Serial Starters

Thanks, Dawn! Yeah, she looked at the link to the house pictures and immediately emailed me to say the paint colors were bad (which I told her before I sent her the link) and that the house was BIG. She actually had the audacity to say, "Are you planning to add to your family? 5 bedrooms?" Sheesh. My youngest is 7 and he was a surprise. I just told her - again - that the paint can be changed and that the 5th bedroom isn't even a legal bedroom because it doesn't have a closet. And that was all I said. I just thought her comment about adding to our family was snarky. I almost wanted to ask her, "And did you and Dad really need to buy a 3 bedroom house when you moved South - when there are only 2 of you?"

Saturday evening

Diet has been horrible - too much stress. Had fun at the church "Pumpkinmania" party last night. I dressed up a "Flo, the Progressive Girl". Everyone loves that costume! We trick-or-treated with the kids at one set of grandparents today and then carved our pumpkins tonight.

And our house went on the market today!!! Working up the courage to tell my family...

Maybe my diet will be better tomorrow.

Annie

Sending out Cabana Boys to check up on Samuels and Saltine and Dani and Mango and Kathryn~~~

I feel slightly better, today... not near as much coughing.. really tired... not sure about the nausea... maybe, combo of meds and sinuses draining... and, the fact that I wait too long to eat cuz nothing sounds good, possibly... hoping I'm starting on the uphill side of this...

Lana - hope you felt well enough to get out..

Tess- thank you... good to see you..

Annie - great news on showing! That would be wonderful!

Sara - have you got a response about changing cubicles? Good thoughts to you...

Back to resting... hoping tomorrow is a better day...

Lana - Greece sounds awesome! I’ve never been. Look forward to hearing about the plans as they unfold over the next several months.

Annie - good luck on the listing! My fingers are crossed for you that you will sell your house quickly so you can move into the one you found.

Missy! Welcome back. I well know how life can get busy and it’s hard to keep up here. No guilt - just glad to hear from you.

AOTW - it’s going to be stressful at work with not much time at night for going to the gym. So my goal is to keep my calories under control and get as much non-gym exercise in as I can.

Good night all - Happy Monday.

Tess

Hey again! I've been bad about checking in here...at least I've mostly been staying on track with the whole health thing though.

Had my first obstacle course race yesterday and it was amazing. I cannot wait to do it again - my next one is in only 13 days but man, that feels like forever. It was some of the most fun I've ever had. I got a...moderately bad injury on the course (hyperextended my knee jumping into a trough that I thought was mostly full of water, but it was actually more mud than water so my foot hit a lot more resistance than I expected and down I went), but it wasn't bad enough to stop me from finishing. I barely felt a thing during the race, it hurt like nobody's business afterward, but now today it only hurts if I put too much pressure on it in a direction that knees aren't supposed to have much flexibility anyway.

Haven't been eating great over the past few days, but that's largely as a result of trying to get rid of stuff I can't eat as of tomorrow (I'm starting a 6-week program featuring a nutrition plan that is extremely limited in the number of ingredients I'm allowed to use) without throwing it away. The program is going to work out to be free for me (because I intend to follow the instructions to the letter). It runs on a model kind of like DietBet - you get intensive coaching instead of more money back, but the premise is the same in that the people who give up pay for the majority of the running costs, while the people who follow through get full refunds. I'm happy that this model is catching on; I've been thinking it should be A Thing for years - I've always thought that if I were to open a gym (not likely, but it's one of the many things I kinda, sorta want to do with my life), you'd get a discount on your membership for every time you checked in. If someone beats me to that...I won't be disappointed at all.

