Two years and eight months.Will it ever end?
Category Archives: health & fitness
A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals
Twitter Update: Time once again to annoy my tweeps with a daily ph…
Time once again to annoy my tweeps with a daily photo food journal! I need some added accountability. #weightwatchers http://t.co/3YV40mqimq
Third Time’s the Charm
After my recent experiences with medical professionals and lab work and needles and whatnot, when it came time for the blood drive at my work, I figured, why not?
I hadn’t given blood since 2006; back then, though, I had given at two drives in a row. The second experience was so physically uncomfortable, so unlike the first, that I found reasons not to donate again. Some of those reasons were completely viable, like being pregnant. Some were more of a stretch, like being concerned that I wouldn’t be able to take a nap after work like I did before, since I have Connor to wrangle now.
At any rate, I’d enjoyed such good phlebotomists with my lab work of late that I finally realized that there was no reason I shouldn’t re-up my donor karma.
So I did. This morning.
My donor card, of course, was long out-of-date. My donor ID was no longer valid, and wouldn’t scan into their system. (However, I found that when I created an account on redcrossblood.org, they do still have my donor history saved!) I sat down with the nice man and did all the prerequisites, including iron count, pulse and BP (both good), easy questions, and finally the uncomfortable/amusing questions (which they now ask via computer, which is faster and less awkward).
The prelims took longer than the actual donation, I think.
Once I got situated in my elevated lawn chair and everything was in place and the nice lady confirmed my name and birthday, I filled up the donation bag pretty quick. Got unhooked from my tubes, needle removed, bandages applied (including red self-adherent wrap tape instead of the old-school gauze and sticky tape), and off to the canteen table I went. A small can of apple juice and a pack of raisins later, I was on my way back up to my desk.
It was so uneventful, it was almost not even worth blogging about.
Almost.
I did feel kind of tired afterward, but no more so than usual. I managed an easy walk outside in the heat over my lunch break… but I compensated for fatigue by eating more sugar and carbs than I should have.
I’m not sure I’ll donate every single time — at least, not right off the bat. Maybe every other time, though. Until someone sticks me so bad that the whole donation hurts and I bruise like a motherfucker afterward.
July Weigh-In
There was a week where I had a couple of really shitty days in a row, food-wise. Went way over my Daily Target and blew through all 49 Weekly Points in just a couple of days. The next day, I decided to do a half-assed fast: no breakfast or lunch, but all the fluids I can drink. I started the day with a glass of milk and some vitamins, and didn’t feel hungry or lightheaded until 11:30, when I ate a few homemade cookies a co-worker brought in. So, “breakfast” and “lunch” were 8 PPVs total, out of my daily 28, and I drank a total of five cups of tea during the course of the workday. Honestly, apart from that one little bout of feeling lightheaded, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I also probably could have eaten the leftover banana at my desk for lunch instead of the cookies and been just fine, too.
Then I ate my banana and went home. I wasn’t sure what to expect: would I binge out and go ballistic and eat everything in sight, or would I be able to rein myself in and eat a fruit salad or something else especially light for dinner? I ate a normal dinner, and then was still hungry, of course, in addition to feeling just generally weird and “off.” In the end, I went over my Daily Target, anyway, which wasn’t entirely unexpected.
I guess the upshot of this little experiment was the reminder that being hungry isn’t an emergency. I don’t have to shove food in my mouth as soon as I get a little twinge (or as soon as I’m bored). I’ll be just fine until my next planned meal, especially if I stay properly hydrated.
Tired and Cranky
I’m not sure why I’m even bothering to wiggle my fingers and record my thoughts on this particular topic. It’s most definitely a case of I Know What To Do But I Don’t Do It. It’s also a bit of The Chicken Or The Egg, in that I’m not sure which thing is the cause and which is the effect, but they all feed off one another and get worse.
The problem: I’m tired and cranky.
Why am I tired? Because I stayed up too late last night. I’m cranky because I snoozed my alarm this morning when I knew I should just get up, and that made me late to work. My almost-four-year-old son also not wanting to get up didn’t help the cause, either.
Why did I stay up too late last night? Because Connor wouldn’t go to sleep and kept getting up, and I wanted to get a time-sensitive blog post done (and didn’t — only the photos, not the text), on top of also wanting some wind-down time in bed before lights out. That wind-down time, as with my wake-up time, always suffers from my tired-brain lack of good judgement, so I stay up even later when I need the sleep the most.
Why wouldn’t Connor stay in bed? Because he’s almost four. And because I kept going upstairs to placate him. According to my chat log with Aaron last night over Words With Friends (because that’s how we communicate when one of us is at home and the other at work), here’s how things went down:
8:15pm – Tucked Connor in.
8:20pm – Connor had to go potty.
8:25pm – Connor asked what I was microwaving.
8:30pm – Connor was “having trouble going to sleep.”
8:45pm – Connor wanted pajama shorts instead of long pants.
9:00pm – Connor turned on his light and wanted a hug.
At that point, I totally lost my shit on him and yelled really loud and made him cry. Which made me feel like Parent of the Year, of course. Once I got him in bed that time, after some hugs and a little talk, I told him that I was going back to “the Grown-Up Room” (aka the home office, where we keep our tower computers and our media), so if he called me again, I wouldn’t hear him.
He stayed in bed that time. Well, as far as I know. I really was in the office where I couldn’t hear him unless he yelled or cried, since I don’t plug in the baby monitor at night.
Oh, and I should point out that I also eat when I’m tired and frustrated, which isn’t helping my goal of losing 15 pounds by Thanksgiving of this year.
So, what would have been some better options, taking into account that tired-brain decisions are always bad ones, and better avoided altogether?
Option 1: Tough love. Put Connor down, allow him a single additional Mommy visit, and inform him that I will be busy and unable to hear him call for me after that (unless it’s an emergency, of course).
Option 2: Resign myself to not getting any “me” time. I could should have just gone upstairs at 9:30pm and had some time to wind down with any number of things: meditation, yoga, iPhone, book. I could easily have been in bed by 10pm (which is really when I *should* be in bed)
Option 3: Start the bedtime routine earlier and/or tighten things up. Less play time in the bath. One book instead of two. Starting the battle of wills earlier (and ending it earlier by refusing to entertain it further).
Option 4: All of the above.
I have a battle plan and a schedule for tonight. I hope tonight is better.