Beauty For Ashes

Needing to vent..

2008-12-29T17:18:00.002+01:00

So Chechu and I are finishing out our last few days here in the States before heading back to Spain on Friday. Much like last year my expectation was to be able to go on and on about how wonderful of a time I've had during the holidays- how much I've seen and how much I've enjoyed being home with family and friends. After being away for a year I suppose it gets easier and easier to romanticize the idea of coming back home. This, in my case however, has only lead to the reality of being disappointed.

Granted, I'm thrilled that I got the chance to see my sister and meet her new husband. Both of us ended up getting sick over Christmas break, so that inevitably limited our plans. But in the midst of it all it was good to reconnect with her- I just wish that we would have had more time to hang out..

As we're preparing to head back home my biggest concern at this point is employment issues, particularly for Chechu. True to form, more issues with his teaching contract have come up and despite having advised his superiors of some mistakes that he caught in his contract nearly a month ago, nothing has been done about it. This has resulted in no paycheck this month which is obviously extremely worrysome. I just hate how everything is such a struggle.

2008-12-16T20:34:00.002+01:00

Today has been difficult in terms of finding the motivation to do just about anything. It was nearly impossible for me to get out of bed this morning and I struggled all the way up through lunchtime to stay on task and get things accomplished. Just one of those days, I guess..

I had class this afternoon at the academy that went well. Today was my last day until after Christmas break in January when I fully take over the classes for the other teacher who'll be leaving. As it stands right now I have about 14 hours per week and all I can do is pray that an additional 25-30 hours come from somewhere. I know that it's all going to work out though and I'm anxious to see how things come together.

I've got the rest of the week to finish house-cleaning and get our packing done for the trip.

Christmas Plan

2008-12-16T00:14:00.003+01:00

It's just after midnight here and I thought I'd get a quick post in before heading to bed. The weather here has been freezing as of late (very unusual for this type of climate) and it's been making headlines everywhere. Thankfully we don't live in the northern part of Spain where they've been bombarded with snowstorms over the past couple of days, but nonetheless this weather has me missing the balmy winter months we enjoyed last year..

I haven't posted anything substantial about my weight loss process in a very long time, mainly because it's been stagnant for months now. It's kind of disappointing to say that I find myself at the same place where I was last year- in fact I've gained a good 5-7 pounds since then. Chechu and I have recognized that we've taken a big-time fall off the wagon and that both of us have gained weight in the process. I feel like I've been flailing in my efforts to get things back on track- one day I'll be totally on, and the next day throwing caution to the wind. It's terribly frustrating.

The "dilemma" in our case is that the holidays are here and within a few short days we'll be on our way back to the States to spend Christmas and New Year's with my family. I find it completely unrealistic to commit to a restrictive fruit and vegetable plan in order to lose weight while we're away and I refuse to continue to allow myself to fall into that same rut, thinking that this time around that plan of action will yield positive results. In short, the main goal for both of us is to come back not having gained anymore weight and then continuing with our plan here at home. However, it'd be great to work out at least a few times with my sister, and definitely lay low on the holiday treats. I guess I just have to see the importance of the holidays minus all the food- a difficult challenge at best. I don't know- to some it may sound like I'm accepting mediocrity but at this point I see it as not setting myself up for failure. I'm going home with my husband to enjoy the people, culture, food, etc that I haven't been around in over a year, and I refuse to allow myself to get stressed out about numbers on the scale. Maybe that's the key of it all in the first place..

I do know that upon our return there will be some specific things that will have to change in order to ensure our success in this endeavor:

1). As the primary cook for our family, I realize that the bulk of our healthy eating (or lack thereof) depends on moi. Since I somehow innately always cook for six people instead of two, one of my biggest challenges is decipering portion control and sticking to it. My husband comes from the type of family that teaches you to clean your plate, full or not, and like me, the women in his family enjoy cooking large amounts of food so that everyone can eat to their heart's content. So, in other words, that means at meal time we eat. A lot. Like two or even three times the amount we should be eating. Diet-wise this is one of the biggest things that has to change.

2). We've been allowing red meat back into our diet. In large quantities. And that's not exactly the best option for me to keep my cholesterol under control. So after Christmas, nothing but chicken and fish crossing these lips.

3). The sugary drinks will also be making their exit come January. Aside from milk and the very occasional sip of wine here and there, drinking 64oz of water will become a norm for both of us.

I'm sure that just by putting these three changes in practice we'd automatically start seeing the pounds come off. This will definitely be the backbone of our plan and that coupled with exercise will definitely ensure us success.

Feelings

2008-12-12T10:44:00.003+01:00

I'm trying not to dwell on the fact that I'm feeling a little bit on the down side this morning.

I had an "interview" this morning at the unemployment office to register me in their system. I was supposed to bring in all of my diplomas and degrees (only one of which I have here in Spain, and somehow it got rained on last week when water leaked into our guest room/office) along with my resume to go over my qualifications and see what kinds of offers are currently available. Since I'll be officially starting to work at the language academy in January, albeit part-time for now, I didn't really see the point in going to the stupid interview, but Chechu told me that it was necessary for me to go- at the very least so that they would have my information on file.
To make a long story short, it was a total waste of time. The woman who "interviewed" me was barely able to register me at all since none of my diplomas/degrees were granted to me in Spain. Apparently I'll have to go through the Department of State in order for my studies to be validated here and until that happens the only work I'll be qualified for - the offers that come through the unemployment office that is- would be cleaning buildings and/or toilets since my degrees don't account for anything to them. Needless to say, I was pretty irritated walking out of there this morning.

On the way back home I stopped by my old job to pick up some of my belongings that I had accidentally left behind. My ex-coworker called me yesterday to let me know that I still had some of my things there and, honestly, just the thought of crossing that threshold again gave me a stomach ache. However, this morning I surprised myself, sucked it up and went in. It was actually pleasant to see the girls again, contrary to what I had originally thought, but I just stayed long enough to say hello and get my things.

I have the entire day to myself today since Chechu has a luncheon this afternoon and won't be back home until tonight after his Bible study group. Initially I thought of just being a hermit for the day, getting the bulk of my house-cleaning/organizing done and finalizing my lesson plans for next week, but I may surprise myself and venture out after all.

Quick note

2008-12-11T17:13:00.002+01:00

This week has gone by incredibly fast- before I know it, next Saturday will be here and Chechu and I will be on our merry way back to the U.S of A. I. CAN'T. WAIT!!

I have had quite a productive day thus far today, and before Bible study tonight I intend to get my lesson plans together for next week, clean my kitchen, wash another load of laundry and straighten my hair. I think I can pull that off in three hours!

Feelin' good!

2008-12-09T22:15:00.002+01:00

I'm encouraged!

1). I just got a wonderful email/praise report from my sister about her husband's residency paperwork on its way to being processed. They could have let this issue be the fork in the road that divided their relationship apart, but on the contrary they chose to trust God and His plan for them in light of the circumstances they faced. After all, what is a simple issue of paperwork for Almighty God? Now my brother-in-law is on his way to becoming an American citizen and I'm so exicted about it I can't even sit still!

2). I just got back home from a great afternoon of classes at the academy. My biggest challenge of the day was with the little kids- second graders- who are the most rambunctious group of children I've ever worked with. I don't mind having class with them but I'll be the first to admit that working with unruly kids is not my forte. Rather than being able to enjoy my lesson with them I spent the majority of the class being a referee which I don't like at all. I get along great with the older children though, and the adult classes I just love. Apparently the other teacher who started almost at the same time as me does very well with the young children, so I may be able to exchange my elementary school classes for her adult ones. We'll see. Either way, I feel encouraged about the possibilities that I have at this academy, and even though I'm continuing to look for additional work to complement the hours that I'll have there, I have an inkling that those additional hours will come directly from there.

3). I am loving my December vacation. This was exactly what I had been praying for! Knowing that I'll never have to go back to my old job just automatically lifts my spirits. I've literally erased the entire experience from memory!

4). I am leaving for the States in less than two weeks!!! Now that I have some more down time on my hands, I'm taking advantage of it all to get this house in order and do some pre-spring cleaning, since I know that once January gets here I won't have time for it all, with all the work I'll have.

5). Weight loss is, well, stagnant. In all honesty I've gained back some of the stress weight I had lost thanks to my job plus a few additional pounds which, according to the scale on Sunday, have brought me up to a record-breaking 227. Knowing that the holidays are coming up and the fact that I'll be home to enjoy them with my family makes me a tad bit nervous about how I will behave food-wise. I won't deprive myself but the key is not to overindulge. During these next couple weeks before our trip as I get my house in order I also need to get myself back on track with proper diet and exercise. I will do it!

2008-12-02T19:55:00.003+01:00

It's funny how some moments I feel totally motivated to blog about my day, my feelings, etc. and then moments later, overwhelmed with everything that I want to say, I completely lose all interest. Tonight is no different but in spite of that I'm fighting the urge to click on the red X and just put off writing for another day.

I had three classes this afternoon at the English academy and, for the most part, they went well. The kids managed to stay pretty well behaved and the teenagers were generally good too although obnoxious at times. Being with them totally reminded me of how my high school Spanish classes used to be. I would have attended the adult conversation class from 7-8 but since most of the students didn't come Christine asked if I could come on Thursday night at that time to sit in on the class which won't be a problem.

Tomorrow I plan to apply for another job in Roquetas, close to where the academy is located, and I'm just praying that if it's for me then I'll have it. I know that I made the right decision in leaving my former job- I've got no doubt in my mind about it. But it's this semi in-limbo stage that's starting to make me feel a little bit antsy.

I know it's going to work out...

One step at a time

2008-12-02T10:39:00.004+01:00

Slowly but surely I feel like I'm getting myself back on track and that to me is exciting.

I officially quit my job last Friday, and with all the hustle and bustle we had over the weekend with our Thanksgiving party and church activities,

there wasn't much time for the reality to sink in that as of Monday I would no longer be going back to that dinky, cigarette smoke-filled, toxic environment of an office to spend 10 hours of my day. For the first time in I don't know how long, I woke up on Monday morning without an ounce of anxiety or stress.

I have unofficially been hired at the language academy that I mentioned in my previous post in Roquetas (my contract will begin in January after the holidays) and over the course of the next few weeks leading up to Christmas break I'll be transitioning myself in as the new teacher for various classes. It's part-time work during the afternoons between Monday and Thursday, and I'm continuing to look for another job to complete the morning shift. My prayer is that this situation will be completely worked out before we leave for the States and I know that God is able and will do it!

This afternoon I have my first session of classes at the academy from 4-9 or so. I'm looking forward to meeting the students!

It's a new season

2008-11-19T17:37:00.000+01:00

This afternoon is proving to drag on in every possible sense of the word. I'm so anxious for 8pm to roll around and it just feels like these next two hours and forty five minutes will never come and go. It's simply amazing how fast the time flies when I'm relaxing at my apartment during my lunch break and how brutally endless the afternoon shift can be- busy or not.

After many hours of prayer and tears shed, my husband and I have made the decision that it's time for me to quit my job. I spoke with my church mentor this past weekend to get a word from her on the whole job issue, and she told me that this was the step of faith that God was calling me to take. Sure, quitting my job has never been the hard part of it all-- it's finding something else in the process that has me feeling a bit nervous.

In spite of that, I put in my two weeks notice on Monday. I have an interview tomorrow afternoon with a language academy here in Roquetas and I'm also waiting to confirm an interview with another language academy here in Aguadulce. I'm waiting for more transcription work to come in, and I might have some e-learning English courses to teach soon. I'm going to continue contacting the few translation agencies around here to see if there's any work available as well... I don't know. I know that God is going to work everything out, and I'm confident that this is the step of faith that I needed to take at this very point in my life.

Chechu and I are leaving for LA on December 20th, and I'm praying that I'll have work lined up before then with something full time to come back to in January when we return. I know that God is going to work it all out.

Joy unspeakable

2008-11-09T12:19:00.002+01:00

I stayed home this morning from church. When my alarm went off at 8am I awoke feeling a rush of anxiety knowing that I still had to plan my lesson for my class this afternoon, organize my finances and take two minutes to myself to- what's that?- relax. So I slept in until 10:30, took a long shower and then sat down to plan my lesson, read my Bible and enjoy the still quiet of my apartment on this beautiful Sunday morning.

At this point, I'm continuing to believe God for a change in jobs. I've applied and applied, prayed, cried, pleaded and here I am, continuing to wait and trying not to lose my patience in the process.

Still standing

2008-10-24T20:58:00.002+02:00

It's been a long Friday. A long, highly emotional Friday. Work-related? You betcha.

I was THIS close to walking out this afternoon for my lunch break to never turn back. I tried to put on a happy face for my husband when he got back home to eat, only to have my efforts dissolve into a puddle of tears at the kitchen table. We prayed about it all together, and he told me that he'd rather see us work with less money while I find another job than to see me upset about where I am currently. So I went back to work with every intention on giving my two-weeks' notice. I spoke with Andrea about it, and to my surprise for once I felt like she really understood me and at the same time felt concern toward me. She encouraged me to keep going and she said that she would work more with me to lighten the load I've had to carry on my shoulders. And she did. She really came through on her word. On top of all that, after the work week we've had I'd pretty much accepted the fact that I'd have to go in tomorrow to catch up. And God miraculously came through so that none of us would have to go in.

It amazes me how much God can cause your heart to change toward a person. Two months ago the mere sight of Andrea was enough to put me in a bad mood. I constantly felt judged by her. But I don't feel the same way about her anymore. It feels like we're co-workers now who help each other out, working together instead of clashing constantly.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll be at my present job. I'm praying for God to open the doors for me to move into a new opportunity. But today's events have encouraged me not to throw the towel in just yet.

2008-10-21T23:17:00.002+02:00

Even though yesterday was a weekday, Chechu and I thoroughly enjoyed our first anniversary together. Sure, a week off from work to whisk ourselves away to some remote island to celebrate would have been ideal, but circumstances being such as they are didn't make that possible. Nevertheless we both made the day special by enjoying each other's company during our lunch break and after work when we went out to dinner. We went out to an Italian restaurant in Almería and had a pretty big meal. At 11:00pm to top it off. But it was well worth it.

I feel like my emotions have run the gamut over the past, I don't know, six months or so. Diet wise I've gone back and forth so many times only to find myself in the same place where I started out in February. That definitely doesn't make me proud, but with everything I've been dealing with lately (aka my job) I can't say that I'm dissapointed in myself for maintaining my weight. Being the emotional eater that I am, I'm thankful that the stress I've been under hasn't caused me to revert back to my old ways in looking to food for comfort (and consequently gaining 20-30 pounds). The most important thing, of course, is being able to pick myself up again and get back on track. I've lost my motivation to get up early in the mornings to work out, and I totally need to get that back.

I'm on my way.

Anniversary!

2008-10-21T00:31:00.002+02:00

Even though it's after midnight it's still October 20th for me since I haven't gone to bed yet. This time a year ago I married my best friend and soul mate, and I'm so thankful to have him in my life. It's hard to believe a year has gone by already!

Reprieve

2008-10-03T08:49:00.002+02:00

For the first time in I don't know how long, I'm having the chance to enjoy watching the sun rise. I have my cup of honey lemon tea beside me, my Bible to do some reading later on and I'm sporting the most comfortable pajamas that I own. I've been sick all week with a pretty nasty virus and rather than forcing myself to go to work like I've been doing, I decided to take this Friday off to stay home and recuperate. I am so glad that I did.

The Lord really came to my rescue about working on Saturdays since the other day I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. This weekend it turns out that I don't have to go in, and I don't think it'll be necessary next weekend either. My boss usually talks a lot before any changes are ever made official, and knowing how reluctant we all are to the idea of working on the weekends I don't think he'll actually make it a rule. Or so I hope..

Tomorrow, depending on how I feel, I may decide to go up to Granada with my husband since he has another rehearsal. I'm going to try to get in touch with one of my professors there to see if I can meet up with her for a little bit. It's been a while since we've seen each other, and I'm sure she'll have some ideas as far as looking for a new job is concerned. I'm so tired of not working in my field..

Diet wise, well, there's not that much to tell since I've been sick all week. I have managed to hold steady at 217 all week, which has been nice to see. The key of course will be getting back in the saddle next week and staying on plan with diet and exercise in order to keep losing. I want to be in the 190s by the time I go home for Christmas in December.

When?

2008-10-01T18:13:00.002+02:00

It's 6:15pm.

I have an hour and forty five minutes left to be at my job.

I'm sick and I desperately want to go home and curl up on my couch.

My life would be a million times happier if I didn't have to come back here ever again. But I somehow have been sucked into the wonderful world of working on Saturdays too, starting this weekend. That makes my headache pound just a little bit harder. I swear this job is just about taking over my life. When is this ordeal going to be over?? When will I be able to move onto the job I've been waiting for??

Saturday

2008-09-27T09:29:00.002+02:00

Finally here. I had some strange dreams last night that have left me a little befuddled this morning, but other than that I'm feeling good. Chechu just left not too long ago for Granada and he'll be there all day for another rehearsal. Both of us were hoping to have a Saturday off to spend together, but it looks like that won't be possible for at least another couple weeks since there are a lot of church activities going on between now and then on the weekends. It's hard to believe that our first anniversary will be coming up in less than a month!

As of this morning I'm currently weighing in at 220.4 pounds. Granted, this hasn't been the best week in terms of exercise, but I have been very diligent (okay, maybe diligent is too strong of a word here) in watching my calories. I'm still waiting to post a huge loss that has yet to come and I'm a bit frustrated about it to say the least. But all I can do is keep going. The method seems so simple-- exercise between 45 minutes to an hour every day, lay off the bad carbs, salt and sugar and increase intake of vegetables, fruits and lean proteins. So freakin simple. And why it's so. freakin. hard to do sometimes is beyond my comprehension.

My goals for this chilly, damp Saturday:

1). Go visit with Fátima and be back before 2pm!
2). Read my Bible and spend time in prayer from 2-3
3). Exercise 3-4
4). 4:30-5 get ready for church
5). Church service

After church:
1). Clean house and iron
2). Make lunch for Sunday
3). Hang out with my man after he gets back home :)

2008-09-24T23:30:00.002+02:00

This week has been a strain to get through. Emotionally I feel pulled in all kinds of directions and, as usual, my job is pretty much at the center of it all. I continue to strugge with finding my peace with being in this work environment, but I suppose I'm getting there. I know I'm not going to be here forever and that God has something bigger and better planned for me. I'm trying not to focus on my "now" and get the big picture instead...

With everything going on this week I haven't had the chance to work out at all. I need to get this back on track by tomorrow. Seriously.

2008-09-15T23:21:00.002+02:00

All things considered, I can't exactly complain about having lost just under two pounds this past week although I do wish I had a bigger number to post. My goal is to just keep things steady and consistent so that by this time next week I can log a preferably more significant loss. I admit, however, that seeing the numbers whittle down tenth-of-a-pound by tenth-of-a-pound can get discouraging at times, making me feel like I'm standing at the foot of an 80ft. mountain trying to contemplate how in the world I'll ever get to the top.

Being pressed for time yesterday I totally missed my cardio workout and today, barring 10 minutes of exercise that I was able to squeeze in tonight before cooking for tomorrow, I haven't had any additional time to exercise. Tomorrow, however, is a new day. I plan to get in a good workout tomorrow before work, and if I can squeeze in another one after I get back in the evening that'd be great too.

2008-09-13T17:35:00.002+02:00

Today has been just what I needed it to be- quiet, peaceful and productive. I slept in until after 11am, played around on the internet for a little while and by noon I was up and about doing my Turbo Sculpt dvd. After that I spent the rest of the early afternoon cleaning and organizing, washed a couple loads of laundry and cooked for tomorrow. The rest of my agenda today includes talking with my sister, ironing and helping Chechu organize our guest room/office. Oh and more relax time of course. Might get in a nice pedicure or something before the day is over, who knows..

