Day 43: Marching On

 

Day 43 of Nutrisystem 2.0. After a restless night I was up shortly after the alarm went off and by 7:30 the bed was made, the cats were fed and I was enjoying my first cup of coffee in the quiet of the morning. It was 45 when I got up and our high temp for today was forecast at 61 !

I decided not to weigh myself today. I'm actually going to move my weigh in day to Friday. I feel like the weekends are where I get off track and a Friday weigh in gives me a few days to 'recover' from any weekend slips. However, I don't intend to use it as an excuse to indulge. That would just defeat the purpose. So we'll see what this Friday brings. I'm still struggling a bit with that bedtime snacking and a tendency not to exercise as planned on weekends, otherwise I feel like I'm doing a better job adhering to the Nutrisystem plan. Last Saturday's Valentine's feast was intentional, if a bit misguided, so I am not worried about that being a problem. 

Breakfast was a 270 calorie Jimmy Dean Delights breakfast sandwich. I didn't have a morning snack. Lunch was a 220 calorie grilled chicken sandwich. Afternoon snack was 180 calorie cheese & crackers. Dinner was 220 calorie chicken alfredo over riced cauliflower. Evening snack was ... the remains of the s'mores snack mix. Calories were .. who cares. Explanation follows. 

First workout of the day was ... nothing. I did not get on the treadmill at all today. Explanation follows.

“Make happiness your priority and be gentle with yourself in the process.”

Happiness is definitely my priority these days, but being gentle with myself is the challenge. I've said it many times: I am always very hard on myself. I'm not really sure how to stop doing that. I think my habit of making excuses is a direct result of how high I set the bar for myself. I set the bar so high that I fail, and then I make excuses to mitigate the failure. Perhaps setting the bar a little lower, not failing and not having to make excuses would be a step in the right direction ? 

I settled on my self-love topic before work today .. how ironic that I had a really tough morning ! I learned I had made a couple mistakes in the work I've done this year. It was nothing major, just insufficient documentation of the activity I completed, but it stung. I strive for perfection and the reality is no one is perfect and I do not know everything. Since I am so hard on myself it affected me more than it should have. It ruined my whole day. The good thing is I tend to learn from and not repeat my mistakes. My boss actually disagrees with 2 of the 3 issues (audit failures) so that makes me feel a little better. The 3rd issue was totally a mistake I made, so I'll own that. I also started off the day with an email regarding something my boss actually completed for me back in December while I was sick. I didn't point it out to her, but she failed to note the claim. The perception was I hadn't done when my job, when in reality I had nothing to do with it. When I came back from being sick it was gone from my worklist, so out of sight is out of mind ! The important thing is I only really care about my boss's perception of me and my work. She writes my appraisal and fights for my rating so she is the only one who matters. After yelling at Abby (and later apologizing, even though she doesn't understand anything I say) and having a small bowl of s'mores snack mix I felt better and got on with my morning. It also didn't help that I have 2 complicated projects that I'm struggling on and need help from our process folks. One is ready to close but the system is fighting me and the other is something our team didn't receive adequate training for, so I'm flailing around in the dark. I just want to get them resolved and moved toward closure. As a result of my chaotic morning I wasn't in a mindset for exercise during my lunch hour. That didn't change when 5 pm rolled around. I ended up working until just about 7 on another issue that had been hanging around for a while. I finally got the info I needed and got that done. I just to put some finishing touches on it tomorrow and that will be on it's way. What frustrates me the most in my job is the inability to get help when I need it. I bend over backwards to help everyone else and yet when I need help no one seems to know anything. Am I really that far ahead of my peers ? My boss always says I am, but I guess I never really believed her.

In spite of the crappy morning I pushed ahead and got a lot done anyways. I also didn't waste my lunch hour. It was 60 degrees today so I went out on the front porch and broke down a mountain of cardboard boxes that had accumulated. I will put all that out next garbage day unless it's windy or rainy. I kept a few boxes because I use them as my recycle bin. 

That's about it for my crappy day .. off to the shower !