Once Upon a Tuesday...

Greetings and Salutations!!!

I am so happy to say that I am updating my blog from the comfort of my own bed :) For whatever reason, I was VERY exhausted today, and found it nearly impossible to get out of my sleepy phase.

It might have something to do with the fact that yesterday was Columbus Day and I had it off, so it KINDA felt like a Monday.

If you don't find this cute... you have issues!!!

The fact that it was actually a Tuesday, meant that I had to be in school all day :(. Before Class started, I went and picked up my Fitness Pass from the UCLA recreation center so that I could begin taking the group exercise classes :) I was hoping to take advantage of the spin class today... but my timing was off all day! I did manage to find a spin class bike though, that had pre recorded Spinning Classes on it, so you could follow the instructor. I did that for 35 minutes, and then milled around the weights for a bit. I did all shoulders and chest, because I have 45 minutes of hill repeats to do tomorrow (my Favorite.... NOT!!!)

I'm not sure how everyone else feels, but after I do a long run, I am always INSATIABLE the following day. After lunch, it felt like I got hungry every 30 minutes or so. Thank God I had this GIANT orange I grabbed as a last minute thought this morning.

Biggest orange in the world!!!

Getting home late also did not help my hunger. I'm trying to be very conscious of my "true" hunger feelings to try to avoid a binge. I think I've done pretty well so far, but I still ave a long way to go.

After a long day of class, I am now enjoying some mindless television :). Law and Order: SVU... what would I do without you. I also have an Episode of Once Upon A Time that I can't wait to watch.

 

If you haven't seen it... please do. I HIGHLY recommend it. Well, that is if you like fairy tales, amazing story lines, and fantastic costuming :)

 



My New Training Partner

Greetings My Fabulous Readers!!!

I feel like so many things have happened over the last few days and I don't know where to begin. Well, I guess first and foremost, I can start with the fact that I am healthy and happy today (yay!). My cravings have been getting less and less, and my confidence and strength has been growing.

I did not do so well on my Goals for this past week, although, I did manage to do yoga twice this week, I walked the perimeter on Tuesday of this week (Sorry Thursday!!!), as far as not checking social media sites... it was pretty much a FAIL! I DID advocate for myself at my internship, and I am hoping that the changes I requested to happen. I think I made a HUGE improvement regarding eating when I'm hungry, verses eating when my "3 hour time limit" has been reaches. However, I think it could use some work, so it is going to be goal #1 for the Week of October 8-14.

Goals For The Week!

 



1. I am going to stop counting hours, and start relying on my hunger signals to tell me when I am hungry.

2. I am going to try and catch up on my school reading. I feel like health wise I am doing VERY well, but I feel like my educational life is starting to slip :/. I haven't really been able to switch my brain over to "Graduate Student" mode. This week, I really want to get on that!

3. Compete in the AIDS Run/Walk :)... possibly hit a PR of under 26 minutes(?!?!?!)

4. I WILL make Black Bean Soup this Friday!!!

5. Continue with my twice weekly yoga :)

Today, I have the "End of a Monday" Blues!!!

I was lucky enough to have today off from my internship, so I decided to make up my 13 mile run I avoided slept through on Saturday. Today was a very different run than most of my long runs, because I was joined by my good (and fairly new) friend, Sederia, and her wonderful beach cruiser.

Sederia and her bike

 I don't think I have ever had so much fun doing a 13 mile run. Sederia has just started working out/training with me and she has been such a good trainer. She was not quite ready to run a 13 miler with me, so she offered to ride her bike while I ran. This actually ended up being a really help through my run today :) We started out strong, she pushed me when I needed it, and helped me finish out with under a 9 minute mile average.

The weather was also perfect! It was overcast and cool all morning until about the last 20 minutes of the run. We're suppose to have weather like this all week, which makes me VERY excited. Cloudy weather is my favorite to run in.

I spent the rest of the day relaxing and making shirts with Sederia for the AIDS Walk that's on Sunday.

Yesterday (Sunday), we took the residents at work to the California Science Center in Downtown LA. We had a really good time, and I really enjoyed the Kelp Bed exhibit. Please enjoy the pictures :)

 

In other (random news)... I signed up for another 5k run next month :). UCLA and USC are having a rivalry race to help raise money for the 2014 Special Olympics!!! I figure, you can always use another 5k in your life, especially when it's for a good cause :)

 

Do you have any goals for the week?!

