Decisions

Today, after writing this morning’s post, I came to a few realizations.  I keep saying that I wish there were 30 hours in the day so that I could get everything done.  Well that obviously is not going to happen.  But one thing that I can do to address this is by waking up earlier.  I am definitely a morning person.  I am much more motivated and driven in the morning than in the evening.  So I am going to try and wake up around 6:00 in the morning.  If I start packing my lunch the night before, then this means that I will almost have an extra hour at the beginning of the day to do what ever I want.  If this be work on my thesis, packing the house or blogging, then that is fine.  It is a way for me to gain control again.  I guess I can even chose if I want to use this extra hour for sleep.  It is all about re-empowering myself.

The second realizations I came to is one of time management/stress management.  Two things in my life right now that I can eliminate that will give my both time back and eliminate some stress are doing two-a-days at the gym and by calorie counting.  The former will give me more time to work on my thesis.  On days where I go back to the gym to do cardio after I lifted that afternoon could be much better put to thesis work.  If I feel really gluttonous, lazy, or over-energized later on in the evening, I can always chose to go for a walk or quick jog around the neighborhood.  The calorie counting needs to go away mainly for stress reasons but also time reasons.  It definitely takes additional time counting out the calories and doing the juggling act of trying to fit everything into the ‘appropriate range’ that I pre-determine.  Also, the stress of staying within a range and letting this decide if I feel like a success or a failure is just getting to be too much to bear on top of all the other things that I honestly do need to succeed in.  Trying to add the priority of weight loss to everything else I have going on right now is just down right silly.  It isn’t like if I don’t become the ‘perfect’ weight right now that I won’t be able to achieve that later on, when life is a little less stressful.  And maybe I’ll never be at the perfect weight…might as well accept and be okay with that sooner than later.  I will keep weighing myself on Friday’s and hopefully the number will keep going down but I simply do not have enough extra time or effort to be putting into that right now.

Today I did go to the gym over lunch (but I did not go back afterwards to swim/do cardio per decision above.)  I tried to increase my weights were I was able to.

Exercise	Weight	Reps/Sets
Incline bench press	70 l.b. d.d.	5/6
Shoulder Press	40 l.b. d.d	5/6
Bicep Curls	30 l.b. d.d	6/6
Skull Crushers	30 l.b. d.d	6/6
Lat rows	2 15 lb b.b.	10/3
Side lat raises	2 10lb b.b	6/6
Front lat raises	2 10lb b.b	6/6
Pushups on bosu		10/3

This took 42 minutes. 

A funny story—many days when I am at the gym, a pretty good looking (and very cut/ripped) guy is working out at the same time I am.  He has been in there for the past few months but we have never talked.  Today he came up to me and asked what I do.  I said “here or for a living?”  He replied “For a living.”  I said that I was a logistics analyst, why?  He said “Oh, I definitely thought you would say a police officer or something to motivate you to workout/look the way that you do.  Girls that lift weights and have muscles are so much sexier than stick skinny girls.”  I felt very flattered by this.  I called the husband right away and gloated. Part of me did wonder if he was just trying to tell me I was too butch in a nice way.

I stayed at work late tonight (instead of going back to the gym) and I worked on the thesis for a good hour.  I ate about 1/4 of the Clif bar I had left over from yesterday.

When I told Justin about work and the fact that I was picked to be the project manager of the largest rollout that my company has had in 10 years, then he said we needed to go celebrate.  He asked what I wanted to do–if I wanted to go out to eat, have him cook, etc.  I said we could either do take out or delivery (something I never agree to on a weeknight! but I figured with this whole ‘lower the stress’ attitude, then I should allow for someone else to cook dinner for once.).  We actually ended up eating out.  We went to this sushi place in Falls Church that we like a lot–Maneki Neko.  It wasn’t nearly as good as it usually/used to be, which was a huge letdown for both of us.  Looks like we will need to start finding a new favorite sushi place…good thing we are moving!

We each ordered a drink to toast my potential achievements.

Then we ordered an appetizer of steamed edamame.  Mmmmmm, always so good.

We ordered sushi for our entrees, which came with miso soup.  I asked for a house salad with ginger dressing instead.  I just didn’t think I needed all that sodium.  And I absolutely adore ginger dressing!

Then our entrees came.  We ordered the Futomaki entree and the Spicy maki entree.  In general, both were a let down.  The futomaki didn’t really taste like anything (and I really do like tamago in sushi!) but rice….I couldn’t even really taste a change in consistency when I chewed the roll.

The spicy maki wasn’t that great either.  My favorite one was the California roll which is typically my least favorite.  The spicy tuna tasted almost fishy, which creeped me out.  The salmon…didn’t taste like much of anything.  Maybe my tastebuds were in a bad mood or something!

