never_quit’s BodyBlog

 So here I am having to remind myself again to take baby steps-that it’s okay to make little changes, in fact it is preferable! Just writing down what I eat is a HUGE step for me-huge being the operative word! Instead of comparing what I do to the person who is a professional bodybuilder and has been for years, I need to compare what I do to myself! Did that make sense? Meaning, okay what did I do before I wrote stuff down? A really really bad day might have started out with me at the office staring at the plate of home made cream cheese brownies that one of the ladie’s brought in. I might have had good intentions and avoided them for the first couple of hours-actually this is not a theoretical situation, this is one that happened and so I need to see it that way and explore the mental process behind it to avoid the same situations in the future! So what ACTUALLY happened a couple of months ago, is that I came to work all frazzled and dreading the day as usual. I got to work and had 45 voice mails waiting for me and the phone ringing off of the hook. I had oatmeal at my desk ready to add hot water to but the phone just didn’t stop ringing and each one was an urgent situation with some angry person on the other line. During each phone call other people would be leaving voice mails with yet more urgent situations needing immediate attention. And of course the fax was busy with  purchase orders coming in, and I was in high gear-phone on speaker, multi tasking like a machine. 3 hours would go by and I hadn’t eaten yet, hadn’t even gotten a cup of coffee for myself. Off I go to the kitchen and find a plate of home made cream cheese brownies that one of the other two women in the office made. The other two are even larger than me and one is playing solitaire on her computer and the other is busy but running out for cigarette breaks every half hour or so. I see the plate of brownies and by this time I’m starving and angry at the other two who are really not nice and never help and who make it plain that they don’t like me, and I know I’ll be working through lunch again and those brownies are basically the only pleasure for myself that I’m going to get all day and there are a ton of them. What is going on in my head is defeat-I feel like a failure-every day it seems like I think to myself okay, I’m going to be healthier, eat well-write down what I eat, take the time to be good to myself, etc. and then I stand in front of the brownies and I know I’m going to eat them and inside my head my evil inner voice is flaying me alive telling me what a failure I am, how I’m always going to be fat, how I’m a total loser, how no matter what I do I will never be good enough, fast enough, smart enough and all along I know that no matter how hard I work I will never be "done" and all I can do is keep trying harder. So, I grab a ton of brownies and hot coffee and for a wonderful brief moment of time I’m able to feel a little bit of pleasure and relief. Lunch might be nothing at all or I might be able to get someone to bring me back something-usually fast food and usually at least french fries and a couple of burritos or cheese chesadillas or something. By the time I get home, it’s all I can do to get in the door. I throw pj’s on and grab a ton of comfort food-I could easily finish off a whole jar of dressing with a bunch of veggies and when hubby came home and offered pizza of course I said yes. This was a typical day for the last 3 years or so.  If I managed to make it through the evening without taking a Xanax just to not scream than I was holding up well. Knowing that I had to go back the next day usually had me taking at least one anti-anxiety pill just to cope.

It didn’t start like this by any means! When I started this job, I was still taking classes at the community college and I would go to karate at night and /or I would take a long lunch and go to the afternoon class. One day I worked through lunch to try to get ahead of my work load and managed to leave that day with NO voice mails left and no tasks undone. The next day was much easier, but slowly and insiduously my work load was growing and the more I did the more my boss gave me. By the third year I was working through lunch every day and working usually ten hours a day straight through. By the fourth year I was starting to really gain weight and take more and more xanax just to function. The fifth year my dad died and I received no support whatsoever from my boss-just anger that I missed so much work. Finally, finally, finally! I listened to my therapist and my new hubby and quit my job about a month ago. I honestly think I was on the verge of a nervous break down for the last year or so. I feel like I’ve just recovered from a horrible disease and that I’m weak and slowly regaining my strength after a long long illness..

So what am I doing now? Following my dreams… I’ve signed up at the local community college to finish my AA and undergrad stuff, and applied at the university for the following term. School starts the second week in January and I’m signed up for karate too with tons of support and happiness from my teacher! What about a job? I’m a musician and along with stopping karate I had stopped teaching my private students as I started working longer and longer hours at my hell job. I had stopped doing anything for ME and finally there was nothing left to stop doing…except the job I started back up with teaching and I am remembering that yes indeed I’m really good at this. I LOVE the kids that I’m helping and they improve and have fun too! I’ll slowly add more and more students and in 2-3 years I should have my teaching credential and I’ll be able to teach bunches of them at a time! I am so blessed to be able to do this and I’m feeling like maybe I’m an okay person for the first time in a very long time. My number one goal HAS to be to love myself and be good to myself. I got into trouble at work because the first thing that went away, which started the whole avalanche of the vicious cycle, was meeting my needs. The FIRST thing that I need to do is meet my needs-and the rest shall follow. Oh yes, and to beat the sh*t out of my evil inner critic whenever he raises his ugly head

English breakfast tea, 2 tbsp fat free creamer 50 cal/0 fat

orange  75

1 tofurkey sausage 270/13

2 cups chopped green onions 50 (?)

1 serving firm tofu 80/4

3 cloves garlic, sweet basil, pepper, 2 tbsp wine   80/0-sauteed with 1 spritz olive oil

2 green apple  200/0 (?)

6 green onions\2 tbsp organice blue cheese dressing  90

total calories in  995

100 cal per hour x 17-cal expended 1700

roughly negative 700 calories for the day

exercise-punched the bag in between laundry sets

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 7:35 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.