Let's Get Random!

This past week, I took a Wednesday off and came in for another girl on my shift on my day off on Saturday.  The only reason I minded doing this at all was because my weekend went from like 1.5 days to just 1 day off.  Saturday was a complete wipe out.  I worked overtime Friday night and got home just before 8am on Saturday just to wake up by 11:15 so I could post my weekly weigh in post and then get ready for work, then work until 10pm and go straight to bed when I got home so I could get up at 4:30 Sunday morning to knock out a 16 mile long run!

 

Anyway, what did I do with myself last Wednesday since I had the day off?  For starters, I slept until 11am!  WHAT THE WHAT?!??!  I don’t do that.  I just don’t.  I completely dislike wasting the day sleeping when I could be up and productive.  So, anyway, yea, I guess I did need the sleep as I have been seriously go-go-go for the last couple months or so.  As a result, I do not regret one bit sleeping until 11am.  I did an evening run that day and it was a fabulous progressive run and the temp was perfect.  I was getting done just as the sun was setting, and that was really nice and kind of peaceful.

 

This past week, I’ve hit up the JC Penney’s clearance racks for some new dresses (12 to be exact!!!).  I now wear a size 4-6!!!  I can’t believe it.  When I started this whole weight loss thing about 6 years ago, I wore almost a size 24.  The biggest size I bought before refusing to buy anything bigger was a 22, but the 22s were tight around my middle.  So, it’s pretty huge (HA!  Pun?) that I can put on a size 4 and it fits so well!  Also, I found a SUPER cute HOT PINK moto style jacket that is an XS and it fits!  In the past, my arms have just been too big to fit in the sleeves of anything smaller than an XL even though that made it shapeless around my torso. 

 

Since I bought all those new dresses (12 of them!), that meant I needed to go through what I already have and get rid of the ones that are too big and that I couldn’t sew smaller.  I got rid of at least 10-15 dresses. 

this jacket is an XS guys!!!

I bought the book The Paleo Manifesto on Friday and started reading it.  It’s a great look at the history and philosophy behind the paleo lifestyle.  This is a lifestyle that I am looking forward to living.  I plan to do it 90%+ fairly strict for at least 4 weeks, then I’ll decide if I want to continue being that strict with it or do I want to relax a little bit with it, but still be at least 80% faithful to it.  My coworker, Steven, that is helping me get started with it told me that you don’t have to get the organic grass fed etc blah blah whatevers.  You can get the store brands and be just fine.  He’s seen fantastic results eating store brand meats and non-organic everything.  Which is good, because I wasn’t planning to buy the super pricey stuff anyway.

To help myself start paving the way for starting a paleo lifestyle, last Thursday I did a liquid diet for the day.  Omg, let me just say I am not a fan of juices.  I do not buy into the cleanses and detoxes.  Your body was built to do those things and as long as you treat it well and feed it well, it is quite efficient at them.  I have always had digestive issues…going days at a time without a movement if you know what I mean.  I always thought that was normal because that’s how it had always been for me.  Then someone told me that that is most definitely not normal nor is it particularly healthy.  Anyway, my gut has been rather unhealthier than my normal lately and I decided to do a bit of a reset.  I looked up online the best way to do that and everything I read said one day of juice and liquids only should be quite effective to get the job done.  I lost .6 of a pound as a result!  That’s legit!  But if I drink any juice in the next year, it will be too soon!

 

On top of the juice reset and starting up with a paleo lifestyle, I also started putting butter in my coffee!  Yep, that’s right, I’ve gone bulletproof.  Now, I realize Bulletproof is the brand name of the original American commercial version of making your coffee this way, but it’s what most people just call putting butter in your coffee.  They say for the best results to use butter made from the milk of grass fed cows.  Like the organic foods that come recommended for the paleo lifestyle, I don’t really see that as an actual necessity.  I just use unsalted stick butter.  Most people that drink their coffee with butter use an immersion blender.  I don’t have one.  However, when I signed up for the Real Appeal program and attended my first group session and then 7 business days later received my success kit, I am now the proud owner of a fairly high powered smoothie blender!  So I use that and it works fantastic.  I do recommend completely consuming your buttered coffee before it cools off as the butter will resolidify and be clumpy and unless you have a microwave and a blender handy to redo it, it is a little slimy. Haha.  That happened to me on Friday and I just had to chug it.  I tried warming it up and shaking it and that helped a little, but it had already cooled off a lot, so…yea. 

Like I mentioned, I started a paleo experiment/experience this past Monday.  For my final meal pre-paleo, I went to a friend’s house and her hubby made this amazing dinner.  There was literally the BEST homemade lasagna I’ve ever had, breadsticks, a simple salad that I put just a touch of dressing on, and then an apple cake (I had 2 slices it was sooooo good!).  What a great “last meal” to have.  Now, that makes paleo sound at least somewhat awful and it’s not.  It’s just no processed carbs, no sugar, no sweeteners, no junk.  That does leave out a lot, but it also means you get to eat fresh, whole, good for you foods.  Food that we humans were actually meant to eat.  I really like it so far.  Come back on Mondays when I’ll do a check in for the previous week about how things are going!

 

I had a really interesting dream this past week.  I dreamt that I went on a 3-4 day trip to Peru with my ex-boyfriend from 6 years (yep, the one that mentally/emotionally abused me which led me to abuse food for comfort and escape which resulted in my 70+ pound weight gain in the 7-8 months that we dated…yea, that’s right, I take responsibility for the weight gain…he didn’t force me to eat the food, just made me feel worthless to the point where I just ate my emotions…anyway…TANGENT!!!), an ex-friend and her current boyfriend.  For starters, I have no clue why I would go anywhere, let alone somewhere I really want to go visit someday, with people I don’t want anything to do with.  While we were in Peru (I don’t remember much from the dream about what we did), we stayed in an adobe-like house in the forest.  It had no door or window coverings.  It had an open front closet with bars to hang clothes from.  For some reason I had brought ALL of my running clothes with me.  When we left and came back to Texas, I realized I had forgotten ALL of my running clothes.  And then I woke up completely confused as to what the heck I had just dreamed.  The best I could come up with is that some part of me is afraid of my past affecting me now and in the future.  Do you have any suggestions as to what, if anything, this dream could mean?  Let me know in the comments if you have an idea.

 “My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.”