I sabotaged Myself

​I self sabotaged and I'm so disappointed in myself!  Why do I do these things?

In my last post I was so excited because I actually had lost 5 Pounds.  True, it was due to a stomach bug.  But seriously, I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!   I was pumped because I was determined that I was going to make sure that I didn’t gain that hard won weight back!  I had a plan!  I planned my weekend and I was ready to see it through.   

I took a day off on Friday so that I could clean the house and get everything in line.  I was on the go all day!  I implemented my plan.  I prepared the food that I needed and I was doing great!   I was exhausted by the end of the day because I was literally on the go from 5AM until 7PM!    Zoe stayed in step with me all day…she was one tired puppy!

Saturday is where it went downhill.  I started the day with heading down the road to see my mom.  I started early and had my water with me.  I do intermittent fasting so I SHOULD have been good until I got home at 12-1!  I ran a few errands on the way there and I couldn’t get food out of my mind!   I wanted food….junk food!   Yeah, I ended up getting a McDonald’s breakfast meal.  (Bacon egg cheese bagel).   First of all…there was no way I was really hungry!  Second of all…McDonald’s?     In my mind I was thinking,  ‘all is not lost, I can not eat lunch and I’ll make up the difference’.  Ha!  Famous last words!   I ate lunch when I got home.  Of course I did!   Dinner was Five guys.  Seriously, one burger is my full daily allotment of calories!   Ohhh. And that healthy snack that I had prepared…it went out the window when we ended up picking up a cake from the store.  Of course I had cake!     Saturday was a bust!

Sunday was Easter.   I nibbled in the morning while I prepped.  I ate a full lunch.   And I was honestly stuffed when I was done.  I wasn’t hungry for dinner.  But did that stop me from having a ham salad sandwich and a piece of cake?  Of course it didn’t!

  What is wrong with me????

The weekend was tiring!  I was on the go for pretty much every second …from sun up on Friday until sundown on Sunday.   I’m telling you…the pup mirrored my energy!

It’s Monday morning.  I recommenced exercise after my week off due to being sick.   My exercise and energy was totally lackluster.  I know it!  Mondays are typically more rough…so I’m not panicked.  

I have to tally up points for the first week of April for my points challenge.    It was definitely NOT the week I envisioned when I planned my challenge.  But that’s ok.  I wanted to plan a challenge that would allow me to compete against myself and NEVER feel like a failure!  Beating last weeks number SHOULD be easy this week!!!

Revelations

I have had a few revelations the last few days.  Ok, maybe they aren’t overly profound.  Maybe these revelations aren’t even new to me.  I very well could have written these thoughts and ideas as some great epiphany a few months or years back.  Who knows….but if I did already write this?  Oh well, here it is again.

I made a vow that I was going to hit the month of April hard.  I was going to get home from work and either walk or bike with Jason and if that didn’t happen I was going to go for a run by myself!  No ifs ands or buts.   April first rolled around and it didn’t happen.  Nor did it happen on April second. Hey, it was cold! (Excuse alert in case you hadn’t picked up on that already.)   I vowed and promised myself that since the weather was not going to be cold on Wednesday the third of April that I would be starting then!  No excuses this time.  Right?   Wednesday rolled around and…….

Holy cow, is that a boil on my butt?  (Stop laughing, this is a serious matter!)  Yes, there is a hard knot of pain on my buttock!  Ok, maybe it’s not a boil….it’s a follicle cyst…an ingrown hair….a really big pimple?  How in the world did I get a boil (or whatever it is) on my arse cheek?  I have no clue, but it hurts!  It rubs.  It isn’t comfortable.  And that my friends is why I didn’t run on Wednesday.  I stayed home and applied a hot compress (hot washcloth) to my keister.  (Being honest with myself, this was also an excuse!)

So here comes the first of my revelations.  I was still planning on running the WHOLE DRIVE HOME, even with the budding boil on my backside.   It wasn’t until I started walking into our apartment that I talked myself out of it.  But I had some interesting thoughts while I was driving and planning on going.  My personal mini me (the voice of discontent and unhealthy that screams in my head telling me to not exercise and to instead eat ice cream) was telling me that if I go running after work that there were going to be SOOOO many people outside and driving by. They would see my sorry boiled ass. (Well, not the boil, because I would be wearing pants….obviously.) They would see how out of shape I was.  They would see my shameful pace. They would see and I would be embarrassed.  You see, I almost have always run in the morning…before the world starts to move about too much.  I ran in more deserted areas…a National park in the morning before the tourists arrived, the C&O Canal out in the middle of the woods, back alleys and paths.  I always ran more privately, away from the eyes of others….especially when I was just starting out after a hiatus from running.  Where I live now is very open.  I would be running in a more populated area with no alleys to duck down to have some privacy while I struggle to breathe due to the affects of my attempt to run. (People would probably call 911 thinking I was in some kind of distress!)   Embarrassment is definitely a deterrent to doing the ‘right’ thing.

So that was my first revelation.