In the end, I probably had 2 of each of the spicy maki one’s and I had probably 3 or 4 of the futomaki rolls.  I did finish all of my salad, sake and we halved the edamame.   No matter what, it was nice to go out to dinner with the husband and just have a few moments without outside stresses to talk and laugh and catch up on life.  We both are just so stressed and busy right now that it is almost like our paths don’t cross as much as we would like.

We got home and I re-read my current chapter on the thesis, with the aims to resubmit it tonight, but I ended up putting a lot of red ink onto the paper, so I will need to revisions again tomorrow.  Hopefully tomorrow I can get it resubmitted.  Tomorrow is even extra busy though.  Work, gym, work, physical therapy, doctor’s appointment (I think I have gotten an infection from a bite/scab…gross, I know!), wine store to get boxes and then home to make dinner, work on thesis, pack and blog.  No wonder I am wishing there were 30 hours in a day.

Off to pack my food to take to work tomorrow.  I never pack ahead, so hopefully this will help.  Have a great night!!

Crash and Burn

Sorry about no post last night.  I basically collapsed and fell asleep after dinner (and after way too much dessert, but more on that later.)  I was sound asleep by 9:30, and I still wanted to sleep more when my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning.  UGH!  And I barely got anything to do on my to-do list last night.  I am just starting to feel a little overwhelmed.

And with that said, I got into work today and I got taken into a meeting that began with “We have an opportunity for you that you cannot turn down”.  I was offered to be a project manager on the biggest project that our company has had in at least 10 years.  It will be entirely different from what I do today and I think it will be very labor intensive.  The project starts at the end of this month and runs until May 2009.  I will need to travel some with this project too. 

I know I am stressed already.  I have this thesis and we are moving in a few weeks.  We are closing on the 24th and work said that I will need to travel to Ohio on the 29th.  This could get interesting but I really can’t say no.  I am intrigued and want to be challenged and also I love being busy at work, it makes the day fly by.  I just hope I am not getting over my head.  I am assuming if they trust me doing this, then I can handle it.

Okay, now let me recap since yesterday’s post.

I went to the gym over lunch and did the cardio wave again.  I am addicted to this thing!  I did 40 minutes.  Then after work I had physical therapy.  They attempted to kill me again yesterday.  Tons to squats, some jumps (I haven’t jumped in 19 months!!), balancing exercises, etc.  It was a sweat-fest like normal.

I felt snacky all day yesterday.  I just never felt satisfied.  I don’t know why, but I kept trying to fight it all day long.  On the way to physical therapy, I had half of a Clif Bar:

and then when I got home from PT, I was really snacky again.  I ate some grapes and some raisin bran right out of the box.  Sorry, no photos.

Then I made dinner.  This is basically an exact repeat of last Wednesday’s dinner.  It was a steak roll-up with steamed broccoli and plain white rice on the side.  Both Justin and I adore this meal right now.

Look how good that roll-up looks!!

I told myself that after eating all that raisin bran, that I really did not need to eat any more.  I don’t know if it was because I was sleepy and weak or if I was overworked/overstressed or if because I had been hungry all day and I had fought it, but well….I ate WAY too much after dinner.  I started by saying oh I will just have a little bit of yogurt covered raisins/pretzel and some Optimum Power:

I had this while working on my thesis.  Then I figured I wanted a little bit more:

And then there was a few meringues and almonds that I snacked on too.  Needless to say, this was not good!

I went downstairs because I couldn’t even think clearly and felt so exhausted.  Despite all the sugar I had just crammed in my body, I still felt like I was going to just fall over.  So I went to sleep.

Luckily, my body has held onto all that sugary goodness, because I was not hungry when I woke up today and I still haven’t been too hungry.  I also aim to make up for my overindulgences of yesterday by eating less today.

Breakfast

I didn’t need much this morning, so I made a carnation instant breakfast mixed with 1 cup of skim milk.

All mixed together.

Then I made a mug of GFI mocha and brought that with me to work.

AM Snack

I am planning on lifting over lunch today, so despite all the eating yesterday, I knew I couldn’t really skip my am snack if I wanted to have a good work out.

A juicy looking nectarine and I poured some plain kefir into a cup on the side (I mixed 1t of GFI into this to give it some flavor.)

Lunch

I figured I would keep with the light theme today for lunch, so I made a huge salad.  There is a spring lettuce mix in there with black beans, wheat berries, blue berries, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, avocado, celery and an egg white.  I poured about 1T of cucumber yogurt dressing on top.

And I am skipping my jell-O today.  Hope I can handle this!

PM Snack

Yesterday’s yogurt was FABULOUS!!! I loved the pineapple chunks in there!  So hopefully this apple turnover will be just as tasty.

Okay, life is getting a little out of control for me now and I can tell it is starting to effect me.  I simply am feeling overwhelmed.  I just feel like I can’t get everything done and because of that, I sort of feel like a failure.  There is that type A personality.  Deep breath…..