This is hard to admit, but it needs to be said. And it needs to be said publically.

The last month, especially the last week, has made the conditions perfect for anxiety eating. And blowing off working out.

I'm leaving this afternoon for a three-day trip to the west coast for a potential job interview. I am excited, nervous, hopeful, doubtful, and all-and-all anxious. I've been telling myself that it's okay to eat the full buritto, or order the cheesy enchilladas, or have that cookie in the breakroom. I've been eating most of my meals out because 1. I'm worried I'll eat everything in the fridge if I bring food home and 2. because I keep telling myself that I need to clear my fridge out for my trip. My short, short trip.

I have been choosing pretty healthy, minus the Mexican food indulgences. Sushi and subway mostly. But still. I need to get my act together. Even though I somehow still fit into my interview suit.

I'm also been blowing off workout out. Yes, my foot injuries are not all that great, although they're improving. Yes, I need to get the doctor to readjust my shoe inserts. Yes, I had trouble the last time I went to spin. But come on. I'm self-sabotaging, and I need to come out and say why:

I'm scared. I'm scared (and excited) that I might get my wish -- that I might be starting over at a new job, in a new state, many, many miles and mountains away. I'm scared I'll take the job and wont like it, that I won't make friends, that I won't find a good place to live, that I'll miss my family, that all-and-all I'll decide 8 months from now that I made a horrible, horrible decision.

And so I've been turning to food and tv for comfort. Food to calm me down and tv to drown out the nagging worries in my mind, that nagging worries that I can't trust my gut when I visit to make the right decision. Even though, with everything I've learned about this place over the last month, that 95 percent of me is saying yes. This is it. This is the life you want to live and the kind of style and culture and community you are seeking.

So there it is. I don't transition well to new places and I don't make friends easily and I'm scared.

I am getting better at it each time I move, though. I've learned from my mistakes and I need to trust myself to make the right decision. That if I do choose to move there, it will take six months to adjust and that's okay. And if it turns out to be the wrong decision, I move to another job. I've known people in my career who've stayed at a job less than a year -- hell, I stayed at my first job for only 10 months! I need to know that no matter what happens, I'll be okay.

And that no matter what, it's better to face these worries head on, instead of turning to food for comfort.

back on track ... part two

Time to get back on the wagon. I was doing really well last week -- weight in on Saturday morning at a low of 135! -- but then immediately fell off Saturday night. My friend came over and we had a huge meal. It would have been fine, except I had three breadsticks and two cookies. I think I about 2,000 calories in that meal alone. And I realized what I did wrong.

I knew that I was going to have a huge dinner ahead of me, so I didn't eat that much all day. Maybe 500 calories total. So by the time 9 p.m. rolled around, I was hungry and I just couldn't stop. Because I had deprived myself all day and after three glasses of wine, I could rationalize it all!

Well, the eating continued well into Sunday and Monday. And I didn't work out because 1. my feet hurt, 2. it's cold, 3. it's sub-zero cold and so hard to get motivated! All the lazagna and enchilladas and seriously, the cheese is addicting. I need to figure out how to make these recipes without the cheese!

Well, all the over eating and out-of-control feelings stops today. Here are the steps I'm taking.

ONE: I have a foot doctor's appointment this morning, which should answer a lot of questions about this nagging injury.

TWO: I packed my gym bag to either 1. do the noon strength workout, which is low impact and should be okay with my foot or 2. stop by the gym after work and either do the elipitical or yoga.

THREE: I also packed a lunch with the last of the cheesy goodness meals, plus a salad, yogurt, apple and popcorn. My plan is to eat a very sane meal, and then if the snacking overwhelms me this afternoon, to drink lots of tea and eat more 100-calorie popcorn.

FOUR: My died will be the following: 300 breakfast; 600 lunch; 100-200 snack; 600 dinner. This totals 1,600 - 1,700 calories and should be enough to get back on track, loose the water/cheese weight. Throw in some low-impact exercises like yoga, pilates, swimming, biking, weight training, etc -- and that should lower it to between 1,400 - 1,500.

FIVE: Prepare myself. My stomach needs to adjust to the smaller bulk of food after this weekend, and that's okay. I might want to eat to feel full even though I'm not hungry. Which is why I'm going to drink LOTS of water and tea!

I should be back on track in a few days, if not sooner! It definately helps to have a plan. :-)

People's attitudes and actions towards me greatly affects me, more so than most people I think. I'm a very emotional person that way.

