Siyyah

Unfortunately, I have stopped even thinking about the challenge. We have numerous appointments every day now and we have been struggling to make it through the day without missing an appointment, which has now happened twice D: I am resigning from this challenge and will pick up the challenge that starts in Jan/Feb after all of this mess dies down.

The last two days have been horrid. My hubs got his clearing papers yesterday and we have been going around to all of the offices clearing them one by one. He insisted that I come with, toddler in tow, because I have already cleared this post once 2.5 years ago when I was "voluntarily" Chaptered for pregnancy. Between corralling the tiny terror and leading him by the nose from office to office. Thankfully, he went and cleared some offices yesterday without us while the munchkin napped. I haven't had a chance to get out and take a walk and we have been eating on the go. Unfortunately, where we stop for an on the go lunch does not sell veggies, so, I haven't been eating my veggies at lunch. It has been cold, wet, and raining. Miserable weather. When I finally get a chance to slow down and take a walk it is dark out. I do not do walks in the dark. In other words, I have been terrible the last couple days and it doesn't look like it's going to get any better. I still haven't had any sugary treats (9 days now) but I have been experiencing terrible mood swings. I go from happy to the point of being giddy to angry and screaming. I don't know why and it is driving me mad. I don't know what to do

I've got some good news this morning. As of last night, I have refrained from sugary treats for 1 whole week. I have been eating berries in the afternoons when I get cravings and I started eating some prunes at the end of every meal to circumvent after meal cravings. I feel great and am easily able to walk past the chocolates and cookies at the store. I don't know if I want to get rid of sugary snacks completely or if I should allow it on a schedule or during the holidays/birthdays. But, for right now, I will continue to avoid the treats and build my resolve for future decisions. I am not completely sugar free, however, I am not avoiding added sugar in breads, canned goods, etc., yet. My problem is with sugary treats on top of my meals and that is where my focus is, for now. When we finally get settled back in the States, I plan on stocking the fridge with whole foods with no added sugar. One step at a time

Considering that I still went for my walk even after posting that, I guess I am not quitting. However, I will need to forego the squats, my knees are taking too much of a beating right now. We won't be settled, however, until after 15 Dec But, you have a good point.

I think I might have to resign from this challenge. As days go by, it is becoming more and more difficult to fit in my fitness related quests. We are moving almost nonstop most days and when we do finally take a break, I am way too tired to get up and go for a walk or do squats. My legs and back ache from the lifting, carrying, and cleaning that I have been doing and trying to squeeze in fitness quests is becoming very stressful. We have a pile of items, boxes and bags in the dining room and a disheveled kitchen to sort and clean. Tomorrow, we pick up our clearing papers and will be busy trying to clear, prep our apartment for the 2 moving shipments, clean the vehicle for shipment, clean the apartment to standard, etc. I feel terrible for bowing out, but I do feel as though I need to.

You're so sweet, thank you for the kind words. We are currently without most of our dishes and are eating off of paper plates. I still have my skillet though, so I can cook. The problem is having the energy to do so. I wish I could say that these changes have had a positive impact on my weight, but so far I don't think there has been any change. Which makes me a little upset. I have been doing all of the lifting, carrying, and heavy work because my husband is recovering from nerve damage he got from hernia surgery a few months back. I was hoping that all this extra work on top of my walking and squats would be making enough of a difference that I would be seeing some weight drop. But it is still early, maybe I will see weight loss after this whole ordeal is over and the stress dissipates. As an aside, I did have sugar cravings yesterday. Yesterday was super stressful and I started to get mid afternoon cravings. I, however, did not go eat junk food, but dodged them with a pear and some frozen berries

The grades for week 2 are as follows: Mini Quest 1: Business of the Dangerous Variety​ Week 1: Walk 20 minutes 5/7 days​ Grade: 7/5 A Mini Quest 2: Legs!​ Week 1: 50 Body weight squats 3-4 times a week​​​ Grade: 4/3 A Mini Quest 3: Choices​ Week 1: Cook at home​ 5/7 days of the week Grade: 4/7 B Thurs. I decided to try and readdress week 1's sugar quest, but redefine it to include only junk food, not added sugar in pantry items. Since Thurs. I have had no junk food and have had little to no cravings which is a huge improvement. This week's quests: Mini Quest 1: Business of the Dangerous Variety​​ Week 2: Walk 30 minutes 5/7 days​ Mini Quest 2: Legs!​ Week 2: 5 Assisted pistol squats/leg 3-4 times a week Mini Quest 3: Choices Week 2: Eat a veggie and protein at both lunch and dinner I am still doing the previous weeks' quests, just not tracking them on this site. I have a checklist that I am working through. For example, I am still going to cook at home as much as possible. However, as the month continues it will become more and more difficult especially once we check into the hotel and are prepping to fly. I am also going to be continuing to do my body weight squats as well as my assisted pistol squats. I have noticed a huge improvement on my knee stability issues since incorporating the walks and squats.​

