Day 117: Welcome May !

 

Today is day 117 of Nutrisystem 2.0 and it's the beginning of a new month! Hello May, the gateway to summer ! I woke up around 4:30 am to the sounds of a downpour but was able to go back to sleep until nearly 7. The rain had passed when I got up but more was in the forecast ! Taking my vitamins, magnesium and Metamucil seems to have worked as I slept well and woke with a lot more energy ! Could be a coincidence but I'm still going to try and stay on my supplement routine. It ended up raining on and off all day but we also had some brief periods of sunshine. It was definitely an unsettled day from a weather perspective !

Breakfast was 150 calorie pancakes with sugar free syrup and an 80 calorie yogurt. Morning snack was a 120 calorie chocolate shake. Lunch was a chef salad & 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt. Afternoon snack was 80 calorie cottage cheese & 90 calorie oatmeal cookies. Dinner was broccoli and a 250 calorie chicken enchilada. Evening snack was a 130 calorie ice cream sandwich. Total calories are 1120.

Today was also the start of a new round of challenges on iFit. It consists of 2 walking and 2 running each week for 6 weeks. I love this concept as it will allow me to do some of the other series that are out there. The challenges are usually 8 workouts each so I usually end up spending half the month tied up in those. Today I put in 35m19s only because that was the length of the walking challenge workouts. Tomorrow I will complete the running workouts and then I can pick some longer workouts for the rest of the week. I'm not going to push myself to do 3 workouts a day as it's too much. Instead I'm going to work on getting the Total Gym back into my routine. 

 

Next in my quest to understand self-sabotaging behavior is the impact it can have on your life. I'm taking it out of order as the next item in the article was "Am I a self-saboteur". I want to look at the impacts on your life before exploring that. The article had this to say:

The main impact of self-sabotage is that you may be unable to reach your goals. Self-sabotage can affect multiple areas of your life, such as relationships, employment, school, health and finances.

Failure to attain desired goals or outcomes can exacerbate negative self-esteem or beliefs by leading to or increasing feelings of depression, anxiety, self-doubt and helplessness. Self-saboteurs may then experience the self-fulfilling prophecy principle—because the goal was not reached, their belief that they could not achieve that goal is confirmed. The saboteur continues along the, “See, I knew I couldn’t do it” line of thinking".

I think there's a lot of truth in this, but I don't fit the mold completely. I'm more inclined to find myself surprised I achieved something I avoided for a long time, because I didn't think I could do it. Do I have negative self-esteem ? Sometimes. Do I feel depression, anxiety, self-doubt and helplessness ? Sometimes. Maybe I never find myself saying "see, I knew I couldn't do it" because I never stretch far enough outside my boundaries and try. I tend to stay comfortably inside my known limits. This is why I'm often surprised when I do stretch a little and actually achieve whatever it is I doubted I could do. I see that mostly inside my exercise space. I often avoid a workout because I don't think I can do it but by the time I actually try I'm ready for it and complete is successfully. Is it a bad thing to know your limits ? I've never been the type that needs more, more, more. Even in my professional life I'm happy where I am. I have no desire to take another step on the corporate ladder, because I see what it is doing to my boss. I could never play the corporate games and the politics these days are just insane and border on the ridiculous. As I've gone through this article's content step by step I'm seeing that I may exhibit some of the behaviors but I'm not sure it is related to self-sabotage. This is a good thing ! Tomorrow I'll look at "am I a self-saboteur" and see where I land. 

Work today was completely non-productive. Honestly, I accomplished nothing because so much of what I have is in a holding pattern while others complete their part. It's frustrating but it happens ! Tomorrow I'm hoping to start seeing some movement !

On a positive note, I got all my vitamins in today. I took a few with breakfast, a few with lunch and a few with my afternoon snack. I had my calcium chew after dinner. I'll take the mag & Meta at bedtime. 

Speaking of bedtime, last night I took a bag of the cinnamon sugar pretzel chips to bed. Well, I was so disappointed in them. They had barely any cinnamon sugar flavor. Sad to say, I bought 4 bags of them and now I'm stuck with them unless I want to trek all the way back to Christmas Tree shops and return them. I probably won't, who knows it might just be the one bag. I suppose it's better to have less sugar, considering I probably ate more than half a bag. Since they were so disappointing I'll probably just eat them here and there when I want something crunchy, but I'll never buy them again. I guess that's a good thing ! I will finish the open bag and then move on. 

In positive news, I finally got the last estimate for my siding and it came in about $10k less than Comfort, so I'm going with it. Scary to consider spending $42k but it needs to be done and the house will be amazing. The $10k I save can be used for the garage door and possibly a front door. I also need to fix the basement stairs and the outdoor basement access. I do have some questions for the siding guy and I told him I want to go over the details before I sign anything to ensure we're both on the same page. I also want some assurance that his crew will work on my project full time until it's done. If they bounce back and forth between multiple projects, that will be a deal breaker. Hopefully I can wrap this all up before the week is out !

On that note, I'm heading for bed !