Serious funk

So I did not make it to WW today but I did weigh myself on my scale and it read 274 which is 2 lbs up from the last time I weighed in at WW and at least a couple of pounds lower than what my scale read last week. That's something I guess. I started the Couch to 5K this week and wow I am seriously out of shape. I used to be able to do 3 miles when I was in high school and I would not say it was easy but I could do it without dying. I almost died on the last jog segment the first day I did it. I did notice that it has gotten easier. This is not to be confused with "easy" but definitely easier. I lasted a little bit longer each time. I am planning on doing C25K kind of slow because I do not want to push myself tooooo hard. Plus the 5K I want to run is in November so I have time. I am going to do each week 2 weeks in a row so I am making the 6 week program a 12 week program. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could at least get through week 1! I can now jog a total of 8 minutes . . . as long as you space those minutes with some walking in between :)

I have been in a serious funk lately and it has been really hard to snap out of it. All the stuff with lab has really been hitting me kind of hard. The pressure and stress is also something that is quickly becoming more than I can handle. When I get super overwhelmed like that I tend to just shut down and that is what I have been doing this week. I am finding it really hard to get motivated. I have also been SUPER emotional lately, as in TV shows, movies, and even the trailer for My Sister's Keeper are making me cry. My birthday is tomorrow and I do not really feel like celebrating it this year. It has been a really hard year and I am trying to focus on the good things but it is hard. I keep feeling like I am failing and I keep feeling like I am letting everyone down on a bunch of different things. So, I heard this song today and it kind of epitomizes how I feel. It is "Not Your Year" by The Weepies

Scattered shadows on a wall, you watch the long light fall
Some impressions stay and some will fade
Tattered shoes outside your door, and clothes all on the floor
Your life feels like the morning after all year long.

And every day it starts again
You cannot say if you're happy
You keep trying to be
Try harder, maybe,
Maybe, this is not your year.
This is not your year.

Movies, TV screens reflect just what you expected
There's a world of shiny people somewhere else
Out there following their bliss
Living easy, getting kissed
While you wonder what else you're doing wrong

And every day it starts again
You cannot say if you're happy
You keep trying to be
Try harder, maybe,
Maybe, this is not your year.
This is not your year.

Breathe through it, write a list of desires
Make a toast, make a wish, slash some tires
Paint a heart repeating, beating, "Don't give up, don't give up."

Scattered shadows on a wall, you watch the long light fall
Some impressions stay and some will fade away

And every day it starts again
Someday you'll say that you're happy
So keep trying to be
Try harder, maybe,
Maybe, this is not your year.
This is not your year.

It's just not your year
This is not your year
This is not your year



Sorry for the downer post. Hopefully next week's will be a little more upbeat.

Work and Graduation

I have not posted in a very long while and I have not weighed myself at WW in a very long while. I need to get back to the meetings and weighing in every week. The last month has been pure hell. I had a deadline this last Thursday that I keep pushing towards and it was stressing me out something fierce. I have spent the last couple of months working at least 6 days a week and sometimes working 12-14 hour days in a row. I have to say it has taken a serious toll on me physically, mentally and emotionally. When I got really busy, everything just fell apart. I haven't been working out and I haven't been eating well. I need to re-focus and get back on it. I need to plan better in the future and have more contingency plans for everything going awry (because it usually does). I am going to try really, really hard to establish some semblance of a routine.

I recently talked to a couple of friends of mine about doing the couch to 5K and I think I am going to try and do that so that I can do the Turkey Trot this year. I have never been much of a runner so this should be REAL interesting. Now that I am not at a point where I need to have had my data done last week I can try to do something about working in some exercise regularly. I have decided to try working out in the morning and go into lab later in the day. There should only be a couple of days in the month where I absolutely have to be in early but I should be able to do that. I think that is the best option for me to regularly get in exercise. More often than not my days turn into ridiculously long days. I think I will be done at 4 and then a variety of things happen throughout the day and I am now leaving at 8 pm. Such is the life of a grad student.

I recently had my family out for my master's graduation. Yay! It felt weird being in the graduation ceremony though because everyone kept talking about moving on from the school and an end to things and all I thought about was what time I needed to go into lab the next day. I have eaten very, very badly while my family was here and if my scale is correct, gained almost 5 lbs!!! Yikes!!!! So, time to re-focus, show some dedication to myself not just my work and take it week by week. We will see what next week holds.

