Longest month ever?

Several people have posted on FB how long January has felt. I’d have to agree. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. February means my event is officially open, which means I have money again, but also means my work cycle begins again, so I am officially back “on”. I have mixed feelings about that. I’m in no hurry.

I think we’re all struggling with kids struggling with the return to school. It’s been like pulling teeth to get B to get through his escalating homework lately. Juggling the two kids each evening with their own reading requirements, homework, and (for Bobby) musical practice, is always a huge challenge. It mostly involves Theo being allowed to watch TV in my bedroom while I try to guide B through all his extra work. Theo only has to read with me and work on memorizing his rainbow words. As it’s been for as long as I can remember, those three hours between kid pickup and bedtime are like a marathon. I look ahead to years of standardized testing, projects, and real grades, and shudder. How are we going to get through all that? Are my kids always going to be this dependent on me to help them with every little thing? Am I creating this dependency? Or at five and seven is it just the way it is? 

In other news, I am down nearly 7 lbs with my 5:2 diet. I’ve discovered what works best for me is just not eating until the evening and having a normal 500 calorie dinner. I noticed when I try to eat two or three small meals it makes me a lot hungrier; I do better when I just don’t eat and instead drink tea and water with electrolytes all day. Yesterday I didn’t eat until dinner time and it worked much better for me. So I may just do that from now on on my fast days. Although I’ve lost a decent amount of weight and I’m pleased with it, a) I’m still technically overweight, b) weight loss has slowed to 1-1 1/2 lbs per week, and c) I still have 7-12 lbs to go before I’ll meet any kind of “goal weight” and those goals will take 2-3 more months to meet. So I don’t want to start celebrating too soon. I have a lot of work ahead of me. But I’m at a weight today that I haven’t seen in about a year, so yay for that. And with being able to eat normally five days a week it feels pretty effortless. 

Saturday my event opens. I met with my partner in the event software today and everything looks on target. I’m praying for a smooth opener with no technical problems and lots and lots of signups. I’ll know everything by Sunday. 

I’ve been keeping myself busy by planting up my vegetable garden. Nearly everything that was planted last year died, so I pulled most things out and just started over. Surviving are a tomato plant, eggplant, collard greens, and some peppers. I planted lettuce, spinach, Brussels sprouts, catnip, cherry tomatoes, and kale. Thursday (my next fast day!) I’m going to plant lots of flowers, bulbs, carrots, more peppers, more tomatoes. I think this garden will be a process of elimination until I find the right things that will work. But I’ll get there.

In a week I leave for Cancún. Stoked.

Resistance Witch rides again

I participated in my fourth Women’s March Saturday. As always, it was invigorating and empowering. We had 350,000 people in LA. I just wish there wasn’t a dance event in Orange County the same weekend that knocks out the entire swing dance community. So many women I saw there said, “I so wish I could march this weekend!” I did both, but I seriously screwed up my voice for singing Saturday night. Ugh. 

So after two days of driving 1 1/2 hours both ways to Newport Beach, getting up early to march, singing until late at night, and dealing with some emotionally charged social situations (having to confront someone I fired a couple of years ago, having to share a dinner table with a Trump supporter, dealing with my diminished voice), I am totally drained. I’m sorry but today is going to have to be one of those “kids on iPads all day” kind of days. I hate it but I just don’t have the physical energy or emotional bandwidth for anything else. They are doing it together and actively engaging with each other and having fun, so I guess that’s ok...?

Week one of my 5:2 diet went well. I fasted on Monday and Thursday, and found it pretty doable. Things I ate were: big salads with low fat dressing, steamed broccoli with Parmesan, lentil soup, hard boiled eggs, water with electrolytes, tea. I find if I don’t eat breakfast I’m not really hungry until about one; but the hardest time is around 4-6. I’m thinking I might push dinner to those times so at least I’m better prepared for the long evenings with kids, without being too hungry. In the first week I was down 4 lbs. I shudder to imagine where I’m at now with a weekend of not great eating, but I feel as long as I’m still losing over all it’s worth sticking with. The main point of this diet - not being on it all the time - really works for me. So, we shall see. I always feel like you should give a diet 4-6 weeks before making a decision about it. So I’ll try to do that before deciding if it’s something I can live with. 

Fasting, day 1

I have survived a three week winter break with the kids not in winter camp. It was easier than anticipated. I would like to thank my co-conspirators, IPads, for their help in this venture. Kids dropped at school an hour ago. Yay.

We had a nice visit to south Florida to see my sister who moved there with her husband last year. It’s funny visiting a place for the first time knowing you’ll be spending a lot of time there in your future. We got home late Thursday night and then I had to unpack and repack and drive up to Sacramento the next morning, early, for a series of singing gigs. Got home late Saturday, then spent Sunday grocery shopping, unpacking, doing laundry, cooking, and getting the house in order for our return to normal life. Exhaustion doesn’t begin to describe it. I’m going to need a reset day today. 

More significantly, though, today I start a thing called the 5:2 diet. You eat 500 calories two days a week and your “TDEE” the other five days, which for me is 1800 (super doable, since I usually eat about 1500). My “fast” days will be Monday and Thursday. So today I have not eaten yet, and instead will have a tiny lunch and tiny dinner. I investigated the various intermittent fasting scenarios and decided this is the one for me, because it’s kind of like dieting part time. It’s not something you are required to do every single day for months at a time, which is not sustainable for me with my travel schedule. It’s also not practical for me to restrict my eating schedule to eight or less hours a day - again, with travel there’s no way I’d be able to do this all the time. This one, however, I feel like I can do, and make it a lifestyle, since it allows for living normally - eating at restaurants, pancakes with the kids on weekends, etc - the majority of the time. The only thing I have to worry about is just how hard it’s going to be on those fasting days - we’ll find out today!! - and what happens if this diet just plain doesn’t work (sadly, as with all diets, results for women are nowhere near as impressive as for men). I figure if I can tolerate it I can always up my fast days to three days a week, at least temporarily. But what I’m trying to do is find something I can live with permanently; eating 1100 calories a day, every day, is not sustainable for me, as we’ve seen. And just three weeks of eating normally and not exercising over this vacation and I’ve gained four pounds. If I keep going at this rate I’ll gain 5-10 pounds a year, and I’m already almost ten pounds overweight. You do the math. So I need to find something I can incorporate into my life permanently. I hope to god this is it. 

This week I make a cash deposit to get me through February’s mortgage - $2500. And I’ll be going into the new fiscal year with probably a $13,000 - 15,000 credit card bill. So, not great. I hate starting the year at a deficit. But unlike last year, this year I’m going to guard my pennies zealously - no special projects except the one I have to do, which is make whatever accommodations the garage needs to install a car charger for when I go electric when my lease is up in November. 

Ok, I’m going to go do my 2.3 mile daily walk on an empty stomach. Wish me luck.