tewie-building

so i go to nutritiondata.com and put in my info.  says my maintenance is about 1900-2100 (depending on exercise options… i always put a few to see where it averages out to so that i know what to eat on longer workout days vs. easier days…)  this means diet calories for me are like 1400- 1600 which sounds very uncomfortable to me… then i go to about.com where i find that my maintenence is 1900 without exercise, 2400 with exercise, which would lead me to believe i could easily lose at 1900 with exercise but it shows only dropping 100 and losing at  2300 with 60 minutes exercise…. this is a VERY different number than the first.  other calculators have varied as well from usually saying anywehre form 1400-1900 calories.  i am struggling with this because i easily lost weight for the wedding (and felt pretty good energy wise) at 2000-2100 but i was nursing brayden at that time.  now with not nursing… do i really have to go back to 1500-1600 again and feel like crap.  also i have read of women who lost weight EASIER AFTER nursing because of the hormones involved in producing milk.  even though i’ve gained weight my stomach feels actually flatter than it did there at the end of nursing him… so i don’t know if that is a matter of just time since i had him or if it is more directly related to the hormones connection.  anyway… i am interested in hearing anyone and everyone’s thoughts on calorie needs…. i need to have enough energy to play with brayden and i feel awful on low carb diets… that said… any advice out there is beyond welcome.

there is this great big community on this site, and i have seen women claim eating 1400 calories that don’t look taht different from those who say they eat 2400 … this can’t ALL be genetics?  very nterested in anyone’s thoughts on the matter…

1.  brayden is officially off the boob.
1a.  OMG THAT IS PAINFUL… WILL THIS EVER END.  I STOPPED ON THURSDAY LAST WEEK.  IT’S TUESDAY NIGHT AND I AM STILL IN SO MUCH PAIN THAT I DON’T EVEN WANT TO GO FOR A RIDE IN THE CAR BECAUSE THE BUMPS ARE LIKE A CRUEL JOKE.  SO PAINFUL.  SO SO SO PAINFUL.  WHEN WILL IT END!! i thought i was drying up anyway because he wasn’t getting enough from me durring the day but my sister said that even if you don’t have much milk that you will just take longer to fill up and reach the point of engourgement before it will begin to dry up for real.  (this makes sence because i quit thursday and the pain didn’t really sink in till saturday night)  sunday was AWFUL and yesterday had to be the peak of pain. today is only a SMIDGE better.

to make matters worse:
2.  brayden is teething AND SICK.   he wants nobody but me and can not be happy… he twists and pushes and… all i can say is with every jerk and movement he makes…   OWWWWWW for me and my boobies.
2a.  the teeth part… they finally broke through today so hopefully that is on the upside now. but…
2b.  this is the first time in my life i’ve had a sick baby and i feel so helpless i don’t know what to do for him.  he just whines, cries, sleeps and produces snot.  any attempt to get him to play or laugh yeilds more crying.  wiping his nose=crying=more boogies=more wiping=more crying… you get the idea.  this is so hard… there’s nothing i can do for him but give him tylenol, orajel and a hug.  that’s all i have for him.  he looks so miserable.    i can’t even make it better.   argh!

dieting has been A LITTLE better since i quit nursing… wonder if it really did make me that much more hungry or if i’ve just been preoccupied with brayden being sick.  hopefully just better.  the problem is that i used to diet on like 1800 calories and it just doesn’t feel like enough with the hours i keep now… i have a reallyh hard time going under 2100… wondering if i’ll be able to lose at that with the changes my body has gone through over the last year and a half.  there are girls on here with that calorie range who are very thin so i’m hoping that is a possibility for me now.   any thoughts welcome and appreciated.

