Day one of my one week challenge

Today was day one of the new challenge I set for myself yesterday. So far, so good. But day one is usually always a good day because you're usually willing to stick to your guns. I know if I want to, I can keep it up.

So I turned off all alarms last night so I could just sleep until whenever but Bailey decided to thwart my plans to sleep in and came in around 7 a.m. and kept meowing. I recall his food bowl being on the low side last night and immediately regretted forgetting to refill it last night. He's usually pretty good about leaving me alone in the morning until my alarm goes off, but since it was past the normal alarm time and I wasn't up yet, he let me know that he was hungry. So I stumbled out of bed, filled up his food, and fell back into bed. I laid there and fought with myself about whether or not I should be sleeping or starting my day, but I opted to go back to sleep until 9:30ish.

Upon getting up, I set to work on my week challenge. I weighed in (photo below) and then made some breakfast, hit up the farmer's market, hit the gym, and then came home to hurriedly pack up my dirty laundry, shower, and eat lunch before heading to Kalamazoo to see my sister, do laundry, and work on my residency applications.

Latest weigh in (check out my weigh-in page)

I want to talk about this morning before moving on. First of all, it took a bit of convincing to tell myself that if I was tired, I deserved to go back to bed. Sometimes rest is just as important as exercise in weight loss. Then, I purposely ate breakfast before the farmer's market because an empty stomach makes me way more likely to buy more. I kept it pretty light - I got some celery, lettuce, San Francisco sourdough bread (sandwich style), apples, and blueberries. Then I headed straight to the gym where I ran into Krista, a fellow healthy lifestyle blogger. I met Krista for lunch once before as we were both going to school in Grand Rapids and she recently moved back. I stumbled upon her first blog via SparkPeople and she has definitely been one of my biggest influences in the blogging part of my weight loss. It was through her blog that I learned what a huge blog community there is. Anywho, we chatted for a bit and she gave me the deets about spinning at the Y before I hit up the elliptical for the day.

While I'm on the elliptical, I like to be doing something else: reading or watching TV. I couldn't decide if I wanted to read or watch the season premiere of Biggest Loser. I opted for Biggest Loser and I'm certainly glad I did! Watching that show while working out really made me push myself harder to keep my heart rate up. I mean, I'm currently heavier than some of the contestants on this new season! I also love their new trainers, Jen and Jessie. Some of the things Jen said really resonated with me. She talks about how you can operate from a place of fear or a place of love and that it's operating from a place of love that really allows you to accomplish your goals. I was just talking about that when I blogged about how I needed to believe in myself and how I need to love myself a bit more! And she's so right. During my year off between undergrad and med school, I totally loved myself and treated myself like I was worth it. Now that I'm in medicine (where you can never know it all), I feel inadequate a lot of the time and those feelings of inadequacy and fear have become so commonplace that it's definitely my normal operating mode. I'm working on breaking out of that and I'm hoping this challenge and publishing all of my recorded weigh-ins will help me work towards positivity again. And I recruited my friend Lisa to help me with this challenge and get me off to the right foot. You can follow her challenge on her blog!

Spending the afternoon with my sister was also a positive thing for me. She just started PA school (she's studying to become a physician assistant) and she's learning the basics. It totally reminded me of first semester of med school where I was completely overwhelmed almost all the time. I cried at least once a week for probably the first semester. And though I know it definitely doesn't feel like it, I realized that things do get easier and that you learn to work with what you've got. Starting anything new is going to be difficult. But it's worth it. And that's keeping me motivated with these residency applications. I'm applying EVERYWHERE and it's terrifying to think that I'll be starting something new, but it's also exciting. It'll probably suck major at the start (like my sister's realizing now), but it'll be okay.

Since I spent the afternoon with my sister, I packed snacks and made us a steak dinner. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera, so you only get photos from this morning.

Breakfast with sad-tasting grapes

Snack before heading out for the morning

Lunch with my delicious sourdough bread!

