mikesgirl

Not sure if this is even possible or if anyone knows how to do it, but I need to change my display name.  Does anyone know how to do that?  I cant seem to figure it out…thanks!

Well I went from working out twice a day, to barely working out at all and I am NOT happy about it.  This week I did well.  Went to the gym for a couple hours twice and I am going again today, so thats three times this week.  Plus I did yoga on one of the off days.  It is hard to work out as much as I would like with my gym so far away and my school work piling up on me.  I was able to do the on demand work out this week, but I am just not sure that is worth skipping the gym for.  I am giving some serious thought to just hiring a repair man to fix the treadmill in the basement.  Boyfriend is really not stepping up to fix it, that much is clear.  It is an expense I really dont need and cant really handle right now, so I have really been dragging my feet in calling someone. 

I really dont get why he wont fix it.  Mike is just so handy, he has worked as an electricition, a carpenter, construction, and he used to fix motorcycles, like this should be no problem for him to figure out!  It is almost like he just doesnt want to fix it for me.  I dont mean to bitch about it again and again, but if you are a guy, wouldnt you want your girl to be nice and thin?  Running is the most effective way to do that. If I am willing to run shouldnt he be willing to fix the damn thing???  At this point he has made it pretty clear that he does not think there is anything that can be done and he isnt doing anything to fix it, so I think I am just going to have to eat the cost and call a repair guy myself. This REALLY sucks.  The thing is so dirty and there are boxes and whatnot piled on top of it, I doubt he really went above and beyond at all. 

 Ok so I have a lot of work to do this week, but by Monday it should all be taken care of.  I can plan to take Tuesday for some me time and check out the treadmill myself.  I have the 800 number for the treadmill company after all.  I am so doing this.  If the tech guys suggest calling a repair guy I will do it, but I have to fix this thing.  I feel like when something is this important to us, we get so little time to ourselves these days, I am going to make sure this thing gets fixed.  I wonder if he is going to feel like a DOUCHE when his blonde prima donna girlfriend fixes the treadmill.  OHHHHHHHH… its gonna be good.

Oh MAN was I pissed this morning.  I have been asking the boyfriend to fix my treadmill since we moved into the new house (MAY) and he still hasnt gotten around to it.. what with his busy schedule of sitting on his ass and playing video games, I am sure that is quite trying for him.  Well things have been going really well for us relationship wise so i got him a ”just cuz” present yesterday and he is feeling good, so today he announces that he is going to check on the treadmill.  I am thinking, FINALLY!  Instead of spending at least three hours out of my day heading into the city to go the gym, I will be able to take just 20 minutes out of my day and run, and then focus on my studies for longer, as I should be.  Perhaps he finally gets it!  No such luck.  He comes back up to my office not 5 minutes later and announces that the treadmill doesnt work.  I am not convinced in any way shape or form that he actually put in the effort for this, so I take time away from studying, which I really did not want to do and is kind of the point of HIM looking into fixing it, and I go into the basement and check things out myself.  There are boxes piled on top of it and it is covered in dust.  I think it is common knowledge that a machine like this wont work unless it is cleaned up and not filled with dust and crap, oh, and perhaps TAKE THE BOXES AND CRAP OFF OF IT…. so i take it upon myself to go upstairs, google the owners manual, and show him the part that says it must be clean in order to work.  He doesnt care, he is done for the day (at 10am) and is off to play video games for the remainder of the day.  ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW????   So i give him Precors 800 tech support phone number, tell him they close at 5, so if he could get on that sooner rather than later I would appreciate it, and he tells me he is busy.  And to this I am thinking, I am going to slap you so hard you will wake up in next week buddy, and by that time the xbox 360 will have mysteriously disappeared.  So I am PISSED and I have two days to do about 3 weeks worth of work, I do not have the time to deal with this crap at all.  So I go upstairs to my office and realize I am way too pissed off to work right now, I should go have a ciggarette.  Now I hate smoking, I wish I could quit, but I get so cranky without my nicotine.  I decided there has got to be a better way.  So I go into the bedroom, turn on fit tvs on demand channel and find a yoga program.  After a half hour of that I felt centered and focused.  I was able to come back into my office and do some quality work, no nicotine necessary!  I am so proud of myself that I was able to refocus with exercise!  I feel good about myself, centered, focused and I am getting things done, not to mention the ab workout is incredible!  I just hopped on Buddyslim so I could tell all of you about it!  If you havent looked into yoga, def do so now.  Calms all anxiety and it is great for you!  Here is to a focused and healthy day!

