It has been the culmination of a few years of hard work. Focusing on paying down debt and organizing finances. Surprisingly (to me anyhow) lots of mental and physical preparation. But it has all culminated in me finally giving my notice at my job. I am not quite done work yet. Still 2 weeks to go. I officially gave my notice 6 weeks ago and have been slowly training my replacement. He is pretty good now and I expect the next two weeks will be monitoring and housekeeping (and if you saw my office you know that I need a few days for the housekeeping part!).
This has been tough on me. Even though I don't particularly want my job, I am still finding it very hard to come to terms with the idea that I will have no job at all in a few weeks. I have always defined myself by my job. I took pride in the years I put in and the increasing levels of responsibility. But even with a cushy pay cheque and title I was never very happy. It was a false pride based on what others thought of me, not what I wanted for myself.
Even so, I have to admit I am nervous about the next few months. I have a plan for the first 3 months and I think that will help. I have given myself permission to be home no matter what for at least 3 months. That means that if we find life with only one income impossible or I hate it (which I doubt, but who knows) I have permission to stay home full time till at least September. Then I can re-evaluate and possibly look for part time or once again full time work. I am also giving myself permission to like not working. Which seems strange but is a bit of a mental block for me. Other than my 3 maternity leaves I haven't been without work since I was 15. It all feels very foreign to me and it will take some getting used to. Of course I won't just sit on my duff and do nothing. But I think the plans I have for my time will be the focus of another post.
So there you go. All those posts where I lamented trying to balance full time work and family life, and I finally did it. I quit. WHOA!
-
When I spend a summer in Brazil I met a musician who spoke near perfect English. In the village we were living virtually no one spoke English. During our conversation he told us he taught himself how to speak English by emulating English language pop songs. Amazing eh! I guess we can do almost anything if we want it hard enough.0
Add a comment
-
I can never seem to get it all done:
If I work hard at cleaning my house on the weekend, I don't have time to do meal planning and prep cooking for the coming week.
If I work out in the evening I forget to plan for the next days supper.
Heck, if I am tired in the evening (right! right!?) I forget to plan for the next days supper.
If I remember to put a load of laundry in the washer in the evening, I am asleep before it is ready to go in the dryer. (I have been known to text my DH from bed asking him to please put load in dryer, crossing my fingers he checks his phone before bed).
If I do a bunch of meal planning and prepping on the weekend I don't get much housework done.
God help us is we decide to ignore all meal planning and cleaning and just hang with our kids all weekend long.
At the moment I don't have a to do list, mostly because I am in denial. I'm not the only one right?5View comments
-
This week I starting contributing to the blog Losing It in Ottawa. I was finding it hard to write about fitness here on my blog, I wasn't sure it fit well. I could go on and on about fitness and my successes and (so far mostly) failures, and I think the Losing it blog is a better venue for that type of conversation. Please come visit me there if you wish, and join the conversation. There are some pretty amazing women writing about their diverse experiences. Interesting stuff.0
Add a comment
-
It has been a few months of huge highs and low lows. I know what the problem is and very little will change until I can address it. I started reading a book called "Fire Starter Sessions" by Danielle Laporte. I have to admit that I haven't finished it yet. It was an ebook I borrowed from the library and very quickly it became apparent to me that I needed a paper version so I could scribble notes and do the tutorials. I must get my hands on that book. It is a guide to making it happen. Make what you want, become a reality. Make what I want for my life my reality. I think my lows are often when I feel like I can't wait anymore, I am growing more and more impatient with my current life. And the reality that making a change isn't as far away as it used to be, that makes me impatient. And I get frustrated and have pity parties and temper tantrums. Oh ya, fun to be around, that's me.
The exercising I have been doing has been helping level off my moods. It amazes me how powerful activity can be. It's effects on my mood are strong enough and so clearly noticeable that I am able to fairly easily force myself out of bed at 5:15am to work out twice a week. The alternative, an extra hours sleep but feeling down, isn't really a viable alternative anymore. And the rest of the week I try to do work outs over lunch hour. I don't always get to them but the endorphin effect from one high intensity work out usually lasts a few days so as long as I get to the gym (or work out at home) every two days I am good. The fact that I haven't lost any weight has been a bit of an annoyance to me. I even let it get me down last week and stop me from working out. Wallowing in my own self pity, see, fun me again. Poor Kevin. Yesterday I read a post that reminded me what is important. I always say my main goal is to be healthy (and it is) but in the back of my mind getting skinny is always there. Sorry to add a second link in one post but this article is worth the read. If you are a fit woman who struggles with body image, you NEED to read this. Thank you EliteFTS and Alexander Cortes for this post. It is the truth, a truth that not only women but society in general needs to embrace "A Lion in Iron: Women- Be More Not Less". I am strong, much stronger than I was 1 year ago. And I will continue to get stronger. Healthy and strong are my goals. I needed that reminder.
1View comments
-
After the holidays I felt run down. I was very tired, my clothing was more snug than it had been and generally my mood was off. It was easy to set me off and when I feel like this my outlook on life can suffer. While M was brushing his teeth the other night he decided to step on my dusty neglected scale. It didn't register any weight at all and he asked me what was up. I took a moment and reset it for him and to prove it was working I stood on it. WHOAAAA! I had gained 10 pounds since my last weigh in (which in reality had been months before). So that probably means I gained more than 10 pounds because I think I had lost a few. F^&*$ Colour me not impressed.
