Small epiphany

 Last week I was exhausted. I mean just bone tired, weary, not wanting to move exhausted. Initially I thought it was from the quick trip to California. Lots of time with people and lots of driving. So I was tired all week, teaching was a struggle. On Thursday night I took a nap on the couch which is something I haven't done in quite a while. Friday I was wiped. I did some things in here in the morning and then spent most of the day on the couch, watching TV and playing games. Yesterday I was kind of tired too, though not near as tired as I was on Friday. I at least did some things without needing a nap. Then, in the middle of the day, it hit me. My body was switching from a glucose economy to a fat economy. 

I like to say that I don't eat much sugar, but the fact of the matter is something else entirely. Especially lately. I've been having dessert with Hubby - ice cream, huge bowls of fruit, cookies, etc. If there are donuts in the copy room, I will grab one. I have taken things off the cart at the end of the day, and usually not one but two or even three. So while I have been saying I don't eat a lot of sugar, my diet has put a lie to that. 

But this week I have not eaten a lot of sugar. Every thing that I eat has little to no added sugar, so I've only been eating naturally occurring sugar. As a result, my body has got to switch from burning sugar for energy to burning fat. And that takes about a week. Well, guess what? It's been just about a week I've been on this program. Hmmm, coincidence? I think not. 

I guess I have to be careful what I say, and think, about myself. I would have sworn up and down that I don't eat that much sugar, but clearly my body is saying something different. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking 'I don't eat a lot of sugar' and therefore thinking this little bit won't hurt. But when I think that those little bits become a lot and can clearly affect my energy, mood, and overall attitude. 

Today I feel pretty good. I don't have that fatigue fog that has been present for a the last few days. I don't feel that bone weary tiredness. I actually feel kind of energized and ready to do things today. So I think the worst may be over. It's a good thing because I have a bunch to do today. I'm going to cut something on the laser while I do laundry and work on school work for next week. Also, need to watch Suits, it's getting good and I want to see how it goes. 

Deep Thoughts

 I had some thoughts during our trip and want to dive into them a little more. 

I thought about myself and my attitude toward people. I am a true introvert. Being around people, though I may enjoy it, is so draining on me. I spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday with Hubby 24/7 and I spent Saturday with a bunch of people I barely knew. Having no time to myself to reenergize, I was completely exhausted all week. I've realized that I need time by myself. Yesterday I worked on my marketing class for a bit, but then I was on the couch all day, watching TV. Hubby was outside. I didn't have to interact much. By late afternoon I felt like myself again. I needed that alone, downtime to recalibrate my mental self. So yeah, I need time alone in order to be myself. I was so drained of energy, I had the hardest time getting through the week. So yeah, it's super important that I get that downtime. I need to keep that in mind whenever we travel. I need to schedule some downtime for myself so that I can get through the whole thing. 

Hubby hardly drank during that whole trip and I could tell. He was reasonable, easy to talk to, and rather pleasant to be around. Yesterday he sat and drank all day and was a bit of a PIA last night. So that's interesting, though I guess I already knew that. 

I do not like driving at night. Not. At. All. Future road trips will include no night driving. We will stop long before it gets dark. 

Oh, the biggest one, is the food on a trip. I discovered something this trip about food. Actually I discovered a couple of things about me and food. First, I don't seem to get very hungry when we are traveling. It's true. I was hungry on Friday morning when we got up, but once we were traveling, I really didn't get hungry much at all. We would eat, but I just ate because I knew I should, not because I was hungry. I found that weird. Second, I really wanted junk food. When I did want to eat, I wanted junk food. It's like junk food and traveling are joined together in my mind. I really don't eat that much junk food when I'm home, but that's really all I wanted while we were on the road. Definitely going to have to work on that thinking. I found the whole food thing so interesting. I didn't drink much water on the trip and have spent the week getting back into the habit of drinking water again. So I used this as a learning experience and now I just need to use this information for good. 

Hello, it's been a while

 So much has happened in the last 11 days, I'm not sure where exactly to start. 

The last post had me in a pretty good place. I was feeling good about workouts, school, and just about everything. Well, the wheels fell off that bus. 

