Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Month: July 2010

Something’s Gotta Give

Life is the picture of overwhelming right now.  Even though I’m getting enough sleep, I’m just a lot more DRAINED than normal so getting stuff done on weekdays outside of working hours (which are some days creeping past 8 into 9 or 10 hours) is impossible.  I mean, I’m up at 8:30, to work by 9-ish, get out of work usually around 6:30 or 7 (and that’s working through lunch), head to the gym for an hour or so, come home, make dinner, and it’s about 9:30 or 10pm by the time I’m done eating, and then I have about an hour and some change before it’s time to get into bed.  Rinse and repeat.

Usually weekends are my saving grace.  However, spending EVERY WAKING MOMENT of 4th of July break out of town and then heading straight into work exhausted and sleep deprived, didn’t help.  And since we weren’t home, there was so much to do this weekend.  Plus work spilled over into the weekend.  And the house is a FREAKING DISASTER and getting to me.  Anyone who really knows me would discern that it would have to be pretty bad – as generally I don’t mind living in chaos.  But this is getting ridiculous – there is so much crap on the kitchen counter that I’m trying to avoid making anything for food that takes prep.   And… this weekend I thought it would be a grand idea to go party both Friday and Saturday nights.  So I’ve spent the entire weekend either drunk or just tired.  No bueno at all.

I’m not even sure how I’m going to keep it together this week.  I’m anticipating a most hellacious week at work due to deadlines and stuff.  We have after work obligations tomorrow and Wednesday.   It’s Sunday night and instead of relaxed and happy and rested I feel exhausted and stressed and frazzled.  Not a great way to go into said week.

I either need to just get up and start dealing with stuff or decide to push it out of my mind.  The house being messy is NOT an emergency and can wait.  If the laundry doesn’t get put away, who cares?  The problem is since I *do* care, it’s stressing me out that it’s not done.  So I think that’s my answer – sacrifice my Sunday night to get shite done even if I’ll be a little less rested, because sitting here stressing about it isn’t restful and isn’t doing me any good anyway.  So there.

It’s not all horrible though.  I made good on my sugar reduction last week.  I did not have desert once, minus a few starlight mints and a fortune cookie, neither of which count in my opinion.  I gave myself free reign with fruit, and mowed through a lot of it.  I also found some really yummy 110 calorie protein shakes which are my new favorite after workout snack (only 1 gram of sugar too).  However, since they’re expensive, I’m saving them for particularly intense workouts.  Any suggestions for protein shake type things that are low sugar and about the same amount of calories?  110 calories for 30g protien is a GOOD DEAL calorie-wise, but at 8 bucks for 4 shakes, not a viable every day consumable.

I also started moving back to making lunch my biggest meal of the day and starting to feel better overall about it.  I’m not a huge believer in the “no eating after a certain time” thing, but I feel like I have less of the “hungries” overall.  And…on big workout days, it’s much more satisfying to have a 800-1000 calorie lunch at a restaurant than 500-700 calories of dinner and 300 calories of random snacks.  Plus now that I’m eating so late, it’s nice to not go to bed so full.

However, I kinda screwed up and didn’t track my calories.  I also completely botched my training plan due to just sheer exhaustion.  I think that I did alright with calories in and out and eating good stuff, but I certainly can’t quantify it.  Here is what I did workout-wise last week:

Monday: off (driving)
Tuesday: 40 mins arc trainer (525 calories)
Wednesday: off (exhaustion, felt like I was coming down with something)
Thursday: 12 mile bike ride, 3 mile run (just didn’t have 5 in me) (800 calories)
Friday: 45 mins arc trainer (600 calories)
Saturday: 12 mile bike ride, 40 mins arc trainer (900 calories)
Sunday: off

This week will really depend on how crazy work is, and how tired I am, but here is the plan.

Monday: 4 mile run (500)
Tuesday: DDR or arc trainer and weights (450-ish)
Wednesday: 12 mile ride and 5k run (800)
Thursday: off
Friday: 45 mins running speedwork (600)
Saturday: 25 mile bike ride (800)
Sunday: off

More running, a nice long bike ride, less arc trainer, and while I’d like to fit 2 weights sessions in there, I just don’t think I have time.  So it is what it is.

I’m just realizing that something has to give for now.  I had hoped to blog a little more frequently, and I even have a really burning post in my head as a mid-year wrap up (as it is now WELL past July 1st), but every time I go to write anything but these weekly wrap ups, I just can’t do it.  While I’m still obviously making strides to make sure I’m eating healthy/enough/not too much, and still definitely working out more than the average bear, I just don’t have the mindshare and give-a-crap to track and be neurotic about it.

Tomorrow is one month away from the scale, and I think that I’m going to continue on at least one more week.  I’m all worked up enough with everything else going on to freak out about my weight.  My pants still fit fine, I know I’m not doing too bad, so I’ll find out later this week or next week when I feel like I *could* handle it if I have gained a few.  I have really liked not worrying about the number.  I think I’ll continue monthly weigh ins unless I find I’ve gained.

Alrighty, going to get up and be productive.  It will be a good week.  No deserts, bigger lunches/smaller dinners, and staying sane and trying to figure out how to get my life under control.  Looking forward to hiring minions to delegate some of this stuff to at work, and perhaps its time to consider doing the same at home (maid service – next on the money list once we get caught up right after “nicer gym”).  Question of the week: what one thing would you hire someone to do if you could either professionally or personally?

