It’s all up to me

I debated about this plan for hours yesterday.  I know it’s a good plan but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to do it.  Scratch that, I’m afraid that I will make an unhealthy choice because everything I do (or don’t do) is my choice.  So I’m going to commit my plan in writing to hold myself accountable.

For today through Monday, here is my plan:

1.  Exercise every day.  I told my hubby last night that I was going to need his help to get through the weekend.  He got that panicky look in his eyes like I was going to ask him to knock food out of my hand, but when I explained that it was just that I was going to need time to work out every day, even Easter Sunday, then he was relaxed.  Working out in the morning on non-school days helps give me the strength to resist tempting food choices.  Today I have already done 30 minutes of Pilates and when he gets up I’m going to hop on the treadmill.

2.  While I am at home I am sticking to the 3 hour eating plan, keeping food within calorie range.  Just because it’s a holiday weekend doesn’t mean that I should throw in the towel.  This is the one place that I can be 100% in control of what food is available so I need to take advantage of it.  Just as I have been doing I will plan out my meals and snacks ahead of time so there are no decisions to make when I’m hungry.

3.  When I’m away from home, I will allow myself to eat whatever I want but I cannot go out of control.  I will start by taking tiny portions of whatever I want and after I have tried it, if I want more I can have it.  This includes desserts.  I’m scared to work this into my plan but I know if I tell myself that I will stay perfect all weekend that if/when I blow it that my all-or-nothing thinking will rear its ugly head and I’ll go on a binge.  A few extra calories over a weekend won’t set me back too far, but a binge might.

4.  This is going to be the hardest part.  Stupidly I told my mom that I would bring desserts for our side of the family.  I know the smart thing to do would be to call my mom and have someone else bring the dessert, but my hubby has already picked out what he wants me to make.  He has been so supportive of my many diet schemes and goes without sweets to help me stick to my diet that I would feel horrible to take his favorite dessert away from him.  Instead, while I’m making them I will have gum in my mouth to remind me not to nibble.

5.  I will post on here every day.  Sometimes it’s harder to find the time on the weekends but I will make time to remind myself that I don’t get to take weekends off.  Wouldn’t it be nice if it worked that way??  I have made good progress this week and I don’t want to see it all fade away in one decadent weekend.

Have a wonderful Easter weekend and I hope everyone is able to find the strength to stick to their own plans.  See you tomorrow.

Wow, I am overwhelmed at all of the fantastic, supportive comments.  I am blessed to have a place where I can honestly express my feelings without worrying about how I “should” feel.  It helps more than you know.

<> Kyle ended up going back to bed around 4:30 that morning so I got in a good 45 minute power nap before school. Unfortunately he had another seizure at the sitter’s yesterday but now he’s doing better.  It was my hubby’s night to get up with him and miracle of all miracles, he slept until 4 am!!!  I don’t think I moved all night.

Diet-wise things are still going well but last night was tough.  I’m finding that while I’m at school I don’t find myself too hungry but in the afternoon/evening it’s a struggle.  Plus, we were really busy last night so everything was rush, rush, rush.  I kind of got into a funk last night, realizing that Easter’s coming and that I have to decide how I’m going to handle the food all weekend.  I was tempted to throw in the towel and wait until Monday to start again when I remembered something I read on someone’s blog yesterday.  It was a quote that said something like “losing weight is hard but so is being overweight.  Pick your hard.”  It gave me the strength to push through.  I did end up making a cup of flavored coffee (30 cal) and even though that obviously isn’t a big deal it was to me because it was off-plan.  But then I realized that it was the right choice and now I can focus on today.

Today is our last day before break, we have Friday and Monday off from school.  Of course it’s the 1st day of spring and we’re facing a snowstorm tomorrow!!  Oh well, it melts quickly this time of year.

Food should be good today and I will be able to workout after school.  My goal for today is to make a plan to get me through the weekend with the least amount of damage.

