so i finally lost another pound when i weighed myself this morning!! so happy to be seeing progress! i guess all the sacrifice and eating right did pay off, and i feel better too. eating the right foods is so important. i'm down to 123 lbs now, so if i can get down to 120, it'll be perfect. i know i can get there! they moved me a new, more spacious cube at work, so that made me happy this week, and will probably make it a little easier to go into work tomorrow, knowing that my scenery will be a little different. also, it's in a corner so it's more private, which is nice, and closer to the windows. i told my mother and she said it was good that they moved me because it's beneficial to shift stale energy around sometimes. she is so right. that's why she's my mom, we think so alike when it comes to things like that.
my weekend plans fell through, but i was kind of glad about that because it's still bitterly cold outside. i'm proud of myself for being able to get my body in shape in the dead of winter, without the benefit of working out outside, and the temptation to overindulge in food. now i just need to keep it up!
it's so hard to work at the pace i have been working. bosses, i truly believe, can easily forget that the person working for them is a human being. at least the bosses i've had in my life. i've had bosses talk down to me, ask the impossible of me, and its all i can do to keep it together and not blow up. i try so hard to be pleasant, professional and enthusiastic, but when it comes down to it, we are all there for the paycheck. and i personally, don't really give a shit about the work i'm doing. sure, i do it well and take pride in a job well done, but it's not going to dictate my life or make me work more than 40 hours a week if i absolutely don't have to. there are currently two VPs in my department. the one who is not my boss is kind, sweet, very independent, hardly asks anything of his assistant, who just started by the way a few months ago, is only 21 years old and has had basically no time with the company. she gets to leave at 3pm on fridays as long as she makes up her 40 hours a week. the other VP is my boss, the tyrant. she has her days when she's ok, nice. but i honestly dread when she's in the office. even if she's not there, she'll repeatedly call me, like she did today. i try to see her as a human being, a mom, a regular person. but when she comes at me with this attitude like i'm simple minded or dumb or should be able to read her mind, that's when i get angry. i'm not a miracle worker. i'm a human being. yes i work fast, but i have limits, and right now my workload is becoming way too much to bare.she actually called me today to have me check her office to see if she had left her cosmetics case in there. i searched all around and found nothing, i couldn't miss it, it's a huge case, and when i let her know. she said 'oh i was sure it was in there,' and i said i looked all around and it wasn't. and we actually had to talk about this insignificant thing. was that really necessary? she has me there on the phone in silence, i have no idea what she expected me to say. i wasn't lying to her. then she called me back to have the delivery guys send her laptop to the office where she was working, so i had to remove it from the dock, and let the guys know to come get it. then she calls me back a third time and asks me to look up some numbers on a spreadsheet that i sent out to her which she could have easily checked, and tell them to her over the phone. then she called back and asked me to do the same thing from another spreadsheet. then she called back to say that the updates she needed for a meeting were not the latest updates, when all i did was copy and paste what her managers had sent me last week as their latest update. we kept going back and forth, 'but what are all these dates' and so on. and i said 'that's what they sent, that's the latest update, that's what i sent to you. and she says 'you need to coordinate this with them' and that's not what i was told, i was told to copy and paste the new information they send me into the spreadsheet, so i DID. i was like, what the hell do you want??? and finally she tells me to put the date of the next meeting, after arguing with me about when the last meeting was and the dates should follow it, like i would check, i'm just going by the data i was SENT. UGH!! then she says she doesn't know who submitted which update, so it follows that she should ask me to separate them by name which she eventually does, but i had no way of knowing that this is what she wanted. she could have easily taken my update, communicated with her OWN team to find out who submitted what, and that would be that. but no, i have to do each and every little step. and the workload just keeps piling on, there are so many things that she asks me to keep track of that i feel like i'm losing my mind. it's hard to keep it all straight. not to mention that i also have requests coming in from her team all the time for things they need. i feel like i'm directly assisting about 5 people. not an easy task for one person. i feel like i want to quit. its all just becoming too much and i don't know why i'm putting up with it and keeping up some fucking happy face. there are other more important things in life, like living and being healthy, than dealing with 5 emails from one person (either my actual boss or her director, or one of her 4 managers) sent from 6-9pm each night asking me for all different things, so the stress begins before i even get to work. i don't know why i always end up with these bosses from hell. but i decided to actually pray tonight for some sort of solution to this, because i don't know what else to do. a good friend once gave me a small card that says 'cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.' so i'm going to try that, just writing out my prayers and pleading to him. i don't care about how much i earn anymore. my salary is higher than what my needs are. most of it is just sitting in the bank. there's no reason for me to have to deal with this much stress. it's not worth it at all. i've been at my company since 2003. don't i deserve to leave early on fridays sometimes???too bad i called in sick last tuesday, or i'd totally be staying home tomorrow and calling in sick. i'm exhausted.
well i didn't give up, kept up the weight loss/fitness plan and i think it's finally starting to pay off. i was just getting a bit impatient. it's not easy giving up your favorite things, like chocolate! and having smaller portions of things like rice, and exercising like a crazy person and have the results be slow in coming. but finally i'm down to about 3-4 pounds from my goal weight. so i'm so relieved!
for some reason, when i go for walks, the weight comes off faster. i went for a long one hour walk this past saturday and ended up discovering a very big park near my apartment. i passed by it a few times when i've been driven somewhere and always forgot exactly where it was located, but i found it on my walk and i was happy i did. it has a really huge race track and people were running/jogging/power walking on there, which was inspiring, also there were lots of hilly paths with inclines which are good for walking quickly on and burning more calories.
there are basketball courts there too and a small boardwalk overlooking the water where lots of people were wandering around, walking their dogs, or taking pictures. there was even a small wedding party there taking pictures. now that i know this park is so close, i have somewhere nice to walk to when i feel like going for a walk, instead of just the boring streets or the main street with all the heavy foot traffic and shops and restaurants (and the temptations to window shop which usually leads to actual shopping). also, now i have more of an incentive to finally buy a bike and go bike riding again when the weather gets warm. i used to bike ride all the time.
with my music on during the walk, the time flew by, and it was a hell of a lot easier and more fun than the 1 hour cardio DVD i've been suffering through the past few weeks. so i'm going to continue eating right and exercising, and sacrificing my favorite foods a while longer to see if i can get in bikini-ready shape for my upcoming family cruise this summer!
i've been getting discouraged lately. no weight lost and i've been doing my exercise plan and eating right since 1/4/2010. shouldn't i be seeing some weight loss by now? it's upsetting me and making me feel like there's no point to wearing makeup and dressing well, because what's the point if i work so hard and can't be thin and can't change my body? i don't know what else to do.:(should i cut my calorie intake even more? exercise more often and do different kinds of exercise? i don't want to get into the dangerous territory, but i'm getting desperate because i don't feel like myself and this is taking too long. i keep going up and down two pounds and not losing any more than that. i am not eating any chocolate or pasta, only salads when i eat out and fruits, vegetables and yogurt if i get hungry at night. i was looking at some weight loss pills today but most of them contain a lot of caffeine which i don't want to do to my body because it could have a negative effect on my anxiety. i feel stuck :(
ok, so i've been sticking to my excercise and diet plan pretty well. i'm pleasantly surprised with myself and proud of myself. i don't have to feel like a lazy, hopeless slob anymore. i tried the tracy anderson dance cardio workout, but that turned out to be difficult because it takes time to learn the choreagraphed dance routines she teaces on the dvd. i wanted to put in a cardio workout DVD and get straight to sweating and burning calories, so i bought Jillian Michaels: Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism (2008) DVD and it's great! jillian says very motivating things during the workout that encourage you to keep going and that's what i like most.it's pretty difficult and there are a few moves i still can't do, but even skipping or modifying those moves and pushing through the rest of the DVD makes me sweat a lot and feel majorly sore. i could barely move the day after i did it the first time, but that's a good feeling, because it means my muscles are toning up, and feeling sore reminds me that i need to eat well because i am working so hard on improving how my body looks. i was really craving chocolate tonight after dinner, but i drank water and resisted the craving, and it worked. i did the workout DVD and had some apple slices with peanut butter as a snack later on.
its nice to workout and feel that i'm doing something that can result in my feeling better about myself again, and more confident. it makes me realize i'm in control, of how my body looks, how i feel, my energy level, and the food i choose to eat. i try to consciously make healthier choices no matter where i am. it's not always an easy thing, especially when i'm faced with visiting my parents and having my mother's cooking. but i persevere. i ask her to make me vegetables with chicken instead of rice. and i skip dessert, and drink only water with dinner. sometimes i slip up and have a (rare) soda or an iced tea, but i make sure to always have water with dinnner even if i end up drinking something else too. water before meals also helps me feel fuller.
for the first time in a while this weekend, i finally got the urge to write again. and i can only write when i feel good about myself and who i am, so that's a good sign. if i feel like writing again then that means that i feel like myself again.
