As midnight approaches

My dear readers please be prepared for some ugliness. Here I sit in bed on a Sunday night and I am left with only negativity. I have been struggling through some pretty immense pain, physical, mental and emotional. The physical pain is the pain of which I am in least amount of control, so it looms as the most frustrating. My knee is no longer swollen, but there is still this intense burning pain every fourth of fifth step. Adding to that is this severe tightness in my back. It is not a place on my back where I have ever experienced pain before. I can feel it in every single movement I make. How did I hurt it, you ask? I answer with a very sad and pathetic, getting up from the couch. You know you are an obese human being when getting off the couch can trigger this amount of pain. I cannot even express into words how defeated this has left me. I have been working so hard, and I know that this pain is most likely due to the amount of work my body has been getting, but in this moment, it does not help. All it means is that I have been disgustingly unhealthy my entire life. As if I needed yet another reminder of that. I knew this process would be tough, but this two steps forward 1 step back dance I am doing is starting to really get to me.

This physical hiccup paired with yet more financial struggles led to a food breakdown. I truly hate to admit this, but if I am not going to be honest, what is the point? I broke down and bought Taco Bell this week. I just could not handle any of this anymore. If I am not seeing progress, why should I deny myself the food that comforts me. There was a problem with this theory though. See, this food no longer comforts me. Every damn bite I could feel myself judging, well, myself. There is a commercial out right now where a guy who cannot afford a gym membership hires middle school girls to tell him when he is being gross. That is how I felt with every bite of Taco Bell. As soon as I bought it I knew it was a bad idea, but with money being tight, I could not throw it away. I ate it. I ate it all and I drank a large soda. The Taco bell WRECKED me. After roughly 2 months of not putting that crap in my body, my body was not prepared for it. I felt awful. It was not just the mental judging, it was the physical awful. I felt lethargic, and gross. It was clear in that moment, that I cannot continue to put that kind of junk in my body. It was such an interesting experience. I could feel myself hating every single bite, yet I could not stop myself from eating it. It was like I was trying to convince myself that this is exactly what I wanted and needed, but it really was not. Through all of the other doubts and negativity, my food intake has remained pretty healthy, and now I know why. My body does not want this garbage any longer.

So what am I left with on this Sunday night? I am left with a body feeling completely destroyed. Rehearsal was a real struggle for me tonight, but we do not have enough time left for me to sit out numbers, so I powered through. I miss the walking and the swimming. I no longer enjoy sitting around doing nothing. I want to be active. I want to do something and my body is not letting me. This has led to me having a really difficult time keeping myself mentally healthy. I am really down on myself. I have been all weekend. I can tell that I am not myself, but I cannot seem to stop it. I have reverted back, in a way. I pulled away from Martina, momentarily, but I did. I hated it. I just wanted to shut myself in my room and wallow in this awful feeling. It made me angry, which leads me to my next big goal.

When I was younger, like early teenage years, I had a serious temper. There used to be holes, or cracks in the house in which I grew up that were caused by my fists, or by me throwing doors open or closed in a fit of rage. In 8th grade I got into a fight after school with the kid who was basically the only person in 8th grade that did not make fun of me. I beat him up pretty good. I do not say this proudly. It is an embarrassing part of Kyle history, but it exists. After that fight, I vowed to not take my anger out anymore. The problem was that I just stopped dealing with anger all together. I bottle it, badly. I have no idea how to express anger when it happens. I keep it stuffed down until one event, usually tiny, causes me to unload in a way that is completely disproportional to the trigger. This anger has been boiling just below the surface as of late. I can feel it every day. Little things will start to irritate me to the point where I get more frustrated than I should. I need to work on that. I have to learn how to express myself in the moment. I have such fear of being alone, that I am afraid of confronting someone because I feel like they will just leave. It is utterly ridiculous, but there it is.