The week was good, but not great. I got some workouts in on Wednesday and Thursday. Classes went fairly well. The hardest part was planning for a sub for Monday. It just takes so much time and effort to plan for a sub. There has to be things to do but it can't be too complicated so the sub can handle it. But I got it done. 

Then came the weekend and the road trip. 

Up early Friday and we hit the road by 6:30 am. Made good time until we hit the grapevine where we ran into an accident and were stuck there for about 2 hours. After that, we zoomed through to Sacramento and got there around 8:30 pm. 

Luckily we did not have to get up early the next day, so we lounged around the hotel room and left around 9am. We dropped Mavy off at Petsmart for day care. Then headed over to find Hubby an aloha shirt. After that it was off to the party. The party ended up being a whole lot of fun. I was very anxious about the whole thing, but it ended up being a good time. We left the party around 4:30pm and headed over to get Mavy. When we got there we found that Mavy had explosive diarrhea all over the kennel. I felt so bad, but it happens. He was stressed and not very happy with us. We headed back to the hotel and an early bedtime. 

Sunday we were up and on the road by 8:00 am. We were driving down to Turlock to see my 2 brothers and sister in law. It was good to see them and catch up with them. They really are the only family I have left and I need to make an effort to stay closer to them. 

Next up was lunch with Jennifer. So we headed off to that. That was fun also. Another group I need to stay closer to. I'm not good at keeping in touch with people and then avoiding contact because it's been so long. 

After that we hit the road. The plan was to get to Bakersfield for the night and then drive home in the morning. Right outside Turlock, in Merced, we ran into a traffic accident that had everything at a stand still. We sat there for a while and finally saw a way to get out of it. We saw trucks going down this grassy shoulder and hitting a road. I was frustrated and tired and followed them. Worked out great. Hit the road and found a gas station. Took a while to get back on the freeway because we had to get around the accident. After that it was clear sailing to Bakersfield. We found a sleazy hotel, a real sleazy hotel, and spent the night with cockroaches. It was awesome. We were up at 5:30 am and on the road. Thankfully there were no incidents this time and we made it home by 2:30pm.

It was a long, exhausting trip. I thought that getting home by 2:30pm, having time to relax, do laundry and getting ready for the next day, would be plenty rest enough for the week. I was wrong. 

I spent this week exhausted and out of sorts. I could not get my act together and get with it. It was not a fun week. 

I did get to workout twice, Tuesday and Wednesday. I was going to go today but I was so mentally exhausted I just could not do it. I will go tomorrow though and possibly Saturday.

I started the Red Carpet Challenge at the gym. It's a workout and food challenge. I went to the orientation on Monday night, got the diet and jumped right in. It is a lot of food. A. Lot. Of. Food. Hubby has jumped right on board. But I'm feeling  pretty good, except for the mental exhaustion. I'll be great tomorrow and will be right back to it. 

Well, that didn't go as planned

 I did set my intentions for last week and I even set up my planner with those intentions, but then I didn't exactly follow through. I didn't record my food at all. I can't help but wonder why that is so hard to get going? It's not a difficult task. It doesn't take but a minute or two. So why can't I seem to do that? Probably because it's just not that critical to me. I need to make it more important. I'll work on that. 

Workouts were good though not as many as I wanted. I went on Monday. I didn't go on Tuesday because of Science Bowl and they were having a great time. I went on Wednesday. I didn't go on Thursday because it was Constitution night and I didn't get home until after 9pm. I didn't go on Friday because I had to get up early for senior sunrise (hiking at 5:30am) and frankly was just exhausted from Thursday night. Then I didn't go yesterday because we had to go check out the kennels where we will be leaving Mavy next weekend. So yeah, not as much as I had planned. 

I did find a marketing course for makers that I bought into. I really think that the key to my not selling much is the marketing. I don't know how to do it and so I need someone to explain it all to me. This lady has a good system and really nothing I haven't heard before, but she lays it out in easy to follow steps. She also covers things like branding and email lists and all that stuff I haven't even considered. It's going to be some work to get things going, but I'm excited to finally have a road map of how to do it. They also have a Facebook group so we can ask questions and get more help if we need. I'm excited about this and really going to dive into it and make it work. I want this little business to be successful and I will do whatever it takes to make that happen. 

