Addiction, Bad Eating and Workout Update 6/25 - 7/1

It was a tough one to squeeze in workouts last week. I was sick (read: on the toilet) on Monday. Spent a lot of time with Greg this week, and went out in the boat crabbing all day Sunday.

6/25 - sick day
6/26 - 65 min and 6.01 miles on treadmill, weightlifting
6/27 - Oops, rest day, went to Greg's
6/28 - 2 hours 10 min and 8.69 miles on treadmill! No weightlifting
6/29 - rest day
6/30 - 30 min and 2.0 miles on treadmill at Greg's
7/1 - rest day, crabbing in Puget Sound

Anyway, we'll call that 16.7 miles last week. Good workouts, but too many rest days. Notice on Thursday that I did over two hours on the treadmill! Ha - I doubt I'll be doing *that* again soon - B-O-R-I-N-G. But I had some time to kill and thought I'd just see what I could do for distance. I walked the whole time, I think.

It's time to tough love myself. I weighed in at 146 this morning, up from my low of 141. For my Monday "Run with Jess/Lose a Half Marathon" weigh-in, that means I'm UP two consecutive weeks. Uhh, the first two weeks of the challenge. We're not off to a stellar start. My sweets eating has been out of control, thank-you-very-much-hazard-of-quitting-smoking. This weekend at Greg's, I think I lived on cookies. I am feeling it in my jeans this morning - jeans that at 141, I was wishing Costco carried in a size four, since the sixes felt baggy. Um, they don't feel baggy at 146.

So. The good news is that I'm two weeks smoke-free today. Yay, me! And with this Chantix, it has been the "easiest" time I've quit. I genuinely have not wanted a cigarette since I started. However, the pills give me nausea, especially if I don't take them on a full stomach. Last Friday, my heartbeat felt weird...my heart rate had slowed way down. This is actually a side effect listed on their website. All along, I've only taken a half dose of the prescription, and now I'm going to go to a quarter dose (e.g. one half pill at night). Time to get off that - even though I do love how relatively painless it has made quitting. But I sincerely hope, with all my strength, that I am smart and strong enough to know THIS TIME that smoking is just pure and utter shit for me. It is such a miserable habit. It it so miserable to quit. Sooo miserable. Please, self, please, please don't ever start this again, what an awful cycle to keep repeating.

Ha! That's a morose little ending to that paragraph, which makes the other side effects of Chantix worth mentioning. This is why I'm getting off the medication - I haven't started down this path too far, but I think it's begun. Depression. I had a wonderful weekend - but yesterday afternoon, it was just "blah." Well, I was exhausted, anyway. Greg and I got up at 4:30 a.m. and took Blake crabbing on the boat. Fun day with very little payoff in terms of crab. :) Anyway, on the way home, I was not so excited about my relationship with Greg. No reason. Felt that way all evening, too. This morning, I didn't want to get up to go to work. In fact, I thought I would rather kill myself than go to work. I was thinking fun thoughts like, "All I'm trying to do is raise these kids, then I off myself if I want to. Just need to get these kids raised."

Umm...okay. So as I was brushing my teeth this morning, I was making plans to kill myself in eleven+ years. I remembered a text message I sent my friend Traci last week: "I have promised myself not to end any relationships or friendships, nor quit my job, nor make any rash decisions while taking Chantix." Good for me for remembering this morning!! It is highly unlike me to correlate side effects with medications, food/eating with effects on my body, or generally any cause/effect relationship.Not my forte, haha.  :) 


Okay, so perhaps I will not kill myself or break up with my boyfriend right now. Perhaps I should just wean myself off this medication, which has these same very known side effects, almost certainly exacerbated by my own tendency to fall victim to depression (TEN MONTHS A YEAR OF RAINY GRAY SEATTLE SKIES, ANYONE??) and melancholy.


No rash decisions. Taper off the medication and know that this time, I really, really, really gotta quit. I am done playing this game. Smoking interferes with my running, don't you know? ;) 


In what is perhaps too much tough love to dole out all at once, I'm quitting smoking and today I told myself I'm back on a liquid diet. I DO NOT WANT TO REGAIN WEIGHT. Plus, I've got to kill this carb-monster. Oh my. Can I tell you that as I was eating cookies at Greg's yesterday, I was thinking of taking a piece of carrot cake home from his freezer, AND stopping at DQ to get a Blizzard with Blake? And that we *did* stop for Blizzards? (Although I did not take cake, haha.) Note to self: Blizzards make me puke. My sleeved tummy hates them, more than they hate regular ice cream. My tastebuds may love them, but the few post-op times I've tried them, I have puked every time, within minutes of eating a few bites. Is it the candy? Is it the proprietary DQ ice milk stuff? I do not know. Hopefully I will also be smart enough to avoid those in the future.


So. Rough night. Last week I bought protein shakes at Costco, and this morning I had one. Oh, ew. Yuck. You forget how nasty those are, haha. Made worse by the fact that within an hour of arriving at work, I was trapped in the bathroom with horrible diarrea. Didn't take a Chantix this morning, so I can't blame that. No, I'm afraid it was merely my body, my sensitive sleeved tummy, sending a message loud and clear. "Seriously, if you eat like shit, I will make you pay. And pay dearly. Next time you won't make it to the bathroom, sister." 


Message received.


Oh, hey! How about a positive ending to this glum post? On Saturday morning, I *did* work out at Greg's. Sure, it was only a half hour on the treadmill, but I did it. There was no TV to watch while I used it, I had a hard time reading while using it (no little shelf for my book like at the Y). The room was hot and stuffy. But the treadmill works great, and by gosh, it was important to me to squeeze it in. And I did. So, yay me!