Bathroom exercises

I just joined a new group on Sparkpeople and read a thread about bathroom exercises and I thought, what a great idea! With all the water I'm drinking, I am in the bathroom constantly. The idea is that when you take a trip to the bathroom, use it as an opportunity to get a little strength exercise in: wall pushups, squats, lunges, etc. We have a small bathroom here at school, so lunges are def out, and it's one bathroom shared with 7 other faculty and staff members, so I have to be careful how much time I spend in there, but there's enough time to do some wall push ups both times I've been in there so far today. I tried some squats and did about 10 of them, but the knee did not like that at all, but I will keep trying anyway. I just thought of this too...I can put the free weights I have in the bathroom and get some sets of bicep curls or something while at home. Does anyone else do this? What kind of exercises do you do?

Confession

They say it's good for the soul, right?

After I got home from school yesterday afternoon, I had...well, the only word I can think of is fiasco. I won't go into details, but pop tarts and a half bag of doritos was involved, so you get the picture. I haven't eaten like that in a while...even now it's making me feel nervous just writing about it. I've kinda gotten away from blogging because, like everything else, I was comparing my blog to others that were written better, etc and seeing myself fall short of everyone else. There's no reason I should compare myself to others nor let myself feel less than they are because I can't write as engaging as they can. I do my thing and that's that.

I decided that, at least for a while, I am going to make this a food diary of sorts to make myself accountable for what I'm eating and the work I'm doing. I have no one to be accountable to but myself and showing it off to the world (who choose to look) will help me be more honest and careful about what I put into my mouth. (on a side note, I did a search one time for "No holes barred" and I was actually like 5th on the list! crazy!)

In addition, having gotten away from moving around and getting any form of exercise, for the month of January, my goal is 300 min of exercise. Namely, walking on my gazelle. that averages to about 10 minutes per day. Seriously, who doesn't have 10 minutes a day? To bring us up to date, I have done exactly 20 minutes so far, so i have some catching up to do.

So, to start my food diary..here are my transgressions from yesterday:

Breakfast: smoothie with 1 c skim milk and protein powder

Snack: 2 pop tarts

Lunch: PB and J Sandwich, aprox 10 crackers with cheese and salami, small salad, doritos, milk

Snack: granola bar

Snack: 2 pop tarts, a lot of doritos

Dinner: 7 sweedish meatballs, 1/4 c corn and 1 c. double baked potatoes, 2 grands biscuits, skim milk

Snack: mug of hot chocolate

It's a mind thing...out of the emotional and into the rational. Taking my time and concentrating...keeping my focus on the right things.

Merry Christmas

We celebrated Christmas here at my house for the first time last night and it was wonderful. It was our first Christmas with out dad, so I think that's why mom suggested having it here at my house (that, and I know she doesn't want to deal with the mess afterward!) On Christmas Eve we get together to open gifts and have an appetizer smorgasbord. As anyone knows, appetizers are one of my biggest downfalls and we had some gooood stuff last night! Although, we did decide not to go with any chips and dips this year, we had other stuff in it's place! Since it was Christmas, I didn't want any bad moods to disturb my good cheer and lay off myself and enjoyed it thoroughly. I ate whatever I wanted and I'm so happy to say that my "eat whatever I want" is of much more normal proportions these days! The last week or so, I've still been hovering around the 15lb loss mark, which is ok by me. Now that my knee is on the better side of things, it's time to get back to my gazelle again. I have 2 wonderful weeks off to enjoy myself, "walk" and fix up my office/guest bedroom. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Monday

What a crazy weekend here! Saturday I had two Christmas parties to go to. One was the faculty Christmas party at our school secretary's house (it's a small staff), and then I left that a little early to head down to our bowling Christmas party. Had a great time at both parties with good food, friends and family. Sunday I was up at 6 to finish a partylite order (I'm a consultant), go to my mom's church for 8:00 service because her choir was singing a Christmas contata, go to my church for 11:00 service because the students were singing. In the afternoon I headed to a friend's house for a surprise graduation party for my best friend who has graduated from college. I left there to go to my mom's house where we were driving up to go to another Christmas concert at another church. Everything was great and I'm glad I did it all, but man am I tired today! My eating went well during all the parties as well, so I'm glad about that. Christmas Eve is going to be at my house this year with lots of appetizers and good stuff to eat which is my downfall...I love appetizer type food and it's harder to keep track of that than like a regular sit down meal.