School was really good this week. I spent some time last weekend really working on school work. I decided that what I was doing wasn't working and I needed to change things around. So I did. And wow was this week great. I was much better mentally and things went really, really well. Going to keep up the changes. 

Okay, off to get the day started. 

Intentions

 I have decided that I want to set my intentions for the coming week. I realized that one of the best things about DMSC was the setting of intentions for the week. We always had an assignment that we would work on each week; get more steps, meditate more, do some unentertained time, etc. I liked that because it gave me something to focus on for the week. Something to work toward. So I'm going to start doing this on Sundays, set my intentions for the week, something that I want to work on. 

For this week I think I want to work on my workouts. I'm beginning to feel the benefits from my workouts and I want to keep it going and build on it. So this week I will workout every day that I can. In other words, as long as I don't have something else to do or am so sore I can't move well, I will go and workout. I will also get back into the hip opening stretches at night. Those really help and I haven't done them in a long time. I think they will help a lot more if I'm actually working out. So this week my focus will be on my workouts. 

I also want to track my food. I have not been very consistent with that. I will do it for a day or two and then stop. So that is going to be my focus also this week. I am starting a weight loss challenge in 2 weeks and I want to have the habit of tracking my food already established. So I need to work on that. 

So this week it is my intention to get as many workouts as I can in and to track all of the food that I eat. Got it. 

Another week down

 And it was a good week. I ended up going to the gym 3 days - woot, woot. I had thought I'd go more, but I decided that I didn't want to push it too far too fast. I wanted to go today, Saturday, but we have friends coming over and errands to run before they get here so it's really too busy. But I'm going to make it a rule that if nothing else is going on, I go to the gym. I'm feeling good. My energy levels are definitely increasing and I love all of this. I want to keep it up. 

Yesterday I wrote about my trials and tribulations at school. I can't help but wonder if the mental fatigue that comes from struggling so much with that is partially what is dragging me down. It definitely doesn't help. I would come home so mentally exhausted that I really couldn't do anything but lay on the couch and play stupid games. So that's what I did. Coming to grips with the issue has helped ease my mind and get me into a better place mentally. 

Other than that, things have been good. Errands today. Then some friends coming over. Tomorrow is given over to school work and cutting things. Very excited, I ordered the extension for my laser. Now I will be able to make larger things and I'm very excited about that. That means I have to rearrange my room here, but that will be fun (lol). 

Okay, I'm done. Off to do something for a few minutes until I wake Hubby. 

Day 5 of a 5 day weekend

 I love these little mini vacations we get. We get off Monday and Tuesday for Monday holidays - yes!!! Love that. And I needed it badly, but I'm going to cover that on the other blog. 

So yesterday I went to the gym and did the workout. It was the first workout that I did not want to quit in the middle of. I took it a little slower and paced myself. That doesn't mean I didn't work hard, I did. But I dialed it back just a touch and made it through the whole workout. I was extremely proud of myself. Not only for completing the workout but for having the good sense to dial it back a bit. I'm not young, I don't need to kill myself every workout. I need to get a good workout in but the level that I workout is up to me. 

Okay, the folks who are working on our pool just arrived. They will be laying the pebble tech and I'm so excited. More later. 

Update:  So they are doing the pool and it is looking amazing. It is going to be awesome when it's done. So I went to the gym and it was awesome. It was more of a strength day so we went heavy and not fast. It was amazing. I am not exhausted either. Saturday and yesterday when I came home from the gym, I was exhausted. Completely and totally exhausted. I ended up spending most of the day laying on the couch watching TV. I think I am making gains. I also worked through some back pain. That's not completely true, it's not really pain. It is definitely muscle related and I honestly think it's just really, really weak. It hurt during some of the movements, but I kept going and made sure I had perfect form and it's fine now. I can feel it, but there is no pain at all. Might that be my problem, a weak back??? Anyway, feeling amazing and waiting on the pool to be done.