Triggers

Hola Amigos,

So tired today, so very tired. I always stay up too late on Sunday nights, prolonging the weekend, I figure. This weekend went by way too fast and I was trying to squeeze out every minute I could. It doesn't really help...

Weight loss is going well. However, the list of things that I must acknowledge as triggers keeps growing and growing. Outpost, peanut butter, Outpost peanut butter, rice cakes (how flipping sad is THAT?), boxed cold cereal, any type of butter spread, cheese, eggs (eggs are a trigger...what can I say about that?), nuts of many types, Weight Watchers frozen novelties, Skinny Cow frozen novelties, generic frozen novelties, frozen dinners, Morningstar farms meatless convenience foods (like soy corn dogs, 'chik'n' tenders).

I'm OK with all of this. I just wish I could keep my wits about me around these foods. But I just can't amigos. If they're in the house I'm going to think about them, and if I think about them I'm going to eat them. How I wish I was one of those people who could just let something be. But I never could. I'd try, but I'd just keep eating whatever it is until it's gone.

But now I have them in writing, right here in black and white. The things I noted above cannot come into my house. Well, maybe eggs. I mean, I never really binge on eggs. I probably eat them more often than a person should, but I don't eat too many of them at a time. It's not like I fry up a dozen eggs and have them at one sitting or anything. They're just so dang easy.

What else is new here...I donated blood on Saturday. I didn't realize how long it had been since the last time I donated. They're all automated now. You still need a human to take your blood pressure and test your iron and all that. But the lengthy (and I mean lengthy) questionnaire they used to give you is now on a touch-screen computer. It was interesting. I did OK, but it was obvious it had been a while because I was pretty wiped out.

But I was reminded why I do it in the first place. People always need blood. The nurses were telling me about a patient who recently used 400 units of blood during one procedure. He was a hemophiliac and was having surgery to remove a 200 pound tumor. They'd put the surgery off as long as they could, until the risks of not doing it outweighed the risks of doing it. I can't even imagine, all that blood.

I'm B+. Only about 12% of the population have this blood type, so the need for my type is almost always 'critical.' It's been critical since I began donating blood in the late 80s. Just the nature of the beast.

After donating, you get to sit in the commissary and have some juice and some sort of snack. The goodies this morning were donated by Panera...couldn't pass that up. So I had a muffin top. It was actually a pretty reasonable portion, nothing outrageous. I also had a little OJ. Canned OJ. That just doesn't seem right, does it?

I came in to work this weekend too. I've been doing so much training that I was falling behind in other things. I just needed several hours to focus and get some stuff organized and off my desk. Thankfully it worked!

Yesterday I took my dogs for a long, long walk. I walk them individually. It's just easier. Between the two they are 130 pounds of dog and it's a bit overwhelming when you're trying to carry poop bags (containing actual poop) and keep things under control. And I like the individual time with them. They are both excellent walking companions. Stella and I were out for over an hour, and Ravi for just over a half hour, so we really got to enjoy ourselves.

Well, I'm rambling again. I've got stuff to do so I'll sign off. This all started as an acknowledgment of my triggers, so I'll wrap up by reminding myself of that fact. I've come too far to let my old habits take over again. So what if I've replaced my old, really bad triggers (Arby's, Culvers, Krispy Kreme) with not so bad triggers (rice cakes, nuts, cold cereal). The behavior is the same and it's the behavior I need to stop. Overeating is overeating, n'est-ce pas?