Day 48, Nathaly: Slacking with the updates DOESN'T mean we're slacking!!

Hey all,

SOOOO sorry to be slackers this week.  I actually have had several personal ah-HAH moments and I'm a loser for not sharing it with you all, but I wanna send a shout out to Kim, especially for reaching out to check in on us via email.  (Funny to think we don't really use email in Team Mango -- when did we choose that name? lol -- given how much I rely on it for my day to day communication).

OK -- so how to sum up the last 5 days?  There's been frustration and there's been moments of real, deeply-entrenched strength.  I'll try to go day by day.  The veggie post was done on Sunday night, so this is gonna be a long one.  APOLOGIES FOLKS -- we both PROMISE to be better!

MONDAY
The new form of jumps has meant re-acceptance of my abilities with the rope (I took to it naturally from the beginning).  I love love love getting thumbs up from cars driving by smiling at me jumping my little heart out in front of my house every morning.  I think my fave moment so far though, as certainly been from a little girl who was obviously impressed by also really shy and still managed to give me a double thumbs-up.  SO cute.

So, what had happened was that I was chugging along from Day 1 (50 jumps in a row) to somewhere around the end of month 1 (up to 200 in a row) and I realized that b/c it was so difficult to maintain, my breaks in btwn sets were going for too long (and therefore, I was taking too long getting jumps done).  So I went back down to sets of 100, but when the 2-min sets started, I worried I would tank. Turns out that because I also re-committed to doing jumps in the morning (based on Patrick's email about how that's when they've got the greatest fat-burning effect), they've been totally manageable.

TUESDAY
Definitely fell off the bandwagon this evening.  It was a SUPER long day starting with a morning 350 organizers mtg (I'm helping to plan a huge local day of action around climate solutions on 10/10/10 as part of the 350.org campaign's climate movement building -- if you've never heard of 350, def check it out and sign up!) and followed by a full day of work and then running up to campus for a grad school gathering and some work on my grad thesis and culminating with a two hours rehearsal with the Burlington Choral Society for our upcoming concert of the Duruflé Requeim and Britten Te Deum Festival.  LONG LONG day.  Anyways, I was perfectly PCP-compliant all day with the diet, but by the time I got home at 9:30pm, I just needed to sit (the wrong choice, I knew even as I made it..) We popped in our latest Dexter netflix arrival which was interrupted by a friend stopping by and before I knew it, it was 11pm.  I was absolutely exhausted and knew that I was just not going to make it.  Ramiro got a little pissed that night (as he had waited for me to do them with him, like I promised) but was a total champ and proceeded to do his workout even at that super late hour.

WEDNESDAY
I knew that Tuesday had been bad and made sure to get up early enough to do my jumps before work.  I had my 2nd choir day of the week (I also sing with the choir at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington), but I planned my day around it and did just fine.  It helped to have gotten a really good night of sleep in, of course. Victory for the day: a guy stopped by the office with a tray of assorted Lake Champlain Chocolates.  he offered each of us one and I grabbed my favorite flavor (dark chocolate mint) as i didn't wanna go into the i'm-on-a-diet spiel.  I set it on my things and gave it to one of the interns the following morning without too much mental struggle (felt very much like bilbo baggins asking himself in the 1st LOTR why he shouldn't keep the ring, "it's such a little thing, what harm could it do?" lol.  YAY NATHALY.

THURSDAY
A friend came in from California late Wednesday night and I was really worried about waking him up in the morning, so after getting ramiro his breakfast and a cup o' joe (those guys stayed up pretty late catching up and playing video games), I stayed in  bed til 9am (NICE) and then took Tiggs out for a nice long walk and did my jumps outside.  It was a slow morning and I realized that in order to get everything done (walk, jumps, shower, bfast) and feel comfortable getting to work without feeling rushed, I need a full two hours.  DANG.  I honestly can't imagine how you all who ALSO do the workout in the mornings handle it.  More power to ya!
That evening we decided to call the day our "saturday" (the 7th day of our PCP week which would normally be only jumps) in order to enjoy some time with the folks from out of town and some other friends. The host made a spaghetti dinner and I had some salad and a bite of carby-loveliness and did a great job of resisting the homemade chocolate cake, but the red wine and Long Trail Ales had my mouth watering..  In a small dip in my rock solid sweets resistance record, as I was helping to clean up, I decided to let Tigger have a nibble at a spoonful of cake someone left on their plate and gave my finger a lick.  WOW was that yummy.  Made seeing that half-eaten tray soo much harder to resist.  lol.  And, knowing our indulgence was around the corner, gave my mind plenty of fodder for going back and forth with questions and such..

FRIDAY (today)
I've been exhausted lately.  We were up late last night and ramiro got crazy allergies from the bunnies at our friends house, so we all slept in.  A morning without the alarm makes for a very difficult time waging the hour, however, and I was in bed until 11:34am.  Wow.  So, I made Tito some coffee and took Tigger out and was only done with jumps at 12:35pm.  Which meant breakfast and lunch kinda collided a bit.  We went to a local Jewish diner to spend a last couple hours with our friend from out of town and had to be really creative to stay within PCP.  To be honest, neither of us ate enough probably, but at least everything was within bounds, except for a couple bites I had of latke (fried potato pancakes) before giving it away. We went to the market to pick up more milk and eggs and when I got home, I did a little reading and felt that exhaustion coming in again DESPITE the frigging 10.5 hrs of sleep!  I was also a little cold, so I used that as an excuse to curl up in bed ("I'm not napping -- really!") and proceeded to sleep the afternoon away, only to get woken up by a VERY exciting message from Ramiro -- our PCP indulgence is of 500-700 calories!  WOOHOOOOOOOO  I was so excited (and thankfully ready to be up again), I flung my arms all around the air and hit the hubster in the face.  LOL.  So, obviously, not a good day, but INDULGENCE, here we come!!

OK -- last two things, i've been saving to share:
1. At some point last weekend, I think (or maybe Tuesday.. possible why i was so wiped out that night), I made the mistake of skipping BOTH my breakfast carbs and lunch carbs.  Never before would I have known how incredibly important they are to functionality.  How do those atkins ppl function?!?  I mean, honestly, I ended up having to add a slice of toast to my dinner meal that day.

2.  How could it have taken this long to learn to do push-ups effectively??  I guess, my arms have been too high this whole time.  It was only Wednesday of this week that I actually did push ups correctly and i've been feeling it ever since.  I really hope my boobs don't shrink too much!!

OOH -- last thing, i promise (SORRY for the long post!!):  YUMMERS BFAST SANDWICH IDEA:  Smear half and avocado all over your breakfast bread carb portion and layer an egg onto THAT.  LOVELY!!

OK -- DONE