My reluctant weekend of relaxation

I just powered through the last week of school, which puts me at the end of the most emotional 9 months of my life. it was stressful, amazing, depressing, exhilarating and every emotion in between. Yes, I have arrived at the end of my student teaching. Well, technically I have one more day, but I am essentially done. In accordance with that, my body is RUNDOWN. I have been in a constant state of go, go ,go for 9 months and my body senses the end. However, I pushed myself this week. I walked for an hour in circles at a mall on Tuesday, even though I was beat, I swam without any breaks one day and I did not sleep that well on top of it. Because of it, I have suffered my first injury. I have strained some muscles in my back. I have not sought help, but I have suffered this once before and this is exactly what it felt like, so I am making a bit of an assumption. Therefore, I am deeming this weekend, a weekend of rest. It means I will not be swimming, walking, or running. I need to let my back heal, so I can hit the ground running when I am up to it.

There is a part of me that wants nothing more to just revel in this rest. I love video games, books, movies and lounging in bed. It suits who I am as a mostly indoor type person. However, I have this momentum and now it is stalled. I am worried that in two of three days, I am going to fall right back into the old habits of my life. I am going to get so comfortable playing video games for more than an hour a day, or enjoy watching an entire season of some show and when I feel better, I am going to not feel like I want to get out there in the heat and continue this journey. of course, the biggest reason I am trying to make this change is so that I am not hurting as much. I know this injury is mostly due to the weight I am carrying. However, in order to lose the weight, I have to be up and moving all of this weight. It is no wonder people give up. It is no wonder why I have given up every single time I tried. Hell, one time I lost nearly 75lbs in a little over two years, and instead of continuing, I gave up. It just got too hard. My body ached too much. I was not seeing the results enough and it was just too easy to stop.

Therefore, my goal over the next week is to not let myself quit. I need to let myself rest this weekend and until I feel comfortable moving again, but I need to keep my mind focused. I think a big part of that will be making sure I still eat healthy this weekend. If I can keep part of my routine going, I will have a better shot and getting myself back into the swing of things. See, the big thing here is, I am not sure how much healthier I am physically right now. I have lost nearly 20 lbs in the month that i have done this, but I am feeling rundown. I am hurting. However, emotionally and mentally I in the best place I have been in years. I am having life altering realizations about how I have lived my life. I am making healthy changes in who I am as a person and how I relate to myself. I am not waking up every day hating everything about myself and feeling like the only way to get validation is to get it from outside sources. I am doing things for me. I am making healthy life decisions. And it is all connected, so I know that even if the weight is not coming of like I want, or if I do not see any change in my appearance, I know it is helping in other aspects and that it will all eventually work together to make me the best version of myself I can be. I can be the version all of my loved ones have told me I can be, but never believed myself.

But for today, I rest. I watch episode after episode of SUITS, or maybe go rent a movie, and definitely play a multitude of video games. Hopefully, I will feel up to going shopping for fruits and vegetables later, but as of now the pain in back is so severe, leaning down to fill my water bottle nearing caused me tears. Oh to be healthy.

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.

Some setbacks, bad news/good news, and ribs

Hit my first set of setbacks starting Sunday. I was out for my walk, which was a killer walk, when I started to feel serious pain around the heel area of my right foot. When I came home, I found that I had bled through my sock completely. Something from my shoe is cutting into my heel when I walk at a nice brisk pace. This is problematic. To say that I am poor would be an insult to poor people. This whole student teaching thing has bled me dry for time and money, so I am not sure how to go about buying shoes that can feasibly accommodate a guy my size trying to put all of his weight on these shoes for 30 minutes worth of walking a day. I need to be able to afford some new shoes, but I really need the RIGHT shoes, which when you wear a size 13 EXTRA wide, it gets expensive. This problem has caused me to lose two days of walking, but today, I supplemented it by running barefoot through grass with some of my seniors who have a free period during 4th. It was quite a sight, me in a button up shirt, slacks and a tie, running barefoot on grass with 4 seniors.

My next setback is my most embarrassing. I drank two sodas yesterday. I am not horribly embarrassed by the act, it was the quickness with which I caved. Last night, I went out to Cattleman's for some seriously delicious ribs and Giants game with Martina, her roommate and two of their friends. Martina was celebrating finishing Chemistry for the semester, and I love ribs, Martina and The Giants. It made sense. I ordered water and the waitress asked if she was sure she could not bring me something more exciting like a Shirley Temple and without even hesitating, I said "yes." Oh man I have missed soda. I downed the first one like I needed it to live and then I had another. The fact that I stopped myself after only two made me feel slightly better, but after a solid week of no sodas, I caved so easily. I am trying very hard not to beat myself up over it, but if you know me, you know how well that goes for me.

I was proud of myself for not over eating last night. In fact, I got some food to go to eat for lunch today and I did not even eat all of it today, so I still have lunch tomorrow as well. I guess I have to take the good with the bad, right? The main idea is to not set a minor setback derail me, like it always has in the past. This journey will be filled with ups and downs and I have to accept the downs if I want to celebrate the ups.

Today before my 3rd period class started, I got some really terrible news. It is student related, so I am not going to divulge the information across the internet, but it was sufficiently day-ruining. I kept thinking on my drive home how much I was going to enjoy getting off the freeway and turning left to go to Taco Bell. I just wanted to order a bunch of crappy food (well, tasty, but crappy food) come home, watch television and try and not think about anything. In a shocking move, when I got off the freeway, I did not turn left. I came home instead. This may not seem like a big deal, but for me to greet really saddening news without fast food is pretty huge for me, especially the last few years.

A few of my students today noticed that it looked like I had lost some weight and said I felt more energetic this week, which is the best news I could have received because these kids see me 5 days a week for 90 minutes and I know that I have their undivided attention, so they would notice this stuff.