A picture of today...

Hey, hey...look who's back from the void.

Confession time:  I have had SUCH a hard time pulling myself together the last month.  After my posts about the struggle and my HOPEFUL post that I was pulling it around, it's been quite a struggle again since.  My weeks have mostly been doing really great for 5-6 days and then come Sunday, I'd find myself elbow deep in chocolate and chips and crying on the couch by 9pm.  There's one thing to indulge and another thing to just stuff your face with a bunch of things you don't really want, but you just feel the overwhelming NEED to have them.  And as much as I tried to brush off these 'rough days' and move on, the repetition of them was really getting to me.  It's like I've been trying to dig out of a hole and just when I felt like I would start to get some traction to get myself out of this bad cycle, I'd fall to the bottom again and have to start climbing, all while feeling terribly defeated (and pretty gross from all that junk eating)

And on top of that frustration...I've wanted this blog to be a place where I document my struggles as much as my 'successes.'  But to be quite honest, I couldn't even formulate A sentence for a post this entire time.  My food OBSESSION reared it's ugly head again...making it difficult to think about anything BUT food and/or the self loathing that comes with all of the overindulging and bad choices. Even my once-a-week balance recap just seemed like too much 'food focus' (even though we've had some REALLY great healthy recipes the last month!  Some favorites include Asian lettuce wrap salads, 20 minute chicken satay and mini Mediterranean turkey meatloaves)  I still find myself struggling with the balance of ENJOYING food without letting it become TOO much.  It's even MORE frustrating when I feel like I've gotten a lot of elements of it under control, only to tumble backwards.  It made it feel a zillion % worse BECAUSE I had been doing so well. 

I think the added anxiety of having to perform on a stage again (IN PUBLIC!) with my adult tap class, really brought up all of my 'grade school' nervousness of feeling like the self-conscious one in the group.  So OF COURSE, with that I really wanted to try to lose weight before hitting the stage, but instead ended up self-sabotaging myself at every turn.  The pressure I put myself to lose weight, coupled with the comparison of how I would look next to all the other ladies in my class didn't lead me to determination and willpower.  It lead to anxiety, which looped right back into overeating, feeling lousy and then overeating some more.

And ya know what happened the day of the recital?  

As the weekend approached, I realized I wasn't going to just drop the hoped for 40 pounds, and then completely shifted my focus to saying 'well, it is what it is so I might as well just enjoy it.'  And I did.  And I had a blast.  My preoccupation with my weight was far from my thoughts and I just had fun and danced.  

And I even made a mental note that I felt like I was going to have an easier time trying to eat well again, once the PRESSURE of 'needing' to lose weight was released.  And ya know what?  It has been.  It's crazy how much we can psych ourselves out sometimes.

So here's where I am now:  Last Tuesday, I felt as gross and low as you could get.  COULD NOT even think about how I was going to get out of this place, feeling gross both mentally AND physically.  And once I realized I have been TEACHING a bunch of yoga classes (27 in June!), but not really DOING much yoga, I decided (thanks to Scott for watching the kidsJ) to get up and GET MOVIN!  Now that the recital is over and my foot has been feeling better, I've wanted to get my cardio back into the picture, so I popped my ear buds in and got to dancin.  And by the time I was done, I felt a zillion times better.  Doing it the next day?  Even better.  So now I've been working on adding ACTUAL exercise (NOT JUST TEACHINGJ) back into nearly every day.  (I've never really had much 'mental' issues with exercise, and I definitely have a post regarding that coming up soon)  But the exercise has not only made me feel physically better, but has helped my mental game A TON.

And on the food front, I've been reading this book from the library...

A friend of mine had recommended it to me, as she has VERY SUCCESSFULLY overcome overeating.  It has a lot of interesting advice, and at the forefront is to STOP DIETING.  I've very rarely followed a traditional 'diet' in all of my years of healthy eating.  But I HAVE looked at food as 'good' vs. 'forbidden' and still struggle with this.  I've definitely been shifting my focus to eating not for weight loss, but for HEALTH'S SAKE this year, but still struggle with not feeling guilty with the 'bad' food.  (and again-there IS a difference between enjoying a splurge vs. starting to eat chocolate and not stopping until you hate yourself, even though you barely tasted it)  Also:  THE SCALE.  I could probably write a whole blog solely on the mental havoc the scale causes my brain (and I NEED to write a post soon), but let's just say I'm trying to ban it nearly COMPLETELY because it is doing me ZERO favors.  It just makes weight loss get in my head too much and we severely need an overdue break up.

OK...so as usual, this is way too long, but I just needed to get on here and type it out.  As always, I just wanted to share that I'm the journey just like all of you!  Hope you have a great day.

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As always...thanks for reading!