Diet wise things have continued well this week. Last week I fell short 1 day according to my exercise schedule, working out only 4 days instead of the 5 I had planned. Not the end of the world by any means though. I had a pretty stressful Friday yesterday too and I didn't get a workout in then either, which I wasn't at all upset about. In fact I was thrilled that I didn't turn to my usual comfort foods in an attempt to make me "feel" better.

This is my exercise schedule for this coming week:

Sunday: Cardio 45 minutes (before church)
Monday: Cardio 45 minutes (AM)
Tuesday: Strength training 40 minutes (PM)
Wednesday: Cardio 45 minutes (AM)
Thursday: Break
Friday: Cardio 45 minutes (PM)

Is it Friday yet?

2008-09-10T15:12:00.002+02:00

Things this week have been going well on all levels pretty much. Plus it's Wednesday and that means just two more days until the weekend. On Saturday I'm taking the whole day to myself to relax and get some things done around the house since my husband will be in Granada all day for another rehearsal.

I feel particularly happy about how I've been sticking to plan this week. In terms of exercise I've focused primarily on doing cardio-- next week I'm going to start adding strength training to my routine and I'm looking forward to it. Tonight's workout will mark my 5th this week- tomorrow I'll take the day off and then start back up on Friday.

Food-wise things have been going well. Barring a couple late-night run-ins with the fridge, I've been doing well. I'm not following any particular diet, but rather focusing on eating low-fat, balanced meals and laying low on the carbs. I feel much better knowing that I'm not tying myself down to a diet routine.

That's all for now..

I think I've got it back

2008-09-07T23:11:00.003+02:00

I did work out early Friday morning after posting my last entry and did it ever feel great. There's just something about starting the day off with exercise that makes you feel like you've already accomplished something important even before walking out the door in the morning- or at least that's how my Friday went, in spite of the hassles at work that I face on a daily basis.

On Saturday we relaxed pretty much all morning and afternoon until it was time to get ready for the the wedding-- Chechu's uncle and his long-time girlfriend got married. In spite of my intense cardio workout before getting dressed for the wedding, I wasn't able to escape the fact that I ended up making a big mistake in putting on a babydoll dress-style top that tied in the back to go with my black dress pants and sandals-- not flattering at all.

Towards the end of the reception the bride's father went around passing cigars to everyone, and when he got to me he immediately remarked on how I couldn't smoke, and that of course left everyone sitting at our table looking at Chechu and me sideways, as if we decided to hide something as big as a pregnancy. No pun intended... Needless to say I was highly embarrassed and angry that he could make such a comment although, in all honesty, I don't believe he deliberately intended to hurt my feelings.

In spite of all that however, I really feel like I'm getting my motivation back to get moving with my weight loss. I've hemmed and hawed with this for long enough and it finally feels like things have come full circle. I'm particularly getting back into my exercise habit, which I'm thrilled about. I know it'll take some time to fully build up my routine again, but I'm going to stick with it nonetheless. I feel good about this coming week and all that is in store!

2008-09-05T04:54:00.002+02:00

I had a splitting headache last night after getting in from work, and for the first time in I don't know how long I went to bed at 9pm. It's now just after 5 in the morning and I'm wide awake, so I figured I'd take some uninterrupted time to blog.

The past couple of weeks have been crazy-this week in particular, and all of the extra stress has wreaked havoc on my intentions to get back on track. I haven't fallen completely off the wagon, but I haven't made any extra special efforts to decisively get back on either.
My downfalls continue to be the same-- no exercise, lack of planning and zero accountability.

My immediate short-term goal is to make tomorrow a productive day- not to let my job and all of the stress it entails consume me, and to make my health a priority. That is, after all, why I'm doing this.

***

So my accountability starts now. This was me today:

No breakfast, V8 for lunch
Dinner (8:30pm) Porkloin/cheese sandwich, 1 cup veggie lasagna
Snack (4:30am) 2 slices of bread with paté spread, 1 can 7Up
Exercise: walking home from work (10 minutes)

My health-related goals to make tomorrow a fantastic Friday

1). Exercise for 45 minutes after writing this entry

2) Stick to my meal plan for the day:

Breakfast: Egg whites, V8, coffee w/ skim milk no sugar
Lunch: Chicken breast fillets, sautéed vegetables, large green salad
Dinner: 1 small can of tuna (drain the oil and rinse), LF white cheese, yogurt

I realize that getting back on track is taking things one day at a time and staying committed. It's about not being afraid to change and being willing to put my health and well-being as a top priority. I am worth it.

Frustrated

2008-08-25T23:05:00.004+02:00

I've struggled with my weight for practically my entire life- so much so that it subconsciously has become a part of who I am. Being on some sort of diet or, at the very least, being painfully aware of how much I eat and exercise every day has claimed a big part of my identity for a very long time. What initially started out as a plan to lose the baby fat at age 13 has extended through my twenties, often times leaving me feeling like the little mouse that runs full-speed on an exercise wheel but never gets anywhere.

Sigh.

I just need to stop thinking and start doing.

Choices

2008-08-22T22:52:00.003+02:00

Life has been quite hectic as of late, namely due to an increased amount of duties at work. If I thought the work day went by fast before, it goes by at lightning speed now-- so much so that I seriously have no down time anymore during my entire day. I used set aside time during the morning or afternoon hours to blog and catch up on emails but that has been impossible lately, hence the 10-day lapse between entries.

Pardoning the cliché, I'm finally coming to realize that my life is going to be what I make of it. I could go on and on about how moody and downcast I've been this entire summer about my job and how it's not fair and blah blah blah, but none of that complaining has solved anything-- in fact, it's done nothing but hurl me deeper into a downward spiral of depression. Allowing this situation to affect me like this has had a significant impact on my personal life-- it follows me home every day and its negativity has seeped into my home because I foolishly chose not to shut it out from the beginning. I'm determined to change that as of this instant-- my husband certainly doesn't deserve to come home to a bitchy wife every other day.

So I'm taking it all back. I'm claiming joy and freedom over my life and the peace in knowing that God has got it all under control. I trust Him and I recognize that I'm where I am for a reason. That truth leads me to a fork in the road: I can choose to wait patiently on the Lord, enjoying every moment He's been gracious enough to grant me, finding my contentment in Him and being a channel through which his love and grace are made manifest OR I can kick and scream myself through this season of my life, making the conscious decision to be miserable and make everyone around me equally as miserable.

I choose the former.

Tuesday

2008-08-12T14:37:00.003+02:00

Another great workout this morning.. Granted, it was even more of a challenge to convince myself to get up and stay up today, but thankfully I was able to beat the urge to sleep. In spite of the crazy morning at work today I felt really energized and in good spirits. I'm definitely going to have to keep up with this routine. Knowing that I've worked out and had fun doing it before I step out the door in the morning is a great motivator.

In light of all the recommitment going on I'm also going to get back to posting my weigh ins, updating my stats continually every Tuesday. Since last Monday the numbers on the scale have been coming down slowly but consistently which, in my case, is the key to success.

More and more it looks as though our trip to Murcia this weekend is becoming a reality and I am so excited about making it out there! I definitely need a break from my surroundings, albeit for just two days. I think I've finally gotten over my vacation bitterness and have accepted the reality that this summer is going to be filled with work. In all honesty, I can't complain at all about that, considering that almost every summer that I've been in school I've had to worry about money and not having enough to pay bills. So now that I have a "stable" job, in light of the current employment conditions here, I have to be thankful for what I do have. At the very least I'll be able to travel back to the States in December to spend Christmas with my family and enjoy a much needed dose of home.

Monday

2008-08-11T18:17:00.003+02:00

The weekend came and went fast as usual. Thankfully I got over Friday's bad mood rather quickly, and by Saturday morning everything was back to normal.

This work week has actually started off well, contrary to what I had thought would be the case. As of last week we've got a new accountant working in the office who is going to be taking care of all the company billing-- the root of all the dysfunction that's been going on as of late- and I'm praying that her being here will change things for the better.

I fought the urge not to work out this morning and won. On Saturday I bought some new adorable running shoes and I broke them in this morning. It felt great to start my Monday off with exercise-- that's my plan between now and Thursday. Hopefully we'll be out of town this weekend visiting Chechu's aunt in Murcia, and in that case I'll be counting Friday as an off day. This coming weekend is actually a long one for us since Friday is a national holiday, so I'm definitely looking forward to the extra day off.

After prayer tonight I'll be heading home to wish my mama a very happy birthday and from there get our cooking done for the rest of the week while finishing up some chores. It's so nice not to have to worry about squeezing in a workout tonight!

2008-08-09T00:22:00.002+02:00

Random thoughts at 12:25AM:

1). Stupid arguments with spouse suck, especially at the start of a much-anticipated weekend.

2). Biting your tongue so as not to exacerbate said argument equally sucks. Especially when you want to verbally let spouse have it for being an insensetive $%#TWFS@@#$@.

3). Pool is awesome. BUT being beaten TWICE at pool with spouse after said argument adds hot, flaming fuel to the consuming fire that is my mood right now. Yes, I am a sore loser.

The only positive in this situation? I didn't allow my irritation to propel me into emotional eating. In fact, I turned down several of spouse's invitations to go out for ice cream after playing pool.

I don't know. I'm frustrated myself for being so angry over something so stupid. For the most part I consider myself to be pretty patient and slow to anger. However, I'm also slow to get over my anger. I replay arguments in my head thinking of what I should have said in the moment when I could have and didn't. I guess that's bad, right? I don't know.. What I do know is that I can't let this argument affect my mood for the entire weekend. It's totally not worth it, especially since Monday will be here before I even realize it. Hopefully after getting some rest tonight I'll wake up over everything.

Work it out

2008-08-08T12:05:00.002+02:00

I'm thrilled to post that I've finally broken through my exercise plateau!

Last night after work I finally dusted off my exercise dvds and got in a 45-minute workout. It was amazing to get through the video and I actually had fun doing it, rather than just wishing it was overwith already. I think that's one of the keys (at least for me) to finally start enjoying exercise. It's always seemed like a chore rather than quality time that I spend taking care of myself, and I know that in changing my mindset that will obviously help me to make exercise a part of my daily routine.

This morning I also started my day off with another workout, so I'm excited to have two sessions under my belt thus far. My goal is to get in 45 minutes of exercise every day for the next three weeks

Day Three

2008-08-06T17:17:00.002+02:00

All things considered, day three of our renewed commitment to health and weight loss is progressing well. However my stomach is a bubbling mess today, presumably due to my increased vegetable intake, and that has left me making more trips to the bathroom than I would like. Hopefully everything will be back to normal by tomorrow though.

My biggest challenge thus far is getting excited about exercise again. It's been forever since I worked out last, and as of lately it's been easier for me to find excuses for not exercising than finding time to actually do it. I have everything I need to get a good exercise regime started- the only think I lack is the key element- motivation. Yesterday I had every intention on working out after my tutoring session, but my MIL and a friend of ours decided to drop by the house for an "I'm coming over anyway" visit (this was after I said over the phone that last night wouldn't be a good time to meet up), leaving me to totally interrupt my class and play hostess until after 11:30pm. Granted, we ended up having a good time together but I was definitely irritated that I had to stall my plans. So, needless to say, yesterday came and went without exercise either. Tonight our plan is to have dinner early after I get out of work and then head out to Bible study from there. I'm making it up in my mind to put forth the extra effort and work out tonight after we get back home. I have to get started with this, and I hate sounding like a broken record! Breaking through this barrier is exactly what I need to get the ball rolling again.

Be encouraged

2008-08-05T16:57:00.003+02:00

I'm encouraging myself through the rest of this week as best I can. It's funny how some weeks just breeze by, leaving you wondering where the time went while others drag on to the last possible second.

I read over yesterday's post a few times last night after writing it. Then I read some posts I had written last year when my sister was in a similar employment situation and I was trying to encourage her, reminding her to just trust in the Lord and that everything would work out fine. In her case, after a summer of worrying and wondering how everything would turn out, she was offered a great job 100% related to her field, she got to move out to LA and, wouldn't you know it, she ended up meeting her soul mate out there, whom she'll be marrying in four short months. Her experience, among so many others that we both have shared, speaks volumes about God's faithfulness and His perfect timing. I know that God isn't oblivious to how I'm feeling right now about my job. In fact, He's quite aware of everything that I'm going through. If I trust Him (which I do), I choose to rest on His promises, knowing that He holds my life in His hands. My dream job is on the way, and it won't be forced or awkward. On the contrary, it will fall perfectly into place.

In other news, we just found out today that Chechu's uncle will be getting married next month! He and his girlfriend have been together for years now, and they've finally decided to make things official. I'm really excited for them! The date has been set for September 6 and Chechu and I are both thinking of it as an additional incentive to meet our short term goals for our new commitment to the diet. I already have the dress in mind that I want to use for the wedding, but I definitely will have to put some work in to fit into it. I refuse to go out and buy another dress when I could easily put in some work and get into the ones I already own.

Since we started out on our new plan yesterday I haven't had the chance to exercise. This evening I have an English tutoring session to teach, and after that I'm not sure whether or not there will be time to work out tonight either. I have to make time for it though. Forty five minutes isn't too much to ask, and I can put my other chores on hold for at least that long and take care of me. I have to change my mindset about exercise- like eating it has to become a part of my day. No excuses.

The rest of my rant

2008-08-04T20:44:00.002+02:00

In all honesty, this Monday was unexpectedly difficult to get through. But, thank goodness, I've made it home and I'm relaxing on my couch, trying to sort through my thoughts. Towards the latter part of the afternoon I started to feel a little sick to my stomach and that, coupled with my eagerness to just get through the rest of the day and get home made me decide to skip our prayer meeting tonight and stick around here for the rest of the evening.

I feel so weird right now, and I hate that feeling. I feel restless and impatient for several main reasons:

1). My job. I've written so many posts about this that I've probably driven people away from reading this blog! But in all seriousness, it really has been a huge stress factor in my life:

My job has nothing to do with what I've spent so many years studying. I'm a translator and interpreter. While I was originally hired for that very purpose, the fact that the real estate market has all but collapsed here in Spain and in the US market we were dealing with caused my boss to begin exploring other business opportunities. Prior to opening his real estate business he previously worked in logistics and importing/exporting food products, and as of March he's gone back into that. Initially I was to be in charge of the international division of the business, but that has all but been put on hold since he is more focused on building up his clientele here in Spain. I wasn't brought on board with that until May when crisis mode hit after he realized that Christina wasn't capable of carrying everything herself, despite my offers to help out.
The obvious work environment which has been toxic as of late, as I've alluded to in just about every recent entry
I hate my work schedule. 9am -2pm and then 4pm-8pm pretty much SUCKS. I have no time for anything else.

2). I sorely need a vacation. I am beyond burned out and I need time to myself and time to just regroup. It pains me to admit it, but I'm jealous of my husband and all the vacation time he's had this summer. He's got the entire summer off since he's a teacher, and since he doesn't have classes he's been working during the morning hours at his second job to bring in some extra income. Even at his second job they're giving him the last two weeks off in August for vacation. Can I have a break here please? Instead of the month vacation we're entitled to at my job, the benevolent boss is giving us all four days off. FOUR DAYS, that's it. I told him that I had to take off time in December to go to LA for my sister's wedding, and I refuse to go for less than two weeks. For that very reason I have no time off this summer. I can't believe I'm saying this, but winter can't get here fast enough for me.

The more things change...

2008-08-04T16:10:00.003+02:00

The boss is on vacation this week and, true to form, now that the cat is away the mice may as well have rolled out the red carpet for the start of the Olympics. All the drama that went on last week with Christina has taken an unsurprising twist, considering that a day and a half after the boss got to the point of threatening to take her to court for breaching her employment contract he called and asked her to come back to work. Finding someone else more responsible and having to take the time to show him/her the ropes was just too much to ask I guess. So since last Wednesday she's been back and she still gets to take next week off for vacation. Seriously??

In my case the word "vacation" has me wishing that this entire summer would just get the hell overwith already. Everyone around me is getting time off left and right- and I'm still stuck here in this BS job with my BS schedule, surrounded by all these crazy people. And it's like 1000º outside to make matters worse. I seriously hate being tied down to all this. I didn't feel this burned out in grad school. Unfortunately, however, I can't grant myself the luxury of just quitting all together because I can't afford it. So until something better comes along I have no choice other than to grin and bear it.

Monday surprise

2008-07-28T23:35:00.003+02:00

It truly amazes me when I start a day off with one perspective and see it come to an end in an entirely different light. After spending such a great, relaxing, work-free weekend, I was dreading 8:45am this morning when I'd have to leave for work. Lately things have been so stressful and tense there, and every time my boss crosses the threshold you can cut the atmosphere with a knife. This past Friday, as has been the case for several weeks now, the work week ended with yet another huge argument between my boss and Cristina, his main secretary. Thankfully I had our pastor's surprise party to distract my thoughts when I left the office, but even still I was really overwhelmed when I left work that day, desperate to find a way out.
This morning, almost immediately after coming into work the two of them went at it again, only this time Cristina cut the argument short by getting up and walking out for good, leaving behind a sea of unfinished work to be sorted out and deciphered. However, the chaos that I was expecting would result from her abrupt departure miraculously never came. Granted, the rest of us had to work double to try to start getting things organized again, but in the midst of it all there was a sense of calm and, dare I say, unity between the three of us to get things done. I actually stayed a half hour later to finish up some extra work because I wanted to and not because I begrudgingly felt compelled to hang around.

I got along well with Cristina, and I find it very unfortunate that she and the boss were'nt able to work out their differences in a more amicable way. However, whether she wanted to be or not, I think that Cristina was actually a part of the problem in the office. With her absence, a new leaf has been turned over there and I think we'll all end up being a lot happier.

Regardless of all that though, I'm still aggressively looking for a new job!

I spent a quiet, relaxing birthday with my husband and his family yesterday and had a great time. I got some very nice gifts and Chechu and I also went out to dinner at one of my favorite American restaurants here in Almeria. Before dinner we went to play a couple rounds of pool-- I'm starting to get good at it! I made some shots that actually surprised me!

Chechu's best friend Angel is in town for the week and tomorrrow he'll be coming over for lunch with us. Some soul food requests have been made, hehe, but I plan to do my best to keep everything low-fat and healthy. Today I stuck with protein and vegetables for my main meal, and I made myself a low-fat banana smoothie for dinner. Amazing. I'm still reading up on the SBD since I wasn't able to get through it all over the weekend. It definitely looks like it could be a good fit. Some of the foods and recipes I'll have to tweak a little bit since some products are different here in Spain. But for the most part we should be able to do it without a problem.

Looking forward to working out tomorrow morning!

Saturday In The Park..

2008-07-26T11:16:00.003+02:00

.. what a great summer song that is. Could I be anymore nostalgic at this point? Hehe..

The birthday party last night was indeed a lot of fun. I focused more on enjoying everyone's company than eyeing the food and, all things considered, I behaved myself very well-- I had only a couple pieces of barbecue and a teeny-tiny slice of cake which, in all honesty, wasn't all that. Cakes here in Europe are a lot different than what I'm used to. I mean, they're great and all, but they definitely lack the thick, sugar-laden icing goodness that I love.. When my sister and I would get together with one of our cousins during our college years we would go out to the grocery store and buy birthday cakes from the bakery just to have for dessert. Ah, the memories!

For most of the day today I'll be hanging out here at the apartment by myself. Chechu left out super early this morning to go up to Granada for another worship team rehearsal at the church and won't be back until later this afternoon sometime. My original plan was to stay up when he left out this morning, but at 6:45am on a Saturday I was physically unable to get out of bed. Instead I got up around 9 and I've been working ever since. I stumbled across an article last night on cnn.com about how to make more use of your time, and one of the suggestions it offered was to prioritize your to-do list, separating what you have to get done and what you'd like to finish on a particular day. I'm all about making lists and I feel so much more productive outlining on paper the specific tasks that I have to do, but it's frustrating when I'm not able to cross off every single item at the end of the day. So today I've started to put this new priority method into practice and I think it'll be helpful in eliminating stress in a lot of ways.