Updates

Usually when I do not blog for a while it means bad news. It means that I have gained and don't want to share that information. However, I am glad to report this time that is not the case. Somehow (I am not entirely sure how) I have managed to lose weight at every weigh-in. This has become especially perplexing for the last 2 weeks because I have not been making good choices. My roomie has suggested that maybe some of my habits have changed and I don't realize it yet and I was actually not doing as badly as I thought I was. So I am going to give all the weigh-ins that I have neglected to blog.

For the Saturday before my spring break trip, my weigh-in went a little something like this:

Previous weight: 280.2
Current weight: 277.6
Weight +/- : -2.6
Total change from beginning of WW last October: +4.2
Yay!!

I was pleasantly surprised because I had gained weight the previous week. My friend Lindsey came down that Sunday and Lindsey, Maria and I went to an Adele concert. It was wonderful. The next day I had to go into lab but the two of them got me up early and got me out of the house (no small task I tell you) so I finished rather early. Lindsey and I then got in some good, fun exercise with a frisbee and a jump rope. I have not jump roped in a really long time and my coordination is not exactly top notch just yet but there were some valiant attempts. Lindsey and I were leaving on Tuesday for Red River and I knew that I would not be able to weigh-in that Saturday so I decided to weigh in on Tuesday morning before leaving. I was not expecting much but:

Previous weight: 277.6
Current weight: 275.4
+/- : -2.2
Total change from beginning of WW last October: +2

YAY!!!

So, now it was off to Red River. I have to tell you I was more than a little concerned about what 3 days in a car driving would do but it was not that bad. We got healthy snacky food before we left and drank plenty of water. The first night we stayed in Amarillo and the Travelodge had a free guest pass to the Gold's Gym so we got up early and went to work out. Later that day we went to Palo Duro Canyon and got some walking around in. It was a pretty active day. The next night we stayed at a La Quinta (I think) and it had "fitness equipment." But I would use that term pretty loosely. I did at least spend 15 minutes on the bike. 15 minutes is better than nothing. I was really glad to have someone else with me on the road trip that was also trying to be food conscious because she helped me make good decisions about what I was eating and for the most part we both made pretty good food choices and stayed active. The road trip could have been a whole lot worse.

Once we got to Red River, there was a lot of walking around trying to get our ski rentals and lessons and then 2 days of skiing but there were bad food choices too. There were some evil chocolate brownies and I made sure that I had some every day. Overall though it was not that bad. It wasn't like I finished off a tub of ice cream after eating a whole pizza. It could have been better but also based on past vacations it could have been a lot, lot worse. I am happy enough with how I did and will try to be better next time.

The skiing was a lot of fun. I did not leave the bunny slope however. I tried the next hill up once and once was enough. I can't really turn fast enough yet and I kept picking up speed and freaking myself out. I am going to try again the next time I go. However, I did not fall while standing still and I did not get hurt (other than being really, really sore) so that is something.

I weighed myself on my scale when I got back and I had dropped a couple of pounds so yay! But then throughout the rest of the week I made poor choice after poor choice. I was too tired to do anything after getting home from lab so I did not have much in the way of activity that week. I was pretty sure that the weigh in that Saturday was going to be seriously bad. So, here are the results:

Previous weight: 275.4
Current weight: 274.8
+/- : -0.6
Total change from beginning of WW last October: +1.4

WTF?!?!?!? I am not entirely sure how that negative number came out of that week but I am not complaining. I had told myself that I was going to make this next week better. And I sort of did. I ate better than I did the previous week but I was not tracking my points and I was making poor food choices and had a couple of very snacky nights. I also got busier in lab (of course) and still have not made it to the gym. I was pretty much counting on a + in front of my change from last week. So I went and weighed in this morning and:

Previous weight: 274.7
Current weight: 272
+/- : -2.8
Total change from beginning of WW last October: -1.4

WTF?!?!?!?!?! Not only was it not positive, it was pretty freaking negative. I am still perplexed as to how that came about. Again, not complaining but I am not going to keep thinking that without focusing on what I am doing, I will continue to get mysterious negative changes in my weight. I am super excited to finally be back below the weight I was when I started weight watchers last October. When I weighed in after spring break, I was actually back down to the weight I was at Christmas.

