Learning From My Failures

The definition of insanity, according to Albert Einstein, is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I wonder if it's a normal human flaw to stick with what we know or what we've always done, regardless of what the outcome is or has been time and time again. I can speak for myself and say that my ability to procrastinate in doing important things that happen to NOT be so exciting to me has not ceased to strengthen itself over time. It's picked up momentum, in fact, and now I've become an expert at doing what is immediately exciting to me, in exchange for things that really matter. By putting off the important items in my life, I always find myself stressed out and wondering "why didn't I just do it when I had the chance?" This thought brings several things come to mind, namely COLLEGE.

Well, right now, it's very important to me that I get in really good shape. Time isn't standing still, and I need to develop a healthy way of life while I'm still fairly young. I plan to STAY in shape this time. As I mentioned yesterday, I found an online trainer who has given me an exercise and meal plan. He updates it every two weeks so that the body will be shocked, which is how we see results quicker and prevent hitting that dreaded "plateau". Well, it took me 2 weeks to get into the groove of the plan my trainer set up. I didn't stick to the diet 100%,I didn't go to the gym on all of the days that were suggested, I did NOT do every single exercise that was suggested, nor did I drink a gallon of water each day as my trainer suggested.

I took progress pics two weeks ago. This morning, I took more pics in the same poses. I ALREADY see the difference in my body! The difference isn't HUGE yet, but my muscle definition is already starting to present itself in my shoulders, neck, and arms. My legs are starting to firm up just a bit. What motivation!! Just the thought of the results that I could have seen had I stuck COMPLETELY with the plan really gives me the motivation I need to do this thing right for the next two weeks. I can't wait to see the progress pics in two weeks!! I'll be 35 years old by then! :-) :-)

An Exercise in Brevity

I'm challenging myself to give an update from the past several months, but without spending the next hour typing about it. I have about 15 minutes, before I pass out due to exhaustion so here goes:

1) My newborn is now a 12-week old. He will be officially 3 months old on Friday. That time FLEW by! He's holding his head up now, and sleeping through the night, as of last night. Life is good! He spits his milk back up a lot more than his brother and sister did. I'm keeping an eye on that because it makes me a little nervous; but in my heart of hearts I believe that everything is completely fine.

2) My 5 year old and 4 year old are such a joy, even at these hyperactive ages. I love them so much. They are both so brilliant in different ways. I see a little bit of young Tami in the both of them. Good and bad qualities. Math comes easy to one of them, the other one is completely vain, one of them doesn't care what anyone thinks of him, while the other can be knocked down with a feather if you don't give her praise. It's simply amazing. And they're such sickeningly beautiful kids inside and out. God TRULY blessed me in a way that I can't ever measure.

3) Haven't been able to find work, so I'm enjoying being a stay-at-home mom. I go on the kids field trips with them, I make dinner (and dessert) every night, I'm involved at their school more and have established a small network of associates in the other moms, I go on play dates with other stay at home moms, and most importantly, my 3 children get ALL of me, not just the ragged, worn out parts leftover from a grueling day at a thankless job. Many would argue that being a mom is the most thankless job ever, and I wouldn't debate them. But I don't think you can beat greeting your kids at 3pm, being home by 3:15pm and having an entire time with those innocent angels FREE from stress. I wouldn't trade this for anything.

4) Hope to have great news to share this upcoming Friday. If the news isn't good, I won't say anything...if it's great, you'll know about it; the whole world will, if you leave it to me! :-)

5) Been working out INTENSELY the last two weeks. I found a wonderful trainer online, and he set up my daily meals and my daily workout plan. Haven't stuck to the diet as well as I should have, though. But I've lost a good 8 -10 lbs and have lost another pants size (fitting back in my 8's; my goal is to get back into my winter pants which are a size 4 -how could I ever have been that skinny????) I'm going to be a fine mofo by Christmas or bust!!



6) Still have an unhealthy obsession for Simon Baker. Pretty pointless to deny it; even my hubby is hip to it. He's not ecstatic about it, but he's known me for the better part of 14 years now...he knows that I'm ALWAYS going to have some type of fascination/obsession over some type of celebrity. Fame intrigues me; always has for some reason.

7) Cultivating, pruning and watering my friendship garden. There were a lot of weeds, that were causing me a lot of grief, and making it impossible for me to enjoy the beauty of the real friendships that were waiting to blossom. I have some really good friends that really love me, and it's high time I start expressing how much I love them as well. I'm getting better at this.

