Moving On

Christmas vacation is over! The kids are back in school today. I enjoyed having them home with me the last two weeks and I am kind of sad. Everyone's adjusting back to going to bed early and waking up early. Somewhat reluctantly, on all our parts, I might add.

Things are coming along in all the other areas of life. Financial Peace University starts tomorrow. I picked up our kit yesterday and I'm really looking forward to it. We have something of a working budget hammered out for now. We're so far behind on the house that for now we've decided we're not paying the mortgage. We are in communications with the mortgage company and have tried several angles to get assistance, to no avail. Right now what we will probably do is wait until they start foreclosure proceedings and then see if we can turn it into a short sale. That will, hopefully, buy us the time we'll need to get everything together to move somewhere else.

"Somewhere else" is looking like it'll probably be North Carolina. I'm open to it and OJ is really interested. We love Boone but employment opportunities are slim... so it'll probably be either Raleigh or Charlotte. He has friends in both cities, and I have a cousin in Raleigh.

On our radar is also Austin, Texas. We have friends there, and OJ's brother lives there. Neither of us have ever been though, and OJ is really not keen on how hot it gets (whereas I LOVE it!).

(And of course, lest we forget, we're probably going to spend about a year in Park City, Utah after I win my beloved HGTV Dream Home.)

It is our hope to visit all of the places on our list sometime this year so we can truly decide on our favorite and start looking for work. And of course, despite which one ends up being the 'favorite', it'll really depend on jobs. OJ's going to try to get a job and stay with friends while he finds us a place to live, I think. We'll just have to see how it all plays out.

I'm still working on the house. Getting lots of stuff purged. Which reminds me, I have a trunk full of stuff I need to bring to Kara, the lady that sells my stuff on ebay. She does an awesome job! She has an ebay store and does online consignment for several people, so she always has a nice variety of merchandise. If anyone is in need of stuff, and wants to help out me, or her, or any of the rest of us local moms that need money, you can find her store here: The Sweet Buy And Buy.

I've also started working on my health a bit more. I had stopped taking everything but the absolute necessary medications while I was having all my stomach trouble last year, and while that hasn't completely cleared up (the endoscopy showed nothing but some inflammation, biopsies of which gave us no information), we're chalking it up to stress/anxiety pain and acid reflux. So I'm easing my way back into my other medicines and vitamins, starting with my metformin, which is causing a little bit of stomach upset but is also bringing my blood sugar down to more acceptable levels, so yay. I'll do most of my health and weight loss blogging over at my blog, The Big Fat Breakup, if anyone wants to follow along.

one of my favorite recent pins. Are you on Pinterest yet? Follow me!

Financial Peace

I've always been a fan of Dave Ramsey, but I've never really put effort into following his ideas... or much of any ideas about finances, really. I'd dabble in fixing our finances but never really committed for more than a short while. Good intentions, bad follow-through. After reading about a friend's experience with Dave's Financial Peace University (and her recent encouragement to check out one of the local FPU classes that will be starting soon), I convinced OJ that we should take the class. It's $100, not very much to spend on one's financial future. I think taking it together, spending dedicated time for 12 weeks talking about our finances and ways to make things better, working together and finally building a solid partnered financial foundation in our marriage, is a good idea.

OJ is skeptical about the fact that it is a Christian-based program and that it is held at a church. He's become very atheist over the past year or two. I told him there was no way I was entertaining the idea of moving to the Bible Belt (North Carolina) with him if he wouldn't even take a class because it was held at a church. I'm sure we can filter out any God messages and apply them in our own spiritual / ethical / moral way. He also doesn't love the idea of paying someone (AKA making THEM rich) to give us 'financial peace', but I maintain that people's time and efforts are worth paying for if we learn something / get value from it. AND, as I said, $100 is not that much for two people to invest in a 12-week class.

I don't know which class we will be taking yet; I have sent an email to the most likely one with some questions. Hopefully we'll be able to start soon.

I wonder if there's a way to take these methods and convert them in such a way that they could be applicable to weight loss and clutter management. I could become the next guru of fixing up your life!

BAB Project: Week 3 (But Really It's My First Post About It Here)

We all know I'm working on losing weight, that indeed I have been working on losing weight for years now. My youngest 'baby' is three and a half! And I was 'working on' losing weight even before I got pregnant with her! Heck, I can't remember a time in my adult life when I WASN'T working on losing weight, come to think of it.


