Tomorrow is the New Day One

Okay. I have been having knee pain for a couple weeks now. They just get stiff and hurt and don't want to support me. Especially after I sit for a while. My fiance says I'm just getting old and arthritic! LOL But I'm pretty sure that it is due to my recent weight gain and lack of exercise. I don't think it's a coincidence that this pain has increased as my weight has crept back up. Also, I was just cleaning the living room, you know, mostly bending over to pick up the kids toys. Well, I got extremely tired and very out of breath. That has never really happened before. Again, I don't think the timing is just a coincidence. And on top of that my stomach is rebelling and having all sorts of pain and bowel issues. Oh, and I keep getting dizzy and lightheaded, like the room is spinning. This weight is making me sick. Literally and figuratively. I put on a pair of shorts that were lose a few weeks ago and they are now tight. Not good. At breakfast this morning I told my daughter that we are revamping our schedule and we are all getting healthy together. She was into it! I told her that we were going to start making healthy meals together if she wanted to. She was psyched! I also told her that we were going to start going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. She wasn't too hip on that idea until I told her that the reason was so that we could all get up and go outside before it gets super hot and ride bikes, or walk around the lake or even play soccer outside. Then she was all about it! We even went to the store and got little man some new tennis shoes since he outgrew his other ones. Now he has shoes to walk and run in too! I am going to get off my lazy ass and start making my fiance lunch every night to take to work the next day. Healthy lunches. No more fried chicken and super-size portions of pasta and pizza. The hardest habit I will have to get him to break is buying the kids chocolate all the time. He likes to be Mr. FunTimes. He will have to get over it. His funtimes are going to make our kids overweight or unhealthy, or both. I am loving the pic above with the quotes. I need to follow those everyday. LESS WORDS, MORE ACTION. Stop talking about it so much and start DOING IT!

I've Got to Get Serious . . . and Not Just for Me

Today my fiance said that our daughter is filling out. He also stated that at the rate she was going that she would be chunky by the age of ten. I was super mad. I mean, how dare he judge her already? She is almost five years old. That's it. And he had doomed her. And he said it in front of her which made me more irate and once she had gone back to her room to play, an argument ensued. I told him that he would damage her self-esteem and self-worth my dooming her to be overweight before it even happened. He pointed out to me that she only wants to eat junk food, chocolate and candies and likes to eat late at night. He also pointed out that she doesn't get much exercise unless he takes the kids to the playground to run around. And I got quiet. Oh, I was still angry, but I was also thinking. I was having a revelation. My kids are doomed to be unhealthy because of us. Mostly because of me because I am the one person they are with for the majority of every day. I don't take them out to exercise. It's hot, I'm tired, I've got schoolwork...and a whole myriad of excuses that I've made up so that we stay inside. We are both guilty of buying them junk food to eat. Just yesterday he came home with two king size Reese's candy bar stick things. Honestly, I ended up eating about 1/3 of each of them. We also don't have them drink water. The majority of the time they are drinking juice or soda...and milk too. I am setting a horrible example for my kids to follow. I don't exercise. I don't eat right. I am an emotional eater, so when I get upset I want to eat. Right now I keep thinking of the orange sherbet ice cream in the freezer and how I want to get up right now and get some in a bowl with milk and devour it. I'm not teaching them coping mechanisms because I don't have any myself...other than eating the distress away. No wonder they have a hard time dealing with disappointment and other issues. I have a hard time and I'm not teaching them how to cope. I am damning my own children! This is so upsetting to me. I have got to change. I've got to get serious about my health and include my children in that. I do not want my children to live the same fate that I have lived. I do not want them to feel less than. I have felt less than all my life. I do not want them to live with that because I didn't want to get off my lazy ass and be healthier and help make my family healthier. I am getting down on myself so hard about this that I so want to eat!!! I am fighting it. Step number one, I guess. I just love them so much and I want the best for them. I have to be the best for them.

Team Taralynn and the Seven Day Cleanse

Okay, so I am trying to get back on track and work on my studies. It's been rough. So I have been following this blog called "Undressed Skeleton" for a while now. She has a great story and shares good ideas and recipes. So she has a group of girls that she chooses every few months to do a group weight loss effort. They are starting the challenge with a seven day cleanse. The cleanse basically lays out what you can eat on what days (there are lots to choose from). There are three days when you can only eat fruit and nothing else. Crazy, huh? But it doesn't sound impossible. My digestive tract could use a good cleaning! So I'm going to give it a go. I will start on Monday. I will be a week behind, but that's okay. It will allow me to cheat a little and use some of their ideas and tips! :)

