Emotional

I've always been a sensitive person.  I cry at those cheesy Folgers coffee  commercials at Christmas.  You know the ones where the brother comes home from college and makes a pot of coffee?  I cry at movies and tv shows when a character dies or some such thing.  I care about people, especially those that I am close to. 

It isn't always easy to deal with and I know that I'm an emotional eater.  Not when I'm angry or someone is angry with me.  I don't like confrontation and it often leaves me with a knot in my stomach and I can go days without eating when that happens.

When I'm sad, well that's a different story.  Give me chocolate, chips, ice cream whatever. 

The past few days have been really hard for me.  I'm dealing with a lot of conflicting emotions and I'm trying my best not to eat the emotions but I'm honestly not making the best decisions.

I was working a multi day event this weekend with a great group of collegues, people I consider to be my friends.  I had seen them all on Saturday while at the event, but as I was the opening shift, they were the closing shift, I left the venue around 2pm with plans to meet up with my friends back at the hotel for dinner. 

About the time I was expecting them to arrive back at our hotel I received a call that they had been in an accident.  Five of them were in the same car and they had a collision with another vehicle.  My knee jerk reaction was to go to them.  Ascertain where they were and just go to them.  Help them, soothe them, do whatever I could for them. 

Ultimately I stayed at the hotel and coordinated with our manager and director, made calls, and texted back and forth.  Packed up their hotel room and made arrangements for their belongings to get back to them. 

I didn't have time to process anything at the time other than just keep working, keep doing things, we had one more day of the event to get through and I worked to get through it.  I didn't let myself dwell on the what could have been's or anything else.  I knew that everyone was going to be all right, everyone was released from the hospital and they were all at home with their loved ones.

I didn't really start to react until Monday for some reason.  Perhaps I was too exhausted from all of the hours I had put in, keeping myself busy.  When I went to work on Monday we had a staff meeting to talk about what had happened and to be updated on how everyone was.   During the staff meeting I started crying.  I kept telling everyone I was fine, I was just tired.  It was after the staff meeting that I broke into the "Emergency" chocolate that we keep in our area for the sugar fix when we need it to get through an event.

I'm trying very hard not to eat my emotions.  I've either spoken with or texted with those who were involved in the accident, I know that they are all right and will heal in time, but I'm still not making the best choices.  I'm struggling and I know that I'm going to pay for that on the scale this week.

How that will effect me?  It's too early to tell. I'm trying desperately to not allow it to effect me, but I know that it will. 

I guess I just had to write about this tonight, to reach out into the vast unknown and admit that I'm struggling. Something I don't like to admit to myself at all.

Double Milestone

It's been a great week! 
I've gotten in a lot of activity every day, including a few hundred squats!  I'm loving the new workout DVD I bought last week, and kicked it up from the beginner workout to the intermediate work out.  I'm loving that workout!  I wore my Garmin while I was doing it the other day just to see what my heart rate was like and it was perfect, in zone 4 for the whole workout after the warm up.  I'm also proud of the major milestone I was able to hit this week despite it being an emotional week.    

It has also been a week of Milestones.
Milestone 1.
After almost six weeks of playing with 6 ounces and landing just below that milestone of 65 pounds lost, this week I nailed it! I passed it by two pounds.  I'm now down a total of 67.4 pounds!!!  I am so excited to have finally made it over that milestone of 65 pounds!  Every week my husband does a comparison photo for me so that we can see the process and I try to wear the same clothes every week but the shirt I used to wear has gotten so big that I can't wear it.  It just hangs on me.

This is today's photo, down 67 pounds, taken just after I returned home from my solo 6km walk/run.

Down 67 Pounds and finished a 6km walk/run

Milestone 2
I went for a solo walk/run today.  I wanted to do intervals and I knew that it wouldn't work with the dog, so I left him behind and hit the road.  I walked quickly for the first 7 minutes or so and when I turned the corner onto Whatcom road, I started running.  I haven't been doing well with timing my intervals as I find I focus too much on my watch so today I decided to use landmarks.  The first one was the 2nd lamp post on the street, walked to the next one and then ran to the gas station, then I walked over the freeway overpass to the other side where I got serious.  I ran for 2 power poles, walked for one, and I did that consistently until I hit my turn around point, and then did the same thing on the way back.  I struggled a little bit and I had to keep telling myself I could do this but I did it!  In total I ran for about 17 minutes.  That may not seem that big to some people, but trust me, for me that was HUGE!  It felt so good.  I felt so good that when I turned back onto our street at the end of my walk/run I sent a text to my husband and asked him to meet me at the gate with Angus so I could take Angus around the block for a walk.  Angus was a happy puppy to be able to go for a walk without my trying to make him run with me :)

I also had some really good times in my intervals.  I forgot to hit my lap button when I started running so I will try to remember that in the future so that I can actually see my running split times with my walking times, but when I look at the player on garmin connect it shows me the pace that I was going and I'm pretty happy with that! http://connect.garmin.com/activity/368987045

Walking/Running along the Corn fields

The power poles are a fair distance apart

On my return going over the freeway overpass

I've done two 5km races this summer and I'm signed up for another two in the fall.  The Rubber Duck 5k in October and the Boundary Bay 5k in November.  I'm also going to sign up for the Santa Shuffle in December when it opens for registration.    I'm hoping that I'll be ready to run the full 5km on October 20th for the Rubber Duck 5k.   I have a friend who has signed up to do it with me.  I know that she loves running and she's good at it, so I really want to be able to actually run with her.

Step totals this week:
Sunday       13,553
Monday      15,223
Tuesday      17,829
Wednesday 13,618
Thursday    13,671
Friday         14,437
Saturday     21,066
Sunday       15,880

Coping

It's been a rough week and a half for me.  I'm hanging in there and I'm really proud of how I've done.  In April of 2012, I left my travel job to take on a new opportunity for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, a cause that I support 150% and always will.  It was originally a 12 month contract that was extended to 16 months.  The end of the 16 months came on Friday.  It was my last official day as a contract employee with CBCF and it was a hard day.  To be honest it was a hard week.  I loved working there, I loved the people who work there, I love the volunteers that work there and I loved the interaction with my co-workers on a daily basis.   I've made some wonderful life long friends working there and I've met and made some wonderful friends on the daily train ride in.

It was a week full of challenges, from not eating through my emotions (very difficult for an emotional eater like me), to having lunch out with my co-workers on Thursday, to dinner out with my husband because I simply wasn't in the mood to cook!

I didn't get all of my walks in during the work day but I still got a lot of activity in.  When I went to my new WW meeting place on Saturday,  lo and behold I was amazed to see I had lost 1.3lbs.

I'm pretty surprised by that, I'm not quite sure how that happened, but I'll take the loss any way I can. :)

I'm also glad to know that I've got the coping skills to get through the week the way that I did.   It was a hard week, leaving such wonderful people behind!