I buckled down at the beginning of June and got really serious. Set new goals of five pounds a month down, thought out the things I really want (I have some life items I'd like to achieve that my weight is hampering now, not just material goods), wrote out a rewards chart and all. Started counting my calories FOR REAL, instead of just talking about how I KNOW I should count calories but I hate doing it. I even exercise sometimes, it's true.


Given that weight has been a ginormous struggle for me for more than a decade, I am definitely the type of person who needs all the motivation, encouragement, and help I can get. I use sparkpeople.com to blog daily about my weight and frustrations and accomplishments on this journey, because while I want to acknowledge my progress here (my weight, after all, is one of the Big Three roadblocks that I feel hold me back from achieving some of my dreams), I really don't think this blog is the place for me to be talking constantly about my thoughts on weight and food and exercise. I've been posting pretty much daily over there, and sometimes more than once a day. If you're on SparkPeople too, you can find me here.


It was around this same time that Natalie at Hope Springs Eternal started her Body After Baby Project and invited her readers to join in. I could, as I just mentioned, sure use the help and support of a community of people that are losing weight. And it's motivating to see other people losing weight. And sometimes, it's a bit of a challenge to keep up with everyone. This isn't a contest, but I tend to personally challenge myself a lot to get things accomplished. ;)


I haven't talked about the project here before week three because I'm a lazy blogger. But I did sign up on her first page, and I will endeavor to stick to the weekly check-ins and let you guys know how things are going with me from now on!


So it's week three and I have lost four pounds over the past week. It's sort of magical, I don't really know how I got FOUR POUNDS off exactly, but I will say that the entire month of June was a big struggle for me, HUGE struggle, I won't recount it all here because it's all over my sparkpeople blog if you really want to know, but I persevered through the frustrations and kept doing my best to count calories and get in some exercise when I could and make small changes and I feel like this is some of the payoff from all of the changes I've been making over the past month.


I hit my first five-pounds-down weight loss goal during the past week. I am rewarding myself with a pedicure (tomorrow!).
I have a goal to lose my SECOND five pounds by the end of this month.


My program is primarily counting calories. I have intentions to exercise too but don't always manage to get that in there. Calorie level is my number one goal right now. I am also diabetic and on insulin injections, and I struggle to make sure I have the right amount of insulin in my body without it being TOO much, because not only can I get low blood sugar, but also excess insulin makes you gain weight. I've been diabetic for two years now and trying to lose weight since my diagnosis has been SO MUCH HARDER than it ever was in the past (and it was NEVER easy). It's a challenge, and I will keep fighting!


Current daily calorie level: Last week (and month) it was 1700 calories. I am adjusting that slightly because I'm a tad off my target for achieving my goal this month. So this week it will be 1650 (if I exercise, I allow myself to add half the calories I burned that day to my calorie total for the day)


Exercise: Mostly not scheduled; I have intentions to get out and take walks with my kids but haven't managed to pull that off yet. I did help a friend move on Saturday, and yesterday we walked to our town fireworks show (and then home after, obviously). Tonight I have my local TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) meeting, and if it doesn't rain I will walk there too.


Weight changes: Since last Monday, I have lost four pounds on my home scale. I am down 4.5 pounds total from my all-time highest weight.

I Need A Spark

It's been a while since I posted. I've been having a lot of issues with my diabetes, I spend most of my days feeling pretty under the weather, and it's kept me from getting a lot of things accomplished. I'm on insulin shots now - two different types, four times a day. My blood sugar numbers are excessively high, even with that. We keep adjusting the dosage but it hasn't helped so far. I'm starting the South Beach diet today, in hopes that this will help me. I'm dusting off my old profile on SparkPeople.com to chronicle my health and weight issues there. Feel free to find and friend me there if you're interested in following along.

I'm tired a lot. It makes it really hard to get things accomplished. Right now I'm really trying to just focus on my health, get that back in line at least a little bit, and then let the rest fall back into place again.