So, since I have started going again (2/21/09) I have lost 13.4 lbs (!!!!). I asked the people at WW to keep the total change the same and not re-zero it because I wanted to remind myself of how easy it is to put those pounds plus some on and how hard it is to get them back off. I don't want to skyrocket back up into a really large total + number. At the same time I needed to remind myself today just how well I have been doing since I started again. I am proud of those 13.4 lbs. I wish that they had been further weight loss of my last number in October but shit happens and I am not going to let that get me down. I think the biggest thing is that I keep weighing in. I usually have to go into lab on Saturdays and it is easy to tell myself that I can't stay for the meeting so why should I even weigh in? That is what happened last October. I have not stayed through a meeting in about 4 weeks but I continue to go and weigh in and I think that is helping to keep me accountable and to give me to the motivation to keep going.

So, this is a really long rambling update but there it is. I am going to try and blog regularly again but I am working on a paper that we are planning to submit for publication soon and it is certainly a time sucker. So, my goal for this week is to make it to the gym at least 1 day. I know that sounds like a weak goal but if you looked at my calendar for the week you would understand :)

So that is all until next week, when I will have less of me to share.

So far, so good

This week has already been much better than last week. I am not sure what the numbers are going to look like on Saturday but I am happy with how I have been doing for the most part. Work is seriously crazy this week and there is a ton of pressure on me. I have actually been doing really well with not stress eating like crazy. I had a little moment last night where I did some late night snacking but I counted the points and I do not think it should set me back too badly. I tried something different this week. On Sunday, I sat down and planned out my meals for the week. I wrote out breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the snacks in between. I tried to leave a couple of extra points for the day so that I could have an extra snack if I needed it. I wrote them out on index cards and clipped them to the cabinet in my kitchen. I take the cards with everything that I pack up to bring into lab with me to remind me what I had planned out. I also make sure that I am eating throughout the day instead of having huge meals three times a day. I think it has been going pretty well.

I am still having the problem of being stuck in lab until about 7 at night. This means I eat dinner around 8 and then I workout around 10-11 so I have been going to bed pretty late lately. I did not get any exercise in the first three days but I did 20 minutes of high intensity workout on the Wii, 40 minutes of moderate intensity on the Wii and 20 minutes of low intensity on the Wii last night. I am going to go to the gym tonight and do around 48 minutes on the elliptical, some ab work, and then come home and do Yoga and strength training on the Wii. I will be going to bed late again. It is a really hard schedule to break. I don't really have the time to reset during the week unless I give up my exercising and I really do not want to do that. I will just keep going as I am and try to reset during spring break.

The reason that I wanted to post today is to actually share a little random fact about me. I have had a very active day because I have been developing films from western blots that we are running in lab. When I am in the dark room (and no one can see me) and I have my iPOD, I like to dance around the room when I am waiting during the exposure and developing times. It is actually a ton of fun and it put me in a really good mood despite my stressful day. I dance like a total goofball so I usually need to make sure there is no audience but I am doing it more and more and I think that it makes work much more enjoyable. I think that is why I like being the only person in lab. So, if you are ever in my lab and I am in the dark room with my iPOD, I am dancing my heart out and having a hell of a time :)

Lose a little, Gain a little

So I thought that I would at least still have lost for the week and according to my home scale I did lose 2 pounds. I went to Weight Watchers (with the same clothes on) and I weighed in and here are the results:

Last week: 279.4
This week: 280.2
+/- : +0.8 lbs
Total: now +6.8 from start of Weight Watchers

So that is really not that bad. I decided to go through my food journal and see what happened with my week and see where I can change things this week. First of all, Friday was not my first cupcake day. I forgot that I had 2 cupcakes last Saturday. So for this week I am committing to NO CAKE! I also ended up eating out a lot last week. I really need to make sure that I do not have to do that. I do sooooooo much better when I make my food. I also end up eating food that is really filling. So, I went to the grocery store today and stocked up on all kinds of goodies for the week. I bought fresh fruit for the first time in probably at least 2 months. I am going to make sure that I keep tracking because I kind of trailed off at the end of last week. I do think that tracking my food is helping a lot so that I can see where I did not succeed in the previous week. I am proud of myself for going to weigh in even though I knew it was a bad week and I did not let that bad week push me further off course. I was back on plan on Saturday and I think that this will be a good week.

