the weekends

I don’t talk about being a stepmom much, at least I don’t feel like I do. It’s equal parts frustrating and good; I do what I can but I think I will always be on the outside.

We’ve been making an effort to stay in Chicago when we have Stepson. This weekend, we did homework, built train tracks, went to a cheaper version of Chuck E Cheese with a Groupon, grocery shopped, made s’mores, went to church, practiced writing and sight words, and lazied around a little.

It was good. He had a good time.

There’s no denying by anyone that he does better when he’s with us. He sleeps better, listens better, eats better. He pooped on the potty (hooray! will celebrate this EVERY TIME.). We talk out our feelings and we turn away from excessive treats and watching TV (because we don’t have one).

But we also don’t have any other kids. It’s quieter at night. The routine has been down since day one on bedtime and expectations, plus what we have food wise in the house. Husband is pretty strict on how he behaves.

 

We are not super parents, we don’t have all the answers.

We only have him a couple times a month, so we all tolerate each other well. We’re trying to ease into taking him a little more here and there, like a Thursday and Friday plus a weekend. I’m nudging Husband to say ‘yes’. I think it’ll be good for all of us.

 

He likes his room, btw. He’s a boy, so he didn’t go berserk, but he enjoys the large, empty space to play in and was very, very good about cleaning it up (with a little whine to go with it).

 

He and I don’t do so well on hugging it out. I don’t like to force it, even though others try to force him to hug me. I want him to want to, because I know kids will hug when they mean it. Finally, finally, tonight he voluntarily came and hugged me good bye without Husband prompting. It was nice.

back in the saddle – mfp

I haven’t blogged about weight and such since June, so I thought I should remark on that.

I was doing so good, wasn’t I? If you look back in June and read the posts I have there about eating and mental weight loss and all that goodness, I seemed to have a handle on things. Yay, June me!!

And I haven’t completely fallen off the wagon. It’s just that I started to slip back into the habit of saying, ‘Oh a little of this or that won’t hurt me’ or ‘I’m not full yet’ or ‘I’m hungry, not bored’. The inner dialogue that just kind of gets you into a place where you’ve eaten half a bag of chips and then trying to figure out how to reverse that from having happened.

Also I spent half the summer and September sucking down medium sized iced caramel lattes from Dunkin Donuts about three times a week. Yeah.

And then the big whammy. I was a fool and, even though we get NO trick or treaters in my neighborhood bought three (count ’em 3) bags of mixed candy at the beginning of October. I thought maybe I would celebrate Halloween every day of October with a little candy treat!

Except I was eating two for lunch, and about four or five with dinner. So a 50 calorie Twix (nothing at all!) was being added to like five other pieces of ‘low calorie’ candy and I was having about 400 calories on those alone. A day.

Yikes. You see where I’m going with this?

So I stepped on the scale around Halloween and was not at all surprised to see a number in the low 140’s staring back at me. I gained about 5 or so pounds.

I started back on MFP on Monday. I tried to do a sort of cleanse with my body where I only had salad for lunch and dinner. (I had spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with a burger a day. Because that’s healthy.) I really feel good and stomach doesn’t feel bloated, like it did when I was eating junk.

Can I tell a quick story about how bad I’ve gotten with food? Saturday I got a train wreck burger. That’s a burger with everything, plus some. Ate the whole thing — with a salad as my side. Because that’s gonna cancel it out. Then Sunday we left Michigan, stopped at a gas station, and I got/ate a bag of Combos and a thing of Twizzlers. Two things I never eat but apparently really needed, because I was ‘hungry’. YIKES.

I’m working on refocusing, reprioritizing myself. Trying to hit my triggers on the head and keep walking. I slow down when I’m eating to let my stomach fill up. I’ve been using NaNoWriMo as a way to block my eating — writing 2,000 words before I eat dinner means I’m eating with Husband and not snacking until he gets home.

Eating right is hard. So hard. I’m not surprised that I gained some weight back. I didn’t want to, but I did. I’ve said before that I might have to always count my calories, and I’m okay with that. It sucks, and it’s tedious, and it makes eating out a bitch, but I need to do it.

I’ll check back in a couple weeks and hopefully I’ll have some real progress to report.