Discipline

Another week, another weigh-in.  I tipped the scale at 144.8 pounds yesterday, a gain of 0.4 pounds (for an overall gain of 1.2 pounds the last two weeks)...which actually pleasantly surprised me, given how far I fell off the wagon this week.  After gaining last week, I felt really bad, but also really unmotivated.  Dan went out of town (he left on Easter Sunday...boo) for the first part of the week, and while I had grand plans to use my "me time" in the evenings productively, I instead totally self-destructed.  Without someone here to hold me accountable, I spent those three days eating the rest of the Easter candy--if I never see another Hershey Kiss again in my life, that would probably be good...  I don't even know why I was so tempted by Hershey Kisses--we usually keep them in the house for little treats for the kids, and I never touch them...until this past week.  I just wanted to eat them and eat them until they were gone and no longer tempting me.  Now I need to stock up again--I don't even want to think about how many I ate.  And I broke crucial Challenge #2 rules by eating them at night after the kids went to bed, sometimes even after midnight when I was supposed to be in bed.

my rationale for eating all the Easter candy

When Dan isn't home, I have random insomnia--I'm super tired, but I putz around the house doing nothing important until the wee hours of the morning, and feel exhausted when I wake up...which in turn makes me not want to do anything but lounge around during the day...and then stay up all night again the following night.  It's an ugly cycle.  I even skipped a few days of my cleaning schedule, I was being so lazy.  My mom came out here to help me on Monday night so that I could still go to my step class in Dan's absence, and she stayed until Tuesday after lunch--it was nice to have the company, and to still be able to exercise.  The classes last week were the only reason I didn't gain 15 pounds in a week.  My regular Zumba instructors were back on Wednesday and Friday, and Wednesday's class really energized me--it was fun and just what I needed to break me out of my binging funk.  Friday's class was also good, but my pesky elbow really bothered me during that class...  I sucked it up and went to the ER Friday night after the kids went to bed--the elbow wasn't getting any better, and I was concerned that I was doing more harm by using it and exercising with it this past week.  I had been avoiding going to the ER for it because I just kept hoping it was going to get better on it's own, and also because I didn't want anyone to tell me I broke it somehow and end up in a cast--but I wanted to get an answer for the pain.  The doctor I saw was really nice, but he honestly had no idea what I have done to it--I had it x-rayed, and the x-ray shows some abnormalities, but he couldn't figure out what those meant...so now I have to go see a sports medicine doctor in the hopes of figuring out what I did to it and what I can do to fix it.  Ugh--not what I need right now.  Maybe it will get better before I have to go see someone else about it--I just want to get on with my life and not have an injury bugging me!  The ER doctor did say that I could keep using it and just take Motrin, so at least I didn't walk away with a cast or a sling.

Ugh...discipline is no fun.

I have lost the discipline I had when I started this Challenge...I didn't call getting healthier and losing the weight a challenge for nothing.  It has definitely been (and continues to be) incredibly challenging!  Last week, I even stooped so low as to skimp on my food journal reporting (if I only eat two bites of the kids' mac & cheese, I don't have to write it down, right?).  I still haven't been drinking enough water, and I definitely have been missing my Challenge-imposed bedtime.  We spent the day yesterday at my in-laws' house, and my mother-in-law is on a similar health journey.  I was inspired by her notes to herself all over the house--"Stay strong!" on a cupboard door, "You can do it!" on her bathroom mirror, "Don't even think about it!" in the pantry.  Perhaps I need some notes around the house for myself--my internal willpower isn't working out so well.  I'm issuing myself a mini-Challenge for this week, in an effort to get back on track:  Get to bed no later than midnight all week.  I think my bad sleeping schedule has put my thoughts in a tailspin and made it easier for me to splurge and not be as disciplined as I need to be.  Once I get my sleep schedule righted again, hopefully everything else will be easier to stick to--and if that's not the case, I'll mini-Challenge myself again next week to fix another problem area!  Here's to some actual weight loss this week!