The other problem I have been having is that I am not eating enough during the day. The bulk of my points are being consumed at dinnertime and late night snacks. I need to make sure that I am snacking during the day because I notice that if I don't, I kind of go overboard with dinner. Kind of like tonight. I also need to stop eating so late. All of these things though fall under free time during the day and leaving at a reasonable hour. I am working on making my schedule more reasonable so that I do not go insane by spring break. When I finally take time off work for spring break I will have gone 35 days without a day off. There were a few days scattered amongst weekends where I only needed to go in for 2-3 hours but still. I will be going on a road trip with my friend Lindsey who does not work in my lab or next door to my lab so I will have a beautiful 6 days with no work and no work related talk. Yipee!!

So I will not reach my goal by Spring Break and it would be rather unhealthy for me to try to get to 269 lbs by next Saturday. I want to try and get as close as possible though by the time Lindsey and I leave Dallas (next Tuesday). I am going to try and weigh in Tuesday morning before we get on the road and I will not weigh in again until that Saturday after spring break :)
I am going to be skiing and we will probably be pretty active but I am not sure how several days in a car driving are going to treat me.

So, finally, goals for this week: Try and get that total change from start of weight watchers to be a negative number (or 0) by the time I leave next Tuesday. I am committing to not having any cake this week unless it is one of those 100 calorie packs which do actually satisfy my craving for cake most of the time. Lastly, I want to try and get 28 activity points again this week. I do not think it should be too difficult considering I reached that goal with only doing activity 4 days of the week. So, here's to a good week!

Ice Cream, Fries, Cupcakes and Pizza

Well today was the trifecta of bad for food. We had pizza for our brown bag lecture series and I was only going to have 2 slices which is not that bad but then I had 1 more. Some evil forces were at work today and someone brought in red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Then I had fries with dinner because they looked so good. I also just polished off some ice cream. The ice cream at least was low fat but still. I am not sure what tomorrow will look like but this was a very bad food day and no gym. I am going to try and get some Wii Fit in for tonight but still. I will probably not have a great number like last week and I should be ok with that. I am pretty sure that I will still lose overall for the week though. I think a lot of this was in response to a pretty stressful day so I need to make sure that I start finding better ways to deal with my stress or how to at least just say no. I will see what tomorrow brings.

Activity points earned!!

Well, my week did not start off very well in terms of exercise. I did 40 minutes of Wii Fit aerobics on Sunday but did not do much in the way of exercise for the next 3 days. Lat night and tonight I went to the gym at school and did the elliptical for 48 minutes. I usually have a hard time staying on the elliptical machine for longer than 30 minutes because I get bored easily. This time I watched an episode of a TV show that I had put on my iPOD and time just flew by. The time spent on the elliptical seemed much easier that way. Tonight I went back and did the elliptical again for 49 minutes. I am feeling pretty good. However . . . . .

I was going to do some strength training tonight at the gym. To start with, I do not really know the layout of the machines in that gym yet and I usually have to look over the machines first to figure out how to use them. I was in the gym late tonight and for some reason that is when all the really fit 20 year olds are in there. Seriously, like everyone there late at night was doing serious training. Sadly, I was really insecure and sort of intimidated by them. I did one machine but I was so uncomfortable that I left. I just felt REALLY out of place. I really do not like going to school gyms. I am always afraid that the students from my classes are going to be there and see me all gross and sweaty and with no upper body strength to speak of doing an overhead press with the weight set to 10 whole pounds. It is something that I have to work on and get over my gym insecurity but I have not gotten over it yet. I did make a big step this week because I went by myself and that usually does not happen.