I am not going to lie. Tonight, I am not loving myself. I have this dark cloud hovering over me and I am not sure how to shake it. I have been moving forward so well, and this roadblock has truly found a way to interrupt my flow. And no one likes to have their flow interrupted. I was hoping as I was writing that writing would maybe shake these feelings, but it honestly has not. I have reached a pretty significant length, and I am still under this grey cloud. There is still so much work I have left to do, and I know this attitude is not going to help push me closer to living a better life. In fact, it is toxic. I have been working to get the toxicity out of my life, but I still have to deal with the toxicity I feel towards myself. When you have told yourself you do not deserve to be happy for so long, it is more of a fight than I thought to remind yourself you do deserve happiness. I deserve happiness, and whoever is reading this does as well. I know I have to shake myself out of this funk, and I hope that this honesty will help me and maybe help someone else. We all hit these roadblocks, it is how we bounce back from them that will determine who we are. it is easy to be positive when things are going well, it is these tough moments that define us and I am no longer accepting personal defeat. I will wake up tomorrow determined to fight back. If I do not fight for myself, how can I expect anyone else to fight for me? See, I knew if I kept writing I would eventually motivate myself.

My physical frustration

Well, the darkside is back. I was in such a groove of positive energy and this damn knee of mine has really brought me down. The tendinitis in my right knee has been causing my knee to be swollen for nearly 48 hours now. I pushed through it yesterday which was probably not my most wise decision. Between choreography on Saturday, dancing at the wedding on Saturday night, choreography on Sunday night and walking to rehearsal on Monday night, my knee is in a bad way. With it, the reminder of why this entire process is so maddening to me.

being obese already puts a tremendous toll on my body and the only way to attempt to alleviate that toll is to get active. However, the more active I get, the more of a toll it takes on my already in pain body. yes, it would have been easier to not just have been grossly fat in the first place, but that shipped sailed many many years ago. All I can do is focus on how to get my life back. Everything was going so well and now that my knee hurts to stand, sit, switch positions, push the gas pedal and certainly do any sort of exercise it reminds me why I always give up. At some point, the pain just becomes too much for me to overcome. The pain outweighs whatever results I see, because I never see the results fast enough to make me forget about the pain. Every time I watch something like The Biggest Loser I get so frustrated because they do not show that aspect of the show. We never see the medical staff of set that is there to make sure no one pushes passed the ability. Well, as someone who is in debt, and cannot afford to ever see a doctor, I have no idea if I am just in pain, or if I am doing serious damage to my knee or to the shoulder that has felt pinched for nearly a week. Without knowing what I am doing to my body, I am left to decide for myself how much to push and right now, I am feeling like I need to ease up just a little bit, at least until the swelling dissipates.

This constant back and forth is starting to weigh heavily on my mind. I know I need this change. I know it is the key to accepting myself and to allowing myself that elusive happiness I am digging for, but what if I cannot get there? What if my body is already too damaged to be helped in a serious way. I know this is a dramatic turn from last week, but such is the life of someone trying very hard to make a severe series of drastic changes. I started to feel myself hit these "what if" scenarios pretty hard two days ago and I have not been able to close the floodgates on them. I am doing everything I can do make the change, but what if it is not enough? Like so much else over the course of my life, what if I am just not good enough, or strong enough to overcome this wave of pain? I am fighting like hell and I think that is all I can do. I have to keep moving forward with the hopes that I will soon find a job, and then be able to afford people to help me really figure this out. Whether that person is a trainer, a doctor, a nutritionist, or maybe one of each, I have no idea. I can only hope that I can hang on long enough to find out if there is something else I should be doing.

I hate feeling like such a downer, and a disappointment, but I think I have to allow myself to have a bad day every once in a while. I just have to get myself out of it before it becomes the predominant thought. I have to know when enough is enough. This is not a pity party, and I am not feeling sorry for myself, I am just frustrated and disheartened today, which in and of itself is progress, because this frustration has always led to a pity party before. I am still going to eat something healthy for dinner and still eat grapes and watermelon as a snack, I am just going to drive to rehearsal tonight and try my best to remain upbeat, but that will be tough tonight.

