Sweets and parenting

I've been craving sweets lately. I have a pretty significant sweet tooth and then I looked at my Garmin period tracker and everything makes sense now. During the few days before my menstrual cycle, I want all the sweets. ALL OF THEM. In my belly. RIGHT THIS INSTANT. This is also the time where it's REALLY hard for me to keep my portion sizes in check because I'm constantly hungry. My mom and I went to Costco tonight and I had a food court hot dog and then I opened the popcorn we bought and snacked at the table. Then we got home and I ate crackers with dip. And I just finished another popcorn snack. Now, what I was more aware of was stopping with serving sizes that were far more reasonable than what I could have eaten. I counted out my crackers. I used a smaller bowl for my popcorn than I maybe would have historically and I didn't go back for seconds. So, winning?

Today I had my back pain resolving massage and did a walk with a friend and then another treadmill walk to watch the new episode of Only Murders in the Building. So, I moved my body today! I also had my first parent-teacher conference and cried almost immediately at the start of the meeting. Reyah's teacher literally started the conference with, "To start, do you have any questions for me?" And I just started crying and was like is she okay? Is our divorce harming her? I just want to know that that little girl is going to be alright. Raising kids is stressful! I'm constantly worried about how I might screw it up. I also had my first volunteer experience today, which further cemented the fact in my mind that teachers are fucking angels who are severely underpaid. I didn't manage to significantly embarrass Reyah, but will have another opportunity to do so next week, so we'll see!

Another old photo since I can't be bothered to photograph anything lately. aa

Fourth of July with the kiddos

Treadmill and enchiladas

After leaving the hospital this morning, I stopped at Walmart to grab some things for a get together this weekend as well as to linger in the diet aisle to see if the Atkins folks ever made anything similar to the peanut butter bars I used to inhale when they were South Beach diet bars. I found a product that looked similar, but it had more calories (boo. hiss.). Nevertheless, I bought it and it was pretty tasty. I don't think I'd buy it again because it's 220 calories, but it did have 16g of protein. However, TikTok recently told me that if you multiply the protein content by 10 (so, 16 x 10 = 160, in this case) and that number is less than the caloric value, it can't be considered a high protein food. I don't know how much that actually matters to me because 16g of protein is still a lot, but who am I to question TikTok? Also, this bar was advertised as a meal replacement bar. And I just can't get behind meal replacement bars because it's not a meal. It's just not. 

After Walmart, I napped and then was hella productive. I mowed the lawn, worked out, packed food, and helped my mom with some Amazon returns. Today's workout was a Peloton Tread workout with Kirsten Ferguson. It was a 45 minute power walk and she made us go up to an 8% incline. And because I like to work harder than I need to, I add 0.5% to all the inclines we do. It's dumb. Don't follow me for workout tips. Anywho, it kicked my butt. When it came time to do the last power walk at the 8.5% incline, I reeeeeeally wanted to stop. I was just about ready to scale back on my speed and then Kirsten had to go and say, "You can do this. Hold it. You've got this. Yes, you can." And it was all motivational and stuff, so I kept doing it. And you know what? It sucked. But she was right. I could do it. I just didn't want to because it was hard. But, I did it. Because I can do hard things if I must. 

Now, as I said, that workout was hard. In addition to upping the incline a tiny bit, I also did some running when we were supposed to be power walking because again, I like to make things harder unnecessarily. It's a real gift. My Garmin, however, is trying to coax me into doing less hard things. After a workout, it tells you how long you should recover from whatever workout you just did. After this workout, it told me I'd need at least 60 hours to recover. Will I listen to my Garmin? All signs point to no, but at least now you really know how hard I worked.

Today, my mom made me enchiladas to take to work tonight. For those adoring fans of mine who are unaware (because I have never told you), my mom moved in with me last winter. She did this to help me with the kiddos and because Nasur and I decided to get a divorce. And let me tell you, Moms are God damn angels. She made the enchiladas and then packed them up for me. I don't deserve this woman.

Also, here are my photos from my long walk yesterday now that Google photos feels like working again!

This is one of my favorite parts about walking around the hospital in Loveland - the mountain views are pretty special.

More Prime. Less Shit?

Welp, Jeff Bezos, who definitely needs more money, made more money off of me today. I had a patient cancel and so I spent that time (and some time tonight) buying more stuff on Amazon. Mostly for my kids, but I did buy myself a new swimsuit as well as some baby shower gifts. With all these new toys on their way, this probably means I should do a major clean out of the kids' play room, which, let's not kid ourselves, absolutely won't be happening, and then I'll be massively overwhelmed by all their crap and will just keep the doors shut to that room for forever. Okay, great. Creating more problems for myself. Like that's a new thing. Next!

Today I had the overwhelming joy of being the doc on call at one of the hospitals. Because it was not very busy at the beginning of my shift, I went outside for a long walk. How long, you as the very enamored reader ask? Long enough for the sun to set and for me to document it but fall victim to Google Photos not wanting to upload them to prove to you that I can walk for a long time. During my walk tonight, I listened to some OB/GYN podcasts so I can stay up on the literature and be the best doctor ever. Then I did two peloton outdoor walks. For those of you who haven't joined the Peloton cult, you should. I bought a peloton tread in April. I wanted to use it to get more steps in and be a little more motivated to move my body and let me tell you, it's working. I rarely do a live workout (read: I did one once), but I do the recorded workouts and these workouts push me way harder than I would ever push myself. If I were to do the treadmill on my own, I'd up the incline and then walk for an hour at a modest speed. Doing a treadmill workout with the Peloton, the incline is up and down and all around and we're slow walking and power walking and hiking, etc. I've even started doing some runs, which I really haven't done since medical school (I honestly can't remember if I did any running in residency). Their app also has lots of stuff you can do off their exercise equipment, like their outdoor series. The outdoor series has an instructor telling you what to do and it pushes me harder. I will do power walks outside now and I have officially stopped giving a fuck about whether or not people who have the distinct pleasure of watching me power walk think that it's weird. It's a decent way to get a humble little workout in when I'm not at home or at the gym with equipment. So, go me.

