Have Your Cake. For Dinner. Duh.

Welp (can you tell I'm from the Midwest?), there's no need to bury the lead over here. I ate cake for dinner tonight. I had a weird day because my back pain was bothersome enough to make me feel nauseous all day today. Then I went on an hour walk tonight and it felt moderately better so my appetite returned. But I was mostly just hungry for cake. I didn't want to bother eating a whole meal just to feel justified in eating dessert, so I skipped the meal and just did dessert. It was awesome and I have no regrets. 

Normally, I'd feel guilty AF for eating cake for dinner, but I feel absolutely fine. Probably because one [very large] piece of cake isn't going to ruin my progress significantly.  And if I had denied myself the cake, I likely would have eaten a hundred things while trying to avoid the cake and then eventually also eaten the cake. So, really, this was the smarter thing to do. I was also texting with a pal of mine tonight who was saying that overly restricting never works in the long run. And she's right. I've done the restriction thing. It totally works...until you stop restricting. Then, boom, all the weight is back. That's garbage and a mind fuck, so I won't be signing up for that again. No thank you.

In other news, tomorrow I'm volunteering in Reyah's room and am awkwardly nervous about this. First, I don't want to embarrass her. I don't think she's quite old enough to be massively embarrassed by me, but I don't want to be the first mom who humiliates her kiddo while volunteering. Second, I am not a good teacher. My mom is/was a teacher and her patience seems infinite and well, mine is most definitely finite. Very, very finite. So, here's hoping the activity they have me do is one these kiddos already have a very firm grasp on!

I don't have any photos from today, but here's a recent(ish) photo of my kiddos, who I miss a lot on nights like tonight.

💖

Zoodle virgin

Well, I promised a weigh-in today despite really not wanting to. Here it is.

So, in the last two weeks, I've gained 5 pounds. I'm not surprised in the least given how I've been eating and lazing around. But I promised to pick myself up. Only, today was a bit crazy and I wasn't really able to...ish.

So, I started the day knowing that I was going to fast. That meant a quick, light breakfast - it was about 290 calories. I forgot to take a picture, but it was 2 egg whites + 1 whole egg, ham, and watermelon. Then I went to work and struggled because I was hungry. But, I didn't give in - even when faced with cake! However, the work day was fucking insane, so that definitely helped. I also ended up staying about 45 minutes late, so my workout time was fucked and I wasn't able to hit the gym before my friend Adam came over for dinner.

Tonight, I cooked for Adam and myself. I really went for it. I have been dying to try zoodles after I bought a spiralizer in July. [For those who don't know, zoodles = zucchini noodles.] And tonight, we finally did it! We had zoodles with marinara sauce, chicken parmesan (a recipe from Cooking Light, so it was healthier), cheddar bay biscuits, and a salad. It was pretty delicious. I was a little unsure about the zoodles, but I could totally make them again. My only thing is that I don't really eat pasta to begin with, so I'm not sure when I'll be making them again.

Anywho, despite being unable to hit the gym, I stayed reasonably active at work and was able to stick to some healthy food choices - especially with Adam here. I didn't eat anything before dinner nor did I snack before dinner. So, it was also a successful fasting day!

Tomorrow I have a lot of surgeries and then clinic in the afternoon so I know it'll be another busy day, but hopefully it'll be just as good. And tomorrow is a personal trainer day, so that's also a positive!

Cheers!

Awesome first day!

Well, let me just say that I am super pumped about this month after today. Sure, there were slow points. Sure, there were the I'm-so-tired-an-explosion-in-my-pants-wouldn't-wake-me points. But, mostly, I'm really thrilled with the nurses and doctors I get to learn from. And that's enough about that - work will stay at work!

Waking up at 4:15 was rough today. I got out of bed and my left temple was pounding in protest. I took something for pain and went about the morning. I knew I needed to eat a hearty breakfast because you never know when food'll be an option in the OB world - it really can be feast or famine. Anywho, today's hearty breakfast was two egg whites + 1 egg, cantaloupe, strawberries, and a slice of banana bread I made on Saturday.