Kicking it up a notch

From the moment I found myself back in the pool, I wanted to get myself to 20 laps. My body is a mess of pain, I am incredibly obese and out of shape and I was swimming 10 laps the first week and in order to do those 10, I had to take breaks. It was embarrassing for someone who used to swim on a regular basis and I was good. This is not some bragging nonsense either, I was a pretty good, and fast swimmer. I have always been bigger, but when I was younger, I was in pretty good shape even for a bigger kid. The fight to get myself to 20 laps has been equally as embarrassing for me. I would hit this wall at 16 or 18 laps and my mind would take over and I would crash. The pain would kick in and I refused to fight through the pain. The back injury was a major setback in my progress, and I was starting to feel defeated but that was before my major attitude adjustment this week. I came into this week knowing I needed to kick myself in the ass.

Well the attitude change brought with it my 20 lap milestone! Not only did I hit the milestone, I hit it without any real breaks between laps! Oh, but that is not all readers, today I got up to 24 laps in the amount of time it took me to get 20 on Wednesday. Next week, I am really going to push it and get myself to 30 by the end of next week. I honestly think I could have pushed myself harder today, but I do have a bit of a cold and it was making breathing a bit difficult, and let's be honest, breathing is an important part of the living process. I started this blog on May 10th and began my quest a day or two earlier, and here I am 7 weeks later and hitting my first, of hopefully many, big milestone. It feels great! My body was exhausted, but it was a good exhausted, not the kind of exhausted you feel after wolfing down a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger.It was not that exhaustion of shame you feel when you ate too much and realize you are tired from eating. I am excited to hit 30 laps next week. My goal is to be at 50 laps before the summer is over. I really believe I can get there.

Keeping with the physical, I had my first dance rehearsal in over a year this week. Our choreographer moves at a fast pace, which I appreciate. For some reason I have always picked up choreography very quickly and I love to move and I love it when a choreographer does not hold back on me because of my weight. The next day I woke up and I could move! This is another huge thing for me. Normally the day after a dance rehearsal my body is a mess of serious pain, stiffness and general sadness, but not this week! I was up the next day, went for a brisk walk and spent the day packing and lifting boxes with minimal pain. This is 7 weeks in and I am seeing the exact kind of results I was hoping to see. Yes, I have hit a weight loss plateau, but I am feeling so great about myself for the first time in a few years.

In terms of weight loss, I have decided not to weigh myself for another week. I do not want to risk getting down on myself. I want to keep this positive momentum flowing. It feels like I burst through a dam and I do not want to stop the gushing water of positive emotions. I need this right now. There are still a few aspects of my life that are freaking me out, and this momentary outburst of pure positive energy is needed to get me through the rest of it.

Happiness is a fleeting emotion. If you find it, you have to do everything you can to hold onto it and remind yourself of that happiness when times get tough. I have a world of things to be thankful for and I am not ignorant of that. I know many of you have great families, but I believe I have the best family in the world. We rally around each other in the face of everything and I have needed to fall back on them many times in my life and never once have they let me fall. My best friend has seen me through so much and seen me at the absolute lowest of emotional, physical and mental health, and he has always told me I deserved better for myself and always reminds me how much I have to offer. I am also lucky enough to have the sweetest, most understanding, most caring and most amazing girlfriend in the world. I apologize, half-heartedly, for the cheesiness, but it is completely sincere. Martina does way more than she probably knows to keep me focused. But most of all, I have myself. I have to control my own happiness. We all have to control our own happiness. We surround ourselves with the people who bring out the happiness. They do not create it or control it, but they help foster it. I have to be in charge of what I let in my body, and who I let in my heart and life.