Being Thankful

It's time to fess up here and admit that I have another blog. Well, I have several other blogs actually, but the one in particular that I'm fessing up about right now is a livejournal account that I've had since 2001. It's primarily friends-only and at this point it's staying that way; I have cultivated a really great friends group over the years and it's become a great place for me to share a lot of my more personal details, my raw thoughts and emotions, and a lot more angst than I'm willing to share in this more public arena. I'll share a LOT here, but sometimes things are just too private for the entire world (yes, even for me, heh).

So yesterday morning I was feeling a little down and panicky for no good reason, and almost posted a real downer Facebook status (because one of the best ways for me to exorcise my mental and emotional demons is to WRITE THEM OUT and then I can move on)... but in a rare display of discretion, I decided Facebook was not the place for it. So I went to my trusty Livejournal and I posted "I'm really afraid I'm going to die before I am able to turn my life into the life I want to be living. And I just don't think that's appropriate as a facebook status so I'm posting it here instead. I guess I should probably talk about that in therapy tonight."

And in response, I got some really good thoughts, advice, and kicks in the butt from my awesome friends. Things like:

"I think most of us spend most of our lives trying to live the life we think we want. I try to focus on what's good now. Otherwise I would go crazy. When I do that, I realize I have it pretty good. Doesn't stop me from wanting to move home or wanting a professor job or criticizing my husband or generally wishing for more, but it helps."

"You can't do that & stay sane, I don't care how much therapy you go to. Live in the moment. Appreciate the eensy bittle things. Just LIVE every moment."

"Two of the quotes I have on my Facebook page:
"Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life." ~ Omar Khayyam
"To dream of a person you would like to be is to waste the person you are" ~ Unknown
I really try to live those quotes each and every day."

I really appreciate the encouragement everyone gave me yesterday about that post. I needed a little kick in the butt. It's hard sometimes to be thankful for what you have, and I guess sometimes I blur the lines between appreciating the life I have NOW (which is a pretty good life, most days) and the goals I want to achieve. Sometimes I get so hungry for those goals that I lose sight of the present and I despair pretty quickly. The therapy is more for THAT... not for making me happy with who I am, because really most of the time I AM - but for trying to deal with this intense need for instant gratification and the fact that I have trouble setting limits in my life. I don't know if it's the therapy, or the blogging, or ten years of ruminating and working towards it, but I finally feel like a lot of pieces are coming together in my life and I really do feel like I'm making a lot of progress on at least one of the issues that has plagued me for so long. (My clutter issues.) And I do feel confident that, once I get that under control, I can deal with roadblock two (my weight) and roadblock three (my finances). I feel more confident than ever that it really WILL all come together, finally. I still have times though where I get really impatient about it, or times when I get scared... especially in terms of my health. I believe I've mentioned it here before, but in case I haven't, I have Type II diabetes. I was diagnosed almost two years ago. It is VITAL that I lose weight and exercise more and eat better to get healthier, and I really feel like my house clutter is tied into some of that (letting things go is as hard for me as letting pounds go, and preparing healthy foods is impossible for me when my kitchen is a mess), and I do feel like I can't tackle my weight and health issues without getting the house in order first. I work on both to a small extent, but I know from past experience that if my house isn't in order, I just plain won't be able to work past that and take better care of myself. I don't know WHY that is; I just know that it is. So I'm working on it. But then something will happen, even if it's not something big; I'll have a day where I feel lousy, or I have this phantom arm pain that we haven't been able to figure out yet (the doctor thinks it's a stress/muscle issue but I really think it's tied into my blood sugar because it happens most often when my eating habits for the day SUCK), and I get freaked out about my diabetes and my health and the damage this could do to my body and the fact that I'm only 31 and I don't want to leave my family mother/wifeless and the fact that I'd really like to have another baby in a couple years but that cannot happen with the state of everything right now, but most especially with the state of my HEALTH (I will not subject my body to that stress in the state it's in now, I just won't, nor would it be safe for the baby), and then I get hung up on dying young and that's when I REALLY start to feel like everything is taking WAY too long to accomplish and I start to despair.

So I need to remind myself... baby steps. The baby steps I've taken have gotten me pretty far, and get me a little farther every day, and a little closer to my goals. I have to keep doing my best, and have faith that the universe and the powers that be will guide me to my goals, and not kill me off too soon (I hope!). None of us get any guarantees in life and we just have to do the best we can with what we have. I've certainly made mistakes in the past; we all have. I'm doing my best to recover from some of those mistakes, and most days now I feel like I'm doing a good job, and doing my best. Most days are good days.