brayden will be rid of my boobies TOMORROW.  he started biting right before i left for vacation and couldn’t wean him while i was going away because of traveling with milk bags and i think that would be a traumatic time for a baby to be weaned so i decided i would work through the biting till we got home and cross my fingers that maybe i could get him to stop by th etime we got home with my goal of nursing for a full year.  he did seem to back off of it or at least limit it to daytime feedings so i removed two day feedings.  the first i replaced with pumped breast milk and the second with formula. (there are few things i despise doing more than pumping my breasts and i ONLY do it before a workout because i couldn’t do cardio with all that excess in there!!)  this lowered my supply of corse and so i cut the morning feeding and am down to bedtime nursing only right now, which i have decided to cut tomorrow.  he pushe off of my breast, bites, picks at my nipples… it’s just time.  i feel that it is time for both of us.  he is not acting satisfied again, i want my body back… it’s time.

that said… i am going to go get ONE bottle of hydroxycut.  i don’t liek to use fat burners but i think hydroxycut gives such a great energy boost and i feel such a drop in energy from cutting calories, that it will get me through that initial blow to my energy.  i also know that hydroxycut is too expensive for my stay at home mom budget and so i will have to just maek the best of one bottle.  i get pretty strict about my diet on that sort of thing because i don’t want to be wasting money.  i am pretty confident that this will help me to kickstart my way back to a better place by thanksgiving… i have been doing a little better even in the last week where my cheats have been relatively smaller and more reasonable than my overeating had been.  i really believe i can be in a pretty good place by thanksgiving and by new years be where i like to be (of corse you can ALWAYS improve but i mean i’ll be in the range of where i am comfortable and like the way my clothes fit, etc)

jeremy and i have also been talking about when to have another baby.  i want to move first which means not for another year, but i also sort of think it may be one of those things that will not come till it’s forced to (moving) so i wonder if i should just take the mindset of "no good time to have a baby" and just go for it sooner.  then i toy with the idea of competing once before another one figuring that there is no way i’ll be competing again for probably several years (being a mom is a lot of work and i don’t want to put competing before that… i can work on my goals as a secondary thing to mothering, competing is something that takes too much out of me to be a good mom at the same time if i had TWO BRAYDENS!  i can only barely think that i could do it with one of him!!!)  so i’d sort of like to get that out of my system once since afterall i was planning on competing once before i had him, only whoops that’s when i got knocked up! haha….  what better reason to drop out of a competition! ha!!!  (i’ve actually never heard a better reason! hehe)  so i guess i have some decisions to make there… perhaps God will decide for me… afterall He sure decided about brayden! (thanks to Him!!! unexpectedly!!!)    either way i am looking forward to not worrying about eating enough to make enough milk, and using that as an excuse, and depending on nursing to burn a ton of calories (i don’t really think it did me any favors) and my hormones leveling back off (i think nursing makes you hold fat because of the incerease in prolactin)  and so on.  however, i admit… that after the ABSOLUTE HELL that is nursing at first… and i mean hell… and i mean a longer time than what they say (they say it’s rough for a few days but in a week or two it gets better… took me 4 months before nursing wasn’t a dreaded fact of my existence!!!) it did get to be something that is a very intimate and fascinating thing.. .to know that i am feeding my son’s life…. to see his sweet face falling asleep…. there are some mornings i’ll have engraved in my brain forever of his slap on my chest with his little fists, his "talks" with my breasts, his tickle under my arm… i must sound crazy… i bet i would have made fun of someoen for saying these things and feeling this way in my prebrayden life.  but nwo…. as excited as i am to finally feel like i’m taking back my body… i am also feeling a little bit of a disconnect to him… a loss of his infancy…. something i’ll never get back.  i had no idea it felt like this to be a mom. how bittersweet each day is.  how you can love it so much and love every minute, and be so excited for the next minute, but still missing what you leave by going to the next… i had no idea how bittersweet the whole thing would be.  i never imagined i would be this type of mom… well any type of mom much less the type that is sitting here in admitted tears because i am watching my baby grow and change and mature and… so excited for every "next" thing, but also wanting to pause each day.