This journey has taken me so many places already. I have cried quietly in the dark of night as I realized how I caused this in myself, but how I always blamed other people. I have randomly laughed, and cheered when I hit this big introspective realization. I have eaten more fruits and vegetables in the last 7 weeks than I can ever remember, and I have stuck to my plans. I have hated every fiber of my being, and then never loved myself more when I realized what was causing that hate. I am a million miles away from completing this journey, but after 7 weeks, I feel like I have traveled the entire world of emotions. I am exhausted, but energized and am thankful to each and every person who has read and followed the journey thus far. I am unbelievably thankful for the words of encouragement, the suggestions and the positive energy everyone brings to my journey. I am even more thankful to those who have said I have inspired them. I do not want to sound douchey, but it is my life's goal to inspire and if my journey to free myself from the chains of obesity, pain and sadness, can help someone else escape their own chains, that is best feeling in the world.

Tomorrow I get to go witness two people who love each other commit to a life together. Is there anything more inspiring than that? I tell you readers, life is a crazy, beautiful, tragic, awesome trip and it is about time I look up and enjoy the damn ride!!

The Toxicity of life

I am finding my summer to be full of activities, which has left me with less time to myself at the computer, so what will follow is sort of a few ideas I have been kicking around since I returned from a family reunion on Sunday.

First off, seeing my entire family was just heavenly. I could easily write a whole post about the feeling I had throughout the weekend, but I will spare you all the cheesiness. I will say this, my dad is the single most focused man I have ever seen. He is on a health quest and has just met and surpassed every goal he has set for himself over the last few years. It is astounding. I can only hope to find that sort of progress in my own life. Also, for a brief moment over that weekend, my mom and I talked about the toxic things in life, in my life in particular. It has had me thinking for the last few days and what follows will be a summary, or meandering word vomit of these thoughts.

I have been doing a good job of cutting all of the toxic food out of my life. I have been doing a pretty good job of upping my physical activity to remove that toxic laziness out of my life. As I have detailed in this blog multiple times, I am working hard on eliminating the negative thoughts that continue to plague this journey of mine. These toxic thoughts lay at the root of everything in my life. I am constantly giving myself new goals, and my most recent goal is to stop being so self-deprecating. I am at a point in my life where I need to take myself and my journey seriously and in order to do that, I have to cut out my jokes at my expense. When you have spent 20 years conditioned to make fun of your own weight so no one else does it first, this is quite an undertaking, but I believe it is vitally important to my progress. Yes, I need to work on getting the thoughts out of my head, but first I need to work on not making jokes at my own expense. If I want other people to take me and my journey seriously, I need to take it seriously. therefore, I am trying to cut down, then eliminate the amount of time I spend making fun of myself. I have done fairly well so far. Try it, it is difficult.

The next part of the toxicity of life is people. I have had many toxic relationships in my life. I had a seriously toxic romantic relationship in my early twenties of which I still feel lingering effects some times. I have allowed myself to carry on extremely toxic platonic relationships out of fear of not having any friends which have done severe damage at times, and I have had a few toxic relationships where the line between platonic and romantic have been extremely blurred. Any sort of relationship can be toxic. Having the strength to pull yourself away from it is challenging. However, I know that I need to expect better of people. I need to make myself expect to be treated better and that starts internally. I am working on removing everything toxic from my life and that includes relationships. Currently, I am working on not carrying all of that baggage from the toxic relationships into my current relationships. I am working on letting go of anger, resentment, sadness and frustration. it is yet another roadblock on my journey. I must figure out how to knock the roadblock over. I can no longer afford to go over it, under it or around it because it invariably pops up again and knocks me on my ass. I am 31 years old and it is time to start dealing with my damn issues! It is never too late to try and fix the things you dislike about yourself.

Onto some random quick hits:

I walked to rehearsal the other night. It was lovely. I am enjoying walking. It allows me to clear my head, and get a nice workout in. However, I cannot forget my knee brace because the difference in my pain level is astounding!