There's an exercise on Facebook right now to post a new status every day from now until Thanksgiving about what you are thankful for. It starts out easy, but I'm sure it'll get harder as the days go on. It can be really hard to focus on everything we have to be thankful for. I'm taking the challenge because it's definitely something I need to do.

I'd like to invite everyone here to take some time to tell me what you have to be thankful for right now. We could all use some positivity in our lives, and a little bit of perspective; seeing what everyone has to be thankful for would be a great place to start.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I have been stuck in a bit of a rut these past couple weeks, since returning from vacation. Everything in the house around me is a mess and I can't seem to get up the motivation to tackle it. On the days I work, I get home and take care of the kids and I am exhausted. I barely feel like making dinner, let alone tackling chores. On my off days, obviously we've done some social things but I've had time to clean and tackle projects too, I'll be honest. I just haven't, for the most part.

The much-anticipated garage sale is this weekend and, while I know it's going to be something of a hassle and I still have much to do in order to prepare for it, I am really looking forward to just getting a bunch of that stuff OUT of my house.

Sometimes I get stuck in these ruts, you see, and I've spent many hours thinking about WHY and also thinking about how to get out of them, or stop them from happening. Here's my theories so far:

1) I become overwhelmed by the mess and clutter around me and I find it really hard to function. (Seriously, sometimes I just sit there and stare at the room I'm in and think that I have to get up and tackle it, but I know there's a bunch of other stuff I need to get done too, and I can't even mentally get to the point where I can make a to-do list because I can't get over the fact that I need to organize my space first, and my brain sort of explodes from trying to deal with it all, and I end up doing nothing but sitting and staring at the mess.)

2) Lack of energy and/or a general feeling of slight illness / sluggishness. Sometimes this is my blood sugar, sometimes not. (I'm diabetic.) And I contribute THIS to: lack of exercise, not eating right, not getting enough sleep.

Those are the things I believe are at the roots of these occasional slumps; it seems when all of those factors are on the 'bad' side, nothing gets done. If I'm doing better in even one of those areas, I generally feel better and can get more done. And of course, the better I'm doing in all of those areas, the more functional and efficient I am.

None of this should really be surprising information to anyone. Especially item two; that's kind of basic biology. I'm writing about it because sometimes I feel like I struggle with staying on the 'up' side of these factors more than most people do. Or when I catch myself on the 'down' side, doing negative things to myself and falling into a slump again, it is sometimes really hard for me to start reversing those trends and get back on the 'up' side. I am also writing this because I start individual therapy tonight to work on why some of these things are so difficult for me, and I am working out what I'll be discussing I suppose. Blogging has always been a form of therapy for me, though lately I haven't been all that introspective. I started this blog to share my journey in accomplishing my dreams. As I've mentioned before, I believe I have a number of roadblocks to overcome in order to accomplish all the things I've set out to do. I hold myself back. Figuring out why, and overcoming it all, is the first step in accomplishing those dreams. So I'm trying to be open and honest and share the good, bad and the ugly. Even when it's a less-than-flattering picture of myself.

When I start to feel overwhelmed by something I try to accomplish, often I will set my sights on a particular event: 'once X happens, I'll be able to accomplish Y'. Then my life becomes a waiting game, waiting for X, while I get very little else accomplished. In this case, X=the garage sale and Y=organzing the house again. What's frustrating to me is that I have thought of a number of ways I could work around the garage sale stuff and keep up with areas of the house, but I just haven't, because I'm waiting for X. That's another thing I've got to work on - staying in the present. I still want to plan for the future, but I don't like that I let opportunities pass me by while I wait for the future to be NOW.

My three main roadblocks, as I've mentioned before, are clutter, weight and finances. About the only one I've been any good at ltely is finances. Good in the sense that we've been trying to be much more conscientious about our spending, and I'm still using mint.com and tracking everything and trying to be more mindful of our budget. Unfortunately, we're in a very tight period right now and somehow we still catch ourselves overspending and making things worse from time to time. I'm struggling with this a bit because it's really frustrating and we've just never seemed to find a really good method that works to keep our heads above water for very long, and I don't see us accomplishing our financial goals if we don't stop living paycheck to paycheck. Then I add in extra stress to my mind by trying to come up with ways to make more money, and suddenly I've added about 50 extra projects to my plate, and I'm totally overwhelmed again.