I did come home and do some more core work and some upper body strength training with my free weights for about 25 minutes. I figure that is not a total fail for tonight. I am going to try again with the machines tomorrow and this weekend. Maybe I will feel better if there are more people. It is like the difference between being on a crowded or empty dance floor. Ususally it takes a lot of alchohol to get me on an empty dance floor but I am not sure that would be good right before a workout. I have hit my goal for this week of earning 28 activity points! Yay! Hopefully the results on Saturday will be satisfying.

Anything I'm Not

So, lately I have been feeling overwhelmed and there is a song by Lenka called "Anything I'm Not" that I can kind of relate to right now:

I will never be, I will never be tall, no
And I will never be, never ever be sure of it all
Oh, why is the world so cruel to me
When all, all I ever want to be is anything I'm not

Gimme a break, a little escape
I am so tired of being me
I wanna be free, I wanna be new and different
Anything I'm not
I'm not

I will never be, I will never be you, no
I will always be, I will always be me, that I know
But oh, even though I'm happy being me
I want to get away from all this harsh reality, oh

Gimme a break, a little escape
I am so tired of being me
I wanna be free, I wanna be new and different
Anything I'm not

Yeah, gimme a break, a little escape
I am so tired of being me
I wanna be free, I wanna be new and different
Anything I'm not
Anything I'm not
Oh, anything I'm not

Gimme a break, a little escape
I am so tired of being me
I wanna be free, I wanna be new and different
Anything I'm not

Yeah, gimme a break, a little escape
I am so tired of being me
I wanna be free, I wanna be new and different
Anything I'm not
Anything I'm not
Anything I'm not
Anything I'm not
Anything I'm not

So that is my almost mid-week post. *Sigh*

Weekly Weigh-in

So, I will get right to it. I weighed in today and here are the results:

Previous weight: 285.4 lbs
This week: 279.4 lbs
+/- : -6 lbs!!!!!

Now, I know that in the beginning I will lose more than I will regularly but the last time I started Weight Watchers again (September or October I think), I only lost 1.2 and 1.4 lbs a week. Which is respectable but I was hoping that when I started again I would see a really big number. I really needed that to boost me up and keep me motivated. I am not 6 lbs away from the weight when I first weighed in at Weight Watchers last year and about 9.6 lbs away from when I last weighed in at Weight Watchers. I am kind of hoping that I can get off all the weight that I put back on by Spring Break. It might be a little unrealistic but that is what I am going for. I was really surprised at this number though because I have not been great with my food choices. I did ok but not great. I did however not count my activity points for more food with the exception of one day. That might have helped. I also think that moderate intensity workouts that last longer rather than high intensity workouts that send my HR shooting up have helped as well. We'll see how that goes next week.

So, here are my goals for this week. I want to earn 28 activity points for the week. Last week I earned 19 activity points but I did not do any exercise 4 of the 7 days last week. I am going to try and change that this week. I am not sure how often I am going to be able to get to the gym (I am hoping at least 1-2 days) but I will definitely get out my Wii Fit everyday. For those of you who do not know about activity points and what they equate to, here are some examples for someone of my "stature" :)

30 minutes of moderate intensity activity (sweating after 10 minutes) is 3 points
30 minutes of low intensity acitivity (not sweating) is 2 points
30 minutes of high intensity activity (sweating after 3-5 minutes) is 7 points

I try to round down with my intensity levels. I figure it is the safest way to assess my actual activity level. Also, I sweat like nobody's business so I don't think that the sweat assessment of activity is really the best for me. I consider all of the aerobics stuff on the Wii Fit to be moderate intensity because I know my heart rate goes way up and all of the other stuff (Yoga, strength training, balance games) to be low intensity. Some of the Yoga and strength training probably could go into the moderate intensity category but like I said, I like to round down. My high intensity workouts come from 30 minutes on the elliptical. I think I start sweating as soon as I see the machine but that is definitely high intensity for me. Another goal is to start getting positive reinforcement from my Wii Fit instead of "Do you trip while walking?" in response to a balance test. As my friend said, that machine is a little bitch. I am improving with my balance and am making an effort to remember my posture both when I am walking and sitting.