This week was supposed to start off with a meeting tonight and one tomorrow, but luckily the one tonight was canceled so I can go home and do a load of laundry so that I have clothes to wear for the rest of the week. After that it's just getting things finished up here at school before break, and cleaning my house so people can come over next week. I also made a deal with my friend to keep ourselves accountable from now on. So far it worked, I got my butt moving again on the Gazelle for 10 min every day. My knee was even protesting that, so I couldn't do more, but it's feeling a bit better today, so I'm hoping for 15 or 20 minutes. It feels good to get my butt moving again, I don't know what's wrong with me that I can't keep it up once I get started.

Dusting myself off

OK, so the last 2 weeks were kinda hellish. I sunk down into this depression that scared even me. I didn't care about anything, I was stressed about work, I was binging, nothing mattered. My eyes definitely were off my prize and it showed.

Once again, I am coming back up and out of it and ready to go again. I was home sick from school on Friday due to a 24 hour flu bug and I watched a show called The Doctors where they were talking about the 4 F's that women fear the most: Fatigue, Forgetfulness, Fifty and Fat. What intrigued me was a site they talked about called Weightview.
I submitted this picture:





And this is what they did to me:




Wow! Do I look healthy!! I look like I can do all the things I really want to do! I don't know that many people find this inspiring, but I do! This hasn't been an easy road and it'll continue to be rocky (I'm definitely a tortoise!) Even though I have down times, I know I can do this and I can look like this person and do all the tennis, rollerblading, hiking, whatever I want and that feels amazing!

Post Thanksgiving

I'm finding it very hard lately to not be negative, so I will try and keep this short. I don't like focusing so much on the negative, but something seems to have taken over me lately. I'm not myself. I'm frustrated by these cycles I seem to keep putting myself through. Things are going well...food intake is good, a little exercise, lots of water...then sliiiiide down. It's not a fast slide, but a slow one until I seem to hit bottom before gaining the strength to dig my feet in and start climbing back to the top. Luckily, this part of the cycle is shorter in length than they used to be, but they are still there. How do you do it? How can I get to the point where I don't have this part of my life anymore? Why do I still find it so hard to get back to my feet? Why do I have to fall so far before my brain says "Hey! stop doing that now!"?

Sorry, like I said, I'm not myself. I was feeling good with that 15 lb loss..but it seemed like it didn't phase anyone and once again, I let others get to me instead of just relying on myself and enjoying this victory to keep going.

I know that other stresses in my life are contributing to this and I can't do anything about those except pray on it and work on not letting it get to me so much because some of it, there's nothing I can do about it, so I just need to keep going and do the best job I can. Wow, talk about a run on sentence....

Happy Thanksgiving!

In the classroom

I do love teaching PreK and K...they come up with the funnies things sometimes.

We were in the basement today in the computer lab and one of my 4 year olds (a little pixie of a girl) needed to use the bathroom down there. So, I walked her over to the bathroom and waited for her (we have one in our class that she's used to using).

After several moments in which i can hear her in the stall:
E: I must be constipated, because I can't go to the bathroom right now (the only 4 year old I know who knows the word constipated)

she hops off the toilet and I hear as she's getting her clothes settled:
E: I really have to pay attention to all these clothes my mom put on me today

Me: so you can stay warm today?

E: yeah



And one of my Kindergartners told me the other day while we were talking about juice "I don't like juice much, I just can't get excited about it."

Have a great weekend!