Tomorrow is my birthday! I think Chechu's got a few surprises planned for me :) We have church in the morning and afterward we'll be going over to his grandmother's house for lunch since tomorrow happens to be her birthday too! All in all, I'm looking forward to spending time with everyone. I definitely wish my sister were here, but we've already made plans to spend our 29th and definitely our 30th together! :)

I'm going to start reading the South Beach Diet today. I think this could definitely be a good option for Chechu and me to get started with.

2008-07-25T14:40:00.002+02:00

It's crazy to see how fast this summer is flying by-- this is the last weekend of July! This time last year Chechu and I were running around getting all of our documents in order for the wedding and now we're just about two months shy of our one-year anniversary. Crazy how fast the time goes when you're having fun :)

I hope to get a more detailed post in tomorrow since I'll have practically the entire day to myself. As for the rest of today I'm looking forward to getting through these last four hours of work that await me after my break, and then we have a birthday party to go to tonight which should be fun. >:)

Winds of change..

2008-07-19T20:37:00.002+02:00

Part One: The Truth

As I've alluded to in previous posts, I've been ignoring practically everything diet-related for the past, oh, two months or so give or take the few days that I managed to work out and stay on track while my husband was away on business. I've avoided the scale at all costs because, frankly, I've been too scared to come face to face with reality. Instead, I've been eating what I want when I want and not bothering to do any form of exercise. This has got to stop. I definitely feel as though I've come to a crossroad in this journey and as of today, July 19th at 8:45PM, I'm making the commitment to get back on track. Period.

222.6. (+5lbs since last official weigh in)

According to my scale, that is what I weigh at this very moment. After mustering up the courage to finally step on, I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised to see such a "low" number considering all the crap I've been eating lately, including today. I haven't been taking care of me, and I am putting an end to this carelessness effective immediately. I'm determined to win this battle.

Part Two: The Purpose

I hate being fat. I hate constantly comparing myself to other women and being painfully aware that within my circle of friends I'm the only one with a weight problem. For as easy as it is to remind others of the contrary, I hate the constant struggle of feeling like my weight is what determines my self-worth. I hate all the undue stress (physical and mental) that being overweight is causing me. I want to be free from all of this, and ironically enough, that is a decision that starts with me.

2008-07-17T11:29:00.002+02:00

This has been another rough week all around. Work, up until the other day, has been nothing short of a circus, I got another scathing you-don't-call-home-enough email from my Mom yesterday, diet and exercise have been CRAP all week long, I'm in sore need of a vacation and my incessant irritability tells me that my faithful friend PMS has decided to drop by for a visit. Nevertheless, tomorrow is Friday and I'm looking forward the mini break.

I'm turning 28 in one week and three days. I really wish I could spend this time with my twin sister-- it's hard to believe that we haven't hung out together to celebrate our birthday since our 25th, and even then I think we were too stressed out about starting grad school to really enjoy ourselves. I'm praying that this time next year either she and her future husband will be able to come out here or that we'll be able to make the trip out there to celebrate.
Chechu wanted to throw me another birthday party this year, but I think we'll just plan to have a more intimate celebration instead since everyone at the church is planning a surprise party for one of the pastors whose birthday falls two days before mine. I'm not trying to steal anyone's thunder, and besides, I'd much rather have a romantic dinner with Chechu anyway.

Rainy days and Mondays...

2008-07-14T14:47:00.002+02:00

The skies have since cleared up from this morning when I left out for work in the middle of a thunderstorm. I was kind of hoping the weather would stay that way today-- theres's something about summer storms that I find ironically peaceful. Nevertheless, at this point the sun has fully come out and there's no cloud in sight. I suppose I can put up with another sunny day ;)

Things at work are going okay today. The Friday from hell had us all running away from the office last week, and I think I can speak for all of us in saying that no one was exactly looking forward to seeing each other's faces at 9am this morning. I sure as hell wasn't. But, thankfully, the morning shift has quickly come and gone without to many hassles. I've got four more hours to look forward to this afternoon that will hopefully go by just as fast and problem-free.

The weekend was good- short as always but we had fun. On Friday night we went to the movies to see The Happenning which I thought was ok. Some things didn't tie together in the end, but all in all it wasn't horrible. At some point this week we plan to go see The Chronicles of Narnia which I'm looking forward to. Saturday we spent almost the whole day with an ex-coworker of Chechu's who came over with his girlfriend to have lunch with us. We ended up hanging out for the entire afternoon and had a great time. At their request I made pork ribs and cheddar-bacon potatoes. Rave reviews on that :) Yesterday was church in the morning and Granada in the afternoon.

I'm hoping this week goes by fast.

2008-07-11T12:45:00.003+02:00

So much for the breather..

It's just about 1pm here and I suppose I could be stressed out about all the unexpected crap that has come up this morning at my hugely dysfunctional and disorganized job. However, it's Friday and I'm already in weekend mode. Obviously with everything going on today it's not very likely that we'll get out of the office early, but I do know that come 8PM, sí o sí, I'm done for the day!

I worked out this morning! YES!! 40 minutes of sweat-pouring cardio. :)

Finally a breather

2008-07-10T10:47:00.002+02:00

This morning at the office is actually going by very smoothly. The past few days have been long and intense, and thankfully the light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to shine through. I can finally see my weekend blank canvas coming into view!

I'm feeling really good this morning. I spoke briefly with my MIL before leaving the house, which was really nice. She's been concerned about me spending these four days by myself, and she's called me every day to check on me and make sure I'm all right. What a sweetheart. :) I definitely feel very blessed to get along so well with my husband's family and to really feel like I belong with them. Lord knows there are plenty of insufferable inlaws out there.

Chechu gets home in less than two hours!! Yay!!

In other unrelated news, I've been feeling some baby pressure as of late. Everyone, and I mean everyone from our church is constantly asking about when we're going to start having kids. To a certain degree I don't mind the questions because, frankly, we'll have children when God decides to give them to us. But it can get somewhat tiresome when the baby questions come up in every conversation. As of lately there have been a lot of newlywed couples who've gotten pregnant and apparently my BIL's wife and I are the ones everyone is looking to next. I definitely want to have children, but right now my focus is on getting healthy for me so that I can be a healthy mom to our children when that time comes.

Anyone else out there thinking of starting a family soon?

Mission Accomplished

2008-07-10T00:12:00.002+02:00

So tomorrow marks the end of my Chechu-less four days--I'm pleasantly suprised that this week has gone by so fast. He'll be home tomorrow by the time I finish my morning shift at work, and I'm definitely looking forward to coming back to a complete house. From what he's said over the phone, the conference has been a great experience for him and he was able to make some contacts with other religious education teachers from other parts of Spain as well. So, all in all, what initially seemed like it was going to be a real drag has turned out to be a worthwhile investment-- we're already talking about making plans to attend next year's conference together.

Diet-wise things have continued to go very well this week. Unfortunately I missed my workout this morning-- I woke up on time but was waay too sore to think about working out. Surely my body is getting accustomed to exercise again since after nearly two months of not exercising my muscles are a wee bit rusty. As for my food intake, I purposely have consumed a lower amount of calories than normal this week so as to jumpstart my getting-back-on-the-wagon plan. As of tomorrow I'll be getting back into my normal routine but continuing to focus on smaller portions and getting in enough fruit and vegetables to fill me up.

2008-07-09T09:08:00.002+02:00

Él es mi paz
Se ha llevado todos mis temores
Él es mi paz, Él es mi paz

Echo toda mi ansiedad sobre Él
Pues Él se cuida de mí
Él es mi paz, Él es mi paz

Totally emotional over this song right now and how true it is and has been in every moment of my life. God is so amazing.

2008-07-08T21:34:00.002+02:00

Mid-week is fast approaching, thank goodness. The past few days have been quite long at work, and, according to the plan, we're putting in extra time at the start of the week so that by Friday we can have a minimal workload and get out of the office early. Here's hoping that actually happens!

I'm actually getting through my alone time better than I thought I would. Last night after prayer I ended up hanging out with my MIL- we went to dinner (we split a salad and a piece of strawberry cheesecake) and since we stayed out kind of late she slept over and headed back out to Almería this morning. Tonight I plan to talk with my mama and then get a few house cleaning chores done before bed, so I've definitely got my time occupied.

My exercise challenge thus far has been going very well. I worked out yesterday and today for 45 minutes. Tomorrow I'd like to get in a morning workout before heading out to the office and the same goes for Thursday morning. I've been filling up on fruits and vegetables over the past couple of days as well. Overall I'm really please with how I've been sticking to my goals, and I'm confident that this week will be the jump-start I need to finally get back into the swing of things.

Exercise challenge

2008-07-07T00:20:00.002+02:00

So this upcoming week has been the one that I've least looked forward to this entire summer. My husband left this evening for a teacher's conference near Madrid and won't be back until Thursday.. Poo. Initially the plan was for him to get up early tomorrow morning and leave out by 7am to make sure he was at the conference by the 11am start, but we later decided that the better option would be to head up this evening and spend the night at his grandmother's house, located fairly close to where the conference is being held. The activities conclude Wednesday evening, but rather than making the long drive back home that night he'll be staying over at his gram's again and leave out Thursday morning.

Although we've had a great weekend together, knowing he was going to be leaving tonight kind of put a damper on my mood. The two of us have grown more attached to each other than we've ever been since we got married last year, and when he's not here there's a part of me that's missing too. I seriously started to cry as I watched him pull away!

Nevertheless, I intend to make the most of the four days ahead of me. I've got some summer cleaning projects I want to finish up and, more importantly, I really want to jump-start my exercise plan. My goal is to journal and exercise every day this week, keeping track of my eating and exercise.

Here's to the start of a new week!

Accountability

2008-06-23T23:36:00.002+02:00

So yeah, getting back to weight-loss and all...

Diet-wise I've been off track for a good little while and and my now tight-fitting clothes blatantly evidence that. Strangely enough however, I don't feel like a horrible person nor have I fallen into my normal pattern of beating myself up endlessly for making less-than-stellar choices regarding food and exercise. On the contrary, I'm seeing this as just another bend in the journey and I recognize that I'm now ready to pick up where I left off and get back on the straight and narrow.

It really doesn't have to be anymore complicated than that.

After discussing this whole deal with my sister, I finally get that:

This isn't a race to the finish line.

I'm through with making ridiculous, unattainable goals for myself, only to buckle under the weight of all the pressure, (no pun intended) digging myself even further into a hole I'm trying to get out of.

My sole purpose in getting this weight of is for my health and wellbeing and not to meet some crazy standard that I've tried to impose on myself.

My friends and family love me for who I am regardless of my weight and my husband swears up and down that I'm the sexiest thang on this Earth. I embrace that and the fact that I don't have to be a perfect size 6 to be worthy of it.

So what's my plan?

1). EXERCISE! I've been off track with this for nearly a month now. Tonight I did about seven minutes or so of Turbo Jam and finished up some housework which, all things considered, is a start. My goal is to gradually (and reasonably) get back into my hour-long workouts and incorporate strength training as well.

2). Journal my food choices.

3). Get over the scale.

4). Get in multiple servings of fruits and vegetables per day, and 64oz water

I'm excited about all that is to come!!

2008-06-16T17:55:00.000+02:00

Summer has definitely arrived here in Almería. As of lately, temperatures have soared well into the upper 80s and more and more people have begun to flock to the beaches here along the coast. I’m definitely ready to have some time off to enjoy the summer season myself. After practically a year of working here at this company, I’m ready for a break.

My feelings about my job continue to sink. I’m not as wishy-washy about it as I was this time a month or two ago, wondering whether or not I should stick it out and just accept the bad with the not-so-bad. At this point I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that whenever the opportunity to move onto a better job presents itself I will be out the door- the key word of course in that sentence being when. To say that I’m bored with what I do is a huge understatement. I miss being able to come into work each day knowing what specific functions are mine to perform. Here everything is touch and go, constantly changing from one day to the next. The position for which I was hired this time last year has absolutely nothing to do with my actual job functions, and that feels really disappointing. I want to be using the skills that I’ve studied (and spent a crapload of money on) to perfect. Nevertheless, at this point I’ve got some pretty significant financial responsibilities hanging over my head that I have to meet on a monthly basis, and that of course keeps me from the frivolous job-switching mindset that I had when I was a teenager. Apart from all that, I’m thankful to even have work, considering that there are plenty of families struggling with unemployment and trying to make the same ends meet each month.

Friday update

2008-06-13T11:25:00.002+02:00

Finally Friday, thank goodness. The transportation strike is still going on here, so it'll be another day without much to do in the office. The weather is oarticularly gorgeous today- perfect for laying out on the beach and relaxing :)

So I had my appointment with the gynecologist this morning, and it actually went pretty well, all things considered. My MIL went with me, and it was so comforting to have her there. If I had had to go alone I probably would have driven myself insane with how nervous I was--you'd think I'd never been to the gynecologist before. The doctor was an older gentleman- very professional and formal as well. The only thing I didn't like about the visit was the fact that we didn't really have a conversation about how I was feeling- the symptoms I had been experiencing, birth control, etc. Instead it was practically like an interview with short-answer questions. When I tried to expand a little bit on what I had been feeling he essentially cut me off, and I didn't like that. That attitude is very typical of doctors here, and that's one difference in health care that has been difficult for me to accept. I'm used to being able to dialogue with my health care provider, where she took the time to listen to my concerns and explain to me what was going on. Patients don't usually have that type of relationship with doctors here. It's all very cut and dry, with no questions asked. Sigh. In a perfect world we'd have universal healthcare and personable doctors and nurses who treat their patients on an eye-to-eye level instead of being condescending.

The actual exam went fine. The doctor found everything to be normal and said that if the pap results come back abnormal they'll contact me directly. Otherwise I'm to go back in September for a follow-up. I'll have to get another blood test done a couple weeks before the follow-up appointment, and knowing that my cholesterol status will come out on that report definitely gives me more than enough reason to step up my game diet-wise. I really want to see a low number this time around.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend! Tonight Chechu and I will be going out for tapas again with his mom. This is becoming our Friday night tradition, and it's proving to be a lot of fun as well. Tomorrow morning we have some errands to run, and later that afternoon we'll be having my brother in law and his wife over, which should definitely be a lot of fun too. I think we'll finally have the chance to try out the pool at our complex, so I'm looking forward to it. On Sunday we have church in the morning and later that afternoon two of our friends (who recently found out they're having a baby!) have invited us to a barbecue Argentinean-style :)

Can't wait for 8PM to finally get here!

Exercise woes

2008-06-12T11:22:00.002+02:00

This has been quite an atypical work week. Since Monday there's been a transportation strike going on, and given that the bulk of our work depends on product distribution we've been twiddling our thumbs over the past few days. Well, so to speak. While the boss isn't in, my two coworkers have been periodically stepping out of the office to run personal errands or do other things. I however have been manning the fort, and taking advantage of this down time to catch up on my transcription work (my other part-time job). I've had quite a productive week thus far and I'm hoping the strike lasts through tomorrow so that I can finish up the week with a decent number of hours.

I really feel like I've come to a standstill with regard to my diet and exercise regime. It seems like the more I try to get passionate about making goals and getting back on plan, the further away from it all I stray. It's not like I've been going out of control as of late- on the contrary I've continued to make pretty decent choices food-wise, barring the occasional ice cream cone of course, but on the whole I feel okay about this aspect of my diet. Exercise, however, is another story all together. I just can't bring myself to do it. I can't get up earlier in the mornings to work out, and I'm either too tired or have other obligations in the evening after work to exercise then either. I'm bored with the workout videos that I've been using. All in all, I just don't know how to get back on track with this. I understand that exercise is a key element to weight loss, but in moments like these I feel like I have no idea where to begin. I have to break this mindset if I ever want to see any progress. How can I get the ball rolling again?

Tag!

2008-06-11T19:36:00.003+02:00

I tag anyone who wants to play along!

1. What is in the back seat of your car right now?
Unfortunately I am car-less at this point- hopefully that will change within the next year. My sister and I left our Cavalier to our Mom before moving out to CA for graduate school in ‘05. The back seat of my husband’s truck is currently clear J

2. When was the last time you threw up?
A couple months ago. I had a pretty bad migrane that day.

3. What’s your favorite curse word?
I try to stay away from the bad words but what can I say, I’m human and the F-bomb does drop from time to time.

4. Name three people who made you smile today.
My husband
An email from my sister
My co-workers Christina and Maria

5. What were you doing at 8am this morning?
Making coffee

6. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?
Working

7. What will you be doing 3 hours from now?
Finishing up at Bible Study

8. Have you ever been to a strip club?
Nope.

9. What’s the last thing you said aloud?
“Vale” (O.K.)

10. What is the best ice cream flavor?
Toss up between Strawberry Cheesecake and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Oh and anything with peanut butter.

11. What is the last thing you had to drink?
Water

12. What are you wearing right now?
Brown capris, red blose, brown ballerina shoes.

13. What was the last thing you ate?
A white chocolate/strawberry cheesecake ice cream bar (I know, I know..)

14. Have you bought any new clothing items this week?
Nope

15. When was the last time you ran?
Phew, it’s been a while.

16. What’s the last sporting event you watched?
Gosh, I am so out of the sporting loop right now. Probably a playoff game last season

17. Who’s the last person you e-mailed?
My sister

18. Even go camping?
Nope.

19. Do you have a tan?
I have a natural tan :)

20. Do you drink your soda from a straw?
Not usually, no.

21. Are you someone’s best friend?
Yes!

22. What are you doing tomorrow?
Working

23. Where is your mom right now?
Working, most likely

24. Look to your left. What do you see?
A blank white wall

25. What color is your watch?
Gold, although I haven’t worn my watch regularly in a while.

26. What comes to mind when you think of Australia?
Koala bears and kangaroos

27. Would you consider plastic surgery?
Probably not.

28. What is your birthstone?
Ruby

29. Do you go in at a fast food place or just hit the drive-thru?
I used to drive-thru, but in Spain (at least where I live) they aren’t that common, so we generally walk in. Not that I eat fast food anymore or anything..

30. How many kids do you want?
Maybe three or four.

31. Do you have a dog?
I’d love to have a dog right now

32. Last person you talked to on the phone.
My co-worker

33. Have you met anyone famous?
Shemar Moore

34. Any plans today?
Finish work, Bible study and hopefully exercise

35. Ever go to college?
Yes

36. Where are you right now?
At my desk at work

37. Biggest annoyance in your life right now?
At this very moment? That’d be the smoke billowing from my boss’s cigar

38. Last song listened to?
Martha Munizzi

39. Are you allergic to anything?
Dust, cats and some weird antibiotics

40. Favorite pair of shoes you wear all the time?
Love the ballerina shoes

41. Are you jealous of anyone?
No

42. Who is your favorite actor/actress?
Don’t really have one.

43. What time is it?
7:33 pm

44. Do any of your friends have children?
Yes

45. Do you eat healthy?
I sure try to.

46. What do you usually do during the day?
Work

47. How old will you be on your next birthday?
28

48. Have you ever been to Europe?
I live here! I haven’t travelled to any other country besides Spain though.. Shame, shame, shame :P

49. Name one thing you’d like to do.
Go to visit my sister in LA this summer with my husband

50. Favorite colour?
All things pink

2008-06-09T13:07:00.002+02:00

It's June 9th already?

It's been a pretty relaxing Monday morning thus far, which I'm quite thankful for considering the jam-packed weekend we had. In reference to my general state last week, on the whole I feel 100% better on all levels, and that has made for a much happier, more-pleasant-to-be-around Marianna. I'm actually looking forward to my doctor's appointment this coming Friday just to bring some closure to all these issues I've been experiencing lately.

In spite of being busy, I had a really great weekend. I've got a ton of pictures to post!

Diet-wise, things have been slightly off-kilter as of late. Exercise has been non-existant for two weeks, and we haven't been following our diet plan as closely as we used to. However, I am happy to report that I have yet to fall back into my old binge habits. For me, this is a big change. Nevertheless, I need to get back in control here. I need to get back into exercise starting today, and I'm going to start journaling my food intake again.

