week 15 - weigh-in day and the short view

I got a CT scan this week. Of my head.  Well, of my sinuses actually.  See, its now been 3 months since I started to think I had allergies, then got sick and finally ended up not being able to sleep lying down.  Have had 2 rounds of antibiotics with no change and the doctor said after the first round that if I was not better after the second round I'd get to have the CT.  The cool, super-cool thing about my cat scan?  I got a dvd of it.  For free.  And now I have a picture of my actual skull.  What I look like underneath all this other stuff.  Me.  The part of me that'll still be here after I'm dead and gone.  Yeah, I know that might be a bit maudlin and strange to you but to me it's super cool.  (Plus now I want a copy of my back x-ray cause if you put the 2 together you have almost the entire skeleton of me!)

What I started thinking about while looking at all the different images of my head (no, I don't appear to have any tumors but I'm sure my doc will tell me the results tomorrow) was the basic things that make me ME.  When you get down to it you are made of skin and bones and muscle etc.  and what goes over that (or in the case of fat, under the skin) is up to me.  I did not pick which bones, what type of density, how long etc.  But  I do get to pick what goes over that.

This leads to this week's confession.  I am at minus 29 pounds.  Yup.  Gained back.  And I know why. As my friend Janice pointed out (correctly too I might add) when I don't blog I'm likely to have not been logging my food journal and not have met my goal of losing more pounds.  This last week was just like the previous 2 or 3.  Busy.  And I have noticed another correlation with me - when I feel stressed and overwhelmed I am less likely to be focused and efficient.  My room has been in a state of shambles for a bit now and I finally got some new furniture that I'd planned to get that will help with some of the shambles.  (I kept saying I would get rid of clothes but never did and was perpetually moving a pile of clothes from the bed to the floor and back again, with no room for them in the closet or in the 1 dresser I had - now I have 3) I have also been planning a big get together in January for my birthday and the finances of that have been weighing heavily on my head. 

I don't think I've said this on here but my finances and my food intake are very closely related.  When I find that I haven't logged my food intake or blogged on here it's highly likely that I will find I have not been paying close attention to my budget and bills.  When I was depressed these were key indicators for me - I'd get a bill in the mail.  Feel overwhelmed at the concept of paying it and so just not even open it, rather stack it in the corner somewhere and "deal with it later".  I have long since set up a budget and generally do not go over that, in fact put money into savings (a-la Dave Ramsey program to get out of debt).  But in the last month I have noticed that along with not logging my food, along with not actually DOING any exercise or real physical activity, I have not been adhering to my budget and found myself at the very last limit of the bank account prior to this last pay check. 

I think that this is all probably locked into my concern for the change in jobs, my not feeling well for 3 months and compounded with the pain from the car accident I was just in a pity mode - and what I do when I feel like that is go to a comfort source...usually food, combined with buying something and spending money on something I should not spend money on. 

This brings me to today's weigh-in.  I am back to being minus 29 pounds and that irritates me because I was so proud of being 31 pounds down.  And then I started to look at the mess in my room and the mess in my physical life and mess in my financial life (all of which are seriously not the worst thing ever but if I ignore them they will spiral into a big problem...thus the nip in the bud NOW) and realized that this comes back to me feeling out of control in areas of my life that I really have complete control over.  I am 100% in control of what and how much I eat, of how much I move/exercise, of how clean my room is, of how much money I spend and on what.  I just need to remind myself that I can get all of these things in line with what it is that I want for me.  And that means putting perspective on it. 

I have a tendency to forget that there's a short view and a long view....  The short view is this:  I weigh more than I want to, but less than I did.  I have a messy room, but I'm getting it organized again.  I want a new job, but I don't have one yet.  I have a big thing I want to do but it will take saving money that I can't spend on other things now to enjoy it later.  The long view is:  me being 100 pounds less than where I started from, me having a party and a big trip in my future, me getting rid of things I no longer use or wear and having a bedroom that is organized and inviting and peaceful.  And me working for myself as a therapist.  In order to get to that long view I have to keep the short view in what I have recently described to one of my best friends as "laser focus".  I cannot get to that long view any other way than through meeting the goals set in the short view.  I totally WANT to push a button and get to the long view.  But that is not realistic.  So I have to do the work.

That being said, I had the first of what will be a total of 3 peppermint mochas from Starbucks today.  10 points and completely worth it.  I LOVE them.  And I charted it.  And now I'm going to go back into my room and continue to create order from chaos, and at the end of the afternoon I will sit down at the computer in my room (which is completely buried now) and pay bills.  This brings me to my mantra.....remembering to take it...

One day.  One pound.  One step (and one goal) at a time.
~N