I have hit a weight loss plateau. I have not lost any weight in about a week. Normally this would send me into a fast food binge, throwing up my hands in a metaphorical manner and going back to my old habits. My motives are more clear this time, so I am taking it in stride. I will continue to take it in stride. If I do not lose weight for a week, but I make a break through in another realm, so be it. My life will not crumble around me with a bad health week. (Also, it was not a bad health week, but did not lose any weight.)

I have found my desire for french fries and chips slowly draining. It is nice. I never thought I would live in a world where I thought I would be cool off french fries.

I am still looking for good healthy side dishes. I love salads, but I need something else healthy to eat with my proteins. It is tough to not just whip up some pasta!

Also, my my desire for snacking is not going anywhere, so I am trying to substitute nuts and fruits for ice cream and candy. It is mostly working!

Slogging through the remnants of a broken shell

Well readers, here I sit, still on bed rest from this back injury. I have about 70% of my motion back. It no longer hurts in the standing up position, but if I am up for too long it hurts. It mostly huts in the transition from sitting to standing, but it is still causing me too much pain to be terribly physical. As a result, I am in a funk. I am kind of a mess tonight. Do not get my wrong, I have loved playing hours of video games, watching the entire first season of SUITS, reading 2 full novels and watching movies. It has been a nice start to summer vacation, but it is not how I envisioned my summer starting.

If you know me pretty well, which some of do, and some of you are learning, you would know I am a man who lives and dies by plans. I love plans. I love to have my entire week planned sometimes. It is a sickness, but it calms me down, especially when so much of my life right now is up in the air. Will I have a job in Sept? Where will I be living in 2 months? I have no clue, but I can tell you what I will be doing Friday afternoon at roughly 3:30 in the afternoon and that calms me down. With Martina having been gone the last 5 days, I had a whole routine planned out to keep me moving forward without her here to help. She may or may not know it, but her constant support keeps my wheels turning on days that are rough. I knew I would keep to this routine, because I like routines, but after cleaning the whole house on Saturday my back gave out and my entire routine went away. So instead of just not knowing about a job and a house, I was now worrying about how I would recover from this extended lay off. Do not tell me it is silly or that I think too much, I already know that. I am the one lives inside of this brain 24/7. I am the one who used to debate calling any friend of mine for 25 minutes before making the call because I was sure that person did not want to talk to me, or would only answer because he or she felt obligated. No one would really willingly talk to me.

Okay, way off topic. Wow, where was I? Yes, my routine. It did not go as planned. I did a pretty good job of my goal to still eat better. Yes, after spending roughly 48hrs alone with my thoughts, I caved and ordered a pizza and drank a liter of soda. But I did not drink the second liter and I only ate half of the pizza. I told my roommate to eat the rest. I did not beat myself up too badly for the soda, which is certainly progress. However, these 5 days of basic isolation from the world have given me time to think long and hard about my life and how I ended up this way. I have been really thinking about my life and the people in it and the decisions I have made. I have been trying to find points of my life to which I can trace some of these issues. Has anyone else ever done that? I mean, wow, that a crappy, brutal, sad process. I truly believe it is necessary, but it can really bring you down. When you really sit back and examine some of the choices you have made in life, it can be more than an eye opener, it is like your entire brain explodes and rebuilds itself with this new understanding.

it hurt. It is still hurting. I know there are quotes about blowing things up to put them back together, and I guess that is what I am doing. I have to explode the shell of who I have been, or who I have tried to be and who everyone sees me as, and find a way to rebuild myself into someone I can look at in the mirror and be proud of. the last few days I have really tried to think about the last time I could say I was truly proud of myself. It is sad that I went through this teacher program, graduated from college, got great roles in theater, and I cannot think of the last time I was actually proud of myself. It was a shocking realization. I have become so crippled in my life by my own self doubt, my "monsters" as I have been referring to my self doubt as, that I have not been proud of these very big accomplishments. It has been an interesting few days inside my head.