Tying up loose ends..

2008-06-06T19:22:00.002+02:00

In one of my favorite King of Queens episodes, Doug likens the weekend to a blank canvas, reasoning that you can paint it however you want. Even though I already know what I'll be getting into on Saturday and Sunday, the fact that I'm one half hour away from getting out of the office for two whole days to spend my time on my own terms just makes me smile. :)

I feel like a lot of things have come full circle this week:

1). After wracking my brain about the whole birth control issue, I've decided to take myself off the pill for good, in spite of the doctor's advice to continue. Since starting them last September, my mother has constantly expressed concern about the pills adversely affecting my health. Neither she nor my grandmother could use this method because of all the health risks the extra hormones posed to them. A month after starting the pill I had bloodwork done, showing no adverse effects. However, I consistently have had migrane headaches which I've just come to learn are a serious side effect brought on by the pill that can lead to a stroke. I told the doctor about the migranes when we went over my bloodwork last year, and she said that it was "no big deal." So, trusting her, I brushed it off. Granted, I haven't had a migrane headache in a while now, but after these cramping/nausea symptoms started last week, I really began to question my decision to use the pill. This morning, after reading about the migranes/headaches being a serious side effect, I definitively decided against using the pill. When I do go to the gynecologist next week, I'll be certain to discuss with him other natural options that Chechu and I can look into.

Both of us are 100% happy with this decision. I just wish that I would have informed myself more thoroughly when I first started considering birth control options last year.

2). My pregnant/not pregnant question mark has been quelled by the fact that I've just got my period. Granted, it was forced because I stopped taking the pill on Wednesday, but I feel better knowing that a) I don't have to plan for parenthood just yet and b) I can "start over" with a natural approach to family planning.

3). Amidst all the stress, I've managed to stay on the wagon this week. I weighed in this morning at 217.4, which shows no gain or loss from the last time I officially charted my weight. Fine by me. My plan is to get back on my exercise schedule next week and keep the progress going.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

2008-06-05T13:57:00.000+02:00

Thankfully things have really picked up at work this week, making each day fly by lickety-split. It feels good to have concrete functions to perform on a daily basis. Consequently, now that I don’t have to agonize over how slow the clock moves I’m a much happier worker.

I went to the doctor (GP) this morning about the whole birth control issue and, more importantly, to check out these two-week long stomach cramp/lower back ache/nausea symptoms that I’ve been having. I’ve lost some of my appetite due to the nausea, although it’s not debilitating and I haven’t actually thrown up yet nor have I had the urge to do so. The discomfort in my abdomen is primarily concentrated where my ovaries are, and the dull lower back pain is pretty constant too. These are all of the usual symptoms I get when I’m about to start my period, but I’m not due to start until next Sunday. I took a pregnancy test last weekend just to rule out that possibility and it came out negative.

The doctor advised me to continue using the birth control pills that I’m currently on, since these symptoms and the pills aren’t related. She also felt and poked around my stomach, which didn’t give me any more discomfort than what I already felt. So what was the diagnosis? A routine trip to the gynie, which is exactly what I was expecting. It’s also been over a year since my last visit, so I’m definitely due. The only thing that makes me a little nervous, however, is that the gynecologist is a man. Since Spain has a free healthcare system, I didn’t have a choice in picking who to go to- a downside considering that I’m used to choosing my health care provider. I ended up making the appointment for next Friday just to cover my bases, but I think I’ll speak with some of the women at my church who go to a private gynecologist to find out what they recommend. Either way, I’ll be going in next week to check this out.

In the mean time I’ll try not to fall into my Internet self-diagnosis habit.

The Friday Effect

2008-05-30T11:25:00.001+02:00

Although I’m prepared for a pretty long day today, I’m definitely glad it’s Friday.

I’m finally coming out of the funk I’ve been in this week. I’m not sure if this is because I’m really over what’s been bothering me or if it’s just the Friday effect. Either way, I’m definitely going to see about myself because I can’t handle all these emotional ups and downs. Surely my doctor can give me some additional options that won’t wreak havoc on my moods.

***

So yeah, back to weight loss.

My update is about three days late and, needless to say, there isn’t much to mention. Thankfully I haven’t fallen back into over-eating, but I certainly haven’t been sticking to my plan. And exercise? HA! My workout schedule for this week that I posted on my sidebar might as well serve as another decoration because I haven’t worked out once so far.

But you know what? That’s okay. I’ve had a pretty rough week, and I’m not going to beat myself up over this. The important thing is picking myself up, dusting off and getting back on the wagon. And that starts today.

I’ve got a healthy lunch planned: fish fillets, brown rice, green salad and mixed veggies

However, tapas for dinner will be my challenge for the day. But I’m claiming victory. I am keeping my goals in mind and will stay within my limits.

As a side note, we ordered pizza last night for dinner. As we stood in the pizzeria waiting to pick it up, I noticed my reflection in the glass door of one of the refrigerators. To say that I was not happy with what I saw is a huge understatement. I’ve really let my appearance go over the years, and I’m so anxious to get that confidence back. This was definitely an additional push I needed to put me back on track.

Thanks..

2008-05-28T19:19:00.003+02:00

... for the words of encouragement.

I'm glad to say that I feel much better today as compared to yesterday. My boss actually gave me the rest of the afternoon off after seeing how burned out I must've looked. I certainly wasn't expecting that, but it was sooo what I needed. A huge blessing. Talk about the Lord coming through right on time! I went home, took a two-hour nap and then my MIL visited with me for a while, which was also a welcomed surprise. We chatted for almost three hours and before she left we agreed to meet up this Friday again for tapas and then to get the whole family together for lunch at Abuela's (her mom) on Saturday. So, in addition to relaxing this weekend, I'm looking forward to getting together with everyone too.

I'm thinking that these mood swings I've been having are primarily due to the birth control pills I'm on. The strange thing is that these pills have a low concentration of estrogen which, in theory, should curb all the hormonal, mood-swingy issues. So I don't know. I've thought about changing the bc method, but then I figure that since I'll be injecting myself with hormones regardless of the method I choose, what's the point of changing it up? I'm good with taking my pills and some of the other methods out there are either too extreme for my taste or just not practical. Perhaps the mood swings are just a part of family planning that I'll have to grin and bear.

What do you guys think?

2008-05-27T16:40:00.000+02:00

Um, help?

I feel like crap today. Why that’s been such a normal occurrence as of late is far beyond me. I am tired. I am irritable. My level of patience is -10. I have this weird sensation in my abdomen. Oh and the last place I want to be right now is exactly where I’m sitting- in an office around a group of people that I don’t like, in a job that I am grateful for but I’m growing to loathe.

What the hell is wrong with me? Am I depressed? Am I having a nervous breakdown? Am I pregnant?

All I do know is that I need a break. I want to be carelessly relaxing in my bed right now, with the windows open and the cool breeze coming in. I need, like, a week of this. In the meantime I guess I’ll be plucking away at my desk, monitoring these last four hours tick slowly by.

Wish I were barbecuing today.. on my own private island

2008-05-26T17:32:00.003+02:00

I'm not entirely sure what is up with my mood today. I thought my afternoon break would give me a chance to unwind, but it was quite the contrary. Between running to the grocery store to do our shopping for the week, running back home, cooking lunch, cleaning up the kitchen afterward and scrambling out the door to be back to work on time I barely had the chance to catch my breath. Sigh. My irritability today can't be PMS because I just got over that. Maybe I'm just tired and slightly burned out. I think that's what it is. All I know is that I'm ready for 8PM to roll around so that I can go home and Turbo Jam my mood away. I think shortly thereafter I'll be calling it a night too.

Back to work

2008-05-26T11:16:00.001+02:00

It’s 9:36 on this overcast Monday morning and I’m already looking forward to this coming weekend. For the first time during the entire month of May, Chechu and I will finally have a Saturday and Sunday to ourselves—we’ve already got some ideas going about what to do, and I’m sure the beach will be involved.

As for last week’s exercise challenge, I managed to work out during three of the five scheduled days. Not the perfect end to the week that I was hoping for, but not an entire flop either. This week, my exercise goals are as follows:

Monday- TJ cardio after work (8:30-9:30P)
Tuesday- TJ cardio after work (8:30-9:30P)
Wednesday- TJ cardio before work (7:00 – 8:00P)
Thursday- break
Friday- TJ cardio before work (7:00-8:00P)
Saturday- TJ cardio AM
Sunday- TJ cardio AM

So it’s all cardio this week, and I’m increasing my workout days to six. Yeah, it’s time to turn it up a notch over these next seven days.

This past weekend was good:

1). On Friday night after work I met up with my husband and MIL to go out for tapas. We had a great time, and I ended up having not one but three. Oh and afterward we went out for ice cream too. I think we’re going to meet up again this coming Friday, and knowing how I am I’ll save up my cheat points until then.

2). On Saturday I didn’t leave my house. And it felt good. I got up early and worked out extra hard for an hour. Then I cleaned the apartment and did laundry. I worked for an hour, made lunch and talked on the phone with my sister for the remainder of the afternoon. That evening some of the young adults from church came over to our house and we had a game night together, which was a lot of fun. There were some light snacks involved, but I behaved myself.

3). Sunday was a busy day. We got up early to help load and unload the sound equipment for church service that morning at the hotel. Afterward we came back home for lunch, rested for a little bit and then headed back out to Granada for evening service. Yesterday also marked the last Sunday that my two other American friends would be attending church since they’re both on their way back to the States this week. Both of them have been such a huge blessing to me in so many ways, and I’m definitely going to miss them. Nevertheless I know that God has amazing things in store for both of them, and I’m excited to see His plans unfold in their lives. Having to say goodbye still sucks though.
However, experiencing those feelings yesterday also made me glad that I’m no longer living the nomadic life of a student. Nearly ten years have passed since I started and finished both undergrad and graduate school (wow), and during most of that time I grew accustomed to the transient lifestyle that students almost always have to take on, moving back and forth every nine months or so. Tomorrow marks one year that I’ve been living in Spain, and I must say that it feels really good to finally be settled down.

I’m in kind of a weird mood this morning. I’ve got Gloria Estefan’s “It Cuts Both Ways” stuck in my head for some strange reason, and even though I can’t relate to this song at all, it’s not making me feel any more chipper. Gah. I need to tune into some praise and worship music to get out of this!

Happy Memorial Day!

TGIF

2008-05-23T11:05:00.000+02:00

It’s Friday, thank goodness. This week has gone by smoothly, things are going well at work on all fronts and overall, I feel good.

My exercise challenge hasn’t been exactly perfect this week. I missed out on my workout yesterday because I didn’t get up in the morning to do it and I had no other spare time during the day to squeeze it in. We went to a birthday party last night and didn’t get home until after 1am. Seeing how late it was, I knew that a 7am wake-up call was going to be a stretch for this morning. I assumed correctly. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something in today, in spite of my equally crazy schedule.

Tonight after work we’ll be going out for tapas with Charo, and I’m looking forward to hanging out with her. Tapas is an interesting Spanish tradition where you go to any bar or pub, order a drink and you get a small plate of food of your choice to go with it for free. When my family came over for the wedding, everyone was super intrigued by this, my brother in particular. The portion sizes are quite small, so usually people order two or three tapas when they go out. In my case this evening I will stick to just one!

I’ll be happy with whatever exercise I can get in today, but at least tomorrow morning I’ll be able to make up for it.

It's Wednesday already?

2008-05-21T16:59:00.000+02:00

It’s crazy how the pace of a week can change so drastically from one to the next. By this time last Wednesday I was dragging myself to work with 0 energy. I was expecting my period then too so that probably had a lot to do with the fatigue, but man. I’m still talking about how brutal those five days were.

As per my friend’s advice, this morning I started on a multi-vitamin supplement and I’m already feeling the difference. I have much more energy and, overall, I’ve got a much more positive attitude. Again, I’m comparing this difference to my hellish PMS week which doesn’t really count, but I have read where multivitamins do increase your energy levels and help to balance out your moods, in addition to filling all your daily vitamin/mineral needs. When my sister got on her nutrition kick a couple years ago she was all about buying her multivitamins and fish oil supplements. I lackadaisically popped a few from time to time but never really got into the whole thing because it seemed too die-hard “fitnessy” for me. Plus I was in grad school then, and since I struggled enough with remembering my own name at times, I wasn’t that interested in piling yet another task onto my mountainous to-do list. But now that I’m putting my health as a priority, it’s important to me to get in all the vitamins and minerals that may be lacking in my diet. It’s nice that one pill can do that for me.

In other news, I did complete day one of my exercise challenge last night. I was so not in the mood by the time I got home last night, but I sucked it up and did the entire Turbo Jam workout. About halfway through I got completely winded and had to hit the pause button. Normally when I get tired enough to stop a workout I stop all together, but this time I waited long enough to catch my breath and kept going. As usual, I ended up really enjoying the workout and had a fabulous shower afterwards. My bed kept me in its clutches this morning so I didn’t get up early to work out (shocker). I will however go home to exercise tonight after work and then head back out to Bible study.

I’m looking forward to this weekend. Hopefully the weather will be warm enough to swim- I’m anxious to try out the pool at our apartment complex!

Challenge results and observations

2008-05-20T11:42:00.002+02:00

1). As per the scale this morning I’ve come down exactly one pound since last week, weighing in at 217.4. Between PMS last week and my period this week I am thrilled with the loss, because in other such instances the numbers have spiralled out of control in the other direction.

2). All things considered, my challenge went well this weekend. I didn’t restrict myself food-wise, and I think that worked to my advantage because I was conscious about everything I was allowing myself to eat. Specifically there was some snacking on Saturday, including pistachio pudding and a couple chocolate chip cookies, but I managed to keep control instead of going into my vacation free-for-all mindset. So I’m proud about that. On Sunday we celebrated another friend’s birthday and of course that included more chocolate and a decadent mocha/white chocolate birthday cake complete with rich, cream-flavored icing. Yes, I had a generous slice of that and no, not one ounce of guilt to go along with it.

3). My friend that I went to stay with is a professional volleyball player. She’s been in sports her entire life, and obviously knows tons about nutrition. We talked some about the struggles we’ve both had with weight and body image, and she shared with me some tips that have helped her along the way. I was also surprised to learn that there are some good health-food products that I can actually buy here in Spain (i.e. egg whites, tofu, soy products, etc.) I never thought to even look for them at the grocery stores where I shop because I was convinced they didn’t exist here. So I’m excited about some “new” dieting options that I now have.

I like the idea of making mini challenges for myself. They give me a more concentrated focus instead of just reinforcing a general goal to lose weight. Last weekend’s 3-day challenge was to keep me on my toes about not losing control on Saturday and Sunday. This week I’m upping my challenge to five days and my focus is exercise:

Work out for 45 minutes (cardio) every day between now and Saturday
Make the effort to wake up early in the mornings to exercise from 7-7:45 (except for today when I’ll have to exercise after work)
Keep a running tab of the minutes I’ve worked out on my sidebar
Diet focus: getting in more protein and less complex carbs, start taking vitamins

Hope everyone is having a productive Tuesday!

3-day Challenge

2008-05-17T10:37:00.002+02:00

I love the challenges that I've been seeing lately. It's great to see people commit to a goal and stick to it, in spite of the struggles and I-don't-feel-like-it days that undoubtedly come up in the process.

I'm going to be out of town for the rest of the weekend, so I'm giving myself a 3-day challenge of my own. I'm starting with 3 days because it's a short amount of time, and knowing how I tend to fall off the wagon I figure it's best to start out small.

Weekends are hard for me to stay on plan. Weekends away from home are ten times more challenging, just because I know that eating out will most likely be involved. So my challenge, in a nutshell, will mainly involve making healthy food choices, drinking TONS of water and trying to get some exercise in where I can. I've included this coming Monday in my challenge as well, just because it's the day before weigh-in and I want to keep myself going on the plan.

Looking forward to sharing the results!

2008-05-16T10:47:00.001+02:00

Oh hiii, PMS. Totally forgot about your visit this week. No wonder I’ve been tired and overly sensitive as of late.

We’ve finally come to the end of what has been an extremely long week. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this exhausted after five days of work. In all honestly I would love to turn myself off from the rest of the world this weekend, catching up on sleep and just enjoying some quiet time to myself. If it weren’t for my friend’s concert in Granada tomorrow, this would undoubtedly be my plan.

It’s 10:45am and all I can think about is the 8 o’clock hour finally rolling around. Will it ever get here?

An explosive day

2008-05-15T17:32:00.002+02:00

Update on the explosion this morning: the house where the gas tank blew up isn’t a house anymore. This afternoon my husband and I drove past the site on the way to drop me off at work and I was absolutely flabbergasted to see nothing but rubble where the house used to stand. Originally I thought the explosion occurred outside, but apparently the faulty tank was inside the home when it blew up. Miraculously neither of the townhouses on either side went down with it, but they obviously suffered exterior damage along with those located directly across the street.

I’ve never seen anything like that before.

The fireworks that kept coming at work this morning have finally died down too, thank goodness. It’s been one of those weeks I guess, and I can’t wait for Friday to get here to finally get off this emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on and have a much needed break.

Tomorrow evening Chechu’s off to Granada for the teen retreat. Even though I’ll miss his company, I am definitely looking forward to a quiet, relaxing Friday night at home with me, myself and I. On Saturday afternoon I’ll be heading up to Granada with another friend from church to spend the rest of the weekend there. My friend Courtney is going to be giving a concert at one of the local cafes there (how cool is that?!) and we both wanted to go up and support her. Knowing how talented this girl is, it’ll definitely be amazing.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. This week has been so long it feels like Friday already. :P Just two more hours left at the office and I'm home free.

2008-05-15T10:46:00.000+02:00

After a jam-packed day yesterday, finally getting to sleep after 1am, I was pretty tired rolling out of bed at 8am this morning. While my husband was making coffee I went to sit on the couch to check email. Just as he was coming back into the living room to ask me about some late-night snack evidence I had unknowingly left behind at 3am (more on that later) we heard this earth-shattering B O O M that shook our entire apartment complex. The explosion came from right across the street and my husband’s first thought was that someone had planted a bomb near one of the townhouses. That was a horrifying thought, considering that just this past Tuesday there was a terrorist attack in northern Spain carried out by ETA (Basque-nationalist terrorist group) where one person died and several others were injured. Initially it would seem a bit unreasonable to plant a bomb in a quiet residential district where we live but then again, when is terrorism ever logical?

So after the explosion my husband grabs the video camera and goes out on the patio to record the scene. Smoke was everywhere. In spite of that, people were pouring out of their homes into the street to see what had happened. This really concerned me because given the fact that no one knew exactly what caused the explosion, people were placing themselves directly in harm’s way given the instability of the area. My common sense radar says to run from danger, not to it.

After getting the facts from some of the neighbors who had been to the site, the explosion was apparently triggered by a faulty butane gas tank. Crazy. Thankfully I don’t think anyone was hurt in the incident but my goodness, what a scary way to start the morning.

However, it seems as if the drama has followed me to work this morning. Tension is pretty thick ‘round these parts.

Is it Friday yet?

Diet-wise, I was up a little bit on the scale this morning. I’m sure I can attribute that to eating really late last night before bed and a 3am run-in with cake. I’ve really been doing well about not getting up in the middle of the night to snack, but the past two days have been brutal. Does anyone else have issues with this? It’s really weird, like a force greater than myself propels me to the kitchen cabinets to grab whatever sugar-laden foods I can get my hands on.

Today’s plan is to fill up on water, fruits and vegetables and lay low on the salt and sugar. I have another full day today, so a workout may not be possible. We’ll see.

Tuesday update

2008-05-13T13:16:00.001+02:00

I don’t have a clear perspective for this morning’s post, so I’m reverting back to my numbered paragraphs to give some type of structure to my ideas.