Here's something I had to say anyway but it kinda leads into an answer to the QOTW: ...it's starting to hit me like a load of bricks just how social this all can and should be, and it may sound ironic but that's actually part of why I've been so bad about checking in - because, well, I know you all are real people, but it just doesn't feel the same as being able to see people face to face. It really hit hard yesterday when I realized just how nice it felt to be out there talking to other people, in person, who were out there for the same reasons I was. Hell, I got help from a friendly stranger when my pants got stuck on one of the walls I had to climb over - that...can't really happen online. That's my problem, I have so many fitness buddies here on MFP, but almost none out in meatspace - most of the people I'm closest to who I can see face-to-face have no interest in this kind of stuff. Ever since the race yesterday, I've been wanting to start or join a group to regularly team up at races like this...but I hardly know where to start. My boyfriend is the closest I've got to a fitness buddy (he helps make sure I eat healthy, we have plans to do a few events together, all that) but he's only one person, he's got a lot of work to do before he's up to running alongside me when I'm going for speed (if that's even possible for him), and he's never going to want to do any of these obstacle courses with me; he hates getting dirtier than necessary.

So, my answer to the question is, I'm trying to lessen the impact of this problem now, by means of Facebook, being more talkative during group assignments in my stress management class at school, that kind of stuff. I have been wanting to use Facebook to do that for a while, but the problem is, I'm not the only person in my Facebook circle of friends and family who's struggling to beat an eating disorder - I am, however, the only one in this subgroup who will see more benefit than harm from continuing to try to lose weight. I didn't want to risk accidentally pushing anyone to relapse...so what I did instead was, I made a secondary account (under an alias juuust so none of those friends run into it by accident), and I'm starting to use that for fitness networking. It's...not going great so far, but I haven't exactly been at it for long.

Hopefully I'll be more able to keep up with checking in as I make progress on this.

Sara: Congratulations on the pants! That...sounded weird out of context, but still, my point remains. Excellent NSV!

Lana: A trip to Greece sounds amazing - I'm jealous! I hope you have a lot of fun!

I've found that real life fitness buddies are very hard to come by. The reasons that can't hit the gym or come to yoga are innumerable. Unfortunately online people seem a bit more reliable in showing up regularly. I'll take the support where I can get it.

Monday

Trying to put my head on straight and telling myself to eat right and get some exercise this week. I just can't afford to gain any more weight over the holidays so at least maintaining is my goal. If I can lose weight, that would be great.

Sara - you always have such a good attitude! Keep it up!

Lana - how are you feeling?

House is ready for the showing this afternoon. I'll have to run home and get the cats/dog out of the house and keep them in our Mountaineer until after the showing. Then I'll work late to make up some time. My hubby said the sign is going up in the yard as we speak. That means all our neighbors will know! And the worst part is it makes me mad to think that the stupid drug-dealers across the street will probably do a "happy dance" to know that we are trying to leave. It feels like they are "winning" but I have to keep telling myself we are doing what is best for our family and to he!@ with them!

Work is very busy today. Will lurk from work.

Annie

Its cold, gray, and rainy here today. I feel chilled to the bone. I need to whip up another cup of chai (with cashew milk and stevia).

Weekend in West Virginia was great. It was chilly in the mornings and warmed up for the afternoons. It was great Jeeping weather! We spent 2 days on the trails. I feel like I have been rolled downhill in a 50 gallon drum, but it was worth it!

Coming back to work on such a dreary Monday was so hard to do.

I wasn't able to really make many choices while Jeeping. They had catered meals so I ate what I was served. Was not able to log anything over weekend because there was no cell signal or wifi up in the mountains.

The scales weren't so nice this morning. I haven't weighed this much in almost a year. Had to pull a few things out of the closet that I wasn't wearing because they were too big.

I am slowly trying to swing back into habit of logging and am also trying to fit some extra exercise in here and there. I figure if I can do 10 minutes of treadmill, or bike, or whatever in the gym at least 3 times a day, that is 30 minutes a day that I wasn't doing before!

a quick update: my daughter was able to actually locate a couple items that were stolen from her storage unit at a local flea market. She had photos of the items and could describe the contents of boxes the vendor had. Detectives questioned the vendor and the vendor actually gave her some items back but denied any wrongdoing. There were several storage units hit last week. So someone out there is making a living by doing this, not just a one time thing.