goals

Okay, I feel like I can be serious about this thing again, this weight loss thing, this "getting healthy" business, this not feeling like a failure thing.

Honestly, that's how I'm feeling just recently, like a complete failure, not only where my health and fitness is concerned but in my working life and at home. I feel like a juggler who has dropped all of his balls and they are bouncing across the floor. Work isn't as busy as it was but it's still very stressful. I know that a lot of what I'm feeling is self-inflicted. Because I was so busy for so long, I've let many things slide and that's not like me. So now, at work, I have to try to figure out how to get myself back on track and sort out all of those things that have fallen to the side, in addition to getting my regular every day stuff done. I'm completely in knots about that right now.

Home is a mess. The house is just not clean, not to the standard I'd like it. Part of the problem is that both my old (less than 2 years old) vacuum and the central vac in the new house are not working as well as they should be so I can only ever do a half-assed job on that score. I'm lucky if I can keep on top of dishes and laundry right now. Because I've been working longer hours, I've just not had the time to deal with it properly.

As far as family goes, if it hadn't been an "official" holiday a couple of weeks (and we had Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' place) I would not have made the time to see them (we haven't really seen them much since the middle of August or so).

Yesterday, trying to be a good sport, we picked up coffee and bagels and went to see the LOG. As times goes by, we are seeing more frequent signs of geriatric senility in him. Now, he has never really been the sharpest knife in the drawer and, as sweet as he is, he only has a grade 6 education. Overtime, I've come to understand his limitations and we get along just fine. The senility thing though, that requires a lot of patience as recently, some of things he's saying and asking are just plain nuts. I don't think he has Alzheimer's Disease (my grandmother had that so I have some personal experience with it), I think that he's just really feeling the after-effects of the medical problems he's had this year (not to mention that he did sustain a head injury in July). Anyway, long story short is that I really lost my temper with him yesterday. He asked me a question and I just lost it on him. It wasn't the question he asked, it was how he asked it. It seemed very snarky and pointed to me, my hunny said that it seemed playful and fun.

I'm sure that LOG didn't mean to, but the question made me feel like I was a horrible, stupid person who is just repeatedly letting him down, despite the fact that I do way more "things" for him in a day than I do for my own parents in a month. While I know he appreciates all of the stuff that I do for him (all of his personal shopping, all of his personal laundry, I pay all of his bills...) he never actually acknowledges it. I'm not saying that I need a big ticker-tape parade but I never feel appreciated by him so I lost my temper, got defensive in answering his question (it was about his laundry) and then went quiet. The truth is, I was too upset about everything else that I have on my plate right now to talk about anything because I was afraid of breaking down in tears. I could cry right now as I type this, just from thinking about it. Fun times huh??

So, yesterday afternoon, because all of this had the appearance of me being a total bitch to LOG, my hunny was pissed at me. We talked about it and seemed to resolve it but things were still tense and weird all afternoon. So much for a quiet peaceful Sunday huh?? No wonder I have had a giant knot in my neck for two months now, is it? To console myself, I ate a whole bunch of those little Halloween chocolate bars. I don't think I tasted any of them but I ate them anyway and no, it didn't make me feel any better about anything.

This morning, as I pulled on a sweater that I have had for longer than I care to think about it, I looked at my reflection in the mirror and said, "enough!" I need to get seriously get my shit together, pull my head out of my ass and make a plan. As Denise says, I need to take some "baby steps" initially as I don't want this to stick this time. I'll start off slowly and build towards my goals (which include, amongst others, buying new winter sweaters in much smaller sizes)!!

So, here are some goals I've made for myself:

mini-biggish-goal:
- lose 40 pounds by January 1

smaller goals - to be accomplished this week:
- journal all of my food on fitday
- no muffins, cookies, donuts or cupcakes will be eaten at meetings (or brought back to my desk after!)
- no unplanned between meal snacks
- intentional exercise at least 3 times during the week and at least once over the weekend
- only one meal "out" per week (our night out with LOG)
- no snacking on halloween candy (the sooner I get the stuff into goodie bags the better)
- increase my water intake (it's been very very low just recently)

If I can do this and get through the week, that'll be a great start. It will help me feel like I'm control of at least two areas of my life and hopefully the rest of it will get sorted out too. I know this much, it can not make me feel any worse than I do, right now.