I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself right now.  It’s 2 am and I think the most consecutive amount of sleep I have gotten all night is 45 minutes and I have been up since 12:30.  Kyle has not been sleeping well, I think Thursday night was the last time he slept more than 4 hours in a row.  Even though my hubby and I take turns staying up with him we’re still in a perpetual state of exhaustion.  And even when it’s my night to sleep you don’t sleep well because you still hear the monitor during the times he wakes up.  Eventually my hubby gave up last night and slept on the couch but I still didn’t sleep well.

It just sucks, plain and simple.  It sucks that we’re exhausted, it sucks that we have to go to bed five minutes after Kyle does in the event that we don’t get a lot of sleep that night, it sucks that we never have time together as a couple because one of us are always tired.  I love my son with all of my heart but I hate his disease.  There should be a rule that when you have a seriously ill child that the rest of your life should be easy.  We never have enough time to spend with our older son  or each other and although I realize he is learning compassion and patience I would  rather have him be a bit more selfish and have 2 healthy kids.

So why am I writing all of this?  I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m just trying to keep myself from eating.  I am hungry but this desire to eat is more out of fatigue/sadness/anger/frustration/I don’t know what else. 

OK, he just gave me a huge smile and his gurgly sound that tells me he’s happy.  When I’m up with him I need to remind myself that I’m lucky he’s still alive.  I don’t know why but I was thinking a lot last night about when he almost died in August.  And if I’m going to be completely honest I think part of the reason I’m struggling so much right now is that for a fleeting second the thought crossed my mind that if he had died, in a way my life would be easier now.  I know most of you are reading this in shock right now, but unless you have a terminally ill child you probably can’t understand this feeling.  I KNOW it doesn’t mean that I want him to die, it’s just that I’m exhausted and all sorts of thoughts jump into your head when you’re tired.  But as a mom, to even think for a second that your life would be easier if your child died is the most awful, guilty feeling you can possibly have.

Well, the writing must have worked because for the moment I don’t want to eat.  I’m nauseous and can’t breathe because I have been bawling as I have been writing this but I don’t want to eat.  I can tell by looking at Kyle that he’s not going to go down for at least another hour but if he does that will give me 2 solid hours of sleep before I have to get up for school.  With any luck I’ll be in bed around 3:00.

I know it’s only day 2 but so far I’m liking this 3 Hour Diet.  Yesterday I was hungry after about 2 hours but today I’m making it almost to 3.  I think being at school and keeping busy is definitely helping.  I have been on the scale lately even though I vowed not to until Easter but there have been good results.  Last Monday (3/10) I was 277 and yesterday I was 272.  I just tried to eat healthy last week and exercised a ton.  This morning, after the 1st day on the plan, I was down to 271.  I’m going to let myself get on the scale on Saturday so I’m excited to see what it says.

I’m not going to be able to workout today because I have a meeting until 5:00 and it’s my oldest son’s 5th birthday.  This time five years ago I was VERY uncomfortable.  Things didn’t get too bad until I was dialated to 9 cm and by then it was kind of too late to go with the epidural.  He was 10 pounds with a set of shoulders on him like a linebacker.  After 3 hours of pushing he was out and our love affair began.   Since I have to stay late at school my hubby (who is on spring break) spent the day with him.  They went out to lunch and to the movies to see “Horton Hears a Who”.  It has been his favorite story for a while now so he’s super excited to see it.

If Kyle sleeps through the night tonight I’m going to get up early tomorrow and exercise at 4:00.  The boys have haircuts tomorrow afternoon and our van is getting the brakes fixed so I won’t be able to get home and workout like normal.  But if he doesn’t sleep (and he hasn’t been lately) I am going to skip the workout.  Now that I feel like I have a plan for my eating I’m not so frantic if I don’t have time to workout.  It’s amazing to feel in control of food for once in my life.   I don’t want to get overconfident because that’s usually when fate likes to slap me in the face with a huge craving but I think I’ll be ok if I don’t get to workout until Thursday.