I also realized this week one of the reasons that I fell through last time I tried this. I tried to go really gung-ho from week 1 and only eat fresh vegetables and fruit, meat that I prepare for myself, and cook most of my food. That was a mistake. While that is what I would like to achieve in the long run when I am not getting home between 7 and 9 pm it will not work in the short run. It is not feasible for me to try and cook all of my meals at home. This does not mean eating out but I mean actually cooking and not just heating something up. For now, it is easier (and cheaper) to use canned veggies and fruit, buy my meat pre-cooked (which does save a lot of time), and generally try to find things that are super fast to make. When I am coming home at 8 pm, I do not want to spend another 30 minutes making my dinner. I much prefer being able to just microwave something and throw a salad together real quick. I think I am being much more realistic and am instead focusing on the quantity of food I eat and the points value of the food I am eating. I am trying really hard to track my food all day. I really do think that it makes me much more mindful of what I am eating and just how much. It is amazing how easy it is to forget the little bouts of snacking throughout the day. As I start to get a handle on my schedule I will start to plan my meals a little more but for now I am planning for chaos and making sure I have a backup plan (something I did not do the first time around).

So, there it is. Maybe this time I can go longer than a couple of weeks. My overall weight loss goal is to get to 150-160 lbs (or a size 10, whichever comes first) and I would like to be around 250-255 lbs by the time I go back to California in May and around 200 lbs (or *gasp* even under the 200 mark) by the time I go home for Christmas. My activity goals are to keep above 20 activity points a week because no matter how I get 'em I need to start regularly getting 'em. I would also like to be able to jog/run a 5K by Christmas but we will see about that one. I have never really been a long distance runner even when I was more athletic and played sports so I am going to have to play that one by ear. I do like the idea of running and I think it would be a great stress reliever but like I said I am not very good at it. I am gonna try though. So, that's all till next week when hopefully there will be less of me to share!

Wii Fun

So I have decided to post mid-week (well actually almost week-end but whatever) and share a few things I discovered this week. The first is just an oddity that I have discovered about myself. I think I am now addicted to Fruit Loops. We use them in lab for food rewards for our rats and they always smell good. I got really hungry one day in lab and saw it was only 2 points for a whole cup so I got an unopened box and had some. I have not been able to stop eating them since. It has become my new favorite snack. I have to be careful though because I had fruit loops 4 times today. I think that signals a problem but they are just so good. I also use the excuse that they have vitamins and stuff in them (calcium too) so they can't be all that bad, but still. Must try to limit the Fruit Loops :)

The second thing is that the Wii Fit is AMAZING! I have not felt like going to the gym this week so I made sure to do some Wii Fit at home at least. I didn't get any exercise in on Monday and Tuesday but I more than made up for it over the last two days and I am SORE! I really enjoy the aerobics exercises that they have and have recently unlocked the Free Step so I turn that on and step on and off while I watch TV. Just doing that for 20 minutes, I did 1400 steps. Not too shabby. Yesterday I even did 10 minutes of it with 5 lb. free weights in each arm to get an arm workout. That is the only thing the Wii Fit is missing, a really good arm workout (but I have the free weights). I love the Super Hoola Hoop and did the 6 minute duration tonight and just about died. Try it before you judge me for that statement. It is a whole bunch harder than it sounds. Anyways, I have really been enjoying the Wii Fit and I think it was well worth my money. It gives me the opportunity to get a good workout even if I do not want to leave my house. It makes exercises a little bit more fun. I have also noticed a difference in my posture when I am walking (sadly, not when I am sitting though, I think I assume the grad student slump when in a chair). So, to close, I highly recommend the Wii Fit for anyone that struggles with getting outside to get some exercise and I also highly recommend staying away from Fruit Loops, they are crazy addictive. Well, another post on Saturday or Sunday when I weigh in and we will see if those Fruit Loops did me in :)

I'm Back!

So this post is going to ramble on past just losing weight.

Well, it has been a looooong time since I posted. I just got busy so I started eating more (and badly) and exercised less. That led to me not wanting to look at the scale on a weekly basis. I had to miss one Weight Watchers meeting to go into lab and then it snowballed from there to me not even caring about what I put in my mouth. I weighed in over Christmas but I did not weigh in again until last Saturday. The problem with me is (and will always be) is that I am really incredibly busy. I usually have too much work to do and not enough hours in the day to do it so I continue to fall behind a little more and more each day before I start giving up things. Some of these things include putting off laundry until I have about 5 or 6 loads and only have my laundry day clothes, leaving my room in a general state of disarray (the same goes for the rest of the house), any exercise at all, any semblance of a social life, sleep, and concentrating on changing my eating habits.

