Day 12 - Weekends Are Hard

Weekends have, traditionally, been down time for my husband and I.  We both push through the week and by Friday, we're wiped out.  Now that I'm trying to be healthier and lose weight, that makes the weekends difficult.  I just want to hang out with my husband and rest.  While I'm not working right now, that doesn't mean I'm not still pushing through the week.  I'm job hunting, looking into other avenues of employment/self-employment, cleaning the house, getting my walking in, etc. etc.  I'm sure you all understand.  This weekend was tough because I was not feeling energetic at all.  I  managed the morning loop but didn't do any other "official" exercise.  It's miserably hot right now and that's not going to change until midweek so I was not interested in going outside and I just couldn't get into walking on my elliptical.  That's silly.  The elliptical is in my living room so I could just load up a podcast or watch a show on Netflix while I'm walking.  I'm also having a problem with my right hip (I injured it a long time ago) but that's easy to fix. A little Deep Blue Rub and a heating pad and I'm good to go in about a half an hour. Basically, I was making excuses to just sit on my butt all weekend.  I only got about 2500 steps in on Saturday and Sunday.

I actually did better this weekend with food than the previous weekend but it still wasn't on plan entirely. Breakfast is always the easiest meal of the day.  Lunch is not super hard but can be challenging depending on my mood.  Yesterday, I got thrown a curve ball at lunch.  My plan was leftover Pasta in meat sauce.  I use GF pasta and my husband bought a new type to try that was made from chickpeas.  The initial meal wasn't too bad, even though it was a little weird.  Reheated, however, it was so gross.  It did not reheat well at all.  I took a couple of bites and tossed it.  Blech!!  I was unsure what to eat instead, so I just had a granola bar. Surprisingly, it held me over until just about dinner time but I was ravenous by dinner.  I know PNP pushes to eat only when you're hungry and not to wait to long to eat when you're hungry but I eat on a schedule for medication reasons. I probably could have fit in some cherries or melon so that I wasn't so hungry by dinner.   So, I ate my planned dinner but then I ended up eating cheese and crackers as well because I got too hungry.  Fail!! I'm going to have to continue working on my weekends until I can routinely follow what I've planned.

So, today my plans are:

Breakfast:  Greek yogurt with berries, GF granola and chia seeds

Lunch: leftover chile verde

Dinner:  If I cook (Monday's are my husband's game nights with his buddies so its just me)  I will probably make something easy like tuna noodle casserole.  That will give me a chance to experiment a bit to make it a little healthier. Otherwise, I'll probably just eat leftovers.

Snack (if needed): fruit (berries, banana or melon)

Exercise: walking (either outside or on the elliptical)

Day 9 of the Emotional Eating 30 Day Journal Challenge:

If my emotional eating has a message, what is it trying to tell me?

Hmm.  This one is tough.  My first thought is it is trying to tell me that I am avoiding pain (whether that's emotional, psychological or physical).  Instead of facing things, I'm hiding behind food.  It also is probably telling me that I'm hiding from the world.  If I stay overweight, I'm too embarrassed to be seen by people and that allows me to hide in my little insulated world.  I think that stems from anxiety and depression which feeds back into my initial thought that I'm eating to avoid pain.  So, it creates a vicious circle. I need to allow myself to feel pain and work my way through it.  Otherwise, that pain will never go away.

Okay, well that's all for today.  I hope everyone has a wonderful Monday and remember ...Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes.