This wasn’t a good week for weight loss. This weekend was my niece’s third birthday party and I decided to eat cake, some crackers, and French fries. This was a bad move. My stomach started hurting that night and I woke up the next morning with a very swollen stomach. I measured it and it was about two inches more than it had been. Monday was one of the most uncomfortable days I’ve had in a long time.

It’s about time that I learn that I cannot eat wheat and starch. Every time I do, my stomach does the same thing. It’s not just normal water retention, it’s really painful. I’m not sure if it’s Celiac or not but I do know that it’s best for me to just abstain from it.

I’m also starting to consider giving up and/or cutting down on my dairy consumption again. I love dairy and I’ve pretty much given up all of the other fun foods but I suspect that it’s what’s holding up my weight loss. Between drinking way too much coffee with cream in it and using cheese as an “I’m hungry and want something NOW” filler, I consume a lot of it.

I notice a very strong correlation between times that I use dairy as caloric filler and a resulting feeling of mental fog. That should be enough to make me want to cut down on it and apparently it is. I should probably be drinking less coffee anyway so it’s a good goal on multiple levels.

After tomorrow I will be done with my class and will start working on a number of other things… like getting enough sleep.

I’ve decided to go back to my old way of doing goals because for a long time it worked for me. I thought that trying to do just one thing for a longer period of time would be a smarter way to accomplish my goals but it doesn’t seem to click for me. I used to do rather well when I gave myself about three things to work on for a week.

And on that note, let’s talk goals!

This Week’s Goals

1) One cup of coffee a day – As I mentioned above, I’m trying to lessen my dairy intake and coffee intake. Since I currently have no cheese in my apartment, the cream is all that’s left to cut down on for the week.

2) Get enough sleep – I’ve been trying to make this a goal for this month and I’ve been doing a decent job so far but it was just kind of in the back of my mind. I’m going to go ahead and make it an official weekly goal. I always feel awful when I haven’t gotten enough sleep and I’ve been in that under rested state for a couple of months now. Not getting enough sleep also seems to make it almost impossible to lose any weight. I have an alarm that tells me when I should be going to bed but I’ve been totally disregarding it to finish homework.

3) Take it easy on myself – Things are kind of hard right now. Massage therapy is much more painful than I thought it would be, school is hard, work is stressful, and making a decision about my new relationship was emotionally exhausting. I feel like I just need to give myself some space to be a little emotional this week and to process things as they come up.