so the weather was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING today… as it has been most of the week… only i vowed to do my fall cleaning this week so instead of enjoying that wonderful breeze and bit of pre winter sunshine i have been locked in my house tearing apart closets, cabinets, dusting on top of the kitchen cabinets… etc… the real down and dirty fall cleaning!  i met up with a really great friend of mine this afternoon for a little stroll around the mall with the babies… and on the drive home i was totally nodding off in the car.  brady fell asleep right as i pulled into the condo complex and i figured there was a great afternoon nap in store for the two of us… but instead, the second i stepped out of the truck i realized WTF am i doing!!! it’s going to be raining again by tomorrow and there are such few nice days left before winter is fully here… why would i waste it dusting cupboards… they will be there tomorrow!!!  besides most of the work is done and i am down to my own closet and braydens and i’ll be done…  there is rain forcasted tomorrow i will have nothing better to do but finally conqure packing up the pack n play (anyone who’s taken one apart knows how impossible it can be to get all that crap back into the bag it came in… it’s almost like reversing giving birth!!!)  and organizing the bedroom closets for the final to do of my operation fall cleaning.  oh and the sad task of condensing the 0-6 months of braydens life that i am ready to pack up and get out of the house for more space. (tears!!!)  so i strapped up the baby and off we went.  so glad for that… i LOVE afternoon walks.  i am not sure what brady and i will do all winter in the afternoons… the walks hada become a scheduled part of our day for the summer and lately we’ve just been running more stupid errands to get out of the house, but i won’t want to drag him out as much as it get’s colder and i hear more threat of swine flu.

so (in my normal long winded fashion) the point of all this is that a walk alone with brayden is valuable think time.  i was walking along feeling my flabby stomach (it does not look like it did in my last progress pics right now… ugh)  and remembering how tight it was the thursday before our wedding.  (that’s when i fell off the boat and have been all over the place since with a few good weeks in there somewhere)  and it occured to me that when i eat whatever i want in whatever amounts i want, i weigh all of 130 pounds.  132 max.  that’s working out of corse because i LOVE working out so i don’t even have any idea of what i would be without working out… it has been over 12 years since i started to be able to have a clue.  so the thing is that even at my max weight… at 5′7′’ there is no way that 130 can be "fat" right?  well it can because of skinny fat which is what i very easily become very quickly.  but it’s like… i know a ton of girls my age and my height that would kill to be where i am when i’m at my worst, so then i start this brain game that goes, "i guess i should just be happy that that is my worst and not be so damn worried about it!!!" but the thoughts always circle back around and i remember that the fact of the matter is that i am just not happy or comfortable there.  no matter what… i just don’t feel good when i slip to that place.  and so instead of waking up adn thinking, "oh yay a skinny day, i can afford to eat a bunch of crap today" followed by three days of oh my gosh how did i turn into that bad from ONE DAY off my diet (i get puffy, bloated, and soft right away)  and then i’m back on till the bloat wears down a few days later and the cycle continues.  but what i need to remember is that i will never know how great i could be if i keep pulling that bull ****!!!  why am i so retarded that i play this game with myself!!!???!!!!

i need to focus on my other priorities:  1.  teaching brayden a healthy lifestyle that focuses on balance and discipline and being better than okay or good enough.   2.  dieting is a discipline… something i definately value… something that i let slip away when i play this game.  discipline would be to stay prudent with my plan even if i realize i can afford a little wiggle room…. because… can you ever REALLY afford wiggle room?  if you can it simply means that your standards need to be higher because you can always improve or you become complacent.  3.  that 5 pounds is the difference between my clothes fitting or not, the difference between me feeling comfortable taking off my clothes with my husband, the difference between feeling like myself or me in a big comforter…  that five pounds is a big deal actually.

i will never forget when a friend of mine said that she judged me harshly until she went to a weight watchers meeting and learned that each person veiws themselves on their own scale so a person who needs to lose five to ten pounds… that is just as real to them as an obese person who is struggling with 30, 60, 90… pounds.  then she understood why i stress over that rediculous five to ten pounds.  i appreciated her new respect and understanding.

i know that i have two choices… i can continue to diet one day and not another, lowering my self esteem and self respect… never reaching my potential or i can suck it up and stick to it through thick and thin…. there are two ways to end this mind ****.  i can give in and accept myself fat, or i can committ to my "best laid plans" and be someone i can respect.