1. I’m feeling kind of down this morning. I hate these mood swings that wash over me from time to time, especially the fact that they all tend to revolve around my job. Some things were said yesterday here in the office that really bothered me. The comments weren’t directed to me, but the attitude behind them definitely got me thinking about my position here in this company. For a while now I’ve been walking the fence between finding contentment where I am and seriously beginning to pursue other employment opportunities. I question, however, whether a new job would provide me with the contentment I seek since the office politics/work mentality is pretty much the same everywhere. Obviously a lot of my issues stem from the business culture differences between here and what I’m used to in the States. So many things have gone on here that I find just wrong on a kazillion levels, but to everyone else it’s just a part of working in Spain. Spain is different, as the natives to say here. They couldn’t be more accurate as far as I’m concerned.

Alli asked me about how the siestas work here, so I’ll gladly explain since it all ties in.

The work mentality here generally is as follows:

productivity = the max number of hours you can spend at work in one day

Most businesses here, including mine, operate under a “split schedule.” I work from 9am-2pm, break for three hours for lunch and then come back to the office from 5-8pm. Initially I was intrigued by the 3-hour lunch break, but it’s definitely not as glamorous as it sounds. The worst part of it all is that all split-schedule businesses (supermarkets included) operate during the same hours. So if you need to do some grocery shopping, go to the bank, or run errands in general, you’re s-o-l because everything is closed during siesta time. Only recently have large-scale supermarket chains a la WalMart and mall stores changed their schedules to remain open during siesta hours.
“Intensive” work schedules (8am-3pm) are luxuries only available to government workers, banks or employees with seniority.

2. On a more positive note, I’m down another 1.4 pounds this week. Yay! Slowly but surely the numbers are decreasing. Even though I haven’t been faithfully updating my sidebar, I got in a lot of exercise hours last week- a big improvement on my part. I’m looking to continue this trend over the next seven days and see where this gets me next Tuesday. I’m trying to focus less on the actual numbers and more on the goals that I can control. Nevertheless, I do want to see 215 on that scale of mine by the end of the month. I mean it’s only 3.4 pounds from where I am. Shouldn’t I be able to pull that off? I think so..

3. I’ll be having a Chechu-less weekend, which kind of sucks. Since he’s one of the teen leaders he’ll be off to the teen retreat our church is holding this weekend in some other remote location in Granada. The kids are all really looking forward to it, so I’m hoping they’ll have a great time and learn a lot. Depending on whether or not I have to work this weekend, I plan to go up to Granada myself to hang out with some friends. Girl time is definitely in order.

4. Tons of non-work stuff to do today. I doubt I’ll be able to work out during my break. Hopefully we’ll leave here on time tonight and I can squeeze in a workout before finishing some other stuff I have pending.

weekend recap

2008-05-12T11:36:00.000+02:00

I’ve had a great, non-stop weekend! For once in what seems like forever I feel like I was really able to enjoy my Saturday and Sunday to the fullest. This morning, rather than having the sensation that the hours just flew by without my realizing it, I feel satisfied with everything that I was able to accomplish during those two days.

It all started on Friday during my lunch break. My husband and I decided to stray a bit from the diet path and order take-out (pizza) for lunch. After being good for an entire week, we deserved the break. We changed into our house clothes, went to pick up the pizza and on the way back we decided to have an in-house picnic. With our huge patio doors open, allowing the warm Andalusian breeze to blow in, we sat on our couch lazily watching the afternoon news, laughing and enjoying ourselves as if neither of us had to be back at work within the next couple hours. After taking a glorious siesta, I returned to the office feeling fully refreshed and ready to get through my last three hours of work. That evening, I left on time, cleaned my entire apartment when I got back home and enjoyed spending time with my husband. Couldn’t have asked for a better Friday.

On Saturday Chechu and I walked over what seemed to be all of creation. We spent the entire day in Almería, walking through the city and doing some shopping. We caught the bus into the city since our car was in the shop all day, and after Chechu’s tutoring session with David we walked across town to try out this new Chinese buffet that everyone’s been raving about. It was definitely worth the walk- the food was amazing. I somewhat behaved myself, filling up on water and only taking one reasonably-sized plate of food. I did have a couple scoops of ice cream afterward too.

After the buffet we walked to the mall, spending a few hours walking around looking at the different stores. This is so rare for me, because I really don’t like shopping, least of all window-shopping. My husband on the other hand loves walking through the different stores and checking everything out. We ended up getting a new iron and I got some new bras and underwear. Not a bad deal. Exhausted, we finally made it home around 9pm.

On Sunday our church celebrated Pentecost in La Herradura, a beach town just outside of Almuñécar. Chechu left early that morning because there were several meetings he had to attend while I stayed behind, doing some work and getting myself ready to meet up with the rest of the hermanos who would be catching the bus down to La Herradura. We all met up around 2:15 and left shortly thereafter.

Service was great. We held the celebration at the local Civic Center, filling up the entire auditorium. It’s amazing to see how much the church has grown since I started attending almost four years ago. We all had a wonderful time.

I’m definitely tired and in need of caffeine this morning, but I feel really good otherwise. The scale gave a very promising reading yesterday morning, and I’m hoping it will go down just a bit more before WI tomorrow.

2008-05-08T10:28:00.002+02:00

Robitussin is not a good start to my morning. This has got to be the worst-tasting cold medicine ever invented. When my sister and I were little, getting us to take this medicine often turned into an agonizing, tearful hour-long ordeal. Now that I'm an adult I willingly subject myself to this torture. Even at 27, I still can't just down a couple tablespoon-fulls of this stuff without having mentally prepared myself first. Then I pinch my nose before taking the medicine, so as not to get the full effect of how bad it tastes, and finally I have to chase it with either water or juice, which never usually gets rid of the bitter after-taste anyway.

So yeah, I'm a bit under the weather today. Aside from the cold symptoms I'm feeling a little nauseuous as well which kind of sucks. It's dark, rainy and gross outside and I would so love to be firmly planted on my couch right now with a warm cup of tea and a good book.

This weekend actually looks to be somewhat low-key, which will be quite a welcomed change. The car will be in the shop all weekend, thus curtailing any spontaneous travel plans, so we'll have even more motives to just hang out and relax. Sounds good to me.

In other news, I'm starting to experiment more with this diet plan that we've been following, mostly because I'm getting tired of eating the same food every week. Lunch is the big meal of the day here, and I've started to go back to my recipe books to find meals that I can incorporate into our diet plan. It's all about making a lifestyle change, and since I don't see us eating the same four things forever, our approach has to be more practical.

I actually got in a good half-hour of walking yesterday during lunch. My legs are feeling a lot stronger now that I'm getting more and more consistent with exercise. For today I'll have to work out during my lunch hour, since that's really the only time I'll have free.

Happy Thursday!

Checking in

2008-05-07T11:44:00.003+02:00

1. Roasted garlic tomato soup. I'm totally missing Trader Joe's this morning. My sister and I were introduced to this grocery store chain when we lived in Monterey, CA. Thankfully they recently opened up a store in Pittsburgh, so whenever we make our trip back I will be packing a suitcase full of this stuff. Their butternut squash soup is equally amazing.

2. Wednesdays are soooooo long for me. Tomorrow looks to be about the same. Boo. Why can't everyone have a three-month vacation during the summer?

3. I felt really good after my workout last night. Second day in a row.
I really hope to keep this up throughout the rest of the week. Today is going to be kind of complicated to squeeze in a workout, but hopefully tonight after Bible study I'll be able to do something for at least a half hour. Otherwise I'll just count today as a rest day and plan to exercise every day for the rest of the week.

4. There's really not much else going on this morning. It's already May 7th as hard as that is to believe. I really want to see some ground-breaking results this month.

Time and space

2008-05-06T10:54:00.004+02:00

The past few days have been really hectic, and it looks as though that trend will be continuing throughout the rest of the week. I've got a few non-work related projects that I have to finish by Friday, namely designing a program for my aunt's memorial service (well, Chechu will actually be doing the designing- I'll just be adding my input) and finishing a few translations that one of the pastors had asked me to do a while back. I'm also waiting for more contract work from my second job to be posted so that I can get started on that as well. Work, work, work. Nothing like impending student loan payments to get that mojo flowin'.

This past weekend with Courtney was a lot of fun. My other friend was unable to make the trip down, so it ended up just being the three of us hanging out. We had quite a full three days and I think she really enjoyed herself. Pictures to come. She said she'd like to come back down during the last weekend of the month, since that will be her last weekend in Spain. It's hard to believe how fast a semester flies by. Time in general tends to do that.

I was really tired after getting home from work last night. I laid down for about a half hour, but knowing that I had a lot of things to do around the house kept me from resting fully. So I got up and worked out for about 45 minutes. As usual, I felt 100% better afterwards, with renewed energy to get through the evening. My goal for this week is to get five 45-minute workouts under my belt. The only day that I'll pretty much have to get up early to exercise will be tomorrow, since I have activities going on throughout the day. I really enjoyed exercising yesterday. Hopefully remembering that after-workout feeling will keep me moving through the rest of the week.

I've come down 2.2 pounds since my last weigh in. I had seen an even lower number earlier last week, but after the weekend I've had I'll definitely take the loss. I'm anxious to see numbers that I haven't seen in a while. Hopefully this will be my week to continue breaking barriers.

The Office

2008-05-02T09:29:00.002+02:00

So this weekend has taken on some new twists thus far.

To start with, more work issues. I'm at the office today, which obviously wasn't a part of the original plan for this weekend. On Wednesday at the last minute, Avelino decided that we'd all have to come in to the office from 9-2pm today since there were some things left over from that afternoon that didn't get done. Needless to say, I'm not exactly thrilled about having lost half a vacation day, especially since we had already established the week before that we'd have a four-day weekend. I had made plans accordingly, and since then I've had to restructure everything for today, which I find pretty unfair.

After what seems to have taken an eternity, my employment contract is finally completed. This means that I'm officially on the payroll and eligible to receive all worker benefits. As thrilled as I am about that, I'm praying that my net income won't go down. Since I'm no longer working "under the table," as an employee more money has to go out from the boss's pocket to cover me. So I'm just praying that I won't take the hit. Payday will be this coming Monday, so I'll certainly find out then.

We've also been having some car trouble over the past couple days, which will hopefully be resolved by this afternoon. Nevertheless, we're facing the reality of having to purchase a new car. Ideally it'd be great if we could hold off until next year to do so, especially since my plan is to have my license by then. We'll see what happens..

Diet-wise, things are going about the same. I'm moving forward, focusing primarily on my exercise goals for this month. I got in a really nice walk yesterday which was quite a welcomed change. This weekend I'll be doing my best to get in some additional workouts as well. According to the scale I'm practically back down to Monday's "breakthrough" weight, but I refuse to allow myself to get too excited about it. Even though I'm anxious to see the numbers consistently go down, I'm fully concentrating on the things that I can control- staying on my plan, getting my water in and working my butt off. I know the numbers will catch up.

2008-04-30T11:38:00.003+02:00

This morning the scale reading toggled between 221.2 and 222. In utter disbelief I must've stepped on at least five or six times to make sure that I wasn't just seeing things, but it was to no avail. The reading stayed the same and I was suddenly faced with an all-too-familiar decision: get angry, curse the scale and throw in the towel all together or keep moving forward in spite of this setback. I've chosen the latter.

I won't say that I didn't feel angry or disappointed after this morning's weigh in because I did. I really did. With the exception of not being able to work out so far this week I've done everything else right by following my diet plan and getting my water in. How that merits a 4.4-pound gain in two days is beyond me. I seriously don't get it.

But, I'm moving ahead. I refuse to allow this momentary setback to stall my progress. Over the past thirty days I've lost a solid 4.6 pounds which, at the very least, is more than what I lost in March. So I'm getting there. It's proving to be more difficult than what I originally anticipated, but that's okay. Turning back is not an option for me. I'm up for the challenge and I know that if I keep striving towards my goals, I will reach them.

It's time to look ahead to May. And in my case, May stands for exercise. I don't care whether it's walking, jogging, Turbo Jam, Tae Bo or any other form of exercise. The point is that for one hour, four days a week I need to be doing something.

I'm also taking down my numeric goals list because it's just not working for me. According to the initial goal chart I set out for myself, I should be 200 pounds by now. Constantly being reminded of the goals I haven't been able to reach isn't doing me any favors, so I choose to focus on goals that I can control, based on the effort that I put into reaching them.

Tuesday

2008-04-29T10:05:00.002+02:00

1. This is a three-day work week for us since we're off Thursday and Friday for Labor Day. I am so excited about having a few days off from work. As far as I'm aware this is the last national holiday we'll have for a good while, so I intend to make the most out of it.

2. It looks like May is going to be another intense month full of activities, particularly on the weekends. After the youth retreat I was selfishly looking forward to having a quiet, relaxing few days just to spend with Chechu, but since then those plans have changed. Two of my American girlfriends will be coming down to spend this Friday-Sunday with us here in Almería, and I'm looking forward to spending time with them. Surely going to the beach will be among the main weekend highlights :)

3. I'm really have no direction as to where this post is going this morning (hence the random, numbered paragraphs). I'm not exactly sure about how I feel or what to feel. There are a few family issues that are somewhat up in the air right now, but rather than stressing out about it all, I'm leaving it in God's hands. I know that He has control over all things, and since nothing is impossible for Him, a way will definitely be made.

4. As of today I've gotten in a measely 5.82 hours of exercise this month. Hmm.. We ended up getting home late after prayer last night and I didn't have time to exercise then either. My goodness, does this have to change for May. This afternoon is really the only chance I'll have at getting a workout in since I have a bunch of errands to take care of tonight after work. I haven't exercised since last Thursday, so I hope to be able to get in a 20-minute workout at least.

5. Tomorrow is the last day of April and, consequently, the big WI. I didn't get on the scale this morning, so I'll just plan to face the music tomorrow. At this point I'm not that worried about it all. It'll be great if I can be in the 215's by then but if not, I'm certainly not going to beat myself up over it. Thankfully progress has been made this month and I know there's no turning back for me. This is one area of my life that I have to get together.

6. I need to update my goals for May. I need to plan my exercise schedule. I'll get to work on that for tomorrow.

Menu for today:

B:
1 slice wheat toast, 1 slice cured ham
coffee w/ skim milk

S1: none

L:
pasta w/ garlic tomato/tuna sauce
Vegetable salad w/ olive oil & balsamic vinegar

S2:
Fruit of some kind

D:
vegetable mix
slice FF white cheese
1 slice wheat toast
LF Yogurt

-0.8

2008-04-28T11:21:00.002+02:00

Diet-wise, I had a really good weekend- quite a contrast to how I did during the women's retreat I attended in March. On top of the fact that the food wasn't that great at the campsite where we were, I was just really focused on not letting the weekend throw a wrench in my plans to meet my 215 goal by Wednesday.

If I splurged at all it was yesterday after getting home from the retreat. I had a small slice of meat lasagna and red wine with my husband which was actually quite filling. Later that evening we went out to our favorite tapas bar for dinner. Steak and homemade fries were involved, albeit in small quantities. Our original plan was to go for ice cream afterward, but strangely enough neither of us (particularly me) wanted any after we ate. So we ended up going straight home instead.

I got on the scale this morning just to see where I was after the weekend, and I'm down to 217.6! Another 'new' low and just 2.4 pounds shy of my goal. At this point I'm just thrilled with the new motivation that I now have to continue with losing weight and getting healthy. I've had my emotional ups and downs this month, but in spite of that I've managed to eek out a 9.2 loss thus far, which ain't all that bad. I feel confident going into May, and I know that I can reach my goals if I just stay focused!

Retreat in review

2008-04-28T10:02:00.003+02:00

So this weekend was a lot of fun. The main theme of the retreat was centered precisely around my reason for attending in the first place-- standing in unity as a church, staying in fellowship with each other and allowing God's love to flow through us. During our devotionals on on Saturday and Sunday morning we read through some attributes and qualities that the Bible ascribes to this amazing love as I like to call it. We read through 1 Coritinthians 13, a pretty well-known passage that defines what love is and isn't:

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails

I've known this passage by heart for years. But what I love about reading the Bible is how God constantly reveals new things to us, even in reading verses that we can mechanically recite from memory. In reading this passage about love I was reminded that above all things, God is love. So these qualities are actually His qualities which flow through us when we allow Him into our hearts. Consequently, we are to treat those around us with this same kind of love.

Sure, it all sounds easy in theory, but I've missed the mark so many times. As of lately I've complained, been less than patient and, try as I might, sometimes it's tough not to remember all the stuff that others have done or said to me in the past. But this weekend I wiped the proverbial slate clean. I have a new motivation to be a reflection of this love to those around me.

Blessing in disguise

2008-04-25T12:35:00.003+02:00

Cold-wise, I'm feeling much better this morning. I'm still on the cold medication and it's working slowly but surely. Hopefully by Sunday I'll be all cleared up.

Last night I didn't leave work until after 9pm. Yeah, I was pretty irritated about it. Mostly because I had to cancel my tutoring session with Jen since we obviously weren't going to have enough time to get through everything before Chechu came to pick me up. Thankfully she said that she understands the new topic they're studying in class pretty well (modal verbs) so the fact that we missed our session yesterday wasn't exactly crucial. We've rearranged to meet next Tuesday evening to review for her quiz the following day.

I got home by 9:30 and sat on my couch for a while, debating whether or not to take advantage of the extra hour I had to myself to workout. I finally decided to go through with it, and I am so glad that I did. I was able to complete the entire Turbo Jam workout, and I ended up gloriously drenched in sweat. I felt so good about myself afterwards- not just in the physical sense but mentally as well. That was exactly the motivational boost that I needed, and I'm so glad that I took advantage of my extra time productively. I got on the scale this morning and I've reached a new low! 218.4!! I'm not sure if I can attribute that to my workout last night or to TOM's exit. Or both. Either way, I'm thrilled with the results. I'm 3.4 pounds away from my goal for next Wednesday. It's a stretch, but I'm sure that with some extra hard work this weekend I'll be able to pull it off.

I've been thinking a lot about my exercise dilemma over the past couple days. One of the biggest pieces of advice I've received has been to build my exercise schedule around what works best for me, rather than setting unrealistic goals for myself and failing miserably at each attempt.

A-ha moment.

For as much as I'd love to be a morning person, I'm just not. That's who I am, and I have to accept it. Getting up early for me has always been a challenge, and barring a miracle it probably always will be. So, in light of that, I need to schedule my workouts either during my afternoon break or in the evenings after work. I'm quite positive that I'll have better results with this plan.

I'm off to the youth retreat this evening, and I'm pretty excited about it. We leave directly after work to head up to Granada, and we'll be back at some point Sunday afternoon. Even though I know I'll have a great time, I miss Chechu already! Hopefully we'll leave earlier on Sunday and that way he and I will have the entire afternoon to spend together and catch up :)

Have a great weekend, all!

Crap

2008-04-24T11:43:00.002+02:00

So I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed this morning.

I d0n't feel well at all. Yesterday afternoon at work I started feeling progressively worse as the hours dragged on. By the time I made it to church for Bible study I had a pretty bad headache and a ton of sinus pressure. I'm still feeling the same way this morning despite taking this "Stop Cold" medicine my husband bought from the pharmacy. I'm not sure if what I'm feeling is actually cold-related or if it's allergies. Either way, I feel like crap.

On top of feeling sick I've got a ton of work to do for a change. Lots of research to do, companies to call, emails to write and pending quotes to finalize. I'm not complaining in the least about this because I'm thankful for the work that I do have. I just wish I felt better so that I could feel like I was getting things done more efficiently.

This weekend is the annual youth retreat at our church. I haven't mentioned this before because my original intention was not to go in the first place. Chechu isn't going to be able to attend since he's the only worship team member who can sing and play an instrument, and therefore he's been asked to lead worship during both Saturday and Sunday services so as to allow the rest of the musicians to go to the retreat. I wholly admit that a big chunk of my motive for skipping out on this event was to be able to spend time with my husband and keep him company over the weekend. Or, to put it frankly, if he wasn't gonna go, I wasn't gonna go either.