My goal for this one-week challenge is to get the scale down to 239.8 next week. I know that seems like a lot in a week (6.2 pounds), but breaking into the 230s again would totally boost my confidence. I'm going to achieve this goal by adhering to my challenge pretty strictly: working out, counting calories, packing food, and not weighing in until next Saturday. The first week of getting back on track usually leads to a pretty big change on the scale for me, so I'm hoping that's the case this time! I'm also going to stay hydrated as much as possible. I'd also like to set the goal of being in the low 220s by the end of this calendar year (220-225). I think 26 pounds is a lot, but if you think about it, I have half of September, all of October, all of November, and all of December to bust my butt to get there - that's 15 weeks that I need to lose 1.5-2 pounds per week and I think that's reasonable.

Today's positive: making awesome strides on day one of the challenge and setting some lofty goals that are totally attainable if I treat my mind and body positively. Also, my other positive for today was motivating Lisa to make some changes too!

Apologies, vets, and workouts

Hey pals. Sorry for the lack of posts. Working nights is the worst. Well, I'm sure there are worse things, but this week was busy, especially when I wasn't working. Since I last blogged, I hit up zumba a few times, went to yoga on Friday with a different [and not nearly as awesome] instructor, took my cat to the vet, went shopping with my sister, had a reunion with a med school friend who's at a different campus, and overslept for my weekend shift.

So, let's focus on the bigger pieces of news: the vet trip. My cat has been getting freakishly skinny as of late. After having my mom watch him while I was in Africa, Bailey put on quite a bit of weight. My mom gave him treats like three times a day, sooo yeah. He probably weighed 12-13 pounds max. Well, I put him on a diet and then he got super skinny. So I put him back on a normal diet, but he didn't gain anything. So, it was time to take him to the vet. The vet was like "Yeah, he's definitely hyperthyroid - his thyroid feels massive and he definitely is skinny." So, he had to have a blood test to confirm and yeah, very hyperthyroid. But she also felt a mass that she thought could be a kidney, but maybe wasn't. And on top of it, he had an elevated white count (indicative of an infection) and his liver enzymes were off the chart. So, there's a possibility of major liver problems. Now, as a doctor-to-be, any time you hear liver injury, you say to yourself, "Fuck." Why? Because the liver does a lot of important things - like making proteins for your blood, like filtering your blood, like metabolizing your medications, etc. A liver disease is never a good diagnosis. And I can't be sure that that's what's going on with Mr. Bailers, but it's possible. So, he's on antibiotics, a hyperthyroidism pill (methimazole) and a liver support pill. He's not a fan of taking pills, so we get to have that fight twice a day. What fun.

In other news, my sister came and we got some major deals at JCPenney. I bought two new tops, four new bottoms, two bathing suit tops, and one bathing suit bottom for $160. Baller. I was waiting for Memorial Day sales for a couple of weeks now. I wanted to get sunglasses and a new bathrobe too, which I forgot about but went and got today :-)

This morning, I woke up late for my weekend shift. I was supposed to be at work at 8. I woke up at 8:15. I blame this on the software update on my phone that changed the format of the alarm feature. It used to say "snooze," or "dismiss." Now you have to swipe to the left to snooze or swipe to the right to dismiss. Well, you're supposed to swipe to the right to answer a call, so I figured that was the right way to swipe when I wanted to snooze this morning. Guess not. I frantically texted my attending, washed my hair in the sink (faster than showering), toasted a bagel while I blow dried my hair, and ran out the door. Not my finest moment. To punish me for my tardiness, my attending ran around the hospital like a mad man, kept me until 4 (we're supposed to be out around noon) and then assigned me the craziest (diagnosis-wise) patients. Thanks. Needless to say, I'm not excited about working again tomorrow.

And can I just say that working two weekends in a row in addition to working the entire week fucking blows? Especially when one of those weeks is a night week and you're transitioning twelve hours in a day. Fuck that. Fuck that really hard.

Anywho, I haven't been the best at taking photos, but here's what was on my camera. I promise to blog tomorrow. I'm sorry to have missed so many days.

Positive for the day: I didn't explode from frustration and finally did get Bailey to take his damn pills.