8) 35 in about two weeks. Having a yummy brunch at a wonderful location in Dunwoody the week after my birthday; waiting a week after my actual birthday so that my sis will be back in town and can be there. I can't wait to spend the morning/afternoon having brunch with people I love!!

9) Hubby is enjoying his new job. In-house counsel for an insurance company in metro Atlanta. He brings home the bacon and I fry it up in a pan...and always make him feel like he's the MAN!! Okay, you get the gist...:-)

Not bad for someone who runs their mouth like an out of control faucet. I can update more often if I can keep it simple like this. Until next time!!

A "weighty" obsession

Bumping this up...thought it was cute. :-)

Originally posted on 1/10/07 at 2:56pm
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I tend to shake my head and sigh whenever I read about Mary Kate Olsen or Lindsay Lohan and their ever-present issues with weight. This is not because I feel that their inability to consume anything over 0.45 calories is despicable. No, no, my friends, I actually empathize with these dear children to some degree. I know what it's like to strive to reach a particular standard of self-perceived perfection; I'm sure that most of us have been there.

When I was 11 years old, a ballet classmate of mine informed me that my thighs were getting fat. I had to do a double take. I was already about 5'6 by the time I was 11, and no scale I had ever been on at that point or before then had ever tipped past 100 lbs. I asked her to please repeat her statement, although I couldn't bear the thought of hearing it again. "I said YOUR THIGHS ARE REALLY FAT!!", she exclaimed. She even went as far as to support her claim by pointing out that my thighs looked especially mammoth while I was sitting on the floor doing our stretches. Is it sad that I still remember her name?

Felicia Davis. She was maybe a year older than me, about an inch or so taller, and extremely top-heavy. She was, like, TWO of me, with a little room to spare. Why didn't I point this out to her so she would get out of my face, and so that I could continue wowing the class with my mastery of the arabesqué? Because that's not the way I was raised. My parents taught me to ignore verbally pessimistic, critical people, as their sole purpose was to find solace in their own feelings of inadequacy. So I smiled at her sweetly, held my head especially high in the air, and walked to the other side of the room to work on my pirouettes.

Sadly, that was the first time I began dieting...at age 11 for goodness sakes! No more potato chips, burgers, chocolate, or ice cream for 11 year-old Tami. I even spent the next few months running in place in my bedroom in front of my full-length mirror. I did this for about 20 minutes per night to assist in rapid weight loss. By the end of the year, once I'd turned 12, I was pretty scrawny. But I remember looking in the mirror and thinking to myself, "What in the world am I ever going to do about these thighs??" The answer would come a few weeks before Christmas that year.

We were in our last ballet class before the holidays, and as I was stretching on the bar one of my classmates approached me to chat. Her name? Kristina Pruitt (daughter of John Pruitt, WSB-TV anchor). While I was talking she began staring at me with fascination. I was certain that she was noticing how fat my thighs were, so I just took a deep breath and said, "What is the matter?" She pointed toward my neck, so I faced the mirror right behind us. I didn't see anything, so I asked, "What's the problem?" She said, "Look at how your collarbone sticks out!". I looked again to confirm this, because I had never noticed this before. I tilted my head (you have to tilt your head to the side to see things more clearly) and said, "Guess you're right." Kristina then explained to me that "...only extremely skinny people have collar-bones that stick out."

I began stopping by Dairy Queen on the way home from ballet class each day, and ordering a banana split with extra whipped cream and chocolate on top. I also ordered an extra side of healthy self-image and a double order of happiness with who I was inside and out. :-)

Beginning the Christmas holidays with a bang!

Update: 12/9/08 8:10pm

Don't have much time these days; work is EXTRA, EXTRA busy. That 2 week vacation is going to be more special and necessary than EVER!

Just a posting tonight to note that I made it through the official week 1 of health and fitness swimmingly!! I only cheated 1 day which was Thursday right before my son's Christmas play. I didn't even get home from work until after 6pm and had to have him at his school by 6:45pm. He left 6 ketchup-drenched fries on his plate from dinner so I ate them. But the rest of the week went WONDERFULLY! Chris and I are competing in a fitness competition middle of next year so we're on a pretty structured plan for our health and fitness. We give ourselves 1 cheat meal per week. Not cheat-day like most people, but cheat meal only. I know better; people with my personality can't be given so much as an inch. :-)

Progress Report: Back on November 14 I weighed myself on one of those scales in the convenience store restrooms where you put in a quarter and it tells you your weight. I weighed myself again today and I was 10 lbs less!! It's been almost a month so that's good progress! Or maybe that scale was busted; I don't trust electronic scales so much. Either way, I'm fitting back into my jeans again. About 3 weeks ago I couldn't fit into ANY of my winter pants from last year, so that's a relief. By New Year's Eve, I'll be back into my skinny jeans which is a RELIEF.