I feel like as of lately I've had quite a lackluster attitude about participating in church events. The other week it was the concert in Jaén that I felt pushed into attending, even though I ended up having a great time. I honestly don't know why I've been feeling this way, but I do know that it needs to change. After praying about it all I really felt led to attend the retreat even though I didn't really want to. On top of the fact that this week the pastors have really been encouraging all of us to make the extra effort to attend, I'm going to go just to counter this funk I've been in. I know that in doing so I'll be blessed. Surely we'll all have an amazing time together!

I'm not sure if I'll ever be a morning exerciser and that stresses me out too. Obviously feeling under the weather was my excuse for not rolling out of bed at 7am today, but in general I just can't seem to shake the grogginess. I could understand the difficulty in getting up at 5 every morning to work out, but 7am really isn't that bad. I should be able to handle that. So I'm kind of at a loss for words about this whole thing. I'd like to think that I'll work out this afternoon during my break but I just don't know if that will be possible. I suppose I'll just have to make time.

On a more positive note, I have the best husband ever. I got home late last night after Bible study only to find him in the kitchen making dinner and lunch for today. In spite of my offers to help he insisted on me taking some medicine and going straight to bed. The poor thing was up until almost 2am cooking, cleaning and ironing. What an amazing guy ;)

Good morning!

2008-04-23T09:54:00.002+02:00

I'm determined to have a positive, productive Wednesday, and it's already started off on a good note. My boss just stepped into my office to see how I was doing. He said I've been looking kind of down lately and he wanted to make sure that I was doing all right. I thanked him for asking about me and said that I'm doing well- just a tad bit tired and I've got a little sore throat going on right now, but other than that I'm great. I totally wasn't expecting that this morning. Ever since we've started working on all these new projects he and I have barely spoken to each other. Needless to say, it's nice to know that he thought of me and stepped in just to see how I was.

After posting my big idea about not getting on the scale until the end of the month (just seven glorious days away!) I did hop on this morning just to see where I was. In my defense, I hadn't weighed myself since Saturday and I was quite pleased to see that I'm only up 0.4 lbs- certainly not the 264598 gain I was expecting to see with how bloated I've been feeling lately. So I'm happy to say that there is hope between me and my goal for this month.

Contrary to my original plan however, I didn't go through with working out last night. I got through the first five minutes of the warm up, but my cramps were too much for me to continue. Plus I just really wasn't in the mood, and that seemed to make the cramps worse.
That sounds like such a whiny excuse.

I think my workout dilemma would be solved if I could just get out of bed in the morning to exercise and get it out of the way. As of lately I've been putting it off until the evenings after work and that has proven to be very inconsistant. Normally I'll set my workout time for 8:15PM but, given the previous track record of leaving the office late, I'm usually still here by that time. In those instances, when I do get home I'm already irritated that I didn't leave work on time and that I have to re-arrange my evening schedule to fit a workout in. That generally translates to less motivation for exercise. This gets even more complicated on days like today when I have church or other activities to attend in the evenings and, consequently, less time to squeeze in a workout.

In short, I really need to aim for morning workouts. This is the only time frame during the day that I can control 100%, not to mention the fact that in doing so I'm getting my workout in before the workday actually begins. That will free up more time for me in the evenings and, on the whole, I'll just feel a lot better. The hardest part of this whole thing of course is not hitting the snooze button when the alarm goes off at 7am.

So, for all you morning exercisers out there, any suggestions? Please? :)

The no-update update

2008-04-22T11:53:00.002+02:00

I didn't get on the scale this morning because, frankly, it was too early and I wasn't in the mood to see what it had to say. Even though I had a good day yesterday (with exercise and all!) I feel like a balloon today. I've got annoying cramps and this dull lower back pain. I though birth control was supposed to make all this go away!

April has been a rough month emotionally. I've had some ups and downs. I've fallen off the wagon once or twice, lured by chocolate and ice cream. The important thing is that I didn't stay off track though, and staying consistent with keeping track of my eating and exercise has really helped.

I feel like May is going to be a breakthrough month for me and I'm excited for it to get here. It's starting to get really warm outside, and I've had enough of the exercise dvd's. I'm ready to get my butt out on the pavement and start jogging. Originally my goal was to start jogging once I got down to 200, but I see no point in waiting for that. Next month I'm going to get myself some running gear and get moving. I've got big plans for May!

Nevertheless, April isn't over yet. Even though I cancelled my weigh-in for today, I'm still staying completely on track. There's roughly one week left in this month and I will make the most of it:

1. I'm not going to weigh myself again until next Wednesday, April 30th. I've been stepping on the scale almost daily since the start of the month and I'm not certain that being this conscious of my weight is helping it go down.

2. Between now and the end of this weight loss journey I've got a pretty good bit of weight to lose. But, for the next eight days I'm just focusing on my goal of 215 to reach by next Wednesday.

3. EXERCISE. Daily.

4. Staying on plan and not letting a minor craving throw my day off.

I plan to squeeze in a workout this afternoon, cramps and all, before I come back to work. I just really need to focus on this goal. I need to make this happen.

Blog Award

2008-04-22T09:42:00.004+02:00

On Saturday morning I woke up to this spiffy blog award given to me by the lovely and inspiring Cat. Thanks, girl. I feel very honored that you thought of me.

I'm passing this award on to Alli, Ready to Shrink and Briy, all of whom are quite inspiring themselves. Thanks for the encouragement, girls.

7 Random things...

2008-04-18T09:24:00.006+02:00

I was all prepared to tag myself to play along with this game, but I've since been officially tagged by Briy! Yay!

So here goes nothin':

Rules of the game:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
5. Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged.

1). I have four older brothers and sisters (2 and 2), one of which happens to be my identical twin, Marissa, who's two minutes older than me. We've grown up living the stereotypical twin lives that consisted mainly in doing everything together. We wore the same outfits. We've worked at the same jobs starting at 16 and going all the way through college. We got our driver's licenses on the same day. We've got matching BA and MA degrees from the same universities. We even dated identical twins once! At one point in our lives, our circle of friends consisted of "just the two of us." (we even dedicated that song to ourselves!) There were people who criticized us for being so close because, as they said, the day we had to separate from each other we'd be heartbroken. That day came last year when I moved to Spain, and I'd say it's one of the hardest things I've had to go through. But, in spite of the difficulty, I see how much richer our lives are now that we have embraced our individuality. Riss now lives and works in LA, and will be getting married this year (close enough, right??!). I am SOO excited about all that she's got going on in her life right now!!

2). I like to think that my husband Chechu (his real name is Jesús) and I have a story-book romance. In 2005 Marissa and I chose to study abroad in Spain (Granada) for a semester prior to beginning our graduate studies in California. One of the first things we did to prepare for our trip was finding a church in Granada, which took no time at all. (we both like to say that we knew where we'd be going to church before we knew where we were going to live!) On February 20th we walked into our new church for the first time. I saw Chechu on stage, playing the guitar and singing his heart out to God. That's when it hit me, and I knew that he was the man I'd marry. After a 2-year long-distance relationship and many trips back and forth between the US-Spain on both our parts, we got married last October here in Spain. My immediate family made the trip over, and Marissa was the star interpreter since the ceremony was officiated in Spanish.

3). I've stumbled across several career paths that I've been seriously interested in pursuing: A) Veterinarian B) Concert musician (I play saxophone) and C) Ventriloquist. (My sister and I to this day put on "shows" with our stuffed animals!). Since I love Spanish so much, I decided on Translation and Interpretation, and that's what stuck.

4). My nickname is Nan. Apparently "Marianna" was too much for my sister to pronounce when we were little, and all she got out of that big long name was Nan. And man, did it stick. No one in my family calls me by my full name- in fact, I'm sure that I've got a few relatives who don't even know what my actual first name is.

5). I love naming things: animals, cars, utensils, furniture, etc. According to my husband I'm pretty good at it too. Our car's name is Gustavo. There's a white-haired stray kitty who can constantly be seen roaming around our complex, and I call him Moses.
And then there's Nacho, a Joan Miró painting that resembles a dragon. Check him out!

6). I am a soul food junkie. Even though I was born in PA, my family roots are from the South. Mom's side is from Virginia, Dad hails from New Orleans. That means loads of collard greens, candied sweet potatoes, chicken, ribs, made-from-scratch macaroni and cheese and Dad's all-star gumbo.

7). I'm not a big shopping fan. I get burned out easily going to malls or shopping centers if I A) don't have a clear idea of what I'm looking for or B) if I haven't mentally prepared myself to go in the first place.

I'm almost positive that I'm the last person to do this, but I tag anyone who wants to play along!

Insert Foot Here

2008-04-17T11:43:00.002+02:00

Ironically enough, I had some punctuality issues of my own yesterday.

Rocío and I agreed to set the time for our GOE back at 4pm on Wednesday. However, there was a misunderstanding on my part as to the actual start time for this week. I had understood that she'd be picking up one of the ladies who's been coming regularly at 4:30 like she'd been doing, and then from there the two of them would come back to the church for our study. She told me to be at the church by 4 to wait for them, which didn't make any sense to me. So rather than showing up at 4 to waste a half hour sitting by myself, I rolled in at about 4:15. To my surprise Rocio was already there waiting for me, and was pretty irritated herself about my tardiness. Before going out to evangelize she prayed for the meeting, and also started praying against apathy and indifference. So that obviously struck a personal chord with me, and I got more irritated. As we walked outside I apologized (between clenched teeth) for the obvious misunderstanding. We briefly talked about it all, and then agreed to move on. I was still pretty pissed though. And I'm sure that shone perfectly through my stellar 'tude the whole time.
Our weekly Bible study is on Wednesday evenings at 9PM. Last night after work I ran back home, and by 8:15 I was back in the Turbo Jam saddle again. I knew I was going to be late to the Bible Study if I stayed and exercised, but I didn't care. After all, I'm not the one with the time issues, right? And besides, I thought, the meeting would start late like it usually does every week. So I kicked and punched away for 35 minutes, stopping the workout early to grab a quick shower before heading out the door. I got to the church by 9:30, just in time to catch a couple worship songs before beginning the Bible study. To my surprise, one of the first things discussed during the study was the issue of punctuality and our responsibly carrying out the tasks which we've been assigned within the church.

The tone wasn't accusatory by any means, but it still stung. And it woke me up to the reality that I'd been sporting a pretty stank, I-don't-give-a-crap attitude all week. I've been moody, irritable, quick to fly off the handle and the general tune I've had to sing over the past several days has been none other than complain, complain, complain. About everything.

After talking about this with Chechu last night, I finally stumbled on what's been bothering me all week: I have PMS. For most women that won't sound like big news but in my case, given that I usually don't suffer from the phsycological aspects brought about by PMS, I was finally able to put a name to my problem. After starting birth control at the end of last year, I see how my body has been going through some minor changes, particularly with more frequent-than-usual bouts of moodiness and sensitivity before my period.

At least now I've been able to recognize this new pattern for what it is, and being aware of this (theoretically) should help me control my emotions more instead of allowing them to drag me all over the place. I called Rocío this morning to apologize for how I acted yesterday, and she graciously understood. On the whole, I feel better about how this week is ending-- much better than how it started, that's for sure.

Positive

2008-04-16T11:12:00.004+02:00

My 30-second rant: PUNCTUALITY

I have the greatest Mom in the world. But to put it mildly she's not the most punctual person. I suppose that growing up with that has turned me into the exact opposite-- having an overly-sensitive concept of time. Living in Spain has tested me in this area on more than one occasion. Last night was a prime example.

I ended up leaving work last night well after 8:30PM for no good reason other than the fact that my boss was chatting it up with a co-worker about a couple operations they're doing now. Apparently there's an unwritten rule that as long as the boss is here we all have to leave the office together, even if that means twiddling your thumbs until he's done rambling. When 8:38 rolled around and we were finally walking out the door I swear you could have seen the smoke billowing from off the top of my head. I couldn't even look my boss in the face to say goodnight to him, and I barely eeked out an "adios" to Christina before bolting down the sidewalk to head home.

If this were a one-time occurrence, you wouldn't hear a peep out of me. If it happened once or twice a week with a prior announcement, no problemo. Better yet, if I actually had a reason to stay later than usual, to catch up on work or whatever, I certainly wouldn't be dedicating this much time to write about it. It just irritates me to no end feeling like other people are wasting my time. That isn't just a work thing. It's a Spain thing. People here love love love love love love love love love love love to TALK. Talk about nothing. And that talk about nothing can last an hour or more if no one steps in. Granted, I got home last night just a half-hour later than what I normally would have had I left the office on time. Other than working out I didn't have any big plans made that I missed out on. But that was my half-hour during which I could have done productive things or just sat on my couch watching TV had I so desired.
I guess I can just chalk this whole issue up to my American "you're-infringing-on-my-time" mentality. And since I'm the one who decided to move to here it's up to me to adapt, and I'm fine with that. It's just taking a bit longer than I anticipated :P

That was definitely more than 30 seconds!

I have to add that last night, in all my furor, I finally broke through my exercise barrier. I actually wanted to exercise in order to let off some steam, so I grabbed my Turbo Jam CD and turned on. I actually surprised myself with the initial energy I had. I was nailing my punches and my kicks were higher than they've been in a long time, hehe.. Surely I was a sight to see! Unfortunately after blasting through the first few sets I burned out after 25 minutes, drenched in sweat.

I will be back for more today!

HYC update

2008-04-15T10:02:00.003+02:00

I've lost 0.8 pounds this week, putting me at 219.6! I'm so happy to finally see a number below 220. Since I began weighing myself in February I think the lowest I had gotten down to was 218, so I'm ear-marking that as my next mini-goal. I feel confident that if I can just stick to this faithfully between now and the end of the month I'll surely reach a solid 215.

I didn't meet my exercise goals for this week, as I only worked out two days. I am really struggling with this. I find it so difficult to wake up early in the morning to exercise, just like I find it difficult to come home after work and do it then. I suppose getting started is never easy no matter how much one tries to plan. There's always an excuse to put it off another day. So for this week, my goal is to just get excited about exercise again. I have to break through this barrier! Does anyone have any suggestions?

I think the "cheat weekends" are definitely going to have to be put on the back burner at this point. It'd be one thing if we could actually stick to having just one off-plan meal, but since we struggle to keep it at that we'll be better off staying on plan for the entire week. In spite of my weird cravings that come up every now and then, staying on track during the work week isn't as much of a challenge anymore. The weekends, however, are my weak point. My goal for this coming Saturday and Sunday is to stick with the plan and see where that gets me next Tuesday.

Here's to a great day all!

Oh Monday..

2008-04-14T09:55:00.002+02:00

I can't believe how fast weekends fly by. As I was writing my posts last Friday I could just blink and see myself back here at my desk on Monday morning. And here I am, ready to face a brand new week.

As expected, Saturday and Sunday were non-stop. We woke up super early on Saturday to meet the other young adults at the church by 7am to organize the carpooling plans. After a minor, yet costly fender-bender we began the drive up to Jaén. I was admittedly in a sour mood for almost half the ride there-- I was tired, but mostly I was angry about the accident we had, which, with a little more care, could have been completely avoided. Thankfully no one was hurt.
After a much-needed trip to the bathroom when we finally arrived in Linares I felt a lot better. The concert was actually a day-long event with different activities during the morning hours, lunch and then the concert was held afterwards. It was quite a big event with teens and young adults from different churches in attendance from all over Andalucía- those of us from Almería and Granada and others coming from Córdoba, Cádiz, Málaga, Sevilla and Jaén. Needless to say I ended up having a great time there, after all the prior headaches.

Yesterday afternoon we drove up to Granada for church with Charo. We had dinner (and dessert) afterwards, and ended up arriving back home around 1:30am.

So I'm a bit tired this morning, needless to say.

No exercise this weekend, and eating wasn't that great either. Our "cheat meal" turned into another cheat weekend, which neither of us are thrilled about. Weekends are so tough for me. After a full five days of staying on track I feel like I deserve at least a meal to eat what I want. While that sounds reasonable, it never turns out that way in my case. One meal leads to more snacking, and then just blowing it all together. In retrospect, however, things could have been a lot worse in terms of my food choice. Yes, I snacked on cookies and honey-roasted peanuts. Yes, I indulged last night, savoring a white chocolate/strawberry cheesecake ice cream bar. But it was all controlled, and I didn't go overboard once in spite of the intense cravings I had last week. Progress is progress, and I'll take it as it comes!

So here's to a brand new week. Tomorrow is my weigh-in, and I'm really hoping to see a number below 220. Between now and the end of the month my goal is to reach a solid 215. April is half over, as hard as that is to believe, and I really need to focus to reach this goal.

Just Two hours..

2008-04-11T18:08:00.002+02:00

...between me and the WEEKEND!

Some random thoughts on this windy afternoon:

My co-worker has taken the rest of the afternoon off and her absences usually keep the boss at bay. For María and me, this means we get to leave the office tonight ON TIME!!!
I'm feeling a million times better right now than what I did this morning.
I spoke with my Mom before leaving for lunch. It felt good to have the chance to just talk- this time about her, how she's feeling and how I can be of help. She's supposed to be sending us pictures of Aunt Bertie to prepare a slide show presentation and a program for her memorial service. It feels weird talking about my aunt as if she were already gone, but since her passing is inevitable, it's necessary to plan for it. At this point, I'm just less anxious knowing that Chechu and I will be able to lessen some of the load for my Mom in planning and preparing the funeral. Marissa is going to speak with her supervisor about taking some days off to fly back home, and that has allowed me to breathe a huge sigh of relief, knowing that my Mom isn't going to have to go through all this by herself.
I made these awesome lemon-peppered fish fillets for lunch today just like how my Mama makes them, minus the bread crumbs and greasy goodness. Got rave reviews from the husband too :)
I get to talk to my Sissy tonight after work!
I'm starting to look forward to this concert tomorrow. I have a feeling that we'll have a great time after all.
We've decided on Sunday as our "cheat-meal" day. I'm still not entirely certain on what lunch will entail, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we'll be a lot less indulgent this time around since both of us are looking to see lower numbers on the scale.
It's been an intense, intense week of cravings, and I've managed to get through it without cheating once. I'd say that counts for a Non-Scale Victory.
I feel stronger and more agile. I'm building up my determination to plow through this weight loss and never look back.
I've spent about an hour on this post. There's no sign of the boss, and that means that I'm just a mere 60 minutes from the weekend!

Have a great one, you guys!

2008-04-11T09:22:00.003+02:00

As of about two weeks ago I started coming into work at 9am instead of 10am like I had been since starting here. Inititally I thought it was going to be tough to adapt to the extra hour, but on the contrary I find myself to be so much more productive with an earlier start. Now I wake up to have breakfast with my husband every morning, and I usually have time to squeeze in a chore or two before heading out the door myself.

I'm so glad it's Friday. This week, to my delight, has actually gone by quite fast. I'm anxious for 8pm to finally get here, even though I know that this weekend is going to fly by. Tomorrow is going to be a long day for sure, as we'll be driving up to Jaén, one of the northernmost provinces in Andalucía, for the young adult Christian music concert I mentioned a while back. The concert will be held in the city of Linares, which is about a 3-hour drive from Almería. Since there are a number of us who will be attending, the original plan was to hire a bus. But for whatever reason, that idea has been shot down and we'll be carpooling instead. Chechu has offered to take the truck, and I'm really not excited about the idea of him driving six hours to Linares and back in one day. Obviously I'd help with the driving if I could, but since I'm just now learning to drive stick shift I'm not exactly the best candidate to be out on the highway. I suppose that'll be my next big project- getting my Spanish driving license together since US licenses aren't acknowledged here.

So I'm hoping that another driver will be able to accompany us on the trip tomorrow. Aside from that issue, when I was at Fátima's yesterday her son (who is helping to set up all the audio/visual equipment for the concert) informed us that the tent where the concert was going to be held has been damaged due to bad weather and now the idea is to have the concert in a 200m hall somewhere that only has a holding capacity of 150 people. Apparently there'll be an estimated 300 people attending, which obviously poses a big problem. So, needless to say, I'm praying that everything will be worked out. To be completely honest I was never that excited about going to this concert to begin with, and the fact that all these issues have come up at the last minute has dwindled my excitement down to 0.

