Fall Focus Goals

Fall is my absolute favorite time of the year.  The crisp cold air, the leaves changing, the holidays... but as you all know, all that comes with hot apple cider and pumpkin pie!  Not to mention the one thing that rivals food for the top diet disaster - stress!  Between dealing with traveling, family, cooking, and preparing for Christmas - my favorite time of year can pretty quickly become one of the worst times.  That's why this year I'm preparing for more than just candy corn and candied apples.  I need to be ready to combat that lame holiday stress.

Goals for the fall focus:
1. First and foremost, get to my goal weight!  Just 13 pounds to go!  With nine weeks, I only need to lose about 1.5 pounds each week.
2. Train for and run a half marathon
3. Add 5 fruits/veggies to my daily diet
4. Keep my stress to-do list close to my heart nearby

Stress is Coming: These are some of the stressers I'm going to face this fall.
-starting a new job
-moving

-money

-being away from my hubby

-traveling

Chocolate Escape

No stress, no work, no chores, no errands.  It's just me, the chocolate, and Bachelor Pad.  I sat in front of my TV Tuesday afternoon popping a dozen peanut butter-chocolate snacks my husband had made.  One after the other I devoured them.  When I started asking myself "Why am I doing this?"  I couldn't come up with an answer - so I continued the binge.

When I was done my stomach hurt, but still no answer.  About 30 minutes later, my chocolate coma ended...  I couldn't breathe.  I was having an anxiety attack.  My heart was beating out of my chest, I had to lean up against the wall and slide to the floor where I sat taking deep breaths.

My chocolate stupor was over, my 'high' had faded - and now only the truth was left - my anxiety.  This all has to do with work.  I've been feeling stressed because I literally have two hours of free time a day - and only a small portion of that is time I can spend with my husband.

When I was high/drunk/strung out on chocolate - whatever you want to call it - I didn't have to worry about those things.  I used chocolate as a drug on Tuesday, the same way my husband used his Lortabs.  After he went into rehab for his addiction, he confessed to me that his addiction all started with anixety.  He said the pills gave him confidence to sell cars.  He was able to go out on a limb, be in front of people, and forget the uneasiness he had felt before the pills.

I'm upset I let this happen to myself.  I'm upset my binge-free days are back down to zero.  At this point all I can do is learn from the experience.  I need to deal with anxiety in a more constructive way.  Before I stuffed my face with chocolate I didn't even realize I was anxious.  That's why I need to come up with a way to combat my work-related anxiety before it comes up again.  I need to make time for myself, time for me to at least think I'm spending my life doing more than just sleeping and working.

Any suggestions?  Is there something I can do that's just for me - something to keep me from chasing my chocolate high?

Crackers Don't Fix Problems (and neither does cheese)

Instead of writing yesterday, I decided to snack - four cheese wedges and a dozen crackers.  Of course during my mini-binge I was thinking about what I was doing.  Cracker after cracker - I couldn't stop.  I just kept spreading on the cheese and devouring the crackers.  Why?  Last week I had a near perfect week - I stayed within my calories each day and had a great weight loss.  Why couldn't I stop myself yesterday?

Today I'm looking back, because hindsight is 20/20 I have a better idea of what I was thinking.

First of all, I weighed myself when I got home from work.  I was back at my last week's weight.  Well, duh.  I weighed myself in the middle of the afternoon - what could I have possibly expected?  (Hence the stupid goal not to weigh myself.  I think I'm going to talk my husband into hiding the scale).

Second, my work day was awful.  It was a breakdown kind of day.  In fact, at one point I almost started crying.  The 2 1/2 hour show I write for is losing more than half of its staff - meaning my job is turning into three jobs on August 4th.  Plus, my weeks are going to turn into 6, 10+ hour days.  I've known about this for a week or so, but yesterday during a series of meetings it really hit me - I am losing my life to a job I marginally like.

Third, anxiety.  I was feeling really anxious about my blog design.  I hadn't talked to my designer that day.  I was just anxious wondering when would it be done, when could I show it off.

It's really obvious that all these things played a role in my cracker frenzy.  Luckily I went for these crackers and not the pie sitting in my fridge.  I added an extra 300 calories to my diet that day, but my life's not over.  I'm dusting myself off (literally, there were cracker crumbs everywhere) and getting back up for the next leg of the weightloss road.

The crackers didn't solve one problem.  The only thing in my life it put a dent in was, well, the package of crackers.  There's still 4-6 weeks (my news director's estimation, so really 4-6 months) of stress ahead of me.  Since self-medicating with crackers isn't helping in the least, I'm making a game plan.

When stress kicks in I will:
-yoga/dance/run
-watch a movie/read a book
-sleep (I know running away from my feelings, but it's better than drowning my stress in ice cream!)
-talk my husband into taking a walk
-take a bath with the works

Any other stress-releaving ideas - ways to escape?  I'm gonna need it - I already need it!