 

What is your favorite thing about museums?!

 



Emotional Roller Coaster And a Victory

Oh, What a Happy Saturday...Well... Kinda.

This is a fair warning that this is not going to be the most positive post that I've ever written. Yesterday was a really hard day for me and my family, and I haven't completely recovered from the day.

I found out yesterday that my mother has 4 large tumors on her uterus that are all much larger than the whole size of her actual uterus. The doctor is recommending that she has a full hysterectomy to remove it, because there is a 20% chance that it could be cancerous. This also means that she is going to have to be on disability/bed rest for 6-8 weeks.

Now, before everyone gets crazy: YES, I know that 20% is not a big deal, and YES, I know that this is the 2nd most common surgery performed on women and YES, I do know that my mother is going to be OK...

That does not mean that this isn't a scary, frustrating, and emotional experience for the both of us. My mother is the most precious thing in the world to me, and the thought of her being scared and in pain makes me extremely sad. I felt guilty because I was out at a rehearsal, and my mom was home without me. I wanted to be there for her, and I felt like I was being so selfish. She told me she was going to try to go to bed early, but that still did not put my mind at ease.

Once I got this news yesterday evening, the rest of my night sort of went down hill from there. Tyler tried to take me to get some frozen yogurt at Yogurtland... but even that was a disaster. I wanted to mix their new pumpkin pie flavor with cheesecake and coconut. Go figure... they were ALL OUT OF PUMPKIN PIE!!! I was so upset, that I purposely did not want to take a picture of it for you guys. I quickly (and emotionally) inhaled, scarfed down, dissatisfyingly ate my container of frozen yogurt. I spent another hour with Tyler before I sent myself home for the night.

The old Christina's thoughts started getting in to my head. "You can just go home and find something else to eat that will satisfy you more than that frozen yogurt did". "It's almost 12:00am, no one will know that you were up late and eating". "I'm pretty sure you left some ice cream hidden in the back of the freezer for just this kind of emergency.... Wouldn't that go great with some Eggo Waffles and Peanut Butter?!?!" "You're going to feel so much better if you just eat something and go to sleep."

I drove home with tears in my eyes, a knot in my throat, and a swirl of CRAP going on in my head. It took every part of my will power to combat the irrational thoughts that were going on in my head. The new Christina fought as hard as she could with thoughts like, "Eating when you get home is not going to make you feel any better about what is happening with your mother.", "The Ice Cream, Waffles and Peanut Butter are not going to make Mom's tumors go away". "How much is it going to mess up your run tomorrow morning if you eat all of that shit tonight?!?!"

I'm not sure if it was a sign from my higher power, or if it was myself, but when I got home my Mom and Ray were awake. I came in, gave my mom the biggest hug I could muster up, put my stuff away in the kitchen and went to bed. I made it through yet another night without giving in to evil voice that still rents a space in my head.

After everything yesterday, I could not manage to get out of bed any earlier than 9:30am this morning. I was suppose to either a) Go to the NAMI (National Alliance of Mental Illness) benefit walk at 10am this morning on 3rd street, or run 13 miles today for Marathon Training week 4. As you can imagine, waking up at 9:30, does not really make either of those activities possible. I was starting to beat myself up a bit for bailing on both commitments, and was almost going to remain in bed even longer when I told myself, "You know what? You can't always do it all."

I managed to get out of bed, and took myself for a long run to help get my body moving, and try to clear my head. I ran 7 miles in a little over 60 minutes and I must say, I felt a lot better. My internship was cancelled for Monday, so I am going to move my long run to that morning.

I may not have been able to do all of the things I wanted to do today, but I had to make adjustments to try to take care of myself. Yesterday was physically and emotionally exhausting, and I owed it to myself to just let go of this one. This is a new concept that I am still learning, but I think it is going to be invaluable to me throughout the remainder of my recovery.