When someone is uncharacteristically mean, condescending, bitchy, whatever -- especially if I don't know the person -- it really affects me. I get really upset. What did I ever do to them? Because usually in these situations, I'm the calm and cool one.

Tonight I think I finally get the advice my mom is always telling me -- put yourself in their shoes. The weight of the world is on them, not me.

It's on them. Not me.

On them. Not me.

On them. Not me.

Powerful stuff. I'll be repeating that mantra the next time a situation gets dicey. Which, unfortunately, seems to be happening more and more.

Taking a quick break from work... woke up way early to work the early shift, which means no weight loss to report.

BUT! I think I have a solution for my heel pain/foot pain issue.

I think it's the shoe.

I realized that my New Balance shoes are very comfortable with my insert and helped me curb the pain this fall. And when that pain went away, I switched my shoes.

(For those that have not been reading for a while: I ran a half-marathon and then was almost immediately crippled by plantar facciatus. Or however you spell it.)

Duh! I need New Balance running shoes. The seem to keep my heel in place. Right now I have an NB walking shoe on my right foot and saucony on my left. The NB feels amazing. A few jogging motions around the apt and it still feels good.

So this week, it's off to the running store.

scale part two

Well, I weighed myself this morning on my new scale.

Here are the result:

Weight: 135.6 lbs.
Body fat: 29 percent.

This is good. No, really. it is.

Good because even though I knew in my head that my old scale, which measured at 131 lbs this morning, was about 5 lbs light, I refused to acknowledge that. And I needed a wake-up call. I mean, come on. I buy jeans at Eddie Bauer in a size 8, but that doesn't mean I'm a real size 8. Every other store is a 10. And lately those jeans, which were once loose, are pretty tight.

It's also good because I now have a real number wich a decimal that will show me incremental results. So my goal is to get down to below 135 this weekend -- to ring in at 134.8. That's not even a full pound. But it is just more than .1 lb a day. Which is totally doable. I just need these small little pieces of motivation!

And it's already kind of showed. Yesterday night I kept thinking of making peanut butter toast. But I didn't. I drank my tea.

Yesterday's meals:

Coffee w/soy milk
Low fat yogurt with blueberries
1 slice of whole what artisan bread with natural peanut butter
1/2 Perkins cheese quesadilla
1/2 large salad with cheese, tomatoes, peppers and honey mustard dressing.

scale

I went out and bought a scale today. A fancy $30 one that says your weight to the .2 lbs and calculates an approximation of your body fat.

I bought it because I want to loose this weight. I'm sick of hovering around 130-132 on the dial scale. I need more motivation, and when I think back my most successful, healthy weight loss was partly motivated by such a scale. Well, not the body fat part, but the decimal part. Every morning I would weigh myself and try to eek out a .2 lbs loss. After a week, that added up to a pound or too.

So this evening, after eating dinner and drinking tons of water and wearing jeans and a sweatshirt -- I normally do this weigh in first thing in the morning, after the bathroom, sans clothes, before drinking water. It produces very accurate results that way -- I found out this:

I weighed between 140-141 (Okay, I weighed myself a few different times. I expect this to go down tomorrow morning)

My body fat percentage is 30 percent. Which means that I am right on the margin of being obese!?? What the ...?

It's on.

I weighed in at 132 today... so frustrating... I was just 129 a week ago...

And then a realized, for the last week, I've been on a cheese binge. Seriously.

It stops today.

I told T, the long-lost guy I met in college on a plane who recently resurfaced, that I didn't want to do whatever we're doing. Not that we're doing anything, since he lives on the west coast and I'm in the middle of the country. But that the past -- where he came and went from my life, where he had this unrealistic view of my Midwesterness, where he never actually pursued me when he had the chance -- had lead me to decide we don't have a future.

The thing is, he was always straddling the fence with me. And the past was repeating itself. He wanted to be a friend, but he never stayed in my life long enough to become a friend. He wanted to talk on the phone, but he didn't return calls. His actions didn't match what he was saying.

I don't need that. I don't want to be a place holder between girlfriends. I deserve better.

So right now, in this moment in my life, I'm taking a stand. I told him we don't have a future.

And that clears the path for me to find someone to have a future with.

I had an interesting thought last night. It might be just enough to push be out of the 130+ category and maybe even back down to 125, when I was before the breaking up began.

It's important for me to love and respect and care for my body, so somebody can fully love, care for and respect me.

I did the eliptcal for 30 minutes today.

It was quite an accomplishment...