Week 2 of this challenge is going very well. I have been doing my squats and eating at home (except 1 day so far). We have a planned outing tomorrow and we will be enjoying lunch at a German Restaurant after we explore Burg Frankenstein. We have been super busy with the move. Packing, scheduling, going to appointments, forgeting to take the munchkin to her dentist appointment, cleaning, etc. but I have still somehow made time to cook and get my walking and squats in. I have been working on changing the way I think about my health and have started making it a priority, which has made a huge difference in how I veiw my day. I have also started readdressing week 1's failed mission. I am working on a no-junk policy. I have rephrased my thinking from "I can't have junk because I am on a diet" to "I am not the type of person who depends on junk regardless of diet." However, I am having an issue with satiety at meals. Breakfast and Lunch go fine and I can make it through no problem until Dinner. At Dinner, regardless of how much I have eaten that day, I find that I am a bottomless pit and am constantly foraging for something more. Tonight, on top of my delicious steak and veggies meal, I ate an 16oz bag of frozen fruit and toast with cream cheese. I still felt hungry and resorted to distracting myself from eating more by giving my daughter a bath early. She ended up having an extra long bubble bath I am not sure if this "hunger" will naturally subside as my body adjusts to not having a massive dose of calories via junk food or if I need to consciously fight the urge to eat after I have concluded my meal. Any thoughts?

Thank you for sharing those articles. I found them very interesting and the comments even more so. I have never considered purposefully adding berries to my meals in an attempt to sway cravings, nor have I considered possible mineral deficiencies as one comment suggested. I will look into trying some of the methods that these articles and comments have suggested to see if any of them work for me. Thank you.

Week 1 is now done and I can say that I have learned a lot about myself. This past week was extremely stressful which made it this challenge extremely difficult to stick with. However, I found out that I am much better at sticking to my physical mini quests than I am my diet related ones. Even when the stress became too much to handle, I would still get up and do my squats or go for my walk. But the same can't be said about my diet related challenge. I still turned to bingeing on sugary treats regardless of how terrible I felt after eating them. I would try to substitute anything and everything in for those treats, to include longer walks, fruit, protein, etc. and still be so consumed with the idea of bingeing that I would eventually give in. Sugar might be a world boss in my life. I think I might need to level up a little bit more before I am equipped to handle such an overpowered mob. The grades for week 1 are as follows: Mini Quest 1: Business of the Dangerous Variety​ Week 1: Walk 10 minutes 5/7 days​ Grade: 7/5 A Mini Quest 2: Legs!​ Week 1: 25 Body weight squats 3-4 times a week​ Grade: 4/3 A Mini Quest 3: Choices​ Week 1: Limit sugar to once a week​ Grade: 2/7 = 29% D There are no F's on my grading scale This week's quests: Mini Quest 1: Business of the Dangerous Variety​​ Week 2: Walk 20 minutes 5/7 days​ Mini Quest 2: Legs!​ Week 2: 50 Body weight squats 3-4 times a week​ Mini Quest 3: Choices Week 2: Cook at home​ 5/7 days of the week​

