New Digs

I have a new blog. 

Engineerbecomesamom (dot) com

This blog will stay up until I figure out what I'm going to do with past posts, but I won't be posting here anymore. 

See you over there

#MicroblogMondays - Willpower

In my weight-issues post, I got some good suggestions that I'm checking out. One of those is the book "The Willpower Instinct". I chose to start here because I have a suspicion that I need more help with willpower in other areas of my life as well. Two birds, one stone...or 3 birds one stone, or a whole damn flock of birds with one stone. You get the picture. In the first chapter I realized what I need to work on as my #1 priority.

Concentrating at work.

Over the past several years my concentration has left me. I don't focus on the task at hand very well, and I'll even derail any progress that's being made by finding distractions. I procrastinate, but not like I used to procrastinate where I'd put something off for too long then work really hard and really long to get it done. Nope, these days I have been known to walk into a meeting cold even if I tell myself that I'll spend an hour getting ready for the meeting.

I have blogged before about how I feel like I'm doing shitastic work, yet I keep getting ranked high on my performance reviews. So, sure, I'm performing well enough, but I'm not happy with my performance. I've been trying hard to cut myself slack while getting through the adoption processes, but  those are over.

It's time to reel it back in. To re-focus, to get serious about work. To actually feel like the good employee I appear to be on paper.

Don't know what #microblogmondays is? Check it out here.

More Family Crap

My new therapist, Dr. D has suggested that I try telling my mom what I need. For example, when I see my mom once a week at Jazze.rcise, the conversation usually goes something like, I say "Hi Mom", she says, "Hi Geochick!!!" all excitedly, I continue what I'm doing (changing usually), she starts telling me what she's doing or what her friends are doing, or what distant family members are doing. I roll my eyes and wonder when she's going to ask me how me and my family are.

Every. Single. Week.

At Dr. D's suggestion, I thought about how to tell my mom that I would really like it if she checked in with me and my family before launching into her stories.

At this moment, I can't figure out how to do it. My interactions with her have reached a certain toxicity to where I can't seem to let go of the fuming anger I feel every time I have to talk to her. I feel like I've already tried to get through to her, but she never hears me, and what's the point of asking?

I recently had the opportunity to do just that.  To stop her and say, "You know mom, I would really like it if you checked in with me before telling me what's going on with everyone else".

I didn't do it. Then the typical pattern emerged. After a while, I finally blurted out that we are currently dealing with thousands of dollars worth of damage to our house because of 2 major hailstorms. The roof is trashed, our awnings have holes in them, the fence is damaged. It's covered by insurance, but still, it's a pain. We have a check to get the work started, except that we have to send said check to two different banks (mortgage and home equity loan) to get it endorsed so that we can actually start. Bureaucratic nightmare, IMO. Not to mention that the flooding isn't covered by insurance so we just have to put up with a carpet remnant covering the floor until next year when hopefully we have enough money to do the work. Or maybe it'll be two years from now, who knows.

This is her reaction, "Oh my God, I had no idea!!!!"

No shit. Cause YOU NEVER ASK HOW MY LIFE IS.

And I react sarcastically, "Well, of course not, because you never asked".

And the cycle continues....

I understand now why people break with their parents. I hate this cycle. I hate feeling like a petulant little kid. I hate that she never asks me what I'm up to, that if I didn't say anything in our interactions that it would never occur to her that she doesn't know anything about my life.

I also hate that I'm starting to feel judged by Dr. D. I can't tell if that's because I'm so ashamed that I can't even try to start fixing this relationship to some degree, or if I'm really frustrated that she isn't validating how I feel about things. She still won't agree that my mom is a narcis.sist. I'm pretty damn sure she is. But I guess I'm not the one with a PhD and years of experience, so I must be wrong.

p.s. everytime I wonder if I should go public, I realize that then I would never be able to write like this and feel comfortable. I think I like my anonymous space.

1200 Calories

That's how many I'm supposed to eat in a day, unless I exercise, and then I can eat my exercise calorie burn. You're supposed to eat your exercise calorie burn, did you know that? You want to avoid sending your body into starvation mode, so you need to refuel post-exercise to keep your body from going after that muscle you just tried to build in your exercise session.

So, where did I go wrong?  I've been carrying an extra 6-8 pounds for well over a year, and training for a 100-mile bike ride has not resulted in the weight "just coming off" as my now-retired GP doc had mentioned. I'm on a half dose of Cele.xa and that could be throwing off my metabolism just enough that my body is hanging on to the weight. 

Or, I could be eating too many calories, because I almost never hit my 1200 goal. On average, I'm eating 1713 cal/day (this is counting my exercise calorie burn, so net calories). 

Probably too much beer or wine, right? I always say that I could probably drop weight lickety-split if I would just limit my drinking to the weekends or quit altogether. It's a great thought in theory, but then I get the thoughts running through my head that amount to that little devil on my shoulder saying, "yeah, but you work out a lot, you can have a glass of wine or two, relax, enjoy yourself." Plus, when I've tried to make that break, I've noticed that I switch vices. If I'm not having a beer or a glass of wine, then ice cream suddenly finds it's way into the house. And then of course, I start to wonder if I possibly have some kind of problem because if I'm not drinking, then I'm eating dessert. 

It's sugar. That's my problem. I know this, in fact I've known this for years and years and years when I finally figured out after going on a yeast-free diet that my vulvodynia symptoms are exacerbated by sugar. I can't sustain a yeast-free diet, but I did maintain a relatively sugar-free diet for a long time after the initial 3-week stint. Gradually, as physical therapy also helped with the pain, I fell off the wagon. It's crept back into my diet, especially with the stresses of infertility and adoption and failed placements and adoption and now parenting a toddler and an infant. There's a hella lotta stress up in here. There's also a hella lotta excuses, because who am I kidding thinking that this parenting thing will get less stressful? um. me.