i'm so glad that tonight i finally got the motivation to exercise. i'm such a no exercise person, that this was truly difficult. but i'm in the struggle to lose about 5-7 pounds right now, and just eating less doesn't seem to be working like it used to. i have to be more active and burn more calories than i'm taking in, so those last stubborn pounds will go away. so i worked out for about 50 minutes tonight. tomorrow i will make it an hour. i decided that my workout time will be from 8-9pm every night, after i eat a light dinner at around 7pm.i did hundreds of crunches-both standing and sitting, some squats, jumping jacks, and leg lifts while lying down. i hate the feeling of my thighs rubbing together, and there's nothing that makes a girl want to eat dinner less than coming home from work, undressing, and seeing a protruding stomach. and it sucks to know that this is my body, regardless of how little i seem to eat. i don't quite get it. so i did a few things, i looked up some jillian michaels exercise mini videos online and learned how to do stand up crunches for the abs from those, and i ordered a cardio dance workout DVD from trancy anderson, who claims to be able to make any woman 'smaller.' and god, how i want to be smaller. not super thin, just thin enough to fit back into my pants again. i found myself wearing the same two pairs of pants for work over and over, and other days just skirts and tights, because i no longer fit into anything else. and that's when the frustration comes in. but now i'm really serious and won't let anything deter me from getting my nice body back. i
also rented a video about the vegan lifestyle from netflix, which i should be getting tomorrow. it shows you how to shop for healthy foods and what foods to avoid to improve health. people who have given up meat say that weight loss is one result, also having a lighter feeling and more energy. so it seems worth considering.
and the first thing that happens when i decide this is that my mom invites me to a colombian restaurant for my aunt's birthday this weekend. i had to make up an excuse and turn her down. i'm not 21 anymore, simply eating in moderation the day after a big meal won't work anymore. and colombian restaurants have no salads or anything light on their menus, and their portions are huuuuuge!!!! they are seriously huge, like a 2 person dinner is usually served for each person. no thanks, don't want to derail myself now when i actually feel motivated. i was looking up online to see if i could find those sketchers shape up sneakers that help you tone up while you walk, they are really expensive, i had no idea. i don't really want to wait for them to come in the mail, so i'll probably go to dsw tomorrow or friday to buy them. i wonder why it is that anti anxiety medication puts a stop to your metabolism so you balloon up. maybe they work by getting you focused on losing weight instead of obsessing over how anxious you feel? and why is it that birth control makes you steadily gain weight the longer you take it? and why does aging make your metabolism slow down? and why does everything seem to cause weight gain???
tonight i watched jennifer's body. a movie i rented just out of curiosity. i wondered what it was about megan fox that people find so irresistible and amazing. and i still don't really know. she's conventionally pretty i guess. but also a bit hard to watch. maybe because she doesn't seem to be quite human. so i guess the role in this movie was a good choice for her. she was strangely convincing. i was expecting a lot more gore considering the movie's premise- a demonic cheerleader who likes to eat boys. but there actually wasn't that much. the writer of this movie, diablo cody, also wrote 'juno' which i haven't seen but had such a buzz around it that i assumed she was a good writer, like tina fey, or someone like that who knows how to be clever with humor. but the dialogue and snappy comments in this movie, jennifer's body, just fall flat and seem to be there just for shock value or to offer quotables like movies that are cult classics. 'heathers' comes to mind, no one can beat that film's one liners like:veronica:'Heather told me she teaches people "real life." She said, real life sucks losers dry. You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. I said, so, you teach people how to spread their wings and fly? She said, yes. I said, you're beautiful. 'jason dean:'Our love is God, let's go get a Slushie.'heather:'Transfer to Washington. Transfer to Jefferson. No one at Westerberg is going to let you play their reindeer games. 'heather:'did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?'jason dean:'everyone's life has got static. is your life perfect?'jennifer's body is not really a cult classic. it was a bit disturbing, but not really that scary, and not really that funny either. i don't think the writer knew what tone to go for with it because it seemed all over the place. it seems like it was made just as a vehicle to make money, to profit on the name of megan fox and her looks, and the fame of diablo cody. it could've been a lot better, and was pretty disappointing. the netflix rental didn't have any featurettes on it either (which i really hate), only previews . i read that the official dvd of jennifer's body contains deleted scenes and a featurette, i'm a bit curious to watch those if only to see megan fox's real personality. if she has one, that is.
here's a pic of me and a friend from work at our company christmas party. many drinks were had by all..
