Draw a Line and Start Over

When I was a crazy single 20-something living in Washington, DC I wasn’t the best budget keeper. I think I’m still paying for groceries I bought at the Not So Safe Safeway. Anyways, my Dad was a trooper. He gave me lesson after lesson about budgeting, saving and keeping my checkbook balanced. Of course I would get my bank statement and it wouldn’t match my check book so I would draw a line in the check ledger and write “Start Over” and write the bank balance. To this day my Mom, Dad and brother still make fun of me for it. I did one better, I married an accountant. (And let the record reflect I still HATE budgets)

I feel like I need to draw a line in my health journey and write, “start over”.

I haven’t posted in almost two weeks, and for good reason. I was part of the team who put on “Buffalo’s Best Fundraiser”, The BASH last Friday. It’s an event with 4,000 of your closest partying friends all benefiting the American Red Cross here in Buffalo. To check out photos of the event look here. We are very proud of it. Best and most successful BASH ever- kudos to my team. Anyhoo, to put on a BASH of that magnitude you pretty much put your body through the wringer. I JUST (a week later) feel caught up on sleep and can feel all of my toes again.  Not for the faint of heart.

And in this process my health, and me, take a major back seat. You eat what you can when you can, you party a little bit to enjoy the time with your awesome work buddies and your work out consists of hauling boxes. And the stress. Well, the older I get the more the stress affects me. It’s pretty rough on my body. I had some added stress this go round, but I will talk about that in a later post when I can speak more about some exciting (and sad) changes I’m taking on.

I have not logged a single bite of food, I have gain 2 pounds and today was my first run in over a week and a half. That’s how I know I’m coming back to the land of the living healthy- I had my personal best run this morning. Perfect weather, heart rate strong and only walked three times for 45 seconds each. Happy with that. I have my big fear conquering 5K next week, which I talked about here.

I have some upcoming Dr’s visits where I am striving to get off one medicine so I need to get this engine back in gear. I’ve been hanging out at this weight for a while now and I still need to lose 20 more pounds so I the time is now to kick it into gear.  I blame the dark chocolate non-pariels. And the wine. And the ice cream. And the…….

I’ve come this far, it’s just a matter of time until I reach my finish line. It’s all part of the journey.

Total side note: I have been reading some of my social media and blog friends that are struggling with health issues, their own health journey’s, marriages and even losing their jobs. I will say, I think of each of you and find your story sharing an inspiration to me each and every day. The beauty of the internet (which sometimes people don’t see) is that we all can share our common struggles so that we can have people support us, cheer us on and know that they too are not alone.