JJanet

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?p=184616351#post184616351

Check out this contest!! As far as I’m concerned, they’re ALL winners for making and posting a video clip of themselves like that! But I am rooting for one meanie in particular.

Playacar was fantastic! Besides a quick trip to Cozumel, I had never visited much of Mexico before, and I had so much FUN!!

I had several opportunities to practice my faltering knowledge of Spanish, and luckily, everyone there was SO SWEET and NICE that they didn’t mind when I blundered at all! I already miss how cheerful and happy everyone is over there!! They do their work with the BEST attitudes!

The beach was gorgeous!

The ocean is such a stunning shade of blue, and I spent much of the week just laying on a chair, staring at the ocean. If you drive about an hour from here, you get to see some ocean. But it’s brown and oily with swimsuit staining abilities. The one in Playacar was MUCH nicer.

I had a few activities planned for my week there, but I skipped them all, with the exception of my day trip to Chichen Itza. Instead, I relaxed in the sun almost every day, and napped lazily, basking in the sunshine!

It was EASY to relax when there were so many distractions! The food at the hotel was amazing, and I will have to workout EXTRA HARD to get rid of the vacation inches that came home with me!! Hehehe!

After the first few days of doing absolutely NOTHING, it was time to venture out for a bit! Chichen Itza called my name, and I went to visit one of the new seven wonders of the world! It was blisteringly HOT. We only spent about 3 hours outside, but the heat combined with the humidity was almost enough to make me pass out. Like a big wuss, I had to sit part of the tour out in ‘time-out’.

After Chichen Itza, we went to visit a Cenote, which is a natural sinkhole with rainwater collected inside of it.

It was dark, cool and beautiful inside! We were enoucraged to swim in the Cenote, but they had these gigantic fish swimming near the surface, and I was too squeamish at the thought of possibly touching them. Gross!!! So I walked around and took some pictures.

Getting back to the hotel was such a relief! I was so tired, hot and sweaty, I immediately decided not to go through with any of my other planned excursions! The next day, I woke up early and decided to go watch the sun rise on the beach.

Breathtaking.

The entire week there was fabulous. I am slightly sad to be home, though, as I have to face up to some of the stuff that was hanging over me before I left. I must admit that I was a bit of a coward, and skipped my workout today because I was not ready to face my friend that I recently ‘broke up’ with. I am going to use today to build my courage back up and get back in there tomorrow, confident with the knowledge that I AM DOING THE RIGHT THING!

… right?

RIGHT!

Smiles from Playacar…

Some people are just plain toxic. My bro-in-law does stupid, thoughtless crap sometimes, but he is not toxic - just stubborn. Like… even though I can’t stand him right now, if my world completely collapsed from underneath me tomorrow, he would be there for me to help me pick up the pieces. Stupid ass that he is. He’s still my bro and I still love him.

But two weeks ago, I had the sneaking suspicion that one of my burgeoning new friendships were toxic. I asked for feedback from some people, and their opinion was that I should let it ride out and see what happened. So I agreed and I sort of sat back and let it play out to see how things would turn out. My gut instinct was right, and yesterday, things were unmistakably clear that it was a TOXIC RELATIONSHIP. So this morning, I had to tell her I would not be her friend. It was such a hard email to write. I tried to tell her in person yesterday, but she wasn’t listening to me, so I wrote her an email which was very explicit that I could not be her friend.

The unreasonable part of my brain tells me that I am mean, horrible, cruel, insensitive and lack compassion for choosing to be out of her life. The rational part of my brain consoles me and tells me that it’s okay, that I need to look out for my own emotional health FIRST, and that being posioned by her would not do anyone any good. So I did it.

I squashed the friendship I was so unbelievably happy about discovering not even a month ago. It’s been a sad day, but also a good one. A part of me grew up again.

Yesterday as I was eating dinner (chicken breast and green beans. Mmmmmmm), I decided that today would be the day that I would stop being so bummed about my family. It has been over a week since it started, and while I was not down the entire time, I have been soooooooo blue since mid-last week that it was just ridiculous! SERIOUSLY. My only sibling and I USED to be so close, and while I told myself we were drifting apart because we lived in different countries, I knew deep down there were other issues at hand. Last week I had to acknowledge them and I won’t lie - I was crushed. But I decided to stop being so damn hurt. My brother in law is SUCH A PIG. I have a few saying about pigs (they don’t all apply here, but). Here they are:

1) For every pig, there’s a pig f*cker. (Crass, I know. LMAO!!!)