Distractions and Decisions

Well, my daughter is out of school for the summer. I have no idea where she is going to go for kindergarten. Our lease is up in August and I have no idea where we are going to live after that. My fiance's hours got cut and I have no idea how we are going to pay bills. All of these stressers have triggered my binge-eating phase once again. Or I guess it's stress eating. Whatever it is, I am very full and I've had pumpkin pie tonight. Cripes! I've probably gained back every bit of what i had lost plus some. I don't really know because I'm afraid to get on the scale and see. A friend of mine mentioned a show she was watching about surrogacy. I looked into it. I'm not sure why, I guess I was just pulled to do so. Well, it pays well. Surrogates get anywhere from $25,000 to $35,000 for the first surrogacy. Plus you get to help someone who can't have a child complete their dreams of a family. I contacted an agency to see exactly what is involved. It can be a long process, but I am seriously thinking about it. It certainly would help us financially.

Integration is Key for Organization and Follow Thru

I have noticed that I am able to do one thing at a time really well. For instance, I can exercise like a mother all week long. However, my eating habits suck that week, I slack on my household chores and I slack on my schoolwork. If I concentrate on schoolwork, then no exercise, poor diet and lack of household cleaning ensues. Why can't I do everything? I honestly don't know. I guess that just isn't my style. But...I'm going to try. I did figure one thing out for sure. I have a dry/erase calendar that I use for important events and bills that are due. I never thought to use it to schedule other things too. So I took the time to make a list in my handy-dandy notebook of all bills due. The next list was all events at the two libraries closest to us and the Children's Board a couple miles away. The third list was of the times that the libraries are open and the times that I would be available to go there and do some schoolwork in peace and quiet. The next two lists I'm still working on. Those are the exercise list and the meal planning list. I also have family events to put on a list as well. Let's just say that my dry/erase calendar does not have enough room for all of these events. I also was blown away by the amount of things that I do or am trying to do. It's crazy! But it must be done. It's not like it's all willy-nilly-silly stuff that doesn't matter. I don't know. I'm trying to get it together. Integration is key here. If I can see it all in one place, it will make more sense to me and I will be more likely to get things done and not forget things. Oh, and let's not forget that I have a notebook in which I write my daily to-do lists, which include copying things off of the calendar. I don't know. Maybe I need to use Word and make a calendar for each week. Just one week at a time for meals, exercise and all the things off the dry/erase board. Then put that printout in my daily to do list notebook. Actually that sounds like it might work. Glad I talked it out! Well, I suppose I should get to work on that....:)

Time is Flying By . . . I am so random!

I just logged in and looked at my last post. It was on May 30th! I have not logged in or checked in for a week! Geez! This past week has been nuts. My daughter's VPK had several events this week that I had to prepare for, including her "pretend" birthday party since her birthday is in the summer. I had to make Little Mermaid rainbow cupcakes. I will try to post a photo later. They turned out well and the kids were amazed that the cake was rainbow colors! She also had her end of year celebration where they sang songs and were presented with a certificate of completion. She did so well, and looked cute doing it! After that they had a pizza and ice cream party. Talk about temptation! I did end up eating one slice of pizza and finishing my daughter's ice cream. :(

Today we are having terrible weather! It is raining like crazy. Which sucks because the children and I have to attend a WIC appointment this afternoon. I hate driving in rain. And I especially hate driving with the children and having to drag them in and out of places in the rain. Oh, and we are all sick with some sort of sinus/cold thing too. Fun, fun, fun. And for those of you who don't know, yes, my family has WIC. We also have EBT. The economy and my fiance's job just have not been good to us. We would love to not have to use this stuff. Lord knows I would love not to have to do the appointments or the evaluations and the reviews. But it is necessary for us right now. I have to finish school and my fiance is just a few steps away from getting re-certified as a paramedic. Once those things happen we will be financially stable once again. I miss that. We haven't been financially stable in a long time. Since 2010, I guess. Back then we were both working and making pretty good money. However, I got laid off in October of that year and he got laid off the following January. Things just haven't been really good, money-wise, since then. Slowly, but surely, we are coming back from it. Unfortunately, it just doesn't happen overnight.

As I just wrote that, I just realized it is a prime example of how my ADD works. I start off on a topic, in this case, weather. That leads to talking about WIC appointments and moves into EBT and how we ended up needing it. The next thing I probably would have touched on is how there are sucky people that just use the system and are lazy and don't have any plans to do better. So I can go from weather to people suck in just a few short thoughts. No wonder my fiance has trouble following what I'm saying in a conversation! Wow, this post started out about how time is flying by, and ended on ADD. WOW. I am kind of weird. This is why I could never write a book. It wouldn't make any sense to anyone but me! Ok. I'm going to go now. I think I'll rename this post. LOL!