Also, I normally can't exercise with my iPod. I accidentally left it at home today and I STILL exercised...did sprints, even!! That's how I roll now. :-) Good Night!

Smooth sailing for Week 2.

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Notable items since Thanksgiving:

My friend Kelly started a new Facebook group called "Facebook's Biggest Loser". It's SO helpful because it keeps us all accountable to one another. Not to mention the fact that I'm ultra-competitive about stuff like this. We all have our gifts or specialties, and one of mine is the fact that I'm so used to being the among the "fit ones" in my social circles. It's something I had grown to take pride in until, like most other women I know, the babies arrived! LOL They have been MORE than worth it, and now it's time to get this body back into shape for good. Let's do it sisters!! :-)

Speaking of Thanksgiving, it was WONDERFUL! We visited with my mom and dad, and my sister and her family came as well. It's ALWAYS a blast when the 10 of us get together. Not to mention that my potato salad was the BIG HIT this year. This makes the 3rd year in a row that one of my dishes was the star of the show. My macaroni and cheese was just a tad too seasoned. I need to use less salt in the water in which I boil the noodles next time. But it was still a cheesy delight! The following we prepared the remaining dishes (potato souffle, dressing, turkey smoked greens and honey fried chicken) and let me just say that we spent Fri, Sat and Sun eating, eating, eating!! The food was DIVINE!!!!

I did get to do some things on my vacation list, and a few others went neglected. But I'm glad that I made an effort to "plan" some vacationy things to do. It kept me from focusing on un-important things that could be left to the regular routine work days (of which there are less than 3 weeks before my 2-WEEK Christmas vacation starts - HALLELUJAH!!)

LOL moment of the day (and possibly week) - My Gmail Chat status says "I'm around...so leave me a message". My friend Neal sent me this in Gmail chat while I was away from my browser earlier today: "i must point out that your status is truncated on my chat window...so all i see is 'im around..so leave' and somehow i can see you saying that in certain situations". He was logged off by the time I saw that, and that made me LOL, literally. :-)

And finally, the best news to report. For the first time in over a year, I have been able to stick to a healthy fitness/meal plan for more than 24 hours!! The best thing about this is that I haven't even had any cravings! That may not mean a lot to most of you, but those of you that know me VERY well know that I am borderline OBSESSED with food. Consuming yummy delights determines my mood in most cases. But this past Monday and Tuesday I only consumed the healthiest fat-free, low-carb, low-fat, protein packed meals. And I exercised both days; I'm SO proud of myself!! I'm on a roll!!

Road to Fitness and Good Nutrition: Day 3

It's like, why am I even still posting these at this point? I've completely abandoned the whole healthy/fitness idea the past two days. But at some point I've got to get tired of coming here making excuses on why I didn't get to the gym. Now, I will say that today I actually did have a good excuse for not making the gym and abandoning my diet plan. If you don't mind TMI, go ahead and highlight the next three words. Womanly issues today. So here's how my day went:

8:45am - chicken burrito from Chick-Fil-A (not too bad of a start at all; I didn't eat the tortilla, just the inside of it)

9:15am - large cup of water

11:00am - Snickers bar (WTH??) I don't even know where this craving came from; oh wait, just I do...the TMI from earlier in the post. Never mind.

2:30pm - birthday cookie w/frosting

9:00pm - rotisserie chicken, salad with buttermilk ranch dressing, chips w/guacamole

9:30pm - kiwi flavored juice

And I'm in a bad mood tonight. No one has done anything to me; everyone has been wonderful. My hubby even went out and got me the yummy eats I was craving. I'm just tired and need a vacation, I think. Off to bed then.