A few months ago when I started this blog I told myself I was going to stop overwhelming myself with projects and just focus on one thing at a time, until I finished it. I did that successfully for a month, maybe a little longer; made a lot of progress on my house. But that was taking too long so I agreed to add in one more project: eating healthy. A few weeks after that, I started letting other things creep back in and before you know it, my project list is huge again.

Perhaps this is partially why I'm in a slump again. I'm trying to do too many things at once, once again. Getting back to the basics really was working for me before. You've seen the videos, and a few folks were even at my house and can testify that it was looking pretty good. I just started to panic because I could see all these others goals of mine flying past me and I get really impatient; I want everything to happen for me NOW. This is why I try to tackle everything at once, because I want it all NOW. But then I try to do it all right away and look what happens - nothing. I accomplish nothing at all.

So perhaps, tonight, we will talk about my impatience and the feeling of panic I get when I see time flying past me and I think about how long it's going to take to get all of these things done, and how I can work on changing that aspect of myself so I really CAN just tackle one thing at a time.

I'm afraid that if I stick to just one thing at a time, I'll get stuck on that one thing and never move past it. Cleaning, for example, is a never-ending thing. Even when I've got it all decluttered, the upkeep is a daily thing. Will I ever have time to keep up with it AND add new projects? Logically I know the answer is yes, at least one day, once it's decluttered and it's become routine. But emotionally, I feel like I'll never be able to juggle more than one thing at a time and I get a little panicked at the idea that even if I accomplish a goal and move on, I'll never be able to keep up with goal one when I'm working on goal two. I know not all goals will require upkeep once they're accomplished, but the main three: clutter, weight, finances - they will all require constant maintenance, for the rest of my life. I worry I won't be able to do it all. I think that's holding me back too.

So there's my introspection for the week. I keep tripping myself up. Here's hoping I can find ways to work past all this.

sleeping with my ex

I feel like I'm surrounded by babies (or babies-to-be), at least with my internet friends, and it kind of makes me want one again. Except I think what I really want to do is temporarily abscond with everyone else's babies, snuzzle them mercilessly, then give them back. There's a whole host of reasons why I should not be having a baby right now (and possibly ever again). My husband is happy with two. I don't like being pregnant (I just like the babies!). Our house is too small. Our house is too messy and cramming another person PLUS their stuff won't help that. It would totally mess up our financial plan. I vowed I would never have another baby unless I could leave work not just after the baby is born, but also for the pregnancy. I worked like a dog during the first two and if I do it again I want an entirely different experience this time. My health, which is also linked to my weight.

Speaking of my weight, I found out at TOPS last night that not only have I NOT lost weight as I'd suspected...I actually gained. Four pounds. In the last month. I'm very close to my highest weight ever again. This was...disheartening, to say the least.

When we went to Cedar Point last week, one of my biggest fears was that I would be a 'guest of exceptional size' and not be able to ride any of the rides I wanted to get on. They don't have strict guidelines as to what constitutes a 'guest of exceptional size', since everyone's body types are different, but they suggest that women over size 18 may have trouble on some of the rides. That's me, folks. At least in my gut. The rest of my body is probably around a size 18 but my gut is HUGE (and embarrassing).
I was able to get on everything I wanted, even the children's rides that required adult chaperones, but it was uncomfortable. And humiliating. Especially on the Jr. Gemini when the attendant had to help me buckle the seatbelt because I was too fat to do it. Bless her soul, she tried to blame my fanny pack (to which I replied "thank you, but I think it's my FANNY"), and I was about to give up but she was very insistent that we could DO it, and I heaved my fat out of the way as best I could and she pulled with all her might until that little belt clicked into place. It certainly was not one of my prouder moments in life.