After my run, I make myself a Chocolate, Peanut Butter Pumpkin Pie Smoothie. I added:

1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (Trader Joe's)
1/4 cup of pumpkin puree
1/4 cup of rolled oats
1 tbsp of natural peanut butter
A couple dashes of cinnamon
A squeeze of honey
A couple mouthfuls of chocolate muscle milk lite

It was pretty good, and hit the spot. It could have used a little more pumpkin, but then again, when can anything not use a little more pumpkin?!?!

Now I'm relaxing before I have to go to work for the evening.

Have you ever had to deal with a stressful surgery, or watched a family member go through one?!?!

How did you cope?!?!

Three Things Thursday

Howdy Everyone!!!

I'm pretty exhausted getting use to my schedule so this is going to be a quick Three Things.

1. I am super grateful for teachers who cancel classes. As I was driving to school, I checked my email on my iphone and found out that my teacher cancelled our class :) I had completely mixed feelings about this. #1... I was up at 5:50am, and I really could have used more sleep #2 I really like this professor, and was really looking forward to this lecture. #3 I got to use my time wisely and went running at the park #4 I still had to go to school for my 2:00pm class.

2. I'm truly grateful for my mental and physical health right now. The last few weeks have been really tough, but I have been holding in stronger than ever with my recovery and I am planning to continue on this route. I don't know the actual date that I got sober again, and I am actually really happy with that thought. Other times that I focused on the date, I eventually ended in relapse. I think the anticipation of "Anniversaries" and adding days was just too overwhelming for em. Without knowing the day, I get to take my sobriety just One day at a Time.

3. Today Marks the beginning of Day 1, of Week 4. It was a beautiful 60 minute run, in overcast weather first thing in the morning. I cant believe that I am already 1/5 of the way done with training. That might not seem like much... but I'm just so excited, and I cant wait to get to the end of this process.

To be honest, this is probably the format my blog is going to e taking for awhile. I'm getting behind on my school reading (and sleep) and I will only be updating when I really have time. I'm sorry for those of you that actually read this... but I think the person it is hurting the most is me :/

Keep Checking Back. You never know when I might say something good.

Manic Monday!

Hi Everyone.

Today was a really long day, but it was pretty good. It started with a nice 30 minute easy run this morning. One of my colleagues from my internship mentioned that she wanted to start getting into the habit of working out again, so I invited her along. Normally I avoid letting people run with me (I'm self conscious and sort of a control freak when it comes to my runs), but I really like Sederia, and I thought that it might be nice to have someone join me. I get really anxious and upset if I don't get to finish a workout the way I planned it, and it has been my experience that often, working out with a friend ends in me frustrated and upset.

I'm really glad that I made that decision, and that Sederia followed through and showed up at to my house at 6:15am. I didn't get to run my normal route, but I was ok with it. She was really understanding about me wanting to do my training, and was ok if I ran a bit ahead of her. I usually circled back so that she didn't get lost :). When Sederia left I did some upper arms yoga to make for a well rounded work out.

I wont bore you with the details of how my internship went, but lets just say that it ended with a very uncomfortable home visit to my client's house. My client and her mother have a very volatile relationship, and It made me very thankful for the relationship that I have with my mother. (Thank You mom, I Love you).

Later that evening, I went with Sederia to an AA meeting. No, we're not alcoholics, she was doing an assignment for school. Sitting in the meeting got me thinking about some of my own triggers that challenge me in my own recovery.

Obviously, there are certain foods that are just immediate triggers for me. Pretty much anything in the Delicious Dessert category is bound to send me into a binge. This is something that I really want to work on, especially since the holidays are coming up. There will be more to come on how I plan on tackling this task.

Stress, is another big and unavoidable trigger for me. I think I've gotten a pretty good hold on my stress triggers lately. When ever I start craving foods, I usually try to check in to what is going on externally that may be affecting it.

One of my major triggers for a binge/purge is waiting until the point of starvation to eat. If I know I am not going to be home for the majority of a day (which happens frequently), I usually do my best to try and prepare PLENTY of meals and snacks to take with me. Sometimes things just don't work out, and before I know it, I'm starving!!! Lately I have been catching myself doing this more and more. I need to start paying more attention and having more easy to eat snacks handy for such moments.

Do you have any triggers?! How do you try to avoid them?!