why i am retarded… i am retarded for continueing this for so long now.  for allowing myself to act like knowledge is enough.  knowledge is nothing without behavior.

has anyone out there every cycled their calories (or currently??)  i have been able to lose weight at a higher calorie range from nursing but will have brayden weaned in the next two weeks.  i am thinking i could try to cycle between 1800 and 2100 at my activity level but was wondering if anyone out there had any insight.  (was going to go higher on 4days of weights and lower on 3 just cardio days that i sleep in a little later)

insight welcome.

i am very dissapointed in myself lately.  i have really been struggling with my diet and with workouts that have been less than stellar i can’t afford it.  (only because i am hacking my brains out between sets! not a lack of motivation or just being wussy… credit where it is due… it is VERY RARE that i struggle with working out.)  i’m getting ready to clean my closet out and put my fall/winter clothes in this week… something i’ve been avoiding because i am dreading going through things and realizing that some of it’s just not going to fit right now.  i know that in 3-4 weeks time i could be back into everything and looking better than before probably because i do have more muscle than i’ve ever had, but damn i have to stop eating **** to do that.

i thought i needed the consistency of getting up at 3:30 so i had made a workout plan that forced me to the gym 6 days a week but i think that (especially in the cold of winter) i’m ganna be better to only have to go in there early 3 days. (i have stuff to do things at home other days) and then go in on saturday with a little more sleep.  so i reworked my workout plan back to close to what it was and am thinking i can cycle my calories to get a couple of lower cal days by sleeping in an extra three hours  a few days a week. (i often think i have to have my cals up because i am tryign to stretch them out over such a long day.)  i don’t even know what my weight loss calories are anymore with being pregnant and then nursing and now that i’m weaning him, i am clueless these days. it used to be 1500-1800 but i wonder now if that was too low even before because i would eat pretty bad on the weekends and still lose weight at that… i want more balance and consistency so i am thinking i can probably cycle between 1900-2300 (1900 2x, 2100 3x, 2300 2x per week) and lose but i may be in a dream world thinking that’s not too high not nursing?

tips and insight always welcome here!

my weight is clear up to 129… that’s 8 pounds i gained since the wedding. ugh.  again, four weeks is the difference between where i am and where i can feel a little better, so it’s a matter of just sticking to it for four weeks… i want to feel like me and not like me wrapped in a big soft blanket!!!

so i got sicker… way sicker.   i was fighting a fever that kept creeping up to over 103 (went from 101.2-103.7 in like an hour)  it was rough.  there has been a lingering chest cold that i’m coughing myself awake at night with and then if that’s not enough, family stresses that have had me crying pretty much daily through this.  doesn’t help the sinuses!!!  basically what that adds up to is that my "first week" of my plan for my sister and i has been a waste.  my workouts have been weak, my diet a wreck, and in general, i have just taken a step back.

brady has been SUPER fussy at feedings with me the last two to three weeks and i’m pretty sure it’s because i don’t have enough milk durring the day.  he’s fine at bedtime feedings and some mornings, but durring the day he is pushing away from me, scratching my nipples, squeezing them, crying and generally uninterested for more than four minutes total! he started biting right before vaca and i had said i was done if he started that, but couldn’t quit right before vaca, so i waited till we got back and he was acting better so i thought i’d stick it out.  then he started bitting AND the other crap.  he almost acts like, "yeah i’m done with this."  i hafe put a LOT of work into nursing him for the last eight months so i made the decision to go ahead and start weaning. i called the doc for help with how to ease him into formula for the three months he’ll be taking it and such and he is fine with it.  i think i’ll take the next two to four weeks to wean him and then i’m going to tak a round of hydroxycut so that i have the energy to get through my days on fewer calories until my body is adjusted to eating less again and then i can ease off of that instaed of quitting it cold turkey.

i have been able to lose weight at 2000 calories while i was nursing… does anyone out there know how much they had to cut cals when they quit nursing? my day starts at 3:30am and ends at 11pm so it’s a long day to run on too few cals.  lately i’ve been doing 2100 and am not losing but not gaining.  do i need to cut the cals further to lose as i quit nursing?

