Crazy Crazy week! Apparently, my week was crazy enough that it took me four tries to write the word crazy just now (and three tries to write the word four. Look out, English majors. This could be a scary post). Well I came off my very busy weekend straight into the first week of boot camp. The boot campers are living off campus this year and they're not even having most of their classes here, so there wasn't crazy stress in getting the facilities ready for them, but they were on campus all last week for their morning classes while the details got worked out for a new classroom location. I got to talk to them about the always exciting world of accounting and how we do our money stuff around here. Their eyes glazed over in about the first minute (I'm blaming lack of coffee and a nasty commute. It couldn't be the material!), but I persevered for another 29 until I had said my piece. It was pretty plain and simple, and I tried to be as kind and easy to understand as possible.
Thursday was my meat-stravaganza with the Davidsons. Since I'm all about going veg now, I needed to get rid of the steaks in the freezer my parents gave me a few months ago. So Eric fired up the grill and made a really awesome dinner for me and all the Davidsons (except for Avalyn. I thought about offering her a piece of steak, but thought the jump from formula to T-bone might be a little much). We had T-bone, round steak, asparagus, risotto, mushrooms, grilled sweet peppers and grilled green onions. Oh my goodness, you guys, it was amazing! So vegetarian purists everywhere are currently denouncing me for eating steak at dinner, but which is worse, eating meat or wasting it? It was already bought. The only options were to eat it or throw it away. I decided not to be wasteful. Plus, the cow was from a family farm, so there! So we had our meat-stravaganza, which involved all of the aforementioned food plus me stabbing myself with a large chunk of glass. That was painful, very painful. It actually still hurts.
Friday we got to throw a surprise party for Gloria, one of our visiting missionaries. She and her husband are super fun, and I always enjoy visiting with them when they're in the states. The party consisted of noise makers, party poppers, streamers, pin the tail on the donkey and a pinata. And, ladies and gentlemen, I have found yet another justification for procrastination. Envision this: Half an hour before Gloria is supposed to arrive, Joy and I are decorating the room and stuffing the pinata. When I finish the pinata, I remember that Will (Gloria's husband) bought noise makers for the party too. So I found them and set them out in a very cute design on a table. In my mind, what would happen was that as soon as we saw Gloria walking up, everyone would grab a noise maker and run to hide. Then we could all jump out and say, "Surprise! Happy Birthday!" and it would be a great day. Dumb me, I didn't factor children into the equation. No adults even got to touch the noise makers, because all the kids decided they needed two or three of everything on the table. And they did not stop blowing on those stupid things for the entire 30 minutes! If sex education isn't working in public high schools, try bringing them to a party with 10 kids running around blowing on noise makers, often stopping to blow one right in your ear, because you weren't paying enough attention to them. It totally overloaded me and I freaked out. I almost hit one child, but didn't (relax, relax!). Instead, once Gloria had gotten there and we had started the party, I helped myself to about 3 pieces of cake and two small bowls of ice cream. And the miniature man in my belly screamed out, "Let the stress-eating begin!!!"
Ashamed? Yes, I am. I would be much less ashamed if that were the end of my eating spree, but for some reason, something snapped in me that afternoon, and I went crazy. I grazed on children's leftover french fries and chicken nuggets (not even thinking until hours later that vegetarians typically don't eat chicken nuggets. OK, vegetarian purists, you can disown me for that one. My bad.) and drank calorie-laden juices. I was feeling pretty low after that (probably mostly a sugar-crash!), so I went out and bought a pizza to console myself. Then I ate the whole dang thing. I've never eaten a whole pizza in one sitting before, folks, but my craziness enabled me to eat like a pig all night. I was really embarrassed, but couldn't understand why I was eating so much! I couldn't see it at the time, but my mood was an accumulation of a whole bunch of smaller stressors that I didn't think were bothering me at all (until I stared at the empty pizza box and realized something was wrong. All these little factors had added up into something huge that turned me into something akin to Jabba the Hut's younger cousin, Corba (don't correct me nerds, I just fused my name with his), devouring any matter unfortunate enough to find itself in my path. CRAZY (and not in the Wow, isn't that a crazy story kind of way, more in the That woman is flat out crazy, I'm not letting her hold my baby kind of way)!!! Ach!
Long story short (you already know that's a lie, when have I ever made a story short?), Saturday was fine during the daytime, but then I snapped again Saturday night and hoovered down any food I could find. I freaked out after that and spent a good hour or so crying in my room before I decided (at 1:00 in the morning) to go to the gym to clear my head and punish the fat girl inside of me trying to eat her way out. I stayed there for about two hours and felt much better when I got home. Sunday was fine and the rest of the week since then has been fine.
So why am I telling you this story? I guess I think it's important for you to know that even though I have experienced success with weight loss, no one is perfect. I am not the model of self-restraint, I don't have all the answers, and I don't have it all figured out. Healthy living is a journey, folks. And it's not necessarily always a fun journey. But it's a journey that I have to make, nonetheless, and falling down just gives me a chance to learn about potholes in the road and figure out how to avoid them next time. I'm way embarrassed about the way I behaved last weekend. An addiction to food is just as harmful and just as sinful as any other addiction. I don't know if I'm actually addicted to food or if it was just the closest thing to me at the time. But I've learned a few things about myself in the last week, and the next time I get stressed out or I see stress coming on the horizon, I'll be able to brace myself for it properly and withstand the temptation to create an ice cream sundae the size of Tokyo.
**ALERT!!! This weekend is my class reunion (can't believe it's been 10 years!), so I'll report back on that, plus Saturday afternoon I'll be giving myself my personal reward for reaching my goal weight. What is it? You'll find out soon!**
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