2) Never argue with a pig - it’ll only frustrate you and annoy the pig.

3) Never wrestle with a pig - you’ll get dirty and the pig likes it.

Most (all?) of us probably have to deal with ‘pigs’ in our lives. And it’s okay to be sad/angry/hurt about the presence of those pigs.

LMAO! (Not too sure what I was thinking in this picture!) But Life’s so much more enjoyable when you smile. And if you don’t feel like smiling, fake it til you make it.

I’m still ‘faking it’ this morning, but as it always happens when I put my heart on getting out of my funk, I make it before I know it. Perhaps I’m already there.

Minus 1.5 horrible days of emotional, I-could-care-less-about-what-I’m-eating, I have been right on the mark! I missed 5 scheduled workouts, but that streak ends today! Today’s going to be AMAZING. I claimed it! Hope your day’s just as terrific.

Okay, I’m a big cheater. :p I don’t want to take a full progress shot! And I don’t think I want to take it in a week, either! I look pretty much like that last bikini shot I took in April. I cannot BEAR to call it ‘progress’ when it is more of a ‘regress’! LOL!!!! So I cheated. Here’s my quad.

My sister and brother in law responded. And while it’s probably better in the long run to have this all out in the open, I am pretty miserable right now. SO! I refused to spend the day feeling sorry for myself. I am still not happy about things, but I know this is one of those matters where I need to sit back, and let things ride out as the only person I can control in this situation is myself.

So what’s a girl to do when miserable?

SHOP! My newest bud and I went SHOPPING!!!!! She’s sort of funny. She always compliments my clothes, and has commented that I need to take her shopping and give her fashion advice, so we finally made it out today. It a tough experience trying to dress someone else! I almost never try on my clothes - I’ll just look at it (online or in the store), and know if I’ll like the way it looks on me or not. But her body is so different from my own. She said she wanted to dress like me, so I picked out things I would pick out for myself - but they didn’t suit her frame, so it was a bit frustrating for her. She was feeling discouraged. She also said she felt really fat. She is completely babalicious and FAR from fat - but the clothes that I picked for her to try on were not flattering. I felt horrible!! Eek! So we took a break, and got some coffee. On our way out of Border’s, we entered this drawing for some silly contest. The guy who was running the stand was really cute, and L was sooooooo into him. LOL!! It was so cute. So we stayed there for a bit, and I was trying to get the conversation flowing since she was acting all shy and cute around him, and as we were leaving the store, I was like, "YOU LIKED HIM, didn’t you?! Go ask him out!". She giggled and said he was soooooooo cute, but she was too shy. So I asked if she’d be okay with me asking for his number, and she agreed, albeit a bit reluctantly. So I went in there, and he seemed thrilled by my question! I ran outside to L, waving the piece of paper out like a victory flag, and we giggled until our sides hurt. So although shopping wasn’t altogether succesful, it was still a good day.

9 more days. I can do this.

My forearm is getting that tell-tale hollowed out look when I am leaning out. Yay? I wish it would take the fat off of my STOMACH instead of my already skinny forearms. LOL! I am only a few pounds away from when I was my leanest in early April, but it definitely looks different this time around. I thought I added some muscle to my frame so I was anticipating looking more musclar at a slightly higher weight, but for some reason, it looks like I have even LESS than I did that first time! I see this particularly in my abs. Eh. I’m not going to worry too much about it because I know I am eating right, I geared my workouts towards leaning out, and all other areas of fitness are in line with my goals, so onwards I go! No room for hesitations or second guessing now!

I did something really tough yesterday. I wrote an email to my sister and brother in law, and aired out some of my grievances with them that I had been keeping in for a few years. It was sooooo hard to press the send button. But send it, I did. And I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. That is, until I saw their reply this morning. It was something along the lines of, "We got your email. We are thinking of how to respond to you. Later."

Ugggh. That was SO not the response I was hoping for. This is my first real confrontation with my family, and I feel SO much anxiety over it, it’s not even funny!!! I am crossing my fingers that a week from now, I will look back on this and think of how awesome it was for me to do something that is so out of my comfort zone. I wish it was next week already, and I could be away from all this tension…

Can anyone relate to This girl?

Me neither.