Sorry for the corny title.  I officially started the Jorge Cruise plan today, the 3 Hour Diet.  It’s going to be more mental than physical I think.  Earlier I was hungry and normally I would have grabbed a snack but it had only been 2 hours since breakfast.  I wasn’t famished and I was able to hang in there because I knew I was going to eat in an hour.  Since I’m such a control freak I think this could be a good plan for me because I will plan out my food for the day the evening before.  Then it’s just following the plan I have made instead of figuring it out as I go.

Today I’m home because Kyle is sick so I won’t have a feel of how the diet will work until I’m at school tomorrow (hopefully).  Today I got a late start on breakfast because Kyle was up from 12:30-3:30 so I slept until 7:30 when he got up again.  Now he’s down for a nap so I was able to fit in part of my workout early.  When my hubby gets home I’ll grab at least 30 minutes on the treadmill.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.

This is the first weekend for quite a while where I have basically stuck to my plan.  I was able to get in a good workout both days and have been making decent food choices.  I did have 2 chocolate-chip granola bars yesterday but I made a conscious choice to eat them.  My son was sick again overnight last night and even though it was my hubby’s night to get up with him I still didn’t sleep well because he had such an awful cough, it kept me up, too.  I took him to the doc today and he said it’s the beginning of an ear infection so we’re now on an antibiotic.  Hopefully by tomorrow we’ll see a difference.

I signed up for jorgecruise.com for the free 7-day trial.  With Kyle being sick I haven’t had a ton of time to look around on it but it did give me some insight on how to schedule my eating since I can’t do it EXACTLY every 3 hours and it also has food ideas.  It’s a new idea for me, I haven’t counted calories in a long time.  Gee, maybe that’s why I weigh 277 pounds????

He’s finally down for a nap so I’m going to head to the grocery store to check out frozen entrees.  I know they aren’t as healthy as preparing foods but until I get a handle on calorie counting it’s an easy way to start this process.  Plus, they’re easy to make so I’m more likely to stick with them.

Actually, I passed a couple.  Yesterday at school they had my favorite meal, pretzels with cheese.  I know, it sounds awful but I absolutely love it.  We were out of lettuce yesterday morning so I took egg salad to eat.  Since I figured the egg salad wasn’t super-healthy so I would choose to have the pretzel.  When I went to the cafeteria I decided to only have the pretzel/cheese and not grab a pack of oreos like I would have before.  Then I grabbed the yougart and carrots that I brought to go with my egg salad and ate lunch.  Yay me!

Test #2 was what happened when I got home.  The plan was to workout but I always have trouble sticking to the plan when I go off-plan (pretzel).  It was tempting to hang out w/my hubby before we picked up the kids but I threw on my workout clothes and did my Pilates and treadmill workout.  Yay, me!

Test #3 came out of nowhere.  When I picked up Kyle from the sitter’s he was sick.  I’m guessing an ear infection or something like that.  Because of his disease when he gets sick it’s misearable and very worrisome; basically I spend my time holding him and not sleeping because he’s stuffy and coughing all night.  This eliminates the possibility to workout and sends me running for easily made foods.  Luckily I had the egg salad leftover from lunch so I ate that for supper and had a grapefruit later.  He fell asleep early so I went to bed around 8:30 in the event that he got up overnight.  We were up from about 11-1:30 but since then he has been sleeping fairly well.

So now the challenge is what to do today.  Weekends are always so tough for me but I have to conquer this.  I am going to focus on eating healthy foods and leave it at that.  My older son has an appt. this morning so my hubby is going to take him and I’m going to stay home with Kyle.  When he takes a nap I will plan to workout but I realize that his schedule might be off today from being sick so if I don’t workout today I have to be flexible.

I am seriously considering changing my eating plan.  Previously I have used a low-carb diet with varied success.  Three years ago I lost 60 pounds fairly easily but this time it has been a struggle.  Lately I have been incorporating more fruits into my diet so I enjoy it more but I have been so inconsistent with eating properly that I don’t know if my lack of weight loss is due to the fruit or the handfulls of mixed nuts, birthday cake, etc.