There is no great mystery involved in weight loss, at least not for the majority of folks. Eat less, move more. It's a pretty simple formula. Yet for so many people, myself included, it's a huge struggle. The formula may be easy but when you try to apply it to individuals with emotions and patterns and preferences and desires and opinions, individuals fighting hormonal responses and addicitons and emotional triggers and years of conditioned response, individuals with varying levels of intention and willpower...well, it becomes a very different, very personal story for each of us. I've been trying to pay attention over the past year or so, and I don't seem to have a huge emotional trigger to food. I don't necessarily want to eat when I'm stressed, or upset, or angry. I do, however, often eat out of boredom. And habit. I eat for entertainment...and who doesn't like to be entertained? Over the course of my life, I seem to have linked food to all of the pleasureable activities in my life. I eat while I read. I eat while I watch TV. I eat while I play video games. I eat while I socialize with friends. I ENJOY eating while I do these things. And it has become very hard to NOT eat while doing these things. Eating has become linked to my enjoyment of these activities; separately, I enjoy each of them very much, but with food I now achieve MAXIMUM enjoyment.

I read a lot on a regular basis, but I have been reading a TON lately. Every night, often for a couple hours. (This could also be why the house is falling into disrepair again.) So I've been eating a lot more at night lately as a result.

The trouble here is that I'm not eating with any sort of intention. I'm just grazing, and when one food stops tasting so great, I just move on to the next one. I'm not really ENJOYING the food, I'm just eating to eat. I'm not writing down any of these foods and I'm not limiting myself in any way either. I'm not saying "OK, I want some potato chips, so I'll just have one serving." I'm sitting down with the whole bag.

So what happens? A weight gain of four pounds, that's what happens. Frustration. Misery. And oh yeah, I don't feel so good most days either.

What am I going to do about this? I don't know. I'm frustrated. It's a pattern that has asserted itself time and again in my life. I have trouble setting limits on myself, I have trouble controlling certain behaviors. I have been trying to track my calories and food intake for a year and I keep resisting. I know it's an important tool for weight loss, but for some reason I just refuse to make it a habit. I want to do it...but somewhere in me I must not REALLY want to do it, or I'd be doing it already, right?

It's times like these when I am closest to admitting that I might need professional help with this problem. But for some reason, even though I don't have a problem with therapy and have gone for other troubles I've had...I am hugely resistant to going for this. HUGELY. I'm not sure why. Even writing about it now, I can feel the stress building in my body, my arms and legs tightening in refusal, as if someone is going to come along and try to physically MAKE me go to therapy and I'm gearing up to resist and fight them. It's freaking bizarre and I have no idea why, exactly, I am so dead set against going to therapy for this, but I am.

I'm hesitant to put this out there in public because it is such a personal issue, and when I fail again and again, it's embarrassing. Sometimes it's embarrassing just to live my life and still be fat, because I've struggled with this for so long and it's not like it's a problem I can hide. When I go out, everyone can see that I'm still fat, or fatter. My repeated failures sit on my body in giant lumps. Sometimes I don't want to go places, or see certain people, just because of the way I look. So putting this all out here in public is sort of like opening a wound. But I vowed to myself that this blog would be a record of my goals and the paths to them; this is a huge issue in my life that I've wanted to get past for years, and I do believe it is holding me back from accomplishing so many other things in my life. It's the elephant in the room; I can't just ignore it. And maybe my struggles (and future triumphs, I hope) will help someone else.

And maybe there's someone out there who will help me too.

what do you do when you feel overwhelmed by the things you want to do?

As soon as I started talking about adding in exercise and meal planning in addition to my housecleaning project, I lost motivation for practically everything. More often than not, I find myself sitting around and wanting to do stuff but not knowing where to start, so I sit and stare at the mess around me, totally bewildered.

Am I overwhelmed at the thought of trying to tackle two projects at once, knowing I've failed there in the past?
Am I overwhelmed because exercise and eating right have always been such huge problems for me and it seems so overwhelming to even TRY again?
Or is there some other reason I'm struggling with the actuality of eating right and exercising in addition to decluttering?

These questions are sort of rhetorical; I don't know the answers. If I DID, I'd be working on the solution.

I think it's sort of a combination of the first and second though. Every time I sit down with a pad of paper and begin listmaking and thinking about all the pieces involved in the two projects, I get really overwhelmed.