Last Sunday my Mom informed us that our great aunt isn't doing well. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's about 6 years ago, and given the degenerative nature of the disease she's now bed-ridden and completely unable to communicate. Over the past year she's been at a nursing home close to where my Mom lives up until about a month or so ago when my Mom decided to bring her home. Last Sunday my Mom got in touch with us to let us know that Aunt Bertie had taken a turn for the worse. According to everyone she's nearing the end of her days, and at this point it's just a matter of time before she passes on. At this point, I'm mostly concerned for my Mom and how she's handling all of this. For her, Aunt Bertie has been more of a mother than an aunt, and it's got to be devastatingly tough to have to come to terms with the passing of a loved one that close to you. I feel bad that my sister and I are so far away from home right now, and that neither of us are able to be there right now to share the load. All I can really do is pray and leave things in God's hands.

Diet-wise, things are continuing to go well. No workout yesterday though, hopefully I'll be able to squeeze one in today.

I Miss Too

2008-04-10T18:41:00.005+02:00

The lovely Alli has inspired me to post a similar "I Miss" list to remind myself of what I had when I was thinner and why I'm so ready to get it back. It's crazy to think that this will be my third time losing a significant amount of weight:

(1)When I started highschool at 14 I weighed over 200 pounds. During my freshman year I lost between 40-45 pounds and I maintained that more or less through my senior year. I was about 160 when I graduated.
The college years. Starting weight: 160ish. By the end of my junior year I had ballooned back up to about 220-225.
(2)My academic year abroad in the DR (2001-2002). I've briefly mentioned some of the huge challenges I faced weight-wise during my stay in Santo Domingo. I was 21 at the time, it was my first time traveling abroad and I was scared as hell. Thankfully my sister shared the experience with me and to make a long story short, we went through a lot that year. I arrived there at about 230 pounds. Nine months later I was down to 150.
(3)Post-undergrad years to the present. After coming back home from the DR I gained back all of the weight I had lost over the course of a year. That showed me that during my time abroad, I really didn't make it a point to learn new eating and exercise habits and let them sink into my normal routine. I was totally out of my comfort zone and I desperately needed to lose weight in order to have basic, everyday things (like not being charged double for public transportation because I took up a seat and a half). I let all of that propel me into an obsession with weight loss. While that did yield quick results, it didn't solve my issues with food. I was only placing a band-aid over my problems instead of learning a healthy lifestyle.

So that leads me to where I am today. Over the past 5 years I've more or less stayed in the 200s, reaching my highest weight of 240 during my first year of grad school. This time around I'm learning to manage food and embrace a healthy lifestyle. In doing so, the weight will come off. I'm not interested in quick fixes; I want long-term results, and I never want to see these numbers again.

My goal weight is 150 pounds. I have a bigger frame, and I think any weight smaller than that would make me look sickly. I've always found curvier women to be so much more beautiful than super skinny girls, and150 pounds on my frame looks good- slender with all the curves my husband loves and pleads with me not to lose. (Side note: My husband and I primarily speak in Spanish, and he is currently learning English. He's improved by leaps and bounds since we first met, and from time to time we go over American slang and cultural expressions. Okay, and maybe a few bad words here and there. Anyway, last weekend we happened to come across Sir Mix-Alot's video of "Baby Got Back" on YouTube, which he thought was great, lol! So now he goes around the house singing "I...Like...Big.. ButtsAndICanNotLie" in his cute Spanish accent. The man cracks me up!)

So this is my motivation:

Having more self-confidence.
Going shopping to buy the clothes that I like in the styles that I want. Not just buying whatever fits.
Being able to walk long distances without getting irritation rashes on my inner thighs from too much friction.
Sitting in public places confidently (restaurants, airplanes, buses) without worrying that I'm taking up too much space.
NO HEALTH ISSUES
No muffin top
Seeing my jaw line in side-profile shots
Looking younger
Feeling good about losing weight and inspiring others to reach their goals
Moving around with more agility and feeling like I can take on the world.

Fantasy meals

2008-04-10T11:50:00.002+02:00

Things at work are going a lot better this morning. When I arrived I made it a point to make myself busy following up on some other tasks that I had pending from earlier in the week. Last night after Bible study I was talking with one of the guys who's been looking for work since he arrived in Spain last summer. He and his wife were married roughly a month before Chechu and me, and with the exception of finding a couple odd jobs here and there, he hasn't come across anything else. It's exasperating enough to have to look for work being single, but when you have a family to look after it makes everything ten times worse. He and his wife are contemplating moving back to London sooner than anticipated so that he'll be able to find work. After listening to his story I felt really grateful for the job that I have, even with its imperfections. While I'll definitely keep my eyes open for new opportunities, I no longer have one foot out the door as was the case yesterday.

I'm not sure why Wednesdays have become so stressful anymore. Due to last-minute schedule changes I wasn't able to attend the GOE with Rocío yesterday afternoon either. When we started together in January our meetings were set to begin at 4pm, giving us about 30-45 minutes to evangelize and/or meet with women who decided to come to the meeting. Generally if someone wants to attend we try to adapt our meeting schedule to theirs, and that's been the case as of lately. So now instead of meeting at 4, we generally start at 4:30 or a little after, which puts a huge strain on my schedule because I have to be back at work by 5pm. The fact that punctuality isn't exactly a cultural norm here coupled with the reality that meetings are usually prolonged because some of the women have questions or want to pray about certain issues leaves me totally stressed out because I can't be late getting back to work. So yesterday when Rocío called to find out if she could pick me up at 4:30 and from there go to the church to hold our meeting, I told her that I wasn't going to be able to go because it had gotten too late. She sounded kind of disappointed, but there was really nothing I could do about the situation.
So tonight I'm going to talk with Fátima, one of the church leaders, about it since she was the one who asked me to participate in this GOE with Rocío. I feel really bad about how the situation has panned out because I do want to participate. I just get stressed out with the scheduling/no-concept-of-time issues, and that inhibits me from putting my all into the meetings because I'm constantly worried that I'll be late. So I hope to get some encouraging words. Obviously with the GOE starting at 4:30 my schedule doesn't permit me to attend. But hopefully she can tell me about some other opportunities where I can get involved.

I'm still having craving issues. It got so bad yesterday afternoon that I found myself perusing Coldstone's, Applebee's and Chili's websites and creating fantasy meals- you know, like the fantasy video games people are so into nowadays. Except my action heroes were buffalo wings, a monterey-jack superburger, french fries and a big bowl of "Cookie Doughn't You Want Some" ice cream from Coldstone. Talk. About. TORTURE!
As expected, I got home last night after 11pm and begrudgingly ate my cup of garlic spinach and hard-boiled egg. Not horrible, but definitely not a fantasy meal.

I'm feeling better today, craving-wise. I hope to be able to get a workout in this afternoon during my break because that's really the only time I'll have. We'll see how it goes.

It's almost FRIDAY y'all!! :o)

Work drama

2008-04-09T10:21:00.003+02:00

So thankfully I was able to stay on plan last night without any issues. I left work at 8pm on the nose, and immediately went straight home to work out before I could give it a second thought. It went pretty well- I did about 40 minutes of the workout and next time around I plan to get through the whole thing. I'm not sure if I'll have time to work out today or not since Wednesdays are the busiest for me. It'll most likely be 11pm or so when I get home tonight, and it'd be pretty unrealistic of me to think of working out at that hour. So, in short, barring a drastic change in schedule I'll be counting today as an off day. Cool.

In spite of my sporadic bouts of lunacy with chocolate cravings, I feel really good on this diet. It's an easy plan, I'm getting in a crap-load of fruits, vegetables and water every day, and on the whole I just feel much healthier. It's also a huge help that my husband and I are doing this together. I struggle when I have to diet on my own, and now that Chechu and I are on the same page things are going so much more smoothly. We're both losing weight and we're looking forward to seeing great results by the end of the month. For myself, a realistic goal between now and then would be 215, constituting an 11-pound loss for the month. Not to shabby, eh? I think I should be more than capable of losing a solid 5 pounds over the next three weeks.

In other news, I'm prayerfully considering a new job. My feelings about being here change sporadically, and that speaks to me of instability. Working here has made me realize that no job is perfect, but I'm really not happy where I am.

Granted, the job has definitely been a huge blessing to both me and Chechu. Last summer, after less than a month of looking for work, I sent in my application here and was hired the very next day. At the time I didn't have any of my paperwork in order to work in Spain, but my boss took me in anyway and has since been faithful in paying me my salary and everything else I've been due. But now that I've got all of my permits together, he doesn't seem to want to move. After running around like a mad woman this week to get my social security documents squared away, I contacted the company's Human Resources director to let her know that I had everything ready to be filed in the system as a "hire." She abruptly told me that she had to speak with Avelino first to go over the stipulations of my contract, etc. Fine. Immediately after speaking with her (Monday) I told Avelino that he'd have to contact her in order to file my paperwork as a company hire, and he said he'd be on it this week. So this morning when he got to the office he mentioned to Cristina that he'd be going past HR today to drop off some other documents. After their conversation I conveniently reminded him about my paperwork and asked if he wanted me to prepare copies of everything to take to HR when he went. So then the man snaps back at me with "I have to take your paperwork to HR?" Then he said that he'd speak to the director about my contract, but I'd have to go there myself to submit the paperwork. What. The. $!(·"%&)/?? That totally caught me off guard, especially since I'm an employee and as far as I know most company directors are responsible for filing their employees' documents with HR. I felt really hurt by how he responded to me, as if to say he truly could give a crap about me, the lowly immigrant.

So at this point, for as absent-minded as Avelino is, I don't know if my paperwork will ever be filed. And frankly, I'm not that interested in sticking around here any longer to find out. This afternoon I plan to send in my resume to a few language academies and translation agencies that I've come across, and all I can do is trust that whatever God has for me I'll have.

Slow day

2008-04-08T18:37:00.002+02:00

Thankfully it's been a calm Tuesday- calm enough for two posts today! In theory I have just under an hour and a half left here in the office, and I'm praying that Avelino doesn't stop by at the last minute like he's been doing lately. That usually means overtime.

Now that we leave work an hour earlier, I have more personal time in the evenings to get things done at home. Tonight I have the following on my agenda:

TaeBo Basic Training @ 8:15
Call Sis
Housework: hang laundry out to dry, iron, make beds, wash dishes, make dinner for tonight and lunch for Thursday (since I won't have much time tomorrow)

After all that I plan to take a soothing, hot bath and hopefully catch a movie with Chechu if there's time. I soooooooo love our apartment. There's something about the lighting we have set up in there that makes it so relaxing in the evenings.

Diet-wise, things have continued to go well today but it's been hard nonetheless. I'm not sure what it is about cloudy, overcast days that tempt me to jump, er, plunge off the wagon. This morning I was still hungry after my mid-morning snack. I started thinking about all the food places I would visit if we were in the States right now-- Dairy Queen, Coldstone, STARBUCKS... Those thoughts led to contemplating how great it would be to go to the supermarket tonight after work (the one conveniently located down the street from our house) and just buy massive amounts of chocolate, pastries and ice cream. No DQ, Coldstone or Starbucks by any means, but a close fourth-place nonetheless. That treat run would have of course implied hurriedly eating it all at home and discarding the evidence before hubby could catch me red-handed. That sounds insane as I read it in print, but those thoughts (when they do creep up) are very real. That totally sounds like a person with an eating disorder. Do I have an eating disorder??

...As I ponder that, I'm very thankful that over the course of the afternoon my visions of sabotage have pretty much dissipated. I didn't go off the deep end at lunch and I certainly am heading straight home after work. I'm enjoying a low-fat strawberry yogurt cup for my evening snack instead of a pint of Hagen Daas, and I feel pretty good about that.

I'm also thankful that Chechu and I are doing this together. He's so encouraging and so disciplined when it comes to dieting. He's not an "enabler," he's not capricious and he doesn't give in to my "c'mon it's just one cookie (etc)" lines. He keeps me honest and that's what I need in this stage in the game.

HYC update

2008-04-08T09:37:00.005+02:00

Hard to believe it's Tuesday already-- it feels like the past few weeks have just flown by. All in all things have been progressing quite well, in spite of my lack of free time to document it all. Work has been picking up a lot as of lately, which is a good thing for sure. After my mini-breakdown last week I've been feeling a lot better about work in general, and moreso now that I've finally gotten my social security paperwork in order after having to make a second trip to the Social Security office in Almería yesterday.

This past weekend went well, nothing too exciting though. On Saturday Chechu and I had our respective tutoring sessions in Almería, after which we ran a few errands downtown and then headed back to our side of town to do a little grocery shopping. I was surprised to see quite a number of people at the beach that afternoon. In about a month and a half, the weather will definitely be hot enough to get in the water. I can't wait!!

Saturday evening after church we went out with some of the other young adults to our usual hang-out spot: the food court at the mall. Chechu and I ended up ordering hamburgers from BK and split a small order of fries. Not too bad considering what it could have been, but a cheat nonetheless. Originally our plan was to have our once-a-week non-diet meal on Sunday during lunch, but we ended up splurging a little on Saturday as well.

Sunday was pretty low-key for me, at least at the outset. Chechu had to be in Almería for church to lead worship and at the last minute I decided to stay home. I felt like I needed the extra time to sleep in a little and catch up on some cleaning and other work around the house. Chechu got back by 3pm and we had our non-diet lunch: pork loin fillets, refried beans (healthy version), rice, salad and mixed veggies. I actually filled up on the salad and mixed veggies. I had two small pork fillets and some beans. I didn't eat any of the rice. For dessert we split a white chocolate/strawberry cheesecake ice cream bar (amazing).

On Sunday evening after taking a nap we went to walk for about an hour along the boardwalk, which was nice. I ended up buying ice cream afterwards though-- a pint of BJ's chocolate chip cookie dough, which Chechu and I split while we watched movies.

On Monday morning I definitely noticed a difference in how I felt after eating so heavily on Sunday night. All during last week as we were following the diet, I felt so much lighter after each meal, instead of that weighted-down feeling I always had before after eating lots of meat and carbs. Chechu has noticed the same feeling as well.

So this leads me to my Healthy You Challenge update for the week. I've lost 6.4 pounds!! I'm really excited about that- it's the first considerable loss that I've had since I started in February. I was on track with my exercise goals this week as well, working out 4 days. I mostly did a lot of walking. I'm also excited for Chechu- he's lost 3.8 pounds this week!

This is what I'd like to accomplish over the next seven days:

1). Have only one "cheat meal" this week. We will be out of town on Saturday to attend a young adult Christian music concert in Linares. Both of us have discussed the need to plan our meals for that day, considering that we'll either have to bring food from home or eat out. We haven't decided on either at this point, but we'll get it together over the course of the week.

2). Exercise four days this week. Last week I did a lot of walking, and in most cases it was because I had to- running errands here and there. This week I want to focus on scheduling exercise into my day. Ideally, that would mean getting up at 7am every morning to work out before Chechu has to leave for work. I'd like to try for that at least once this week and on the remaining days work out in the evenings.

3). Journal more

Happy Tuesday all!

What a difference a day makes

2008-04-03T11:19:00.002+02:00

Yesterday started off rough. For no good reason I arrived at the office in another one of those "living abroad kind of sucks" attitudes that tend to creep up on me from time to time. I got to work and was informed that I have to jump through some additional bureaucratic hoops in order to get my social security card and have access to the worker benefits I'm entitled to. In all honesty it's not that big of a deal I guess- I just have to go to the Social Security office, fill out a form and turn it in with my green card (it's actually green, hehe). With that I'll be assigned a temporary SS card until the actual one comes in the mail. Not a big deal by any means, but given my mood yesterday morning I could only see it as yet another hassle.

After finding all that out, my other co-worker made a comment about how untidy our office was. Cristina isn't a fan of cleaning at all, and while I do enjoy keeping up with my chores at home, I tend to check all that at the door when I walk in to work. Since I don't dirty the office with cigarrette ashes or paper clippings like others do, I've never taken on an active role in keeping it neat and clean. In addition to that, I've always distanced myself from the office too, and the feeling of not belonging 100% has lead to my passive attitude towards it.
That started to change yesterday. María's remark was the straw that broke the camel's back, and I broke down. I was angry about everything that had happened that morning, mainly the negative attitude that I couldn't seem to shake. After seeing how upset I was, she got upset thinking that her comment was what made me cry. She insisted on cleaning my portion of the office so that I could sit down, relax and pull myself together. So what was initially a tense moment turned into a bonding/therapy session between the three of us. Two days ago I was certain that María didn't like me, and yesterday she was totally supportive and encouraging. She apologized for her harsh tone that comes out from time to time and I've learned to accept her personality. I've always been on good terms with Cristina, and I think María and I have turned over a new leaf in our relationship as well.

Today marks day three of the diet, and things are progressing wonderfully! I've been weighing myself daily since Tuesday just to follow the results, and I'm currently down to 221.2!! That's over five pounds in two days! I'm positive it's all water weight anyway, since I had fallen way out of the normal weight range that I've been in over the past several months. But nonetheless, seeing that drop is incredibly motivating, and I hope to lose a few more pounds before my official weigh in next Tuesday.

Admittedly I've been doing minimal exercise this week thus far. But something is better than nothing at all, right? On Tuesday night I did about 15 minutes of TaeBo, and yesterday I did about 20 minutes of brisk walking. While brief, these workouts have merited a star on my calendar, and I hope to add another one today. My goal is to exercise four days a week.

I'm looking forward to this weekend. On Sunday we have the entire day to ourselves, and I'm excited about spending an full, carefree day with my husband.

New month, new plan, new goals

2008-04-01T19:28:00.003+02:00

Happy April 1st!

A new month feels like such a new beginning: a fresh, clean calendar full of endless possibilities; a blank canvas, if you will, and I hold the paintbrush. Depending on my willingness to work, I can and will accomplish a lot during these next thirty days.

Today marks "Day One" for Chechu and me. We've put ourselves on a doctor-ordered low-calorie/low-cholesterol diet as of today. This was decided on Saturday afternoon when we got the diet after going to Almeria for Chechu's tutoring session with one of the boys from church. Originally we set our start date for March 31, but since we weren't able to make it to the grocery store until yesterday to stock up on all the food we'd need, we decided to push the date back until today. I actually am glad that we chose to begin a day later. There's just something motivational about starting a new month off on the right foot.

Needless to say, knowing that we'd be beginning our new diet this week, I ate h o r r i b l y from Saturday night all through Monday. There was pizza, strawberry cheesecake ice cream, ham and cheese croissants and an insane amount of chocolate (among other things). I'll admit that some of the indulgences I hid and ate in secret so that Chechu wouldn't see me. I feel kind of embarrassed writing that down because it shows that even in front of my own husband I feel ashamed to expose that side of my eating habits. "Last-chance eating" has been a part of my yo-yo dieting experience since it all started many moons ago, and that's a concept that Chechu just doesn't get. To him it's a huge contradiction to b & m one minute about wanting to lose weight and then going out for pizza and ice cream the next. While he's so obviously right, I suppose that if L-C-E cycle were that easy to correct, most of us wouldn't be in the predicament we're trying to get out of.

So anyway, I'm not at all surprised with the horrid 226.8 reading I got this morning on the scale. Yep, that's up +3.8 since the last time I weighed myself. Under other circumstances I'd be down in the dumps about that, but I feel really good about this weight loss plan we're on. Today has been very positive thus far, and I'm certainly looking forward to continue.

Here's what I've eaten thus far:

B: 1 slice wheat toast w/ grated tomato, garlic, 1tsp. olive oil

Coffee w/ skim milk, no sugar

S: Banana

L: 2c. tomato pasta w/ tuna, large veggie salad w/ FF ranch

S: Mandarin orange

D: (after work) 1c. mixed vegetables, 1 slice FF white cheese, kiwi

Exercise at home tonight after work. More to come with my specific goals for April..