However, the metaphorical light at the end is that I realize this now. I am aware. Self-awareness is always a blessing and a curse, but I can make the changes now that I see it. I know that I have to be less hard on myself. I have spent so much time beating myself up before anyone else could get to it and it is not going to fly anymore. I feel like this blog has really been more of a chronicle of my journey to mental health, which is not at all what I intended, when I started. I think I am much more mentally unhealthy than I realized when I began this process.

The best thing to happen to me over the last few days was getting Erik back. Since his own life change partially inspired my desire to like myself more, it is really great to have him around. His constant support has helped me in so many situations over the last 7 or 8 years that I know he is going to be there through this as well. Plus, no one knows my predilection for awful self thoughts more than he does and he knows to tell me when I am being ridiculous.

Tomorrow I am going to try and get back in the water for swimming. Tomorrow I am going to try and wake up and remind myself that I have some pretty damn good things going on and I would not have these great things if I was not deserving of them. Tomorrow I am going to wake up and remind myself that this is a daily life change and when you attempt to change your entire life, and your entire routine, it is going to take time and that is okay. Tomorrow I am going to wake up and tell myself 5 things I like about myself and 1 thing I love about myself. I suggest anyone having a tough time do the same thing. I have people who love me, so I must be doing something right. Now, to get out there and love myself. (Shockingly, I do not mean that in a dirty way.)

My Batman Shirt or a celebration of happy things

A little over a year ago I bought a Batman T-shirt. I bought in the 3X which is the size of all of my shirts, but it was a tad bit more snug than the other shirts, but it still fit, so I wore it out and about. Pretty soon after I bought it, I started to put a lot of the weight I lost two years ago, back on. Quickly that shirt became one that I put in the back of the closet never to be been seen again. My girlfriend still thought it looked good on me, but I did not feel comfortable in it. I was always worried that my fat was going to come creeping out from under the shirt and scare small children, or swallow puppies. Away it stayed for months and months. I would wear it around the house on laundry day, but it was never to see the outside again. I would never say that it was my goal to be able to feel comfortable in that shirt again, because it feels silly to have that as a goal, but it has been on my mind these last few weeks. This last week was a bit nuts with trying to finish class with my seniors and make sure they all passed and could graduate, so I fell behind on laundry and found myself staring the Batman shirt in the face. I put it on and it fit very much like it fit when I first bought it. This is progress. It still does not fit as nicely as I would like, but I wore it out in public and did not worry about feeling super uncomfortable. it is about the small victories, right?

And now celebrating positive things, as this blog has focused on the darker stuff lately:

I have yet to feel the pain of my tendinitis on any of my walks over the last two weeks. It has been glorious to be able to walk around without that particular pain weighing me down. I am not sure if it is due to me being more active on a regular basis or because of the accessory I purchased when I bought my shoes, but either way, it is an incredible feeling.

I have had 1 8 ounce cup of soda in roughly 3 weeks and I have not had a single Rockstar since I decided to cut them out.

Most of the need for the energy drink has been eliminated due to having more natural energy because I am not eating such crappy food.

I have really cut back on my snacking. I have been snacking on healthier foods, but I have been trying to cut back on snacking and so far it is working.

For so many years I just accepted my lack of will power as the rule in my life. I have had a terrible time fighting off my cravings for bad food, and have had a terrible time turning my life into a series of good habits. It turns out that it was about owning my will power. While Erik has been just killing it health wise in Oregon, he knew he could not force me into changes. The person has to be ready to really make the change, and for whatever reason it was not until recently that I felt ready. I think you can switch out "ready" for "worthy" and it makes more sense in my particular situation. I know Erik still wants me to fully embrace his Primal lifestyle, but he has not been pushing it and I appreciate that. I actually appreciate it from everyone. People have been incredibly supportive, and offered advice, but no one has been incredibly forceful. I know I have to figure out what is best for me personally. Every person is different and for me, I think a patchwork lifestyle change is one that is going to work best. Just call me Tarantino. I take existing parts and change them, rewrite them, reshoot them and make them their own work of art. Okay, that might among the most douchey things I have ever said.

