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

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.

💖

I just want to be overweight

I'm going to start out this blog by saying, "Yay me!" I got my butt out of bed this morning and went to the gym. It took me about 5 minutes to convince myself that I wanted to go to the gym, but I did it. Once there, I did about 45 minutes of cardio and then did some upper body strength training. I also did some ab stuff that I've done with Mark, but I'm not entirely sure that I did it right...

After the gym, I came home and had the exact same breakfast as yesterday: eggs (only one full egg and one egg white) and little turkey weenies. Here's a picture just in case your memory is poor.

I got to work right on time and didn't have a whole lot to do, per usual. So, I decided to do some online courses that Lubrizol offers to teach myself a bit more about the industry. Then I came home for lunch. I had an English muffin pizza and some of the leftover beef tenderloin I got for dinner last night.

Amazing dinner from last night

Lunch for today

Also during lunch, I changed my facebook profile picture to this gem that google put up today to honor Bunsen's 200th birthday. Didn't you know I'm a dork?

After lunch, Sheli, Carrie, nor I had a whole lot to do. We hung out in the lab being dorks, and ended up unpacking our four ball machine which arrived today. It's $120,000 worth of sexual jokes and innuendos. Trust me, it's going to be awesome. 

After work, I came home and started making dinner right away because I volunteer at the hospital every Thursday night. Dinner was some Schwann's chicken, some potatoes, and some steamed broccoli. It was pretty good. I was more in the mood for a large donut, some cookie dough, and a side of cake, buuuut, since my goal until the next weigh-in is to log everything I eat (and stay within my calorie ranges), that fantasy meal wasn't about to happen tonight.

Not my fantasy meal, but still pretty good

After dinner, I was pretty pumped to go volunteer tonight. Photographic evidence right here:

There was actually stuff to do at the hospital tonight, but I still got sent home a bit early. So, I went to the mall to pick up my resized ring! Woooot. It fits very well now. I wear it on my right ring finger. So pretty.

Speaking of my right hand, I also wanted to show you my Power Balance wristband. Like I said before, it's supposed to improve your balance and range of motion. I'm still a bit skeptical, but I was able to balance on one leg without falling over for once when I was stretching this week, and I was able to do one of my harder arm exercises without feeling too strained. So I'm glad I got it. And it was a size small. Haha - I can't remember the last time I bought something in a small. And with my poopy progress this week, I'm sure I won't be buying clothes in a size small like...ever.

But I'm going to keep working on it. As I said earlier, my goal is to log everything I eat and stay in my calorie ranges until my next weigh-in. I usually measure everything out with the help of my food scale and measuring cups, but I'm going to have to be extra diligent now, hence me drinking my chocolate almond milk out of a measuring glass.

So hopefully this will help me continue to lose weight and maybe even faster! And in 22 pounds, I will no longer be obese, but simply overweight. I know it sounds weird, but I just want to be overweight. There are a lot less health risks involved in being overweight versus being obese.

Anyway, how was your Thursday? Any fun plans for the weekend?

Willpower FTW!

Ever have one of those mornings when you don't want to get out of bed? That was this morning for me. So I was a tad late for work. But that's not really a bad thing because being that late means that I missed the majority of Carrie's daily unnecessary rambling about about her kids, which is typically the absolute last thing I want to hear about that early in the morning.


I spent most of my morning scrambling to finish an analysis on a sample that would have been done a week ago if Carrie would stop shoving her work off on me and then not updating me with the new information. Grumble, grumble (those are my angry noises). Frustrated when things just wouldn't work, I decided to do some of my own work and then relax a bit before lunch.


During my lunch break, I ran to Jack's, a fruit and meat market near where I work. I was out of veggies to eat with dinner, and I knew I wouldn't have time after work to grab some.


The thing I like most about Jack's is that pretty much all of its produce is waaaay cheaper than meijer's. Also, it's locally owned and all that jazz.

So, I got all of this lovely fresh produce for $4.78. I call that a win - especially since strawberries aren't exactly in season in Michigan...


For lunch, I made a version of my English muffin pizzas. I really like pizza sauce when it's not cooked, so I just toasted the English muffin and then added the sauce and cheese afterwards. I also ate a hunk of honey smoked turkey breast for some lean protein. And I had some strawberries since I don't need to ration them as strictly anymore (being that I have tons more).

And because I was craving it, I decided to have some fudge too.

So far I'm pretty impressed that this thing is still alive and well in my apartment. I'm practicing self control. Shocking, I know. I also practiced some self control later in the day, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.


After getting home from work, I ate some more Schwann's chicken for dinner with garlic potatoes, cauliflower, and some of the broccoli I bought at lunch. Also in the picture are my nerdy salt and pepper shakers that my sister got me for Christmas. In time I will show you the other dorky things I own.

Then I got all dressed up in my volunteer uniform to head to volunteer at the hospital like I do every Thursday night (last Thursday notwithstanding) from 6-9.

I always feel very matronly when I wear it. Probably because the jacket is very shapeless. Anyway, the ER was pretty swamped tonight. People had been waiting up to 6 hours by the time I left. Yikes. Since they were so swamped, they weren't discharging patients very quickly so I didn't have a lot to do. I ended up spending a lot of time in the staff lounge, staring down the delicious pizza sitting right in front of me.

Eventually, I caved and had one piece. Buuuut, I still stayed within my calorie range for the day, so it really wasn't that big of deal. It took a lot of self control for me not to have another piece, or two, which definitely would have thrown me out of my range. One piece packs a ridiculous 14g of fat - that's about 1/3 of the amount of fat I'm supposed to have in one day! I bet the resident who ate three didn't know that... However, one of the nurses ignored the pizza altogether and simply ate a banana when she came in for a quick break. I congratulated her on her self control and she said that she's been trying to lose weight with a group of friends in a friendly competition. She's lost 13 pounds in four weeks. That's pretty impressive. Then we got to talking about what sites we use to track our calories. She made a recommendation, but I really like SparkPeople and I have their app on my phone so I can track easily all day. I also have the app to calculate BMI, to look up calories in certain restaurants, and to estimate my BAC. Yeah...I was kinda bored at work today...


Anyway, after volunteering, I came home and caught most of Grey's Anatomy - for FREE since they still haven't shut off my cable - WOOT! Anyway, I totally predicted the ending. We'll see what they do with this predictable plot twist next week.


I'm really pumped that tomorrow's Friday. These last two weeks of work have been pretty terrible. I don't have any fun plans for the weekend, but I'm just glad that I won't be going to work. Do you have any fun plans for the weekend? Want to come to Midland and hang out with me!?