oh I'm not doing well mentally this week. I'm feeling like the ultimate failure but not really caring enough. I've refused the gym twice and I don't foresee myself heading there tonight. I have little to no patience for my children's antics and I feel like a horrible mother because they've really been surprisingly good this week.

I've thrown myself into being as busy as possible -- lining us up for as many playdates and outings I can squeeze in to avoid being at home and alone and it's been working pretty nice. I lose it when I'm alone with the kids.

the bottom line is that I'm depressed. I know I am. I see absolutely every sign that I am all over the place mentally and I hate it. Sometimes knowing I'm depressed means I go into a mode where i can save myself but this time it's just like "eh, I guess I am, lets eat chips" and punishing myself for being fat and lazy and just not a good mother or even a good person.

my house is a wreck and I'm not cleaning it up and that's affecting my mood as well. I just don't know where to start and I'm so overwhelmed and I always think "well if it was cleaned just once and everything had it's place ICould keep it that way" and I Think that's true but if I don't do it... it just stays a mess.

it sounds awful but I'm leaving for FL in little over a week. I will be gone for a week and I have lofty high hopes that my husband will be so bored he will want nothing more than to make the house super clean. he only has a week, and if I had a week with no kids and just work who knows what I'd want to do. but imagine what you could do if you had whole days iwth no kids! how did i ever think I had no time before!!! the things I could accomplish in a day with no kids are staggering I think LOL.

this weekend will be busy becuase we really do need to clean. I"m having company over on Thursday night. we are planning on hanging out in the yard I Guess, but still. I have to clean up the yard and get it ready for night life. build a fire, set up tiki torches and candles and bug stuff and since I don't have any good lighting we are going to hang up lights in the trees so I need to pick some of that up and some chairs! we need chairs since all our patio chairs are officially broken. I only have a small table but that's not a huge deal because it's not like we are having everyone over for dinner. just cheap alcohol. and I know I'm going to get uproariously drunk becuase i don't ever just have one and I really like that feeling.

so yeah, this week sucks.

I haven't posted here much this month and I can assure you it's because I haven't been health-focused at all. I had too many "well, only today will I...." days this month. I didn't count calories as fervently as I was doing, I didn't go to the gym as much as I wanted to and I didn't eat as healthily as I planned. HOWEVER, I am staying right around 168, so I at least managed not to completely sabotage myself.

Today is my birthday and I am 28! This is the year I get thin :) I think my biggest problem right now is that I'm 4 lbs from being the thinnest I've ever been since HS, and I just feel thin. Obviously I'm not and I have 40lbs more to lose, but I really need to lose at least 33 lbs more before I am actually "normal" I'm just not obese and that's an incredibly nice feeling. I'm probably feeling a little smug that I've lost weight and not quite on track again.

My goal is to shake myself up and throw myself back into gym every day this week (excluding today, I plan on eating my weight in cake and food all day) but after that, gym every evening!

*sigh* I'm not doing well. I'm having a bit of a bumpy patch right now after weeks o being so spectacular I'm really not following my Plan very well. I had such a bad weigh-in on Monday I'm feeling depressed and disheartened. I also heard something that really upset me greatly but I won't go into. Needless to say, it's been a struggle. I was hoping to be 165 this week, instead I'm sitting at close to 169. It's still ok goal-wise, but I think the rest o the month is going to be a huge power struggle. I think the goal is to hope that I just don't GAIN in the month of April.

I hope that my dad will settle for some healthy home-cooked meals, and I hope that I have the willpower to eat healthy when we go out to eat.

I desperately need a new pair of workout pants, but I'm not having a good time finding the pair I want. Old Navy didn't have any in my size and neither did Walmart, and Target had some but they were too expensive. I think Im going to buy some MEDIUMS (!)

Overall I feel like I'm doing well. I'm working on my Spark People Vision Collage (in photoshop!) I'm trying to keep a clean house, I'm trying to go to the gym and be more active, but this past week I've suddenly been attractedt o unhealthy food choices and not caring about it.

Well, I thought this post would be more epic but Oliver is fussing.

It's a holiday but that's not my excuse

This week I got cocky. I went over my calories all week. not necessarily by a lot, but usually between 1700-2000 calories. On Thursday I was 167, which is still almost a lb down from Monday's weigh-in but I haven't seen any 6 at all this weekend. I really went over a few times, but not too horribly.

I hit the gym twice this week and went for a walk once. I made sure to keep active with the boys, something I never used to do. I love that we can go to the NC Life Science museum because I am forced to walk around a lot to see the different things.

This week my dad comes to visit. I'm really nervous because he's a diner and buffet kind of guy who doesn't really eat vegetables or very healthily at all. I'm really going to struggle to keep up with calorie counting without making him feel weird I think. then again, I might be a healthy influence on him, who knows. I really need to think about food that I can make that is healthy and very tasty for him. I think probably along the lines of spicy. maybe a lot of stuff on the grill? I am nervous because I don't want to sabotage myself while he's here. I want to keep losing and not get out of this habit of health.

I am also hoping this week to try a BOSU class on Monday. Water aerobics on Tuesday, spinning on Wednesday and we are doing a girl's night out on Thursday so I might skip the gym only because my dad will be here and I don't want to be away from him for so long.

Going to the gym will be hard because he's here and we will be busy. we have a list of things to do and I'm so excited. we will be very active and working around the house and I need to remember that even if I'm not at the gym I'm still active and getting my body moving.

Landon and I are talking frequently about how to be healthy . He and I talk about how moving our bodies in different ways is good for it. We talk about what kind of foods are healthy and what are treats, what we can eat all the time and what we can have on special occasions. I'm trying very carefully to refrain from saying "I'm fat!" but explaining that everyone has different body types and it's ok, but to be healthy we need to eat right and move our bodies. it's why we go to the gym, why we eat vegetables and why we run around and play outside of the gym. It's why we limit television and candy.

I like the way we are moving to be healthy.

I was in a study/am in a study at Duke that focuses on preventing childhood obesity. it's for obese/overweight mothers and they follow us for 2 years. they gave us 8 months of healthy tips and parenting ideas. each month someone called me to see how I was doing and she told me she was so proud of me this week. it was kind of sad that it was the last week of having her call me because I was struggling to get to the museum. Anyways, I knew I was doing awesome and that we are making a lot of positive changes in our family health, but it's nice to hear from someone who has no attachment to me at all. I will go in for a weigh-in sometime in the near future, and we will have to wear activity monitors for a week again. it will be interesting to see if Landon will be so easy to wear it again.

Anyways, this post turned into a thing about how awesome I am, and it's true. I do need to work on those calories this week. losing so fast is nice and I want to keep going. I have a long way to go.

also at 165 I want a nose ring.

maybe that's why I'm not losing this week lol.