… six weeks to thanksgiving already….

so i just got back from vaca.  it was really really nice… bittersweet leaving because i do love to get home to my normal schedule and life, but sad to leave my grandparents and the relaxed feel of the little middle-of-nowhere town they live in.  it always does root me to go there for a little, and reconnect with roots.

unfortunately, the whole ride home i was sweating (very rare for me to be the hot one in the car) and the only way to sleep was to put my head against the window and the cold air on my head… i guess that’s what got me so sick.  all i know is that my eight month run of only missing one day of working out is now up to three days because i had to miss the day we got to iowa (18 hour drive and the gym was not open by the time we got there) and today because i was bed ridden pretty much all day.  i have it ALL.  i mean the aches, the stuffy/runny nose, the congestion, the chest wheezing, the eyes and ears running, and the worst part (the part that made me unable to workout)… the headache.  i took some tylenol and laid down and thought i’d get up and push through cardio to break up what’s going on in my chest and give it a good hour and then rest the rest of the day, but the second i sat up, my head felt like it was going to explode and i fell back over.  my mother had to come over to help me with brayden so that i could sleep.  it was awful. so i am praying to feel better by tomorrow. brayden had a little cough that soudned full last night and i freaked out and called the doctor haha.. i may have over reacted because he sure is a happy baby today while i am worse!  i just got nervous because if he was as sick as me… gosh at 8 months old… that could be bad, right!?!

it’s good to be home… in my bed.  in my nice quiet doesn’t hurt your back bed.  it’s good to be home.  but what a reality check with this whatever i have!  ugh!!!

my sister and i will start the 12 weeks to twenty ten program i designed for us before i left monday.  i am hoping to take pump tomorrow so i may be starting this off with some moderate soreness, but i’ll have to feel a little better than i did today.   wish me luck….

we are leaving for iowa tomorrow night!  i can’t wait.  i am going to sleep like i haven’t slept in eight months!!!  of corse i’ll still be getting up at 3:45 to hit the gym before the family gets up… but oh there will be naps!

today is full of house cleaning, starting packing, making lists for what needs to be done last minute tomorrow and the hubby needs to take brady to see his grandma and grandpa to say goodbye for the week.  he will have to pack when he gets home so he can be ready to go right after bowling tomorrow (he’s dork and bowls on a league, but at least he’s a talented dork… he’s very good! hehe… i actually love to watch him… i guess that’s part of love… adoring their interests too….)  tomorrow will be jam packed… we will be in the car for somewhere around 18 hours so i need to have a nice big lunch box packed, plus the food i will take for the week there (i have allergies so it’s best i take my food… for a whole week… so it’s a lot)  i’ll get produce there, but i made and froze lunches and protein pancakes… etc.   anyway… i also want to get in an hour of cardio, yoga, and bodypump since i know i’ll be in the car so long.  hopefully i can get an hour run in when we get there friday, but if not, it’ll only be my second missed day in 7and 1/2 months so i can’t complain… i know i won’t miss any comming home.  i just don’t like how i feel when i miss, and i guess that’s why i am so good about it.

my sister and i are starting my 12 week plan to new years as soon as i get back, and i’m excited to see if it helps me get some more muscle shape.  i’m eating more calories and i think i’m feeling much more energetic and healthy.  i hope i don’t have to cut too many back when i’m done nursing brady… which i hope to talk to the doc about when we get home.  i want tos top as soon as i can without having to put him on formula at all.  we have been doing yogurt and he LOVES it.   such a sweetie.

my jack book never came so if it’s not here by tomorrow i’ll be bummed to not have it for the trip, but it’s not like i don’t have ten other books to read so i’ll survive.