Every time this happens, I see some bright point in the future when I won't be this busy and I tell myself it will be easy enough to put things off until I have more time. I keep telling myself that I just have to get through the next couple of months and then things won't be so crazy and I can focus on losing weight again. The even bigger problem is that time usually never comes. I have been telling myself these things since last October and I came to the realization that I am going to be insanely busy for probably the next 5-7 years of my life. Working in a research lab requires a huge time commitment and usually unorthodox hours and a constantly changing schedule. What I need to do is to stop letting work overrun my life and put me off of the things I need to do to keep myself physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy. The silly thing is that I make my own schedule pretty much. The thing is I have deadlines for completion of experiments and there are only so many hours in a day, and so many days in a week, and yada yada yada.

My big problem is in saying no. If my advisor asks if I can do something I will almost always say yes. The same goes for other lab members. I also have found myself in charge of the graduate student group (who, coincidentally have not had any activities this semester, I wonder why), organizer of a graduate student journal club, and secretary of our local chapter of Society for Neuroscience (which is also doing a book club that I will be attending). In fact I often am volunteering to do these things because I really want to be involved in them and some of them are good for my career but I need to learn how to say no. We had a visiting speaker at school recently and we were talking about high incidence of poor memory among researchers (and in my opinion, especially among those that study memory) and she was saying that she thinks it is because researchers always have too many things going on because they cannot say no.

So, I will still be overworked until May and probably through the summer (and in this instance is completely unavoidable if I want to finish grad school in 5 years) but instead of putting everything else off, I am going to make a bigger effort to make more time for myself and scale down the things that can be scaled down. I am getting better about delegating tasks in lab and I have a little army of undergrads so it should be a little easier to scale things down. So I am going to stop using the "I am too busy" excuse and just learn how to deal with it all. The career path I have chosen means I will always have a lot of work to do. Even when I finally enter into the so-called "armchair science" when I do not actually have to complete the research myself, I will still be busy with all of the other responsibilities of a faculty member. So, I need to learn how to achieve some sort of harmony in my life now because the work factor is not really going to change. It will be hard and kind of baby stepped but I am really going to try. This is something I need to do not only for my weight but also because when I get this busy I get really unhappy. I find that I start complaining A TON and if you don't believe me, just ask Maria (sorry for all the complaining lately). I also tend to get downright bitchy, depressed, and am generally not a very fun person to be around. I do not like the person that I am when I am like this. I need some positive in my life and some happy so that I can be a happier person, even when overstressed.

So, without further ado, onto the actual weight part of this entry. When I weighed in last Saturday, I was:

285.4 lbs

Sadly, that is +15.6 lbs from the previous time I had weighed in at the Plano Weight Watchers last October and about 3 lbs more than when I first started Weight Watchers. When I weighed in during Christmas break in California I was 274.8 lbs, which is actually not that bad. I really just went into a deep slide downward when I got back to Dallas. So, we will see how next Saturday turns out. I have been keeping up with tracking my points but I am still finding it a little bit difficult to get in the exercise time. I am trying to find a few more fun ways that I can do some exercise at home at any time of the day. I have a feeling that getting to the gym regularly is not going to happen right away. However, I am going skiing with some friends for Spring Break in March and I want to try and get in a little bit of shape for that. I am going to take an entire week off of work and it will be glorious. Anways, my goal for the rest of this week is to try and go to the gym at least 1 day before Saturday and to make my Mii just a little bit skinnier. I have a Wii Fit now so I am going to use that for some of those days when I really do not want to go to the gym and want something a little more fun. It will also be nice to get to the point where it does not try to guilt trip me for not using it more often :)

So I will report back on Saturday as to my success (or limited failure) and I will also post my new measurements. I was going to do that today but I could not find my measuring tape. So, that is it for now. Wow, I really have a propensity for long-windedness. I think it is because I feel like I spend more time with rats than people lately. If you are reading this part, thank you for sticking with me through all of this and I promise not to ramble so much in the future.