But I had to be honest with myself. Since the school year started in September I hadn't been going to the gym regularly. Once or twice a month at best, and that isn't going to do much for my waist line, or my fitness level. Of course I do fair amount of reading about fitness (so much easier than actually doing it) and I had come up with some ideas of what I wanted to do. Kevin and I had a talk about things and he reminded me that I needed a plan. I had lots of ideas and goals but no plan. One of the blogs I have been reading is GoKaleo and her way of thinking appeals to me. No quick fix and no starving yourself. Fuel your body, exercise everyday and the results will come. She says that one reason weight is hard to lose, and any loss hard to maintain is that we don't eat enough food. That our bodies are suffering from under nutrition and our metabolisms are confused by all our dieting.
This is my plan:
GoKaleo links to an Energy Expenditure calculator in a few of her posts (and her Start Here section). I used it to calculate my energy expenditure on my low/no exercise days, and on my exercise days (different amounts depending on what I do). Last week I started going to bootcamp twice a week and on those days my energy expenditure is 2720 cals. On my non exercise days it is 2200 and on days when I jog or weight train (which I don't actually do at the moment) it is 2675.
So these amounts are the calories that my body needs to fuel my life. If I eat these amounts (in healthy, whole foods) I should maintain my weight, no losing, no gaining. I find it interesting that My Fitness Pal has the default energy expenditure amount at 1800 cals a day for me (and everybody I assume, it is a generic amount after all). That's whopping 400 calorie difference, which doesn't seem like much but when you take account that the amount of calories I had to eat each day on their "diet" was 1200 then it certainly becomes a big deal.
I decided that I still need to track my food with MFP. I am not using their base amounts but the tracking is useful. It reminds me to be mindful of what I am eating. Every day I go into my settings and change my calorie goal depending on what kind of day I will have. On bootcamp days I give myself 2400 cals (300 shy of my TEE Total Energy Expenditure amount) and on non exercise days I give myself 2000 (200 shy of my TEE amount). Now that I think of it I should drop that to 1900. I do want to lose some weight after all.
This week (and last) I attended bootcamp twice a week and played soccer once a week. Next week I plan on adding another gym visit. This visit will start with some strength training. Every 2 or 3 weeks I want to add another work out to my week. By the end of winter I should be doing some kind of exercise every day. At the moment I envision that as: Monday Gym Strength train or Bootcamp, Tuesday walk or jog, Wednesday bootcamp, Thursday Gym strength train, Friday Soccer, Saturday walk or Jog. Sunday Rest. Of course these are subject to change, and some days I won't make it, but one thing I am is easy on myself (sometimes too easy). The idea is that as long as I have a plan I shouldn't be as easily derailed.
The experiment part of this plan is the eating. As you can see from the calorie amounts I posted, I am eating between 700 and 1200 cals more than I was when I was following the MFP diet. I did lose weight on the MFP diet, but I also gained it all back really really fast. That is the part I am trying to avoid. I will report back as things progress and we can see if this will work. I expect it will.
8View comments
-
Everyone has their thing. I know I have mentioned before that I love to cook. I really do. It hurts my heart to buy things pre packaged. When I do, I don't enjoy the meals we eat. I know to some it sounds silly but it's just how I feel. But I also don't have time to prepare fancy meals and I find meal planning hard. I have a hard time deciding what to make and often chose the ~wrong~ thing. Things that take too long, or that don't turn out as well as I would like. I have learned that no matter how wonderful Pinterest is, you cannot always rely on the recipes posted on there. They just don't always turn out.
When I was on maternity leave with D2 I signed up for a meal planning service. At the time I used the free version. It provides you with a menu for the week plus a grocery list and plan for prepping. It outlines what you can do ahead of time and what to do during the week.
I really enjoyed it but when I returned to work the weekend prep work suffered. I didn't want to spend a few hours prep cooking on the weekend. I wanted to spend every waking minute I could with my little one (and when he napped I wanted to nap).
Two weeks ago I decided to try it again but this time I paid for the service. With paying I get grocery lists I can edit, lists sent to my iphone that I can use (and cross off) while I shop. And the ability to edit the menu to our tastes. My family and I are really loving the meals. It is work getting things started on the weekend, but it pays off in spades when I only have a small amount of cooking to do each weeknight and I am still getting healthy home made food on my kids plates. PLUS they love it. Twice since I started using the service they have commented on how much they have enjoyed the meals.
Happiness for me is a happy, well fed family. And these days I am happy.
Edited to add:
~ I guess I could tell you about the service. It is SOS Cuisine. I love it for many reasons but one really good one is that it is Canadian, fully totally Canadian (from Montreal I think). Oh and I forgot to mention that they work out their grocery lists with the store sales, you pick the stores you shop at and they tell you where the cheapest of everything is (based on your profile).
They didn't pay me for this post, they didn't give me anything. They don't know who I am, or that I have a blog. I am getting nothing for naming them here.5View comments
View comments