The morning that hell froze over...

Before I went to bed on Monday night I had the following conversation with my husband. "Babe, I want to ask you to do something, but I'm scared that if I do, you'll do the thing I ask you." This obviously leads to my husband looking at me with a mix of scared and my wife is crazy. He's like "so what do you want me to do then?" After much contemplation and heavy sighing I eventually say "I want to go running in the morning but completely suck at waking up early. Can you 'help' get me out of bed? Remind me that I want to run in the morning?" So my husband agrees, but asks "and how do you want me to do that?" I tell him "just remind me I said last night I want to do it. If all else fails say Shan, if you don't want to get fat, you need to go for a run like you wanted to". At this point my husband looked at me like I truly was crazy, laughed out loud and said "ya f*%$ing right I'm going to say that to you in the morning" followed by something along the lines of "do I look stupid?". So we agreed that he would just remind me that I wanted to run and keep pulling the blankets off me until I got out of bed. Perfect.

So, in the morning, my alarm went off, I ignored it and my husband reminded me once or twice (or three or four) times that I wanted to go for a run. Somehow, him bugging me about it got me out of bed, into my running clothes and out the door. This is the point where hell froze over. I DO NOT RUN IN THE MORNINGS. I HATE MORNINGS!

But guess what? I did it and it felt pretty damn good! Yay me! And when I got home I ate breakfast too...raspberry yogurt with Kashi cereal. Good start huh?

On my way to work I stopped to get a Starbucks soy chai latte.  It was Tuesday after all.

I won't bore you with the details of my work day. Nothing too exciting happened. Lunch time rolled around and I had some leftover chickpea salad.

I love eating this salad the day after I make it. The flavours have melded beautifully by this point and it's tasty! After I ate my salad, I made it through the rest of my afternoon at work. Quittin' time rolled around quickly and I left work to go pick up my daughter from school. I'm enjoying those moments while I have them! When we got home we snacked on protein bars.

I figured I never ate one in the morning after my run, so it was fine to eat one in the afternoon. Once my tummy was full, I moved on to making dinner. I had to go back to work for my evening program and wanted to make sure I fed my daughter first. I wanted something quick and easy so we had BBQ veggie burgers with fries. I thought I'd take advantage of the remaining BBQ weather.

I had just a small handful of fries with my veggie burger. I didn't quite have the willpower to say no altogether...french fries are my weakness!  So I figured a handful wouldn't kill me. After I ate, I headed back to work. My program tonight covered a lot of material and even though my group participated very well, program went longer than usual. Then on top of that I had to stay late, catching a guy up who had missed a session. By the time I got home I was EXHAUSTED.  Early mornings and late nights don't mix well for me. This of course means that the second I walked in the door I decided to relax with a glass of wine.

That felt better! Unfortunately, because I had eaten my dinner so early (like 3:30 - super early for me), by the time I got home after work I was hungry again. I wasn't feeling very creative or much like cooking, so I had some more leftover chickpea salad...on a salad sized plate even!

This led to my next problem, one I've been having a lot more lately...late night carb cravings. I had managed to eliminate these for awhile and really wasn't doing much eating in the evenings. That hasn't been going so well lately. I had mad carb/crunchy/chip cravings which I eventually caved to. Jalapeno-cheddar Doritos.

So much for willpower! At least I can say that I had one handful in a plastic container and that I didn't return to the chip bag for more. The old Shannon would have definitely returned for more if not all of the chips left in the bag. So, I guess that's a step in the right direction. I think the best plan for me is to not have chips I like in the house. I'm weak! I don't know exactly why I've been having so many carb and late night snack cravings lately. I think it might have something to do with the fact that my meals haven't been as balanced lately...mostly because I've been unorganized in my eating plans. This was much easier in the summer for some reason. Things seemed more relaxed. Lately, I feel like I'm constantly on the go with no time to plan and prep. On the other hand, I'm keeping up with exercising, so maybe that's balanced enough? I don't know!!! What do you think??