LOL!! This is what I will be tomorrow evening. Not for me, but for my new little friend, L! She said that she really admires the way I handle myself with men, and she wants to ‘learn’ from me. LMAO! I KNOW, right?! Nobody has ever said that to me before!! I know she meant it as a compliment, but it took me a few moments to take it as such. I was mildly insulted initially, thinking, “I’m NOT A FLIRT!”. But I tried to step back and see it from her perspective. I do make eye contact with most men I see, I do smile at them, and I guess my clothing can be interpreted as ‘flirtatious’. But I also make eye contact with most women I see, smile at women, and I dress to please me and no others. So I processed the comment, decided to be flattered I had a little ‘protege’ who wanted to come under my wing, and agreed to accompany her to a bar tomorrow night. LOL! I will be out of my element here because it’s been several years since I have last been to a bar. But the rules never really change, do they? Here’s to hoping I can be a good ‘teacher’ and that L will find someone worthwhile to connect with! With us luck!

I skipped my workout yesterday and upped my calories ever so slightly to help boost my energy levels back to normal. But this morning doesn’t feel any better. I think the problem may be my carbs. I cut off starchy carbs around 3:00 every afternoon, and my breakfasts are devoid of them as well, and while it was fine for the first week, I think my glycogen stores are pretty depleted, so I’m running out of gas. So I just filled myself up with some peanut butter oatmeal (PB2 is the BEST for getting the flavor without all the oil!), and started including carbs back into my breakfast today. I already feel better! I’m going to KILL my workout circuit and spinning class today. I can already tell!

Here’s a picture that captures how I feel today. This is when I was off to visit the Queen in London. Hehehehe! Have a fabulous day!

I have one cleeeeeeeeean week of eating behind me, complete with a solid week of brutal circuit training/lengthy cardio sessions! I am definitely on my way to leaning out, although I will not be taking any form of measurement until June 19th. To help encourage a friend who is very new to clean eating, I challenged her to a little competition to see who could lose the biggest percentage of inches off the waistline. Even though my workouts are pretty brutal and my diet couldn’t be cleaner, I am anticipating losing this round, and I think I’m okay with that. But I’m still giving her a run for her money. The loser has to send the winner a care package filled with goodies (she’s in Alberta), so we’ll see how that goes!

Thanks to those of you who resisted the urge to give me advice on how to deal with Mr. Umbrella. LOL!! I know how hard it can be to listen to someone vent without trying to ‘help’ them. I am fighting this very urge with my new gym buddy I met a few weeks ago. Since meeting her, we have been to lunch several times, and spending a decent chunk of time together. We really clicked and I think we’re going to be good friends. Here’s us at a country club luncheon last week.

She is a special person. I am drawn to her sweetness, her utter transparency, and her ability to talk frankly about subjects that most people don’t discuss with near strangers! She is … like… my opposite twin. With almost everybody, I (think I) am a bit distant, hesitent to share my true thoughts, and extremely reluctant to share matters of the heart. I am quite certain that I met her because I need to learn from her. And I think there are some things that she is currently struggling with where I may be able to help. She is a busy little butterfly when it comes to her social life, and in her own words, she is a pushover. A doormat. After listening to some stories about how some men have treated her, I couldn’t stay quiet anymore. Like many of the uninvited problem solvers in my life, I burst in with my well-intentioned advice and told her what to do. LMAO!

(I am just venting right now). She tolerates men treating her poorly. I just cannot bear to even listen to these stories, and know that the behavior is likely to continue. It kills me to hear them. I know that there are lessons we need to learn the hard way, and that no matter how adamantly someone tells you to do something, I know experience might be the only way to learn. I just … have never been in this situation before, to tell you the truth. I have never had the honor of having a friend who is able to be THIS honest with me EVER. I have so much to learn from her. And I hope that I can show her that she definitely deserves a guy who can treat her the way she should be treated.

Isn’t life a blessing? I am so thankful to have met her. I can tell great things are going to come from this friendship.

I took my first ‘booty’ shot yesterday, and posted it for a few minutes in my progress pictures, but took it down because I was too self-concious of it. But, I am too DAMN PROUD of this shot, so I am going to post it here! From a formerly booty-less gal, I looked at myself in the mirror, and realized that all of my squatting, leg pressing, lunges and hamstring curls earned me a booty. Damn right I’m proud!