The second thing wasn’t anything profound and not really a revelation, just a realization.  I woke up on Thursday and weighed myself.  I was happy to see my weight down at a nice low number. (A low number being relative to the most recent numbers that I have been seeing on the scales!)   I was so happy!  I planned my lunch with thoughts of my planned dinner and calories in mind.  I was going to slay this weight.  I was so close to dropping into a new ‘decade’ of weight on the scales!  I was going to do it!   On the way to work I realized something.  I was totally focused on this ‘new decade’ and losing weight.  The lower number had made me dig in my heels to really do this.  I don’t know what had changed in my thinking, but I was tickled with the determination that the nice number on the scales had given me.  It was a total change from previous months.  In the past few months I’ve had some successful weigh ins where I saw lower numbers.  But without fail, almost every time I had a great number on the scale I would sabotage myself.  How?  I would be driving to work flying high on nice number I saw on the scale.  I would have my breakfast fruit sitting beside me ready to eat but then the thought of tater tots and breakfast muffins would enter my mind.  Instead of saying ‘The scales are going down, I need to keep it going down’ I had defaulted to saying “I did good, lets reward myself with some tater tots for breakfast.” (or a muffin, or a bag of chips at lunch or maybe even a full lunch at the cafeteria instead of my healthy lunch that I had packed.)  I was sabotaging myself by rewarding myself with food.  BAD BAD MaryFran.

Luckily something clicked yesterday morning and I got excited by the number and motivated!  I knew that breaking from my packed breakfast (and lunch) would only result in the numbers on the scale going back up and as soon as I realized that, I knew that I had indeed been sabotaging myself and that it had to stop!

Soooo…there you go.  My revelations from the first week of April.  Oh and for the record.  On Thursday I did NOT sabotage my eating by rewarding myself with food.  I DID also walk on my lunch break (both Wednesday and Thursday)Go me!  Still working on the after work activity...and still using hot compresses on my butt cheek!  And the scales…well they rewarded me.  I’m still not down into a new ‘decade’ but I’m close!

Something + Anything = Everything

The mind is a crazy thing.  Last night I was plotting out my day.  When I say plotting out my day I was planning my food and thinking about my exercise.  Zumba after work was pretty much a non-negotiable thing.  I try not to skip that too often.  But I went to bed with grand thoughts of waking up and exercising for a bit in the morning to kick start my day.  Grand thoughts, grand dreams and actually a great idea.

However, I woke up and I felt like curling up on the couch next to my cat Desi.  (Actually Desi is my husbands cat...he doesn't like me all that much, he sorta tolerates my presence).  My mornings tend to be more on the lazy side.  I lay in bed and read a bit.  I get up and mosey to the couch and play around checking all of my various on-line sites that I visit.  It's a bad habit that formed on the days that I don't have to be at work until 10.  It's one that I know that I need to break. But it's just so tempting to curl up like a cat and sleep.


However, I knew that curling up on the couch wasn't an option. So after I dropped my husband off at the studio (still sharing a car) I came home determined to get on the exercise bike and get some kind of activity into my morning.  I walked through the kitchen and looked at the sink.  There were dishes in the sink.  Yes, dishes!  Dirty ones!  Now mind you, I hate house cleaning..I do it of of course.... but a few dishes in the sink would not have caused the end of the world in my house.  I could have tacked them onto the dinner dishes tonight and it wouldn't have been any skin off my back (it was only two glasses, a coffee cup, a bowl, a plate and a few pieces of silverware).  But no....my mind just said "MaryFran you HAVE to do these dishes now!" So I did the dishes (our dishwasher is leaking and while we know that it is just the intake hose, Todd hasn't gotten around to fixing it......so I am doing dishes by hand).   Of course pushing off exercise was not a problem.


While I was washing dishes it occurred to me that I really needed to make my bed.  Seriously!   No, I couldn't delay making the bed.  I had to do it right then there was a burning need within me.  I had to do it before the cats settled onto the bed for their first cat nap of the day!  Of course, this was once again pushing off exercise but that wasn't a problem was it?  After all, there were much more important things to do!  However I started to realize that my mind was trying to sabotage my efforts to exercise. These things were not important.  You see, I don't always make my bed.  GASP!   But it's true,  sometimes it doesn't get made, and the world does continue to spin on its axis.  So why was I gung ho today?  There was only one thing.  My mind was at war with itself.  Crazy eh?????   I made that bed...determined to go straight to the exercise bike afterward!



Best laid plans though......Of course I had made my discovery about my self sabotaging, so I was thinking about exercise.  And that made me think about zumba......and it reminded me that I didn't have my clothes out for zumba. I pack my clothes and take them to work.  Even though there is time for me to go home to change between work and zumba (about 15 minutes), I know that if I go home I would NEVER make it back out the door.  So of course I took a few minutes to pull out my workout gear.......My mind at this time TOTALLY knew what was happening.  Instead of letting it beat me, I vowed to not let it get me down!   Even as all these thoughts went through my mind I decided that I had to get pictures of my day for this blog.....GRRRR that took a few more precious minutes of my morning.


No fears though.  I STILL got myself onto that exercise bike!!!   It wasn't a long ride.  It wasn't a super strenuous ride.  However, I wasn't aiming for distance and I wasn't aiming for super strenuous.  Tonights zumba is my kick A$$ workout!  This morning was simply to get my body moving.  To do SOMETHING. Any kind of activity was what I was aiming for.  Because 15 minutes or 30 minutes is SOMETHING.  You see, if  you NEVER do it;  you will never get there.  Something, anything equals everything!

I'm still rolling.  Determination rules every step I take.  Failure is NOT an option!!!!!