For instance:
In the decluttering department, I am almost done sorting through the entire house. That feels REALLY good, and that is why I'm thinking about adding in another project while I finish up. Because after the house is done, the only other areas to declutter are the laundry room and the garage. And those are going to be HUGE, time consuming projects. I think I'll do much better if I take them in small chunks, say, a box a day on my days off. But that'll take WEEKS and I don't want to wait weeks or months before I start working on my health too.
Even though most of the stuff in the living areas of the house has been tackled and will be done shortly, I still have:

1. decluttering the laundry room
2. decluttering the garage
3. sorting through all the magazines I've saved (largely cooking magazines) that I still can't bring myself to throw away
4. sorting through the BOXES of paper that I've saved (and this is just what I've found in the house, not even what's stuffed in the laundry room and garage) because I couldn't handle decluttering STUFF and PAPER at the same time. (So I just boxed up papers separately and set them aside)
5. scanning all the papers I've decided to keep

Yes, I have a huge paper problem. This post isn't about that. I know it's an issue. I'm working on it.

That's all stuff that falls under the 'decluttering' project. That in and of itself is a fairly overwhelming list.

So when I sit down and try to think about tackling all that PLUS exercising every day AND planning out my meals AND changing my eating habits, I get a little freaked out. TOO MUCH CHANGE AT ONCE.

So what's the answer?

If it's too much, the answer is to cut back, right?

Now, despite the fact that my decluttering project list is still pretty hefty and overwhelming, I've been making huge progress in that area and I feel pretty comfortable with it. I'm confident I can keep working on it and tackle it all (in time) and CHANGE for good.

With the weight thing, I know that exercise AND healthy eating are both important. But I think I'm going to start by focusing on just ONE of those areas. I'm a little torn as to which one, but I believe I will start by focusing on my eating habits. Because I feel more emotionally resistant to exercise: eating is something I do every day anyway; exercise is another time-suck that is going to take away from my decluttering project. I know that's not how I SHOULD look at it, but it's how I feel about it right now. I feel like I'm already getting a decent amount of exercise with the decluttering I've been doing, and I want to continue doing it. (I will add in some extra walk breaks on the days I work though, because I really feel too sedentary those days.) My eating habits are a HUGE issue though, and I've also read in numerous places that a healthy diet is really the bulk of the weight-loss battle. Yes, exercise is hugely important, but if you don't have the diet in place you'll never succeed or maintain. So I'll start with diet and worry about structured exercise down the road.

So basically I live in a constant state of anxiety no matter what.

I haven't gotten very far in tackling two of my roadblocks at once yet. Indeed, whenever I think about starting to work an exercise / healthy meal plan into my life, I start to feel anxious. I am still fighting the clutter monster in my home quite fiercely, and it fills me with anxiety that I will not ever finish this particular project (as has happened in the past) if I start trying to work another project in.
On the other hand, I'm also very anxious about the fact that I'm only focusing on one project, a project that is taking much longer to complete than I had planned, and it is really bothering me that I'm not working on my weight / health issue.

I've also noticed that on days when I work, I get virtually nothing done at home. I just feel too tired. I suspect this is because I sit on my butt all day at the office and sort of fall into a no-energy stupor. I use my brain but not to a terribly challenging level (yet; there are some fun-sounding projects on the near horizon), and by the end of the day I just feel tired and mushy. If I worked more movement and challenge into my days, and if I was eating better-quality foods (or eating at all; sometimes I don't even feel motivated to go eat lunch at work...and that's not so good, especially for a diabetic), then I think I'd be more UP and motivated when I get home.

So all in all, I still think that it makes logical sense to start working on my Fat Breakup...but emotionally, I'm not quite there. I need to push past that.

Today I'm just cleaning, cleaning, cleaning for the next couple hours...then it's a shower and a birthday party (at my place!) for one of my friends. The downstairs is still a mess of boxes and detritus, though it's not nearly as bad as before. However, there's still a LOT to sort through. I'm just going to do whatever I can and we'll party around the rest. It's not like my friends haven't seen my house the way it was before, and they all know about my projects, so I'm not stressing about it. They come to see me, not my mess.
Would I love to have a totally clean house to show off? Sure. And that will come with time. But I'm already proud of everything I've managed to accomplish. Just showing off the closet full of garage sale boxes is a giant accomplishment!

Back to work!