One month progress update

So, as of today, we have been on Keto for 28 days.  And in that month, I have lost 11 pounds.  Of course, I would be much happier if this was a larger number, especially when I compare that number to some of the outrageously awesome losses I have seen from others.  BUT eleven pounds is nothing to balk at!  And that's 11 pounds comfortably, easily, and consistently. I'm going to try to get some measurements later today and perhaps some one month progress pictures, though I'm pretty sure you won't be able to see much.  Eleven pounds just isn't as evident on my frame.

If I stay on this consistent loss schedule, hopefully in the next month,
I'll start noticing it in my body. I'm going to go through my clothes this week and maybe I'll be able to pick out some things to track some of my non-scale related progress with.


More importantly is how great I feel!  I never felt particularly deprived. We've been trying a ton of new recipes, including yummy sweets and breakfast options.  We've been eating 95% whole foods, which is super important to me. I'm so much more aware of the food that we're putting into our bodies.  My energy level is more consistent than it has been in years. Combined with my medication and exercise, my mood is super stable. This style of eating really, really works for my body!

My First and Final Commentary on Steubenville

I am not going to go on a lengthy rant about rape culture and human rights for women. I'm not going to tell you how sickened I am by the outcome of the trial.  We've read it all.  We've seen it all.  We've been paying attention.  God, please, let us all have been paying attention.

I am going to say that I will be using this horrific situation as a catalyst to have another discussion with my son about rape, consent, respect, healthy boundaries, responsible substance use, and consent consent consent consent consent.

We all need to talk to our children. We all need to let them know that anything less than an emphatic YES needs to be treated as no. We need to talk to our kids. We need to talk to them openly and frequently.  From the very beginning of family sexual education, we need to be talking about boundaries and consent. It's so very easy and so very hard all at once, but please, fight that urge in your head to gloss over sex and gloss over the messy parts. Telling your kids and teenagers about the nitty-gritty is not going to make them go out and have a ton of sex. They are still your kids. They still have the values that you have instilled in them from day one. We need to talk to our kids.

Keto Trial Week One

Wendy and I decided last week to give following a new eating style a trial. Now I know that the keto diet has some skeptics and some folks who are downright opposed to it. With the vehement nature of some of the responses we have gotten, I am starting to feel like there are some moral implications that I am unaware of. Really!  Folks get downright hostile about it!

I can make you a gargantuan promise, my dear friends. With as many problems as I have had with food, body image, nutrition, and fitness, there is absolutely no way that I would take on a dietary change without a very large amount of research and consideration. I am not, and have never been, a fad diet follower  I never tried Atkins, South Beach or the Zone, didn't jump on the cabbage soup diet or Slim Fast. The Biggest Loser style of dieting scares the bejeezus out of me.

I have read so many peer reviewed research studies on the topic that I feel as though I could probably be published in an academic journal myself if I were inclined to write my own paper.

Not being someone who enjoys preachiness OR conflict, I think I'm just going to start carrying around a list of resources and references to hand out for anyone who asks about it. That way I  can stop feeling the need to justify my decision to everyone that asks about it. We'll see.  Hopefully the questioning will slow down as people get used to us eating this way.

In the past week, we have eaten better than we have eaten in years! I've been absolutely impressed with our decisions.  Every meal has been whole foods and cooked from scratch. There are no "frankenfoods" in our house. We've tried a number of new recipes, including an AWESOME one that I made up on my own yesterday morning. I might even get around to posting it here once I do some tweaking.

I've lost a few pounds, but more importantly, I feel good. I haven't been having having my normal 2 pm energy crash. My mood is surprisingly consistent. Considering it is early March, this is miraculous for me. Normally Seasonal Affective Disorder would have left me in a very, very dark place. Now, I am by no means claiming that not eating carbs has cured my mental illness. My anxiety is still through the roof. I've still had down days. But, even if it's a placebo from taking better care of my body and getting a little self-esteem boost, there is a definite difference in the stability of my moods.