Yesterday I went to the gym before class and it felt really good.  I ran for about 20 minutes, and then did the elliptical for about an hour.  It felt so good to work on myself like that I decided I would do whatever it takes to make sure I would go back to working out on a daily basis from now on.  I wake up today and there  is some sort of hurricane situation going on outside.  There is just no way I am walking to the train, taking the train 20 minutes into the city, to walk in the rain to the gym.  It is times like these I really wish my treadmill worked.  It is not so much an issue that I dont want to work out, cuz I do, I just dont want to have to go outside in that ridiculous rain storm.  When I bought the house, the woman selling it said there was a treadmill in the basement and I could just have it since she really did not feel like having it dismantled and shipped to where she was living.  I was estatic!  Mike took a look at it and said it was broken, could not be fixed at all.  Now I am pretty sure if HE wanted it to be fixed he would be able to fix it, but since it is not important to him, he is not going to bother.  Hoenstly I doubt that he even looked at it.  I feel like he just decided it was too much work, doesnt benefit him, so he just fitured he would tell me it doesnt work.  I want a piece of exercise equipment in the house so bad.  I want to be able to work out when it is raining or snowing and I dont want to make my way into the city just to go to the gym.  A part of me is thinking, why can’t I just fix it myself?  I can find the make and model number and just google it.  See what I can do to make it work.  When I was a senior in high school, my senior project was to take a 88 camaro small block V8 engine, take it apart, clean all the parts, and put it back together again so it would work.  I was able to do that, how much of a challenge would a treadmill be?  Today I am getting my grad school information together, making sure I can apply to all the schools I want to apply to.  Once that has been taken care of I am going to see about fixing this treadmill.  It is important to me.  I am going to make this work!  Good talk buddies!

Well I am already seeing improvements with myself.  Usually I enjoy lazy Sundays, sitting around, doing a whole lot of nothing.  But I was really not in a position to do that this week.  Usually I ignore what I need to do and continue with Sunday Funday, but yesterday I really stepped up.  I read three chapters in my Abnormal Psychology book, wrote a paper for that class, AND almost finished my Statistics take home midterm that is due this evening.  I worked all day! So much for my lazy Sunday!  The thought did cross my mind to just screw everything and relax, but I used my new will power and got my work done.  Look at me, I’m growing.

However, I did not exercise and I did eat total crap.  Boyfriend wanted to go to a diner for breakfast, but I knew I had work to do, so I could not take a couple hours to go off and walk around town.  We ordered in.  To say that ordering in breakfast in this town is easy for the diet concious, would be a lie.  We went with the usual, bacon egg and cheese on a hoagie (this is Philly so no one says Sub, everyone says hoagie.. haha.. you get used to it).  I tried to do myself a favor and order a ham egg and cheese instead of the bacon but I just really didnt like it.  I never eat the bread, but still, the food just isnt good for you!  Then for dinner, Mike wanted to reward me for working so hard so he feeds me the most ridiculous food.  We split a stouffers mac and cheese, he made some sort of tv dinner in the microwave that consisted of corn, some sort of pizza situation, and a brownie.  Then he gave me a pack of rolos.  I still stayed within my calories, but lets be honest, I could have done better.  The kitchen will not be done for another two weeks, so until then I still have to deal with the microwave dinners, but I really could have not eaten that mac and cheese.  So I am proud of myself for working hard, but I am not so proud of the food intake.  I am heading to the gym in a mere moment, hopefully I can undo the damage.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some!  Here is to making today a better diet day!

Ok what is it about Men that makes a girl want to eat herself out of house and home?  My man decided this week, the week I have a midterm and a MAJOR test, was the best week to fight with me.  Like are you serious right now?  The weird thing is, lately I have been noticing that when we fight I am no longer going straight for the bad for me food, I just stop eating.  This seems somewhat backward to me.  I used to be a major binger, and I really havent been doing that lately.  I suppose that is good, but not eating is really bad.  I get to the point where if we are fighting for days on end I will actually start dry heaving cuz I am so sick of this crap and I have nothing in my stomach.  I do get physically ill from stress and not eating is probably making it worse.  So that begs the question…which is better, bingeing or just not eating at all?