After two weeks of not really working out at all ... well, it's hard to get momentum back up. Especially when it's so amazingly cold!!!!!

The woman at the soup shop asked me today if I was the one that always comes in with my boyfriend.

Seriously, I have to tell the woman at the soup shop that we broke up? Nearly four months later?

What the #$#!@?

More proof that these weight/strength/core classes are not only kicking my ass, but reshaping my body:

I lost an inch(!) from my waist! It's now 32" :-)

My newest thing -- strength training and working out on my lunch break.

Seriously. I love it.

I'm all stressed out when I get off at noon. I work out for an hour. I'm completely relaxed. And that's it. My stress levels stay pretty normal for the rest of the day.

My goal is two days a week of strength training.

a walk down memory lane

I really wanted to write about something else tonight, something completely off topic. About the guy I met on the plane my freshman year in college.

I met him in this amazingly romantic way, at least at 18 years old I thought so. We were flying home for Thanksgiving and a huge group of us went to the airport together on the metro. I flew to Minneapolis and T was on my same flight -- he had a connection there to California. Long story short, we sat together and we talked for the 2 1/2 hours. It was one of the amazing conversations where you feel like you've met the person before, but also a little awkward because you're trying to impress the other.

Long story short, we went on a few dates -- if you can even call them that, since it was college. He implied a lot of things, alluded to wanting to date me or more. But that's all it was. He never once tried to kiss me. Even when we spent an incredible romantic evening walking around the national mall. Not once.

And so, like any sensible midwestern girl, I wrote him off. I dated other people, who did kiss me. But in between each boyfriend he reappeared. He took me on dates. He alluded to a lot of things, but that's all he ever did. And I thought two things. That he was flakey. And that he liked the idea of me, a sweet midwestern girl meets the big city, more than the actual me.

So fast forward -- oh my god -- EIGHT years. And out of the blue he contacts me. He's living in California. He tells me he's been thinking a lot about me, how he regrets never pursuing me, how he thought I was his true love that night he met me on the plane. He implied he wanted to visit, wanted to become a part of my life again. He gets really excited when I say I've applied to a job in the same state he happen to applly to law school.

What the hell is a sweet midwestern girl suppose to do with that?

I did a strength class at noon and spinning after work. I'm a little sore, but not nearly as much as I thought I would be.

Which means ... time to run this afternoon!

I was contemplating running outside at lunch, but the sleet looks pretty messy and my muscles could use the extra 5 or so hours of rest.

The good news -- I'm down a pound to 130 (damn Christmas cookies!).

I ran five miles yesterday. In 14 degree weather.

And loved it.

And completely undid all the good by munching on a half-dozen christmas cookies and throwing back a beer at a coworker get-together.

A sugar addict, I am.

Today I went snowshoeing with D. My legs were happy that I stretched them out without killing them at spinning. My emotions? I wouldn't exactly characterize them as happy... but... there were moments. And what can I say, I miss the puppies.

Who were very, very happy to see me. Scout couldn't help himself and climbed up into my lap the second I got into the car.

Yes, in the end, despite the brief tears, it was definately worth it. It is what it is, he's not the one. But the puppies still love me.

a confession...

I have a confession to make.

I have become a sugar addict. Ever since cookie baking last week I have eaten my weight in chocolate, cookies, cocoa and sugar.

It's why I'm hovering at 130.5 pounds, a nearly 3 pound gain in 3 weeks.

It's always why I am feeling so lethargic lately. How many times did I run or spin this week? (Once each. Not good.)

On the other hand, I tried a new class yesterday at lunch and I'm pretty sure I'm going back. It's a core strengthening class. It was hard but I can definately feel it this morning.

I'm also dressed and will be leaving in a few minutes for a "body pump" class. Not sure what exactly that means, but it's worth a try. I'm also planning on taking a small break and then going running early this afternoon, when the temperatures start up in the high 20s.

I miss running outside! It's SO much better than a sugar rush (and inevitable slump).

I did not workout yesterday. I did spend the afternoon baking cookies with coworkers and then, after successfully eating none all day, I ate six. For dinner.

It's so cold here my car won't start. :-(

brrrr....

It's suppose to be just a few degrees below zero when the race starts this morning, warming to zero by the time it's over. I keep wondering if it'll be cancelled. The killer is I promised my friend I would do it with her -- although she'll be running a lot faster than me. So all of a sudden I find myself being one of those crazy runners that brave the extreme cold to run a 5k. All for a sticken' t-shirt!