Road to Fitness and Good Nutrition: Day 2

When I'm bad, I'm REALLY bad! the day started off a little rough and went downhill from there:

I mentioned when I posted yesterday (Monday) evening that I was planning to go to bed early so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat anything bad for me. I've got some type of chronic sinus issue that has been keeping me from sleeping soundly for a very long time. Even though I drifted off to sleep at 11pm, I woke up at 2pm unable to breathe through my nose. I stayed up until 5am, and since "Dawson's Creek" comes on The N on Comcast at 5am, I was up until 6 am watching it. I drifted off to sleep around 6:15 and woke up at 6:45am. How brutal is that?

So I jumped up and got the kids ready, took them to school, and was back home by 8:20am. I worked online for a while to take care of some emergency issues. Bear in mind that I haven't eaten anything this entire time. So by the time I get into the office, I'm pretty hungry. I consider going to the gym, but there's too much work to be done and it needs to be done immediately. I "put off" the gym until later in the afternoon.

By the time later in the afternoon rolls around, a last minute group pow-wow meeting is called. By the time the meeting is over, I am FAMISHED.

3pm: Chick-Fil-A sandwich, fries, lemonade
3:30pm Snickers Bar
7pm: Grilled Chicken nachos from Pollo Loco
7:45pm - 2 chocolate cookies

I had a glass of Kiwi flavored juice; no water today. It is 8pm and I can barely keep my eyes open. I have to leave in 15 minutes to drive me and the kids all the way to GA State to pick up my husband from class. We won't be back home until around 9:30pm at which time I will probably crash and burn.

As long as I spend 5 out of 7 days not eating terrible and getting some form of exercise, I'm happy with that.

Road to Fitness and Good Nutrition: Day 1

Here's how my health and fitness went today:

9:30 - pack of sugar-free oatmeal w/ ice cold water

10:30am - ice cold water

11:15 - 12:15pm - up in the gym just workin' on my fitness...lots of room temp water

1:30pm - protein shake, chased by water

3:30pm - 1 tilapia filet and veggies w/ ice cold water

7pm - 1 tilapia filet and veggies

Making it by the skin of my teeth at this point. I'm going to bed at 8pm so that I'm not tempted to eat anything else. Tomorrow, I need to up the resistance training and add some more protein in the AM; hopefully I'll be up early enough to make some egg whites.

Faith in the midst of confusion

I'm sure that I've posted before about my faith in God. Always the optimist, I never cease to believe that good will come out of every situation. As a parent, I have come to realize that no experience in your life good or bad can affect you the as much as anything involving your child. I'm pretty sure that when I'm touting positive messages for people to hear and even to affirm these things to my heart, mind, and spirit, it's because I don't really have a lot to lose in any of these situations. There will always be someone to bail me out emotionally (my hubby), or financially (my parents).

Right now, I am in the middle of dealing with something centered around my son. Please don't be alarmed. His health is great, and we are all doing fine. He loves school, he and his little sister get along great, and continue to be a joy to all of those that they are around. But I am now learning what it's like to REALLY have faith in God. My son is going through a series of exams based on a referral from his pediatrician. Again, this isn't related to his physical health at all. This is all I feel comfortable saying about it in such a public forum at this time, even though only about 2 or 3 people read this.

I feel like I have butterflies in my stomach. Lately, I've been in a state of constantly holding back tears so that I don't have to deal with real possibilities. My son goes in for an exam tomorrow morning at 9am. We have to drive 45 minutes northwest of here for an exam, another hour back to his school, and then 20 minutes to my job. I'm not so much whining about all of the driving, as much as I am pointing out that I'm not going to be in the best state emotionally tomorrow. It's almost 11:30pm right now, and my son and I have to be leaving the house in 8 hours. :-S

So, now it's time for me to put up or shut up. I honestly don't believe that life is just some place for us to congregate for 75 or 80 years and have fun, fun, fun. I believe that we all have a purpose that is revealed to us in due time. And I do believe that God wants to have a relationship with Him, and for us to trust Him and His word. I don't have any problem trusting Him. So why do I feel so scared? I am not terrified for my son at all; I know that he will be fine. But will I? I am so confused sometimes about how to be a good mother to my children. Time is tick, tick, ticking away, and things are starting to be revealed in my children that I believe are a direct reflection on me as a mother.

I'm really worn out. These visits to the doctor with people asking all of these repetitive questions about my son are starting to take their toll. Our lives are already somewhat hectic...adding this log to the fire my just do me in, I don't know.

:SIGH: Hopefully, my post tomorrow will not find me so emotionally weak and exhausted. Good night.