So feel free to skip this next part cuz I am really just complaining about the boyfriend from here on out…So he has had a serious alcohol problem in the past… in fact 2 years ago I moved to another state just to get away from him cuz I could not take it anymore.  But he went to rehab and claims to have seen the error of his ways, and now we have been living together for about a year and a half.  But everytime we fight he uses it as an excuse to go over to his friends house and have some beer (His own version of the binge I suppose.)  Lucky for me, his friend happens to live with one of my closest friends so I tend to know how much he is drinking, without him knowing about it.  Apparently last night, after he stormed out (its how he likes to end fights.. which is delightful) he rushes over there, but according to my friend Liz he really only had one or two beers and they were toward the end of the night after he had talked himself down some.  Today, Mike and I talked, and it seems like he just doesnt want to be limited anymore, ie he wants to be able to drink whenever.  He said he would certainly let me know if he was going to drink or where he would be or whatever couples are supposed to be telling each other, but he does want the freedom to drink.  So here is my question.  He is not drinking as he used to, but pretty much everyone keeps telling me that if he does start drinking again, he will not be able to control himself and things will go from bad to worse.  I am wondering if I should just give this a shot.  Let him drink if he wants, and let this make or break us.  The truth is, I am in  grad school right now and that is my number 1 priority.  I just dont have the time or the energy to be fighting with him about all this anymore.  My semester is over on Dec 20th.  Would it be at all wrong of me to let things go, see how it all works out, and if I can’t handle it, just break up with him at the end of my semester?

Well I did it!  I woke up this morning and went directly to the gym.  I did not give myself anytime to wake up and rationalize not going and ended up having a great work out and feeling really good about myself.  I did free weights, the elliptical and I ran for a bit (which is new and im pretty excited im running again.)  I think I do need a schedule, but now I know that the best way for me to get to the gym is to just wake up and go.  On top of all that, the guys at the gym actually commented on my progress.  There are these two guys at the check in counter at my gym that have been there since I joined and they actually pulled me aside today to tell me that I look really good and it looks like I lost a lot of weight.  I would say overall I have lost about 27 pounds, as I lost weight before I joined Buddyslim, and it is really nice to know that people that don’t even know me are saying positive things.  It does feel really good when anyone tells me that I look good.  I am going to a family party on Nov 1st and I havent seen a lot of these people since I was at my heaviest so I am hoping for some nice compliments there.  Oh, and did I mention that the moment I got home I started studying?  I have been so efficient today!  Yay for me! (first time I have been this efficient in awhile so please… do the happy dance with me)

So on Monday I decided to make a plan for Tuesday.  Did not follow through on that at all.  I woke up and Mike wanted to reward me for taking a midterm the day before and for us being so great lately.  So I let him.  We lay around all day and just spent time together.  It was pretty nice.  I started to stress that I wasnt doing what I needed to do so then I cleaned. How that makes sense I have no idea.  But while I was tearing the house apart cleaning, Mike went up to Dunkin Donuts and grabbed us some coffee, breakfast, and, dare I say it, a dozen donuts.  Now I only had three, but come on now, I really should not have had any.  And the craziest thing is, I NEVER eat donuts.  In fact, I had previously convinced myself I don’t even like donuts (turns out that was a lie) but now I am just very upset with myself.  I havent been to the gym in like a week, and here I am eating donuts? are you serious right now? 

 If I can manage to move on from the donuts and from the fact that I am not focusing as I should, my best friend just had a miscarriage (didnt even know she was pregnant so that is pretty horrifying) and my other best friend has thyroid cancer.  So of course I am running all over Philadelphia to be there for OBGYN appointments and Chemo appointments so I am just taking more time away from myself, but I just feel like I can’t NOT be there for my friends.  I am wigging out, bottom line.  I have way too much stress to deal with and once again, i am not doing anything about it.  Why can’t I just do things I know would be best for me?  I watch the Biggest Loser and get all motivated and the next day, its gone.  How is this the same person that went to the gym twice a day just two months ago?  I seem to be having a pity party here so I am going to sign off, but any advice on how to focus, how to get back on track, would be much appreciated.

So on Saturday I decided to put my new “plan” into effect, and completely failed.  I studied almost all day for my Psych test this week (damn you nbc.com with your full episodes online), but then I spent Sunday as a Sunday Funday.  I actually think I really needed the day off, it felt really nice to just relax with my man and chill out some.  I may not be working the entire time I am at my desk (sooo easily distracted) but it feels like I do not get any down time.  So due to some much needed advice I devised a schedule today that I think will help things along.  I understand that study time, in order to be effective needs to be set up in blocks.  Too much time and you will feel fried.  So, starting tomorrow (is that the chubby gals anthem or what? “i will start tomorrow i swear…) I am going to impliment my new schedule:

9 - wake up, pull myself together (i woke up at 11today so that is going to be an improvement..trust)

10 - Buddy Slim! (I seriously need to get back on here daily!) Check email - figure out what needs to be done for the day.

11 - 1 Pure uninterrupted study time.  Time to get on the ball here people!

1 -   lunch it up, get ready for the GYM! (gotta start going everyday again, this i swear i will go tomorrow crap is NOT flying anymore)  I have to go into the city to get to my gym (i may look into changing gyms soon, as this is becoming rather annoying) so it takes me awhile to deal with a gym trip now.  20 min train ride in, change, work out, (when I go I tend to work out for a couple hours), then rush to the train and head home, will prolly take about 2 - 3 hours for the whole trip.