We get lunch for free at work - it's in a place affectionately known as "the trough." Do with that what you will. It's mostly decent food, but there's no such thing as fresh fruit (unless you count the overly waxed apples and oranges). There is salad that once upon a time lived in a bag somewhere and there's usually something pretty okay. Today, I heaped half my styrofoam plate high with salad/lettuce and the other half had some kind of lemon pepper fish and a BBQ chicken drumstick. Then I went hungry until a suture representative brought the interns cookies. I definitely had a few as my stomach was causing me physical pain. Then we hung out for a few more hours before my first rep dinner with people trying to sell us equipment. So, I had a pretty awesome teriyaki chicken with some veggies and a little bit of rice.

Given that we were at the dinner until 8, I opted out of the gym because my butt (and the rest of me) needs to be in bed. But, tomorrow night I have no excuse dinners, so don't worry - I'll be going!

I think that this is going to take a bit of getting used to. My bowels weren't sure what to do with all the lettuce today and turning down dessert at dinner was hard, but hey - it's a treat! And I wasn't celebrating anything. Plus, I've got some delicious fruit pizza this weekend to look forward to.

Also, thanks for all the love and support - with comments and emails! I'm going to have an easier time because of all of you! I especially liked the comments about keeping it slow and steady and not going for the all or nothing. Making positive changes should be gradual - I've learned from my own past that going balls to the walls only results in pain. When I focus on all or nothing, I usually just fail and then I really let myself spiral into a pity party that isn't pleasant for anyone.

More photos (I kinda forgot today) and a weigh-in on Monday (forgot that too!) for you to look forward to! In the mean time, have you ever had to talk yourself into being okay with a gray area or imperfection?

Day four of my one week challenge

Today was an awesome day four of my one week challenge. I got out of work early enough to get a nap in and hit the gym before the after work/5pm rush and do my strength training without having to wait for any machines or weights. Baller. I also got some reading in and practiced some knot tying. I'm teaching some third years how to suture and tie knots tomorrow, so I needed to brush up a bit on my own. I also made a decent dinner and set up my food for tomorrow. 

The biggest thing that I'm doing this challenge that I've been having a hard time doing is good food planning: I've been packing food and I've been having legit dinners rather than just munching on food when I get home from work. I'm going to have to keep myself motivated and keep that going because it's definitely helped in the calorie department!

Also, I finally applied to all my residencies today. Yesterday the site crashed and so they took the site down until today and reopened it at 9 am. Thanks to getting out of work early, I was able to come home and review everything at a leisurely pace and then called it good and paid a buttload of money to have people consider me for their program. Hopefully some good comes of that!

And here are today's photos!

Breakfast (with baby bananas!)

Packed snacks

Pre-gym fuel

Post-gym snack

Post-gym protein

Another post-gym snack

Pre-dinner snack

Dinner

This takes forever to cook, so normally I don't have the patience to wait

Dinner

Practicing tying

Today's positive: Lisa's rocking out on her version of the one week challenge - check out her blog to see for yourself! Also, productivity for me! Hooray!

Taking back control

So tonight I talked with one of my closest friends about some things going on in her life. She's had some ups and downs as of late, but the thing that struck me about her is her ability to remain positive and continue to take control of her life rather than sit there and play the victim (a role I run to whenever given the opportunity). It was a well-timed conversation because it got me thinking about some of my current hiccups. 

Right now, I'm doing pretty awesome about getting to the gym. I've been getting in about 5 workouts a week and I feel really great about that. I've also done a nice job eating a healthy, filling breakfast. Lunch is usually pretty healthy too. But after lunch, all bets are off. I just hate making dinners. There's something in my head that always makes me think dinners should be so much more structured (probably because I grew up with structured homemade meals at 6ish each evening), but I have a hard time doing that. I'd like to say that it's because it's hard to cook for one, but really it's because I just don't care for cooking all that much. Sure, I enjoyed it once upon a time (when I worked a normal 8-5 job), but now with a random schedule that changes daily, I just don't want to put forth the effort.

That being said, after lunch, I tend to just eat whatever. So, though I'm not going to go all out for dinners, I am going to try to make an effort of having a dinner rather than just eating whatever I want whenever I want. It doesn't have to be fancy smancy. As long as it's something healthy, I can be happy with that. With this in mind, hopeful I can take back control over my afternoon/evening eating.

Cheers!

Counter to Success!
Gym days this week: 1
Total gym days during this challenge: 13
Days without sweets or weighing myself: 19
Days without eating past 8 p.m.: Uh...14?