bunch of pansy-ass whiny beyotches you are!  Jesus C. Frog you can set up a bitch session like no one else. “No, stop, please…we can’t take anymore…someone really should be doing this for me…please, just take a break, ow ow ow, it hurts too much.” Pathetic.  Don’t you want to look pretty? Don’t you want to get rid of your cellulite blanket?  I can assure you it’s only going to get worse from here so you better just quit yer bitchin and get with the program.

Feet – I saved the best for last.  You and I have certainly had our differences over the past few years.  You’ve been through surgeries and therapies and you’re still not right, but you sure put on your big girl panties and sucked it up this week.  You didn’t give me much grief at all, and you flew through things I thought were going to be hurdles for you, so you get the prize for being the biggest team player this week.  You deserve a pretty princess pedicure!

Tomorrow we get a rest day!  We deserve it after a hard first week.  Use it wisely because Monday morning we’re going to be right back at it, only harder and faster than before. 

Go Team!

What a week!  I’ve had a lot on my mind, and a lot to do.  In honor of being scatterbrained and low on blog fodder it’s bullet time!

• First and foremost?  These bullets are fugly.  I should spend some time figuring out how to add some pretty pony bullets to my template, but really?  What are the odds of that happening.  I’m thinking slim and none.  So really it’s fug-bullet time.
• The main reason I’m so scattered is exhaustion.  Hubs and I came up with the brilliant idea that our dog Sasha was lonely.  She has to stay home during the day, like most dogs, and she wasn’t doing well with it.  Because sometimes we’re not that smart, we decided to get another puppy to keep her company.  Suffice it to say that I’m losing sleep and my vocabulary has been reduced to single syllables.  Now I know why people my age don’t generally have babies!  I am clearly too old for this shit. I’ll post puppy pics soon!
• I’ve been cooking a lot lately, which is good.  I went through a pretty long dry spell there for a while!  I’m working on two new (to me anyway) recipes that I’ll post here when I have them worked out.  I’m having fun eating the practice runs!
• What kind of dorkfish loses their camera transfer cable?  That would be me.  I have a card reader, but I like using the cable better.  The local camera store wants $50 bucks for one, to which I say nay nay!  I think it’s $16 on the Canon site, but it’s on backorder right now.  I feel strangely stifled by this.
• I have been stuck in the whining about my fat stage for a disgustingly long time now.  I may actually be moving into the doing something about it phase, but I’m not sure.  I’m conflicted about it, which seems counter-intuitive to probably anyone but me.  I’m not sure I want to get on that ride yet again.
• Has anyone had cortisone shots?  Did they help and would you do it again?  I’m considering it for an unruly bone because the only other alternative is yet more surgery and I’m not down with that.  So I’m wondering how effective they are, and what are the possible permanent side effects?  I googled that shit, but I got mixed reviews so I’m looking for the straight poop from someone who’s been there.
• I no longer have to do the pants off dance off for Avitaween!  My pants finally arrived and my costume is almost complete.  The beauty of this costume is that some of the pieces are things I will re-use, because I’m a planner like that.  I don’t know where I would have re-used the pirate wench costume I was originally looking at except maybe down on 4th Street looking for some extra cash.

That’s all she wrote!

I need to re-adjust my schedule and find time to fit in exercise because, oddly enough, the sitting on the couch physical fitness program isn’t working for me.

In the interest of getting back in the saddle, I bought a couple of workout dvds and some new hand weights this weekend.  Because everyone knows that newer stuff is more inspiring than the old stuff, even if the old stuff is perfectly good except that maybe the ends periodically unscrew themselves from my dumbbells and fall off.  On my foot.

All that new stuff?  Is still in the Jeep.

That’s the problem with trying to economize and do my working out at home.  I can always find something I’d rather do at home than working out.  Quite honestly, I’d rather scrub bathrooms than work out at home most days, and I detest scrubbing bathrooms with a fiery passion reserved only for mushrooms.

Which, if you think about it, are kind of related.

Back in the day I always had more success when I went to a gym, because I had a destination with a purpose, and the sole purpose was exercise.  There really isn’t anything else to do at a gym but exercise.  Well, I know that people go to the gym to “see and be seen” but that’s not me.  When I go to the gym I prefer to not be seen.

It helped when I had a trainer, because then I had an appointment.  I had someone on the other end expecting me to be there.  Someone who wouldn’t let me half-ass my workout because I just wasn’t feeling it that day.  Sometimes I think that’s the real value of a trainer, the idea that you have to be there because of someone else, and that you have to perform better than you might on your own because that person is watching you and calling you on your bullshit.  They make you do things that you don’t think you can do, until suddenly you’re doing it.  That is the awesomesauce about trainers.

I’m on the fence right now about re-joining a gym, for several reasons:

• It’s expensive, of course.  I could use that money to pay off some bills instead of spending it on a gym membership.
• I have equipment at home.  I have a treadmill and kettlebells and weights and videos and yoga mats and balls and a Wii Fit and and and and…  I have the tools.
• I’m not considering a trainer again because that’s just TOO much.  Plus I wouldn’t really want a different trainer than before, but I don’t want to go back to my old trainer and have him give me crap about re-gaining weight.  Because he would.  He’s a mouthy one.  And my trainer doesn’t work at the gym anymore, he’d have to train me at home, and he’d whine a LOT about how far it is to drive to my home.  Fucker.
• What if I don’t use it?

