Thursday, March 15, 2007

Sometimes you give, sometimes you take

Sometimes I'm so concerned about helping others that I forget to help myself. Or maybe it's just that it seems easier to help others than to help myself. And certainly anything is easier for me than asking for help. However, to live life to its fullest, sometimes you give, sometimes you take.

When I first started this blog, oh about a month ago, I was on the honeymoon phase of my renewed healthy habits and doing quite well. Then, as usually happens with me, something happens to discourage me and my "all or nothing" personality takes over, deems myself a failure, and stops trying so hard.

Well, as a "failure," (my words) I didn't really want to share the details. What fun is that pointing out your flaws? But the reality of losing weight (part of what I promised this blog would be about) is that sometimes you do well and sometimes you don't. It is how you handle the times you don't that make the difference.

Now that my "failure" party is over, I'm re-dedicating myself to good habits and am feeling better already. I've been reading other blogs, websites and books like crazy looking for inspiration and finding tons of it (no pun intended). In the next few days I'll be posting more on what I've found inspirational, as a means of "paying it forward."

Hope everyone is having a good week!

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Sleeping is making me stress about sleeping

Apparently too little sleep makes you fat. And apparently too much sleep also makes you fat. One would think there would be some magical calculation out there for the optimal number of hours you need, but I keep seeing conflicting information. Add to this my own social observation of my dog, a 2 year old daschund mix, who sleeps about 18 hours a day and is skinny as a rail. What gives?

Is it the quality of the sleep? Is it the number of hours a day spent in bed? If you get some good sex before sleeping does this add or subtract from your hours? If you lay in bed worrying about sleeping, or the errands you forgot to run, does that affect your perfect sleep number equation?

And what about those pills? There's one that makes you sleepwalk and eat hotdog buns in the middle of the night. Then there's the one that appears to give you trippy hallucinations about butterflies. Then there's the one that supposedly makes you dream of talking beavers and Abe Lincoln. Does drugged sleep count as better sleep than natural sleep?

All I know is I wake up still tired almost every single morning. Then I worry I had too much sleep or I worry I didn't have enough. Either way, I didn't have quality sleep, which I feel is unobtainable. Maybe I'm overthinking things. I'm guessing the reason my dog can sleep 18 hours is he has no worries.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Pancakes bigger than my head

You know you've been low-carbing it when the thought of pancakes bigger than your head make you start to drool...just a little bit. The gals over at HungryGirl, (a fun site for daily emails about new low-calorie, sometimes low-carb products) featured a site today that makes pillows in the form of food! The "stack of pancakes pillow" looks yummy. If I had that pillow sitting on a chair anywhere in my house, I'd be hungry 24-7. They did have some "pear" pillows, but somehow they just didn't look as scrumptious.

Does sometimes just looking at pictures of food make you hungry? I know if I'm really jonesing for something not on my plan, that is a guarantee that commercials with gooey and yummy looking shots of that specific food will be on tv. Commercials are evil that way. I saw a great postcard on Post Secret once that said something like "I google my cravings when I'm hungry." In the back of my head I thought to myself "wow, at least I don't do that!" Hey, an unfair judgement, but we have to draw the line somewhere.