That’ll Do Pig

There is really no place like home.  It wasn’t always that way.  As a kid, the last day of vacation was always so sad to me.  I’d have to be dragged kicking and screaming from the pool the last day.  People at summer camp would get homesick, and I never understood that, I’d just get sad the last day when everyone else got excited to go home.  It’s not that home was bad at all, it’s just that I loved different.  I loved new experiences.  I loved having a break from the norm.  If I would have caught a break to do it earlier in life, I might have easily taken a job with tons of traveling and been happy as a clam.

However, that train left the station years ago.  It took the left track and I took the right, and now I loathe being away for too long from my leezards, my couch, my bed, my kitchen… my house in general.  If I have to take a trip without my Zliten, forget about it.  I’m counting the hours until my plane lands. It’s sick and sappy and perhaps pukeworthy, but it’s almost pointless to go away without him unless I have to, because I barely enjoy it, even after 11 years of being together.

The last few years, it’s also a desire to be back into a routine.  I come back from vacation craving veggies like an addict in rehab, and after shaking off the tireds, enjoy resuming the hardcore workouts.  This time I did definitely keep up the activity the two days we weren’t driving all day, but usually it’s just a lot of walking.  And since I follow the ethos of letting go on vacation, it usually just barely (if at all) makes up for the revelry and merriment.  I’m ok with that because we go away a few times a year, and it really hits home how good I feel when I eat healthy.  Seriously – when I get grumpy because I can’t let go and eat anything I want, I remember how I feel after a few days on vacation.  It’s worth it, but I am always so happy to be back to healthy food.

So to tally up all the so bad/so good things I remember eating, there was pizza, homemade waffles, fries, a bowl of frosted flakes, oreo cookie frozen custard, movie theatre nachos (complete with the fake orange “cheese food” that is so low quality it tastes like plastic but even still has a soft spot in my heart), a few types of wedding cake, crackers and dip, and much more.  Not to mention for-reals moonshine, dequiris, beer, and copius amounts of whiskey.  Against that, I ran 3 miles, ellipticaled 2 miles, did 20 mins weights, swam over half a mile, and walked about 7 miles total.  On the way there and back I stuck to subway because damned if I was going to splurge calories on fast food nastiness.  So, it wasn’t all bad.

It was totally worth it to see my two great friends get married.  They both looked awesome, everything about the wedding was country and adorable and just felt like it was done up with love.  They both lost it multiple times during the ceremony and it was just fantastic.  Not to mention the “nuptial picnic” after out in the middle of nowhere.  There was a taco buffet, lots of homemade appetizers, a daquiri machine and kegs of beer, five different types of wedding cake.  We played bingo (and won an inflatable monkey and some other prizes cuz we were lucky!) and watched kids light off hours worth of fireworks (no one even lost any limbs or had to be rushed to the hospital), drunk Elvis came out, we drank moonshine, and I convinced the groom to do a kegstand.  By doing a kegstand myself.  Don’t judge.  Do notice the good form, my gymnastics coaches would be proud.

This week, it’s back to the grindstone.  Monday was a too big breakfast (two plates of fruit, half a bagel, a piece of peanut butter and honey toast), subway turkey, and then veggies and fiber pasta w/chicken and spicy sauce for dinner, so fairly healthy, but I did have some sweets in there.  As of yesterday, I’ve actually decided to do a mini sugar detox – no deserts for as long as I can stand it.  I had a fortune cookie, but that totally doesn’t count.  After dinner I had a bunch of frozen fruit instead of a random sweet, so it’s off to a good start.

I’m almost considering putting off weighing one more week – I’m not entirely sure I want to know what I weigh 6 days from now.  We shall see. Last week by the numbers is pretty much useless, but I’ll list out my workouts.

Monday: 6.75 miles running (725 calories burnt)
Tuesday: Arc trainer for 30 mins, 45 mins weights (600 calories burnt)
Wednesday: 12 mile bike ride, 5 mile run (1075 calories burnt)
Thursday: off (packing)
Friday: off (driving)
Saturday: 3 mile run, 2 miles eliptical, 800m swim, 20 mins weights, 1 mile walk (1200 calories burnt)
Sunday: 5.75 mile walking (500 calories burnt)

4100 calories burnt.  585 on average per day.  Considering I rolled at a significant deficit the first 4 days of the week, I’d have had to done like 3500 calories per day on vacay to really and truly gain weight.  I might have gotten close one day, but not all of them.  So I’ll say – that’ll do pig, that’ll do.

Here’s the plan for this week, which is already underway…

Monday: off (driving)
Tuesday: Arc trainer for 45 (600 calories)
Wednesday: 12 mile bike ride, 5 mile run (1075 calories)
Thursday: weights + somesortacardio for about 30 mins (500 calories)
Friday: run of some sorta TBD (10k, sprints, hills)  (500-750 calories)
Saturday: weights, walking adventure (600-1o million  calories)
Sunday: off or something mellow-active like a bike ride or walk or some such (who knows)

Kind of a TBD week.  I felt really super exhausted yesterday after work and almost took a rest day, but a mellow workout did me right, I do believe.  Today, I have crazy planned, but if I’m still not feeling 100% I might ratchet down to just mildly insane.  It’s going to be a hard week at work, and I’ve got lots to do at home, so we shall see.

Hope you all had a great 4th…or may the 4th be with you? 🙂

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