This week I have been reading “The Three Hour Diet” by Jorge Cruise and what he writes makes a lot of sense.  Basically you eat every 3 hours to keep your metabolism burning.  Now I have always incorporated this idea in a general sense with small snacks throughout the day but on this plan I would space out my calories throughout the day instead of eating probably half of them from 3pm on.  Because of our schedule at school I won’t be able to adhere exactly to the 3 hour schedule but I can come fairly close.

<> Has anyone out there tried this approach?  I know it will work if I stick to it (just like any diet plan) but  I’m curious to know what others have found.

Yesterday was very good food and exercise-wise.  Today hopefully won’t be any different because I will be able to workout after school.  I know I’ll be tired because Kyle got up at 2:30 but I love to workout and I love how I feel afterward so it hopefully won’t be a struggle.  I’ll also be tired because this is the first 5 day week of school we have had without a delay/early out since around Thanksgiving.  I think spring is near!!!

…patting yourself on the back.  It comes back to bite you in the butt.  I was so proud of myself and how I got through Monday and then yesterday got me.  All of my greatest challenges were rolled into one:  my hubby had night class so I had the perfect opportunity to engage in secret eating, I wasn’t able to workout and I had a craving for mixed nuts.  I tried all of the tricks that usually work.  First, I chewed gum.  Then I tried a couple of healthy alternatives and then when about an hour passed and I still wanted the nuts I told myself to eat some and then get over it.  By then, though, I was pissed at myself for eating the other snacks when I knew that I wanted the nuts so I dove in head first.  Even the arrival of my “Fitness” magazine didn’t stop the flood.  When I saw it in the mailbox after having this craving I saw it as divine intervention, but there I was, eating handfuls of mixed nuts while reading the magazine.  Nice.

One small victory is that I reduced my supper.  Honestly, I would have skipped supper but I didn’t want to show my older son that it was ok to snack all afternoon and then skip supper, so I had about 2/3 of a pork chop and a tomato.  But then after he went to bed I found some of those candy orange slices in the cupboard.  I don’t even LIKE those candies but I ate them.

What is wrong with me?  I realize today is a new day but I almost wonder if that mentality is what’s getting me into trouble because I can always start again.  But the alternative, giving up, isn’t good either.  Then I think about all of the difficult things I have accomplished and wonder why I can’t solve this problem.  I desperately want to be healthy and thin but obviously the pleasure I’m getting from eating is greater than the strength and hard work it will take to accomplish my goal.

And I don’t want anyone to think my nut-binge last night was uncontrolled.  Every bite I put in my mouth was 100% my choice.  I would tell myself that this wasn’t a good choice and then pop them in.

Slow and steady wins the race, right????

Yesterday was easier regarding food.  Thank goodness because I don’t know if I could have been strong 2 days in a row.  It helps so much being able to workout after school.  I was surprised when I got home that my hubby was there, he got out of class early.  As much as I wanted to hang out with him (we rarely have a minute when it’s just us) I headed downstairs and did my Pilates and treadmill workout.  Yesterday, after a warm-up I walked 4 minutes at 3.9 mph and then 2 minutes at 3.4 and repeated that rotation 2 times.  Next week I will repeat the rotation 3 times, gradually increasing every week.  Including the cooldown it was only 20 minutes, I was tempted to go more, but I figured I would follow the plan exactly as it’s written for a couple of weeks and see if it works.  How awesome would it be if it actually works to workout less but at a higher intensity.

Today I can’t workout because my son has physical therapy right after school and my hubby has night class.  This program is based on working out six days a week so Wednesday is going to have to be my day off.  There are leftover baked porkchops waiting for supper so I should be able to hang in there.  The last couple of nights I have fixed myself a cup of sugar-free flavored coffee for an evening snack and it has been working.