Fearfully and wonderfully made

2008-03-31T12:30:00.002+02:00

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139: 14-16

On this last day of March, and in honor of my new goal list that I set out for April, I wanted to share another one of my favorite scriptures. Starting next month I am focusing on several non-scale goals that I've set out for myself. Among those, I want to re-wire the negative thinking that I tend to fall into at times concering my body image by focusing on what God has to say about me in His word.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am not my size 18-20 pants. The numbers on the scale do not define who I am nor do they categorize my self-worth. God created me in His image, and He loves me for who I am. I love God and I love His creation. Since He made me, I love me too. It's time for me to stop basing my self-image on what others say about me.

Considering my childhood and the constant struggles I've had with my weight, this lesson has been a hard one to grasp. It sounds like a beautiful idea, but in my case it's been difficult to put into practice. But I'm getting there.

My husband is such a great example for me in this regard. No, he doesn't run around proclaiming his love for himself. He's not vain, arrogant or conceited by any means. He is just comfortable in his own skin and doesn't let what others say about him affect his self-image. This weekend was a prime example of that.

Chechu's mom has been on him for a while now about losing weight. While both of us have put on some extra pounds since the wedding, he's the one constantly reminded about his weight gain. Like most men, when Chechu puts weight on it goes directly to his tummy. He makes jokes about it all the time, and I know it's not a façade to cover up the true insecurities he has about his weight. The man just doesn't have any.

Yesterday the three of us drove up to Granada for evening service. As we were walking toward the hotel, Charo began to remind Chechu about his belly and how much he needs to lose it:

Charo: Your stomach looks horrible. You look like a 40-yr-old instead of a 29-yr-old. You have to lose weight.

Chechu: Are you kidding?? With all the money I've invested in my belly to get it like this? (Proceeds to show off his side profile)

All laugh and immediately change subject.

I love Charo to death. She is such an amazing person, and so obviously a mom who cares about her son's well being like any mother does. However, her words can be somewhat harsh for my liking when it comes to Chechu. He insists that she sometimes exaggerates with her comments because she knows that since it's all going to go in one ear and out the other anyway, maybe something might stick. But no. Chechu genuinely laughs it off, showing her and everyone else that he's not going to change anything about himself until he makes that decision for himself. He gets the whole fearfully and wonderfully made concept and lives it.

Marianna, however, has struggled with that her entire life. As a child and adolescent, even the slightest comment about my weight would throw my world in an uproar, crushing every ounce of self-esteem I had. The vast majority of those comments came from the bullies at school. The remainder came from concerned family members who (usually) reinforced their words with love. I, however, didn't know to make the distinction between positive reinforcement and just plain cruelty. It was all the same to me, and it all lead me to my conclusion that being overweight was equivalent to having 0 worth.

Now that I think about it, every time- EVERY time I've ever lost weight in the past, it was always done in an attempt to please others. So that Fulanita will be my friend. So that Fulanito will think I'm pretty. So that I won't be charged double for public transportation. (Part of my whirlwind experience living abroad in the DR, which deserves an entire blog for itself). Even when I did lose the weight then, I was never content with the results, and I never managed to see myself any differently.

A few more ups and downs on the yo-yo cylce and several years later, I'm finally starting to get it. This time around, I'm not doing this for anyone else. Not for friends, not to keep up appearances. This is all about ME, and I'm going to bask in my success. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and yes, I AM worth it all.

"Be strong and courageous..."

2008-03-27T20:06:00.004+01:00

In all honesty it's been a rough couple of weeks. In particular, over the past few days my raging hormones have made me quite emotional and hyper-sensitive. I'm already overly-sensitive as it is, and with my period my defensive radar goes a little haywire.

I've been through a lot of drastic changes this year. For the first time in my life I'm living on my own, away from Mom, Sis and everything else familiar. I've recently taken on my newest role as "wife," which is a huge learning process in itself. As I'm adjusting to life in another country, I'm learning to embrace my individuality and to appreciate the life lessons that come out of each difficult moment. Overcoming those hard days makes me stronger as a person, and they cause me to stand even more steadfast in my faith. I've grown so much spiritually and personally during this past year. In spite of the tears and the down days, which in the grand scheme of things are only momentary, I am so thrilled to be where I am. I'm so excited about all that God is doing in my life and where He's leading me.

One of my favorite Biblical passages that I've come across is the first chapter of Joshua. God calls Joshua to the forefront, out from behind Moses' shadow and into the spotlight. He reaffirms to Joshua the same promises that He gave to Moses- that He would be right there with him, through the challenges, the difficult moments and the hard decisions. However, he also required something of Joshua- that he be strong and courageous. Obviously that spoke to the fact that hard times would surely come up. But God gave Joshua a glimpse of the victory road ahead, telling him that by standing strong and holding fast to His promises, he and his people would come out on the winning side.

This passage has spoken volumes to me since I began to study it several months ago. I relate so much to Joshua in the sense that I too have been called out of my comfort zone, having to embrace a brand new reality and take on new challenges. I also know that like Joshua, I have the victory already won by standing tall in my faith, holding fast to all of the promises that God has given me and being strong and courageous every step of the way.

HYC Update: 223 lbs (-0)

2008-03-25T13:43:00.005+01:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, this past week hasn't been my best, although certainly far from being the worst. With the Easter holiday, out-of-town traveling and an annoying case of back pain all wrapped up in seven days, it definitely wasn't a recipe for total success. And that was something I had already seen coming anyway. I cancelled my weigh-in yesterday morning because I just wasn't prepared to face the scale. This morning however, I had to know. I was somewhat surprised to see the same number as last week, 223.0, although I certainly wish it could have been lower.

It's been about a month or so since I started focusing on losing weight again after the wedding. I feel like I need to have a heart-to-heart with myself, to recap where I was, where I am and to remind myself of where I want to be and why I'm doing this in the first place.

Part One: The re-cap

Finishing grad school and planning a wedding simultaneously was a pretty tall order for me last year, in addition to facing all of the other changes that were about to take place in my life. I started grad school at about 215, ballooned up to 240 and then dieted and exercised my way back down to about 225. In March of last year, two months shy of graduation, I bought my wedding gown after several trips to the dress shop and trying on about a dozen differnt gowns. The day I bought the dress I got so motivated seeing my reflection in the mirror. It was a perfect fit, and the accessories that I was going to buy along with it went perfectly together. Not being satisfied with that, I decided to give myself an extra motivational push to lose weight by buying the dress in a 16 instead of the 16W I had tried on.

To make a long story short, I put myself through nothing short of hell that summer trying to get into my wedding gown. Since I had to bring the dress to Spain with me when I moved here, I no longer had access to the bridal shop's seamstress should I have needed to get any alterations done. (Nope, didn't think about that when I bought it.) Thankfully my MIL's best friend is a seamstress and has worked at a bridal shop for many years. As soon as I got here she offered to help me with the gown if I needed to have it taken in or out. For the longest time it looked as if the latter was going to be my reality. Finally, TWO WEEKS before my wedding, I tried the gown on again, and it zipped up perfectly. I still remember hearing the smooth, flawless ziiiiiiip. I cried that day.

On my wedding day I weighed 200 lbs. Since then I have managed to gain back all the hard work I put in over the summer months. That's frustrating..

Part 2: Coming to recognize need to lose
After knowingly gaining some "happy weight," getting through wedding celebration #2 and Christmas break at home, I came back to Almería feeling the need to get my act together weight-wise, for my health's sake. My family suffers from a plethora of weight-related health conditions, and I do not want to continue down that road. I choose my health and well-being over sweet, greasy indulgences that will only lead to illnesses and heart conditions. I want to be here to enjoy and cherish everything that God has given me and all that is to come in my future.

My health is seriously my main motivation to get this weight off. At one point I just wanted to look better in cute clothes and swim suits for summer. But, that isn't my sole motivator anymore. In fact, looking good is just another byproduct of being healthy. I'm not aiming for the byproducts anymore because I know they'll come as a result of me focusing on my health.

With that said, I plan to update my goals and plans with this whole thing. As I said in an earlier post, I need to make goals based on things I can control.

So here's to a new week of new beginnings and a new focus.

Back to work

2008-03-24T11:37:00.008+01:00

I find it so difficult to get back into my normal routine after a long break. Getting out of bed this morning was a struggle but thankfully I was able to resist the urge to sleep in until the last possible minute, which allowed me to get a few things done around the house before heading out to work.

The past four days have been pretty intense and jam-packed (hence my lack of posting). Not too much of a restful vacation but a needed break from the office nonetheless. As of lately I haven't been too motivated to take pictures, and unfortunately this weekend was no exception. :P Anway, here's what I was up to:

Thursday: Chechu and I left out that morning to drive down to Almuñécar, a beach town located along the coast of the province of Granada. The drive down was quite pleasant, although halfway there it started pouring down raining, bringing traffic to a screeching hault. Aah!! We did stop in Torre Nueva for churros, but only bought a small order to go with our coffee (no chocolate this time around). We finally got to Almuñécar around noon to visit with Mª Angeles and Curro. We had lunch with them and then later that afternoon we went to another couple's house for coffee and pastries. After much prodding I did have a small slice of some kind of chocolate croissant that was absolutely amazing. Well worth the indulgence I have to say! After watching a little bit of The Color Purple we headed back to Almería since we both had group meetings at the church that we had to attend. We finally got home after 11pm and crashed.

Friday: We left out before 9am to pick up some of the girls from the church who asked if they could drive up to Granada with us. We ended up leaving Almería almost an hour late due to a few unforeseen circumstances but not to worry- since nothing ever starts on time here in Spain, the fact that we got to the church nearly a half hour late went completely unnoticed. Finally around noon we all began to organize ourselves in groups for the evangelism activities that afternoon. All the groups were assigned to different sections of the city to pass out leaflets and invite people to attend Easter Sunday service. I actually had a really good time walking around and talking with different people. Usually I get extremely nervous when approaching people spontaneously, but this time around I was able to come out of my shell and initiate very pleasant conversations with several people.
We reconvened at the church at 3pm for lunch, and afterward Chechu and I had to head back to Almería since he had to lead the teen Bible study which started at 7:30. Since we didn't have time to stop back at the house we immediately went to the church. While Chechu was leading the Bible study I went with Alejandra to Burger King of all places to have a diet soda with her before she began her shift there. She convinced me to nibble on some fries with her (BK has the best fries ever!) and before I left to head back to the church to meet Chechu she hooked us up with two #1 value meals.
However, what was initially going to be an evening at home with BK and movies ended all-together differently, as we both got home and went straight to bed.

Saturday: BK for breakfast! That held us over until 4pm that afternoon when we finally sat down to lunch after running some errands. I made pork chops at Chechu's request along with baked potatoes and salad. I had two small pork chops, one small baked potato and a pretty decent-sized serving of salad. I also cut up some strawberries and bananas for dessert.
After lunch Chechu went to the church since he had to lead worship for that evening's service while I stayed at home to clean and catch up on some laundry.
That night we were supposed to attend a birthday party for a friend of ours, but she ended up postponing it due to the fact that she wasn't feeling well. In light of that, we decided to go out anyway and have a date night of our own. The original idea was to go to the movies to see Horton Hears a Who, which looks adorable. We planned to catch the 11:45pm show, giving us time to have dinner first. We went to MacPapa's, splitting a chicken campero (huge sandwich) and a hot dog. Not the best choices, I know.. After dinner however we ended up coming back home instead of going to the movies. It was really late and we were both still pretty tired from the previous days' activities.

Sunday: Stayed home all morning to finally relax a bit. I finished some laundry and permed my hair while Chechu did his lesson planning for the week. At around 3pm we met up with Charo, Javi and Mariel to have lunch at this Chinese restaurant before heading out to Granada for church. At the restaurant I had a spring roll, fried rice and chicken with almonds. Flan for dessert.
After lunch, Chechu, Charo and I drove up to Granada for Sunday evening service. It was very nice, and there were several new people who came, presumably from the evangelism activies on Friday. I did miss celebrating Easter at home though, because here it really isn't the same. We ended up leaving Granada after 10pm, and on the way back we stopped for tapas. By that time I had a pretty bad headache, so I didn't eat very much. We finally got back home at around 12:30am.

I feel exhausted just having written about all of that!

I'm hoping that today will end up being low-key. I decided to cancel my weigh-in this morning since a) I have my period and b) I really didn't want to know. This past week, while my portions were okay, I really over-indulged in sweets and red meat. As I'm prone to high cholesterol, neither of those are good options. Now that things have returned back to normal I've jumped back on the weight-loss wagon again. This week I plan to keep my meat intake to a minimum, having only tuna or skinless chicken if I do decide to eat meat, and filling up on vegetables, salads and fruits. The back pain that I complained about last week has finally dissipated thank God, so I'll be getting back into my exercise routine as well.

2008-03-19T12:47:00.002+01:00

Today's WI: 223.0 (-0.8)

Last night after work I did go home to a hot, soothing cup of tea, with every intention not to eat anything else for the rest of the evening. Nevertheless, Chechu got home late from his leader's bible study and I ended up having a bowl of cornflakes and bananas with him before bed. Not too bad considering that I lost .8 pounds, but it still irks me that I can't seem to stay away from the kitchen at night.

Work is somewhat slow-going today since it's the last day before the long weekend. This afternoon Rocío and I have our GOE and then later tonight I have bible study after work. Tomorrow we'll be heading to Almuñécar for the day to hang out with Curro and Mª Ángeles. Chechu is already talking about stopping for churros con chocolate tomorrow morning for breakfast on our way there. AAHH! I must maintain control, and I'm confident that I will. Last weekend at the retreat I definitely went overboard. I had my indulgences for the month, and I don't intend to repeat the experience.
We may be in Granada on Friday all day as well since our church has planned several evangelistic activities there. It'll certainly be exciting to go and participate, but it very possibly may mean another day of eating out.

I've still got this nagging back pain that doesn't seem to go away. I'm going to see if I can pick up a hot water bottle this afternoon and hopefully that will help.

The results..

2008-03-18T19:20:00.010+01:00

Monday's WI: 224.2 (+1.4)

Today's WI: 223.8 (-0.4)

Results: GRRRRRRRRRR

As Monday's weigh in results clearly show, I didn't do as well as I had anticipated over the weekend. Instead of sticking solely to salads and fruit like I had planned, I indulged. At mealtime I managed to fill my plate with meat and potatoes as well, and of course I saved room for dessert after each meal. (Two words- rice pudding...) In spite of the short-comings however, I was able to maintain control: I only ate one plate of food at each meal, usually leaving a few morsels behind, and when I got full I stopped. I also made sure to eat vegetables and salad. All of that stands in stark contrast to my free-for-all, fried-meat-and-carbs-only M.O. for eating at buffets in the past. Therefore, what was a 1.4lb gain could have easily been 5-7 pounds had I reverted back to my old ways. So praise God for small miracles.

Our schedule at the retreat was jam-packed. Between workshops, devotionals and worship services we had almost no down-time. I didn't take a single picture! But I thoroughly enjoyed evey minute and I learned a great deal about myself and my walk with the Lord. It was great spending time with the other hermanas as well, several of whom shared that they're expecting!

I started noticing some back pain yesterday that hasn't gone away. I must've slept in a bad position or did something to strain a muscle back there. It's not an unbearable pain by any means, just dull and constant. Nonetheless I've decided to lay off the intense exercising until it goes away completely- the last thing I need is to do more damage. So this week I'll be focusing more on perfecting my eating habits. Maybe that's what I should have done in the first place.. So here's what I ate today:

Breakfast: Danacol

Bottle of orange juice

Coffee (skim milk, 1tsp. sugar)

Lunch: 1 1/2 c. beef stew (beef cubes, tomato, garlic, onion, zucchini, eggplant,

corn, peas)

1/2 c. white rice

1/2 c. diced strawberries and banana, 1 tbsp sugar

Snack: 1 slice white bread, 2 tbsp. chunky peanut butter

Since it's well after 7pm, my plan after work tonight is to take a hot shower and enjoy a cup of green tea (sounds sooo soothing right now). I'm confident that if I can stick to that plan, I'll be able to chart another loss for tomorrow. My goal of 210 by the end of the month is still in sight.

Thursday and Friday of this week will pose a challenge for me, however. Since it'll be Easter break, Chechu and I will be out of town visiting friends on Thursday, and we'll surely do something else on Friday as well. Knowing that I may be eating out on a few occasions will allow me to get a plan of action together before things have the chance to go awry.

I also joined the Healthy You challenge last week, and I'm excited to see new comments on here! Many thanks to those of you who've offered words of encouragement-- it truly is nice to know that we can support one another as we all work together towards reaching our fitness goals.

It's the weekend!!

2008-03-14T10:21:00.003+01:00

Random thoughts at 10:22am on this gorgeous morning:

I'm so glad it's Friday. This week has gone by fast, but nonetheless it has been a bit tiresome, both physically and emotionally. On Monday I managed to roll into a funk- just feeling frustrated and irritated about everything- mainly things with work and the lack of results displayed on the scale. As I was coming out of my mood around Wednesday, Riss informed me that she had been diagnosed with tonsilitis. This came almost immediately after a bout with pnuemonia (a mild case, thank God), so that obviously perked up everyone's concern including her doctor, who did a blood test on her to check on her immune system. As of yet the results still haven't come back. While we all know that she's perfectly fine, there's still a twinge of anxiety in waiting for the doctor to confirm that. I spoke with her yesterday and she said she felt a lot better after having taken the antibiotics that the doctor prescribed for her. Surely by tomorrow she'll be feeling back to normal.
Marissa's wedding!! It's my twin sister's turn to get married! I can't even believe I'm writing that. Chechu and I got married on October 20th of last year, and then we celebrated another wedding with my family on December 22nd. Marissa's wedding is set for December 20th of this year, just about nine months from now. I'm really excited for her and Carlos and I know that the two of them are going to have a wonderful life together. Now I get to start thinking about my matron-of-honor dress. I definitely want to be at my goal weight of 145-150 by the wedding, and I'm looking forward to trying on dresses over the summer.
It's hot outside. Speaking of summer, it's right around the corner! It's really warm this morning, making me think of those wonderfully hot, lazy beach-bum days that I will be spending with my husband in just a few short months! I don't foresee a bikini just yet (although I don't know if I'd ever feel comfortable going to the beach in a bikini), but I will definitely be looking better in the new beachwear that I intend to buy for myself!
RETREAT! This evening we will be heading to Almuñécar for the annual women's retreat, and I'm really excited about it. I have a feeling that we'll be receiving A LOT from the Lord there, and I'm anxious to take it all in. Since we'll be staying at a hotel, I've been debating on taking my laptop with me. I guess I'll make up my mind at some point before we leave. I do intend to take lots of pictures!
Met my exercise goals for the week!! I worked out consistently Mon-Thurs of this week. This morning I had planned to exercise too, but Chechu needed to take the laptop to school with him. I thought about working out this afternoon after lunch, but I don't think that'd be very realistic, seeing that I still have to pack, straighten my hair, and spend time with Chechu since he'll be staying home for the afternoon. I found my mp3 player this morning (YAY!) so I'll be taking that with me on the retreat. I'm sure the weather will be gorgeous in Almuñécar this weekend, so I'm looking forward to getting out and walking.
Pre-weekend weigh-in. I got on the scale this morning and I'm currently at 221.6, which I'm pretty excited about. I'm even more excited about the fact that I feel motivated going into the retreat weekend. I WILL take on the buffet and WIN! This coming Monday is WI for me, and I want to see the numbers continue to go down.
Looking forward to next week. Next week is Semana Santa, or Holy Week, as it leads up to Easter Sunday. Easter is probably my favorite holiday, as it celebrates the inconceivably immense love that Jesus has for all of us. He took our place on the cross at Calvary, conquering sin and death and reconciling us back to the Father. Through Christ we have the gift of salvation and eternal life!

I'm not sure if I'll have time (or the resources) to post this weekend. I'll definitely be back on Monday though with all the stuff I learned on the retreat!