Other little changes that have occurred over the past couple years include me dropping out of a weekly strength training class, and out of the gym all together. I used to join the gym where I work, and once a week do a 30-45 minute weight training workout and once a week take the strength training class. Plus, I had been walking a 2-mile loop at lunch time pretty regularly and I never got back into the walking routine after maternity leave. After I started trying to squeeze in yoga during lunch, the gym dropped off. Jazzercise is great for strength training, and we do a fair amount in our classes (20 minutes out of 60), but I haven't been pushing myself to take it to the next level, lazily hanging out with 8-lb weights. So, my body is used to it. Plus, instead of teaching 4 Jazzercise classes per week like I had been doing pre-Baby X, I only teach 2. During the winter, I pick up more subbing jobs and take classes as a student, but during the nice weather months I've been cycling. This year, I'm training for a 100-mile ride and that takes up the other 2 days I have for workouts. Lately, my workout week looks like this:

Monday - off

Tuesday - bike

Wednesday - Yoga or off

Thursday - Jazzercise

Friday -  off

Saturday - bike

Sunday - Jazzercise

On any given week I have at the very least 2 bike rides, one of which is several hours and 2 Jazzercise classes. Yoga is always the first thing to go because the classes are during the lunch hour. 

Keeping my calorie count down to a level where MFP thinks I'm losing weight is tough. Plus, I figured out that I've been kidding myself with the way I set up my profile. I had been going for 1.5 pounds loss per week, but I told MFP that I was more active on a daily basis than I am, not realizing that the question they were asking was how much do I sit on my as$ during the day at a computer. Once I fixed that and changed the weight loss goal to 1 lb/week, I landed on 1200 cal instead of 1230 cal. 

Here's the problem I'm having though: MFP, under the assumption that I needed 1230 cal to lose 1.5 lb/week, kept telling me I should be losing! Like, over the last several months, I should've lost a few of the pounds that I've put on. Even though my calorie count was off a bit, I still should've seen progress with the amount of tracking and exercising I've been doing. For crying out loud, I'm burning up to 2,000 cal on one of my rides, and up to 700 cal on the other ride every week! When I teach Jazzercise I burn between 400-440 on average. And I put everything in my food diary even when I know it's going to be seriously bad news. If I cheat it, I'm the only one who loses.

I really feel like I should've said bye-bye to these 6 lbs months ago, yet they still hang on. For the record, this is not a case of building muscle so the scale is going up. Some of my pants still don't fit. Argh!

I'm frustrated, and keep tossing around the idea of going all Whole 30 to see if that gets a result, but I know that doing something that restrictive only results in gaining the weight back once old habits are established. I know that you are supposed to carefully and slowly introduce foods back in after the initial 30 days of restrictive eating, but I don't see myself doing that. 

When I get frustrated I try to remind myself that I'm not overweight, I'm in good shape, I'm under a lot of stress, and maybe now is not the time to be stressing myself out even more about life in general. The food we have in our house is healthy. The meals we prepare are heavy on vegetables and lean meat, light on starches (if any). I usually eat leftovers for lunch, so lunches are also pretty healthy. If I cave and find myself going fast food burgers because f-ck it, I want fries, I always order the smallest meal possible. If I find myself at the drive thru on a hot day because ice cream sounds like a grand idea, I get the less than 200 cal soft-serve cone instead of the Bizz.ard or McF.lurry that I used to treat myself to. It's not like I don't know how to eat, or that I'm not eating well, or that I'm not paying attention to treats, it's that apparently I just eat too much.

How have you busted through plateaus, and is 1200 cal/day really doable?

Snippets about Baby Ears

- Tubes went into Baby Z's ears about a week ago. He was great the day of surgery, and then spiked a fever the following two days. One of those days was when gparents were watching the kids and S and I were on a much needed weekend trip by ourselves. See, Baby Z's fevers are sneaky. He's fine all day then they show up at night. We thought he was fine after waking up from the first one fever free and not giving any meds all day. So, we went ahead with our plan to play in the mountains. It spiked again that night as if on cue. Gparents were able to care for him and I felt more than a little bit of mommy guilt. Then I reminded myself that it takes a village and gparents are well equipped to deal with a fever that is just that. A fever with no other symptoms. When we picked up the kids, we discovered he also had two teeth coming in at the same time. So....

- You may wonder why we chose to leave town only a few days after surgery. Well, in retrospect we should have scheduled surgery for the following week, but were worried that the ear infection would come back before surgery could be done. So, we hedged our bets and went with the earliest date we could get. Good thing we did too, the doc said there was a lot of fluid and infection. 

- Baby Z is doing really well and seems to be hearing better. He's even starting to say words!

- I had been struggling with some depression symptoms in the weeks leading up to surgery. I also was completely exhausted the night he had the surgery. Like ready for bed at 8 kind of exhausted. Now that it's past and I'm feeling better overall, it seems I had situational depression related to dealing with his ear infection. My kid was sick and not getting better. That sucked. I didn't realize how much it was affecting me, but I was researching chiropractic care and wondering about alternative therapies. When I asked my chiropractor two days before surgery about it, his answer was, "my kids got tubes. Just get the tubes."  Goes to show I wasn't sold on it up to the bitter end. 

- Watching my kid come out of general anesthesia was heartbreaking. He was confused and screaming and inconsolable for a bunch of minutes.