I am about to come to the end of a very fulfilling journey and embark on the next phase. Student teaching has been the single most rewarding part of my life and now I am heading into the world of looking for a teaching job. I am also getting ready to look for a new place to live and currently trying to find summer work as well. The stress of all of this would normally launch me into an emotional tailspin, but I am getting my emotional health into a much better place. I am actually finding that getting my emotional health right has been much tougher, yet much more helpful in getting the rest of my health right. So many of my food issues are tied to emotional issues.

I am going to ask a question here and I hope to get enough responses either as comments or facebook, or text, or wherever, but would it be okay if occasionally I used this blog to write about something other than my health? I have this desire to write a blog post about my time as a student teacher, but do not want to turn readers away, and do not really want to start a whole other blog. It is perfectly okay to say "no" as this is lifestyle change blog.

The bad week continues

I am hesitant to post this, honestly. I warn you readers, this may not be pretty. I am a ball of distracted mess this week and it is showing in every aspect of my life.

But first, the good.

-While the walking is not working due to some shoe issues, these shoe issues do not exist when I am running. Now, I am not one to run for fun, so twice this week I played basketball with a mix of teachers and students. I will be making a separate post on basketball (well sports) Tomorrow or Sunday, but the 30 minutes of basketball really felt great.

- I have lost weight. Weighing myself is not something I will do regularly, so do not expect consistent updates about weight loss. I am not really tracking weight loss, I am tracking a better life. Weight loss is part of it, but I have to learn not to rely on it because losing weight is a fickle proposition.

- I did not buy any Rockstars today. Usually Friday after teaching, I grab 2 so I can power them down and stay up on Friday night. This week I am going without and will probably just nap for a bit.

Okay, onto the rest of it

The events of Monday's soda debacle have been recounted on the blog, so with that in mind, here I go. This week was just unbelievably rough. The student related thing I wrote about on Tuesday still linger over my head every day I walk into the classroom and it is a struggle. Thursday kind of was the nail in the coffin of the week and I went to lunch with a friend and picked out like I had not done in a few weeks. I tackled a giant portion of these loaded fries, and then took down a huge plate of nachos all by myself. It was a tremendous feast of embarrassment. As I was eating the final third of the nachos, I just hated myself. I hated that I was still eating, but mostly, I hated how much I was enjoying stuffing my face. It was exactly the reason I got myself here in the first place. I eat my feelings and this whole week I have been feeling awful and for that brief moment of nacho heaven, everything felt right. Ugh, I am disgusted with myself as I type this.

Of course, I paid for it. I paid for it dearly. I am glad for this. My stomach was so upset with me for shoving this much food down into it that it ruined my outing with my cohort friends. This shows that my stomach is already adjusting to my new diet. It does not want me to stuff my face, it wants me to eat in portions. Of course, I will not know if my lesson was learned until the next time I am confronted by this.

One of the hardest parts of being me is that I focus too much on the negative. As this is not just about changing my eating habits, but changing my life habits, I need to learn to let it go. One of the things I realized in my health class this semester is that physical health, emotional health and mental health are all connected. My physical health is going to benefit from a better emotional and mental state of being. There will be times when this blog does not focus on my eating or working out at all, but in how I deal with a crisis, or how I managed to let myself be happy when I accomplish something, which is a big problem for me.

Which brings me to tonight. I have one goal: Just have fun and enjoy this accomplishment.

When I got my B.A I did not let myself celebrate. I kind of went right to the next thing to worry about. Tonight is reason to celebrate. When I was 25 years old and working in a warehouse, moving cans of paint from one side of the warehouse to the other, or washing vans in 103 degree heat, this all seemed so far away. I felt like college was never going to happen for me, but I did it.

I got my B.A and now I will have a Teaching Credential, and you know what, some day in the next 5 or 6 years, I will have a Master's degree as well.