I had my day off with my daughter the other day and we had a lot of fun. We went to the playground and played on the slide and she played in the leaves. We took a nice long walk together and just had a lot of fun. I still had things that I needed to do, however, so we walked to the mailroom and mailed off Christmas presents for the family and stopped by the bank. I was given a small guilt trip about my not cleaning up or washing dishes (which still aren't washed out of spite...). The last couple of days, however, have been some of my worst in a long time. I have been feeling like absolute crap and have been really down on myself. I have been crying and bingeing and just having an all around terrible time. The night before last, I got 2 hours of sleep. My daughter skipped her nap and fell asleep early. I stayed up until 10pm thinking that she was going to wake up any minute to play. When I finally decided that it was safe to go to bed, my hubs came home for midnight chow. He insisted that I stay up with him because he was given 2hrs instead of his normal 1hr. We compromised and I stayed up for an extra hour. Unfortunately, I still wasn't able to get to sleep because the hubs decided to watch Hulu before going back to work. Lots of screaming, explosions, and gunfire later, he finally went back to work. Then at 1:30am the kiddo decided it was time to get up for the day, despite my desperate pleas for her to go back to bed. She fell back asleep at 7am but I had a Dentist appointment at 08, so nope, no sleep. I get to my appointment and find out that my dentist called in sick and they had transposed the last two numbers of our phone number, so they couldn't reach me. I went for a walk to calm down and got a coffee. Once home, my daughter woke up from her nap and the hubs declared it his bed time, leaving me exhausted with a toddler... The day crawled by and ended with me eating all the sugar just to stay awake and not kill my kid. Today, wasn't much better, but there was some sleep, though interrupted by toddler screams, movie explosions and doors slamming... I broke down into tears this morning because none of my clothes fit and I feel huge. I own 3 pairs of pants that I can squeeze my butt into now. 2 yoga pants and one pair of jeans. I have long legs (35in inseam) and have to buy my jeans from specialty stores that sell in pant lengths above 33in. When I am in the states, I have a handful of places I know I can buy from, none of them are over here. The number of pants I own slowly decrease and I have not been able to replace the ones that rip or wear through within the last 3 years because of our location (the places I know that I can buy from in the US do not ship to APO addresses). However, my 3 pairs of pants that actually fit me were all in the laundry because I am unable to wash clothes when the hubs is sleeping during the day because it is next to the bedrooms and is very loud. Faced with the pile of pants that are way too small for me, I lost it and cried. It feels terrible to be this big and ever growing girth-wise when faced with jeans that fit pre-pregnancy. We went to Schloss Heidelberg, today, despite my apprehensions of leaving the house because of my hugeness. The castle was very underwhelming and all we really got out of it was a good workout. Parking was up hill from the entrance and the hill was very steep and winding. Took us almost 30 minutes to climb up to our vehicle from the entrance. I skipped breakfast because of my mood and the food at the castle was awful so I barely ate anything. On the way home we had to stop by the grocery store for some granola bars for the gremlin and I ended up getting some cookies and eating 4 of them. I feel absolutely terrible and thought about quitting the challenge all together since I can't seem to do anything right. But, I am not quitting. I will adjust my goals but I will not quit. Does anyone have any tips for getting through the times when self-esteem plummets?

This morning I woke up a frantic mess because I thought I was late for a dentist appointment which ended up being for tomorrow morning lol. On my way home, I did my walk for the day and stopped by the shoppette for some glorious coffee. I have never been so reliant of coffee to get through my day as I have been the last couple of weeks. I also called DPW this morning and actually got someone to answer the phone. I assume yesterday was a German holiday or something which was why they didn't answer yesterday. They have to replace the dishwasher since it is 13 years old but wont be able to do so before we leave. We are on a waiting list for a new one now, so housing can't say anything about it. Once the munchkin is done with her breakfast, I am going to get her dressed and we'll go out to the playground. While I wait, however, I will knock out my squats. I am conciously skipping breakfast this morning though. After my binge last night, I feel awful. I feel like puking and the thought of putting something more than coffee on my stomach makes me want to vomit. So, I will skip breakfast and try to eat a light lunch. I think I might need to adjust my challenge goals. Looking at them now, I might have bit off more than I can chew. Would it be too late to edit those goals to make them more PCS friendly?

I broke down today. After spending hours trying to get the dishwasher fixed, with no reply from DPW, and nothing else going right today, I broke. My daughter was in one of those moods where she wandered the house whining, for no apparent reason, which was very stressful because her daddy was sleeping and I needed to keep her quiet (totally didn't happen). I got halfway through hand washing the dishes before I just gave up. Ended up only doing a dish or two at a time because the tiny terror kept getting into trouble. Never made it to the post office. On my way out to do my walk, I stepped in some dog crap right outside of the stairwell door. I did end up going for the walk and did do my squats which is a win. However, I completely broke down and binged on Halloween candy and cried while watching an episode of Doctor Who which I didn't even get to finish watching. I have declared tomorrow a day off from PCS crap, household chores, etc and plan on spending the day with my munchkin at the playground, as long as weather allows.

This morning I woke up to a dishwasher that refuses to function, which means a call to DPW to schedule a maintenance appointment before we hand over our keys on 4 Dec... What fun... Today's chore list includes the mail room. I have to ship out Christmas presents for family before we leave or they will never get them. I also have to hit up the TKS to put in our internet cancellation notice. And finally, start sorting through our stuff and deciding what is trash, what is to be donated and what is coming with us. Oh and washing all of those dishes that the dishwasher refused to wash. Off to go do my squats and find something to eat. I have been so busy today that I haven't had a chance to eat yet and it's already lunch time :/

I love berries, and they are my fruit of choice. I eat them frozen which helps with any ice cream or frozen dessert cravings I may have. Out of all the commotion today, though, I didn't have time to even think about craving sugar. It is now time for me to cook dinner and all I really want is to curl up with a hot cup of tea.