the bds book is SO MUCH more helpful to me.  i’m on day four of it and feeling emotionally a lot better than i have in a few weeks.  maybe i’ll just bust it out everytime i feel like i’m struggling… i like that it doesn’t get so feely… sometimes i do eat for emotional reasons but sometiems i’m just sabataging msyelf and it’s not some deep emotional reason.  sometimes i just got hungry.  bds works with that stuff AND hits the emotional stuff lightly… but realitsically the more i look at myself the less i think eat for emotional reasons.  i mean.. i’m VERY happy with my life.  i love my husband, i love my baby… i’m fascinated at watching him grow and change.  i get frustrated with the crying and that does end me to the kitchen but every since i acknowledged that i haven’t been tempted from that at all… it’s more just knwoing the peanut butter is in the cupboard and it tastes good.  haha… but why can some peopel resist and others have more trouble?  that’s more what the bds deals with and i think it actually is hitting my mentality better… i’m a pretty logical no bs sort of girl and i think the emotional eating book was a little more fluffy than is longterm good for me.  i did diuscover that i sometime eat out of rebellion… AGAINST MY OWN FRIGGIN RULES which is just rediculouse so i’m ganna put on some blue eye liner or something.  that’s a big no no… but not as detrimental as overeating! haha.

so my spirits are up a little todya… if i make it through today i’ll feel a TON better because it seems that when i get on those kicks of really struggling i usually find thatif i can get 4 good diet days under my belt i start to have confidence in myself and get back on track form there.   (funny cause the bds emphisizes confidence techniques to help… not like confidence in your looks, but in your ability to stick to this diet business!!!)  which is a LOT of my issues… i get nervous and anxious that i won’t be able to stick to it and go okay then i’ll go ahead and blow it.  ugh stupid!! creating my own worst case senarios… supid!!!!! supid stupid stupid!!!

okay well the child has become mobile and it’s time to chase him away from more danger! haha…. i think he’ll be fully crawling by the time we get back from iowa but right now he’s rolling himself around the room and getting cords, bags, etc etc etc… anything but his toys!!!

i am generally long winded but i am tired tonight and have a LOT to do tomorrow (this is a busy week getting ready for the family vaca trip!!!  want my house to sparkle, my laundry done, food ready to go… etc.  leaving thursday night)  so i’m ganna try to be short (for me anyway)

a few rants from the week/end:
1.  my jack lallane book has finally been sent.  will it be here by thursday for the trip? i do not know but i will be highly bummed if not.   I LOVE JACK!!!   i am very dissapointed it took so long for them to finally pull the money and send the book…. but it was a good deal.  i found a special in an oxygen magazine or clean eating i don’t remember where you could buy the book and get a year of clean eating for free!  SO worth it… the book only cost like two bucks more than if you got it any other way.  speaking of… did anyone see tosca has a new one out.  MY MOM FOUND IT… how the heck did she stumble apon this little gem of info??????    was excited though… i love fitness books, don’t you!!

2.  i got discouraged that the shrink yourself book has "weekly" sessions/projects/exercises, whatever you want to call them and decided to go ahead and read on when i lost my focus and my discipline and… just… argh… ya know?  argh!!! so i read on and got some good info out of it but i’ll be honest, the meat and potatoes of the book is on the website "shrinkyourself.com" and so i read, highlighted and made notes of stuff that hit home for me on the rest of the book on friday… followed by a VERY stressful night that had me digging in the peanut butter jar.   it was probably one of the top 3 worst nights of my married life.  (no we are good… just saying since we got married it was one of the roughest days i’ve had.)  and as always goes… the stress of screwing up with the pbutter (among other things truth be told) only made me feel ****tier… and the circle continued… saturday was not much better and i almost NEVER screw up two days in a row.  it was a very very stressfull weekend.   that’s no excuse.  so…

3.  i brkoe out the beck diet solution book.  i read it when i was preggers but couldn’t do all of the "exercises" because it wouldn’t have been appropriate for a preggers girl.  i love the book because it is not about diet.  it does not explain your behavior.  it just helps you change it.  and frankly i’m done caring why i eat badly… i just want to stop.  that book is probably the best for me becuase there are daily challenges instead of weekly so i have a new thing to try to do daily… plus i love psychology stuff and combinging psychology with fitness… oh what could be better in the world (besides brayden’s smile of corse!!!)  so i am going through that book again.  i do think it helped me before…just everything’s been different since brady was born.