A day couldn't get any shittier

And the I added in alcohol and looked at Facebook. But I'm jumping way ahead of myself.

Friday morning, work was going along swimmingly. I was feeling much, much better about work in general. I was taking calls.  I was fixing issues. I was going through my quality checklist on every call and making sure that I was doing exactly what I was hired to do. The anxiety from earlier in the week was become more controllable and manageable. I was starting to think that, hey, maybe I really could do this. Maybe I had finally found a part-time job that was do-able regardless of my disability.

And then I get called into a private, virtual "conference room" and told that, essentially, someone had complained that they heard Riley in the background of a call and because this was not the first time one of the trainers had heard background noise on my calls, I was in violation of the "distraction free work environment" agreement I had signed. The HR employee that presented me with the information about these calls was aggressive and caustic. Let's call him Dick.  By the time Dick finished accusing me of essentially lying to the company about having a home that was set up to allow for an appropriate work environment, I was in tears.  And he ended the conversation with, "Okay, well, I need to consult further with the rest of the HR team. So, go ahead and get back on the phones".

Now unless the company intends to send the impression to its customers that their tech support reps are a bunch of sniveling ninnies, there was no way that I was in any shape to take calls. The conversation with Dick had left me feeling upset and defeated. I messaged my trainer and told her there was no way I would be able to complete the day. I was a mess. She very sweetly asked me to call back into the conference line to talk with her. And then pulled a really crappy bait and switch by bringing Dick back onto the line as soon as I got logged in. Being the personable guy he is, he essentially told me that he agreed that I shouldn't get back on the phone and that he would have another member of the HR team call me later in the afternoon.

The call was not even slightly encouraging. "Tuesday", the HR chick, was cold. The distraction-free work environment policy was read to me verbatim. I was asked if I understood that and asked if I understood how my dogs being in the back ground would go against that policy. When Tuesday asked if I had any comments to make, I explained that we had less than one week to go in training, during which I would gladly take my dogs to daycare to ensure they were not an issue and that once training was finished Wendy would be home to keep them occupied and out of my office. Tuesday didn't indicate one way or another that plan would be enough. She told me that there would be a further meeting with my training team and I would hear from them with the final decision about what action would come next before my next scheduled shift, either sometime over the weekend or at the latest, I could call in on Monday morning at 8:00 a.m., one hour before my shift.

I spent the rest of Friday feeling humiliated and disheartened. Regardless of all the hard work I have done to conquer my anxiety, I might lose this job. I was adjusting to the idea of working again. I have started enjoying having a bit of extra money to put into a savings account and a bit of pocket money to toss at wedding planning.

The remainder of the day was spent cycling between crying and giving in to stress-induced narcolepsy.  By the time Wendy came home from work, I was quite frankly spent. The idea of dinner out was the only possibility that I would eat, because there was no way in hell that I was going to cook.  Unfortunately, I made the decision to have a very large margarita with dinner and to surf Facebook. A perceived jilt has pretty much determined the rest of my weekend. I have felt pretty useless and unwanted. (Though the slight still burned, it was absolutely the result of drinking while I was already feeling vulnerable.)

So, here I sit. Completely unaware if I have a job.  It's Sunday at 8:45 a.m. and I have yet to hear from them. I guess we'll find out tomorrow morning.

Did I shave my legs for this?

Last night, Wendy and I were chatting about my day at "work" and we were both really laughing about the ridiculous things that I do in between taking calls. I guess there are more benefits to working from home than just the great commute.

- Propped my legs up on my desk, pulled out my electric razor, and got rid of the entire winter's worth of hair growth,

- Spent entire days folding origami flowers and hot gluing stems to them,

- Colored and filled in 12 days of guided journaling pages,

- Researched wedding traditions and honeymoon locations,

and that was just this week.

On the agenda for this weekend, desk shopping at Ikea and at least one day where we don't take our slippers off.