4:30 - 7 straight study time again. 

7pm - dinner with my man and finally get to relax.  Anything else that needs to be studied I can do sitting next to him, but I need to make sure that I get my down time, otherwise I feel insane!

 Ok so that new schedule will have to start tomorrow.  I will let you all know how it goes.  I actually meant to start on a schedule today but did not actually make the time to make a schedule, so I woke up at 11, did some laundry, and I have a midterm tonight so I do need to study for that.  Anyway, enough with the excuses.  Today did not go my way, hopefully tomorrow will.  I am hoping since I wrote it all out for you guys today I will hold myself accountable.  I feel like I have let down my buddies enough lately by not being on here as often as I should.  Really need to get on the ball here.  DO WORK!

So when I went back to school I was freaking out about not being able to handle it.  Several of you told me to go for mine, and not worry so much about my weight loss journey until I had school under control.  I listened, and gave myself permission not to focus on my weight loss so much and to really focus on school.  Well I am doing well enough in my classes, but I have almost completely given up this weight loss thing.  I am never logging into Buddyslim, sporadically logging my food and I am really only exercising once a week, if that. 

 The most insane part is, that I am still losing weight!  I keep weighing myself and I am still steadily losing.  I am afraid it is not for the right reasons though.  I am afraid I lost muscle since I am not lifting at the gym twice a week anymore and that is where some of the weight has come off.   I am also afraid that the muscle is turning straight into fat, since I think I read that somewhere, but who can really be sure.  But I am def eating less than I used to, so I guess it is possible I am still losing, just taking in less calories than I am burning.  I really need to get back on track though.  I am so tired of being overweight!  I know I can make myself healthy, I just need the will power.

 On top of all that I am elbow deep in grad school applications.  Originally I was only applying to one school and as I was preparing the application, I realized this is sort of a reach, odds are I will not get in.  I hate to think negatively like that, but I would also hate to not be able to start my Masters in the Fall as planned.  So now I am applying to six local universities.  And taking three courses that are pre reqs for the Masters.  AND I have to take the GRE on Nov 5th.  Bottom line, my head may explode from the stress.  OH yeah, and did I mention that me going back to school inspired my boyfriend to go back as well?  He has taken the GED and passed with flying colors.  Now I ask you, how is it that he scores in the 99th percentile in these tests and yet some idiot let him drop out of high school?  Makes no sense.  On the upside he is also going through the application process, starting college in January.  I am so proud of him for doing this, I can not even express it.  But the intense amount of stress we have both been going through may not have been all for the best.  We were fighting a lot, both not being able to handle the stress and at one point he actually up and left, went back to his parents place for a couple days.  The good news is he is back and we worked everything out, and are actually stronger now.  We are actually communicating (who’da thought that might be important?  haha) and things are actually much better.  But just cuz we can talk it all out now does not really mean that we are less stressed than before.  I mean, it does help to know he is in my corner, but I still may have to face the fact that I may not get into grad school and that is driving me nuts.  And he is dealing with financial aid stress, finding out that due to injury his dad may be forced to retire in which case he may not be able to depend on his parents as heavily for money as he would have been otherwise.  We are stressed out in this house!  It does help to know the relationship is good now though.

Plus I feel fatter.  Which sucks.  I finally felt like I was losing weight, and now I feel like I am back to battling the bulge.  I really need to get myself on some sort of schedule or something.  I do actually respond well to limits and structure, I just have a problem actually setting out to achieve that.  I keep saying if I can just get myself on some sort of a track I will be ok.  Like, wake up, maybe clean some, head to the gym, then come home, shower, and study for a couple hours.  Then I can have my nights to myself (and for Mike) and not feel guilty that I am not working.  I find I am studying all the time, but getting distracted and doing other things as well.  Just cuz I can multi taks doesnt mean I should.  I try to spend time with Mike AND study at the same time, but then  I feel guilty, like I am short changing him AND not getitng as much work done as I would like.  PLUS I am on the worst time table EVER.  I stay up till 2am everynight watching tv, unable to fall asleep and I don’t wake up till 10am.  Perhaps if I get on a normal schedule, I will be able to spend more time studying and less time wishing I would just fall asleep already!Well I think the answer here is pretty clear.  Get my fat butt on a schedule and on the treadmill, and I will start seeing results again.  thanks for listening guys, you are always here when I need you! 

 PS sorry I havent been a great buddy lately.  Perhaps now, if I can make some sort of schedule, I will be a better buddy to everyone.  Buddyslim time MUST be on the schedule!  Have a great weekend everyone!