i want to remember to behave in a way that i would want him to see.  he’s still too young to understand when he sees me eating peanut butter like a crazy woman out of the jar but i don’t wnat to have to worry abou twhen he does understand.  it’s not far off.  i want him to have a healthy relationship with food which means i need to set a good example of that.  i have finally determined my final answer on sugar and treats:  as long as they are planned and moderate it is fine.  "what would i tell brady? how do i want him to veiw foods?"  i asked myself… and i decided that i would want him to see it as a healthy and normal thing to have celebrations and treats once in a while, but not daily.  so the question i am always asking, "is it better to have a little in moderation daily or just cut it completely"… the answer is… i think… neither.  i think that it is good to know that you can have a small treat once in  a while.  i want him to know he can have a lollipop when we go to the bank… but not everytime.  (who am i kidding my mom works at the bank he’ll get one everytime haha… but i mean this as an example mroe and if my mother did not work there…) i don’t want him to think that everytime you go to a special place you get a special treat… but that sometimes it’s okay to.  that you don’t get it everyday.  that it’s a treat not a reward, not a daily thing… but an occasional.  so i am cutting the sugar pretty hard for the next week or two just because my body needs to get it out of my system a little from my over indulgences, but then slowly, i’m going to PLAN a small thing here or there.  and anything unplanned will have a one or two bite rule.  so if i know that my mom is ganna have something spectacular at bible study on tuesday night or jeremy is going to take me to a dinner on saturday or whatever…  i can PLAN a SMALL something special in there… but if ididn’t plan it then i just decide to stick to it.  i love how the bds (beck diet solution) says:  the stress of weather or not to "cheat" greatly diminishes the second a decision is made… that means that the decision not to can be jsut as relieving as the decision to give in.  how true, right!!?!!  all the emotional struggle is in the fight with yourself about weather or not to go for it!!!  she also states that all unplanned eating is bad because it reinforces your inability to stick to your focused goal.  so if you want a treat, you decide it the day before and you plan it into your day and rather than beating yourself up for it, you have it and know that it wasn’t something that helped you twoards your goal but it was small enough to not be  a setback either…. it’s a veyr healthy approach.  if hwoever i would find that there was a suprise of something VEYR good… i want to be comfortable enough with food to say, "okay i’ll have a bite or two" AND THAT BE IT…. because all food loses it’s wow that’s soo good after the first two bites really!  if they weren’t satisfying to me, more won’t be either.  i just need to have two bites, a bottle of water and tell myself that i’m full cause i ate the whole bag instaed of thew ater (even though it was really the water…) that’s how i quit smoking and i can apply that here.   so here’s to hope again….

vacation could be a small challenge.  last year i was pregs and ate snickers everyday.  the year before that i took my food (allergies…)  and the only thing i did wrong was a little wine so i actually came back thinner!  maybe i can stick to that this year again…  i’ll have the bds with me and work on it even though i’m on vaca… after all if it’s not vaca it’s something else… there’s always an excuse to eat poorly…. which means there’s never really an excuse.

three days till we leave!!!! can’t wait for my boy to see his great grandpa.  oh my goodness that boy gets sweeter everyday.    he lights up and his whole body gets so excited and tenses up and he screams with this huge excitement when he sees me if i left the room and walk back in.  it’s absolutely breathtaking the way he is happy to see me.   this weekend he woke up crying twice in the night (he has been sleeping through the night for a very long time now)  and i went in and rocked him back to sleep and i was telling my hubby in the monitor how this was a real guilty pleasure… i knew it was wrong to go in because i know it can set habits, but man oh man does it feel good to have his little body just curl up to me.  he grabs my face and pulls me into him and just lays his mouth into me (his idea of a kiss haha)  and it’s this slobbery disgusting but wonderfully heartwarming… oh my goodness….  i just had no idea it could be so cool.   even after all my stress this weekend, in the midst of it, i wouldn’t change my life for anything.  i have an awesome husband, a beautiful boy, and more love than i knwo what to do with.

… and this was supposed to be short…. it’s bedtime!!!!