Tonight's outdoor walks I did with coaching by Alex Toussaint and Joslyn Thompson Rule. Alex had some pretty legit motivational things to say during his walk, but also his playlist was killer and he kept the pace up. Joslyn was way easier with her walk, but she has kicked my butt before. I have already bookmarked more outdoor walks with Alex because I really liked his style. 

I'm off! Perhaps tomorrow you can have some photos and we can start talking about my toe touching goal. P.S. I packed my food for my shift, so one could say I'm killing it with food packing even though it's the worst task in the world.

Resonation

In my undergrad physiology course, I distinctly remember the professor asking us if we thought folks who were super in shape would sweat more or less than folks who weren't in shape. And we were all like less, duh. And she was like, "Hahaha, losers! You're wrong! It's more." Or, you know, something to that effect. Basically, she was trying to explain that a body that is used to having to cool you by sweating gets you sweating earlier and has a more robust response. So, that's why I was sweating so much during my work out today. Because I'm so in shape! 

Yes. That's definitely it.

It could also be because I upped the ramp on the treadmill from a 3% incline to a 4% incline. It honestly didn't feel that much harder, but I accidentally/semi on-purpose looked at how much time I had done (38 minutes) and I was so sure it'd say at least 45 that I was discouraged because I just wanted to be done. So, I told myself if I still felt like I wanted to be done at 45 minutes, I could start my cool down early. But you know what? I just did the whole hour because I'm not a loser like my physiology professor may or may not have thought. Bam, motherfuckers. 

In other news, while scrolling Instagram, I came upon this post by Erica FitLove which really resonated with me:

For those of you unfamiliar with Erica, she rose to fame when she became a trainer for Biggest Loser. She lost hella weight on her own and became a trainer recruited for how awesome she was. And here she is, in the same boat as me. And you know what? She's right. Starting over is hard. But, here we are doing it anyways.

A weigh-in and some goals!

Today I started the day with a weigh-in. I had to wait until Nasur was busy getting dressed to do so because I'm still too self conscious to allow him to know my weight. I don't know if/when I'll ever be comfortable telling someone my weight because it feels like I'm defining myself by that number. Reyah, on the other hand, is at the age where she's excited about gaining weight because she loves getting bigger. Weird to see things so differently.

I had a day in the office today that was relatively busy. I hit the gym afterwards and just walked for an hour. I have the treadmill at a 2% incline and walk at 3.0mph. Today, it felt really easy. So, maybe next week, I shall up the pace or up the incline. Happy to see some progress in what I can do! I also need to get back to lifting, but I'm a bit self conscious about that. My goal is to start that in the next week or two.

I tried my best to snap photos of my eats today, too, and I did okay-ish. I got almost all the way through my scrambled eggs before I remembered to take a photo. Lunch was my leftover gyro from last night. I ate some of my fries and was then too full to eat any of it. I was only able to eat half for lunch, but did have some chocolate for dessert, since you know, the dessert stomach is its own stomach. I forgot to take a photo of my protein drink I had at work. I also forgot to take a picture of our dinner - salmon + green beans + potato wedges. I shall try to do better at remembering tomorrow!

Tomorrow I'm in the OR, so I'll be depending on the physician lounge for food. Here's to making good choices!

And now, for today's weigh-in! 7.8 pounds down from my last weigh-in. I'll take it! Ideally, I'd like to be at ~250 before we go to Disney World in March. It's going to be hard work, but the ozempic is really helping with cravings and feeling full much faster. 

Catch you tomorrow!

Ozempic and food

Oof. Didn't realize I'd taken such a long time between posts. My deepest apologies, millions of fans!

This weekend was busy on call and sleep was hard to come by. Despite that, I have survived. Only to be on call again on Wednesday. Major facepalm on that one. 

Over the weekend, I didn't do much advanced planning in terms of meals, but I can tell the ozempic is definitely helping. Ordered a sandwich on Friday and only ate half and didn't obsess about the other half - I save it for my Sunday night call. I got breakfast for us on my way home on Saturday. I only ate half of that too and had the other half for lunch. And, again, no overly obsessing about it or feeling compelled to finish it. Saturday night, we watched Mulan (again). I made popcorn for the kids and stopped at one small bowl for myself rather than finishing off the bag. These changes are certainly helping with my weight loss. And you know what, at first I kind of felt like a failure in that I needed to be on a medication to lose weight, but now I'm glad I reached out and started the medication. It is really helping me.

In other news, I went to the gym today. I just walked for an hour on the treadmill again. Last time I did an hour on the treadmill was Thursday and I wore my brace because, without it, my knee really gives me trouble. But my brace just would not stay in the right spot and I was adjusting it every 2-5 minutes, which was highly annoying. Today, I pulled my old knee brace out and it was a way better fit. I only had to stope to adjust it at the beginning. Also, despite some advance planning, my Netflix episodes apparently didn't download, so I read my kindle and listened to music and really enjoyed my walk. I know walking isn't much, but I'm really happy with what I'm doing so far.

Tomorrow's an OR day. Hoping I get out at a reasonable hour so that I can do another walk tomorrow. 

My panini from the cafeteria that left a lot to be desired on Friday

Reyah excited about wearing a Halloween shirt