But

• There’s the destination thing.  That’s a big deal for me.
• I hate when the people at home watch me work out.  This is not a spectator sport but I don’t have a private place to work out at home.  Oddly, enough I don’t mind that other people can watch me at the gym, mostly because I know they’re not really watching me.
• There’s infinite variety at the gym.  I can change things up frequently a little easier at the gym because there is such an abundance of equipment and different classes to take.
• They have a pool, and I kind of want to try the water aerobics.
• There’s a sauna.  I loooooooove the sauna!
• Alone time!  Even if hub goes to the gym with me, he’s never with me.  I plug in my headphones and I am my own island.  I don’t care how much I sweat, or what I look like, or who is next to me on the treadmill.  It’s my own time in my own brain, and I work out a lot of stuff in my head at the gym.  I love that.

The big thing, though?  The thing that’s really stopping me from biting the bullet and spending the money?  My foot is not healed.  (I know, you’re sick of hearing about it but this time it’s relevant and it’s a real consideration) It’s still pretty sore most of the time and I’ve stopped thinking that it’s going to get better.  Am I really going to be able to suck it up and ignore it?  Because that gets really hard sometimes.  I can do it for a long time, until suddenly I can’t.  Only this time at the end of that period where I stop sucking it up I’ll still have an expensive gym membership that I’m no longer using because I’m a wuss.  So there’s that.

I think in the end I’m going to chose the gym because I need to.  I’m not working out at home, that’s been proven.  I appear to need a place to go.  Whether I can do it on my own, without a trainer, remains to be seen.  I am awesome when I’m being pushed, but not always when it’s just up to me.

I know, I need to be like Nike and Just Do It.  I waffle on these decisions for way too long.

I often wonder what it is that makes me eat when I’m upset. I call it eating my emotions, which may be more true than I let on while I’m trying to be all clever.

It’s true, though. If I’m upset, I eat. Perhaps it’s an eaters way of drowning the sorrows. I feel bad, ice cream tastes good, therefore if I eat enough ice cream I can tip the scales of good and bad more in favor of the good by the shear volume of the ice cream goodness.

But it never really is good enough for that, is it? All it does is make me sick.

Which leads me to my next hypothesis of emotional binging, that of the Puke Factor.

If I feel bad and I can’t get it out in other ways, am I overeating to the point of nausea in order to make myself sick enough that I have a physical manifestation of my emotions? I feel pukey, therefore I should want to hurl? And would that get the badness out? Like when you drink too much and you know if you could just get it out, you would feel so much better?

And yet it doesn’t work that way either, does it. Because it doesn’t feel better, it just makes you sick. Now I’m sick and sad.

Is it the food as a drug thing?  Nine times out of ten when I’m reaching for feel-good food, it’s something sweet.  Am I looking for that sugar high to cover up the emotional low?   But that’s just like sweeping the dirt under the rug; it’s still there and pretty soon it makes a lump that no amount of stomping will flatten. Plus, we all know that what goes up must come down.

The truth is that I don’t eat to the point of nausea or throwing up.  Not anymore, anyway.  There are times when I’d like to, but common sense wins out and I just can’t be that self-destructive.   That doesn’t mean that I won’t go buy donuts after a particularly gnarly fight with my husband, but I’m not going to eat the whole box.  I’m not even going to eat the three donuts I said I would because really, what would be the point?

Still, even though I’ve made it past the point where I eat myself into oblivion, finally, at this stage in my life, I haven’t been able to get past all of the emotional eating because I still bought the donuts.  I still ate two donuts.

And I wonder how long it’s going to take, and who I have to kill, to get past that part?

I had the best weekend ever.

Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration considering that I spent it moving large rocks from one side of my yard to another. But the thing is, I spent it moving. I don’t think it’s reaching to estimate that I moved over 1,000 pounds of rocks and I lived to tell the tale. I’m not even sore today, just a little stiff. Maybe tomorrow the soreness will kick in, but usually it’s hit me by now if it’s going to.

So why was it such a good weekend? For the last year I’ve been living the sedentary life of the depressed and slothful internet whores. Part of that has been fueled by chronic pain, part of it has been because other events in my life have been kind of tough to deal with and tougher to get over. I’ve used food and mindless internet surfing to smooth out the unpleasantness, and I’ve paid a huge price for that.

This weekend reminded me how good it feels to be productive, to use my body to move large and heavy things, and to revel in the satisfaction of a hard job well done. I did that! I moved all those rocks! Look how nice the pond is going to look! It’s an infinitely better feeling than I should get up off this couch and do laundry but I have no energy. I really should go do the grocery shopping, but meh. Not into it. Look at all that dust. I should do something about that.

Weekends like these make me feel like the clouds are lifting. Slowly, but surely I’m regaining control. I’ve been paying more attention to what I eat, although I haven’t been counting calories or points or fat grams because I’m not ready to be crazy like that. But I notice a difference when I’m eating things that are good for me and I’ve been paying more attention to that again. It’s not that I don’t know how to do this, just that for the past year and a half I’ve been ignoring all those signals my body sends out when I eat like a junkyard dog because when you’re depressed a carb coma is kinda nice.

Summer does this to me. It’s like my engines kick into full gear and I’m able to function more clearly. I can give some of the credit for my sunnier outlook to having actual sun and warm weather, but I think some of it is coming from me too. I am on the road to conquering the pain thing, and I’m doing my best to drag my brain out of the doldrums. I’m making a conscious effort to stop beating myself up about the huge fatness, I’m making inroads in the family wreckage, and I’m starting to concentrate on feeling good.

After being able to do what I did this weekend without stroking out, I feel a lot more confident that I haven’t broken my body forever. Sure it’s going to take time and hard work, but that’s nothing I haven’t done before. I can handle things not being easy and I can handle hard work; that’s a cakewalk compared to the despondency of thinking that I was going to be like this forever.

So yeah. It was a good weekend.