So here I am at the end of 'Week 2', husband in the shower, lying on the bed with a cup of tea and some good music feeling very relaxed and happy. But not all of this week felt like this.
After all the alcohol and travel of New Years I wanted a quiet start to the week, but that's just not how life works now is it? Our return to work was greeted with chaos, to cut a lot of things short January is the second busiest month of our school year, just behind February. Immediately I was confronted with a sheer wall of things to be done and all the relaxed atmosphere of the Christmas break vanished off into the realm of memory. This stress was compounded on Tuesday with some contract negotiations regarding our leaving date from Korea which was not helpful in any way. Now for me, and I guess for many, stress is a big trigger for eating too much, not exercising and generally running myself into the ground. A couple of years ago, or even a few months ago being totally honest, this amount of work to do would have sent me into a spin, but recently I've been learning how to manage this better. So whilst for Monday (and then again on Tuesday) I needed to get my head down and work through all the challenges being thrown my way, I silently vowed to myself to make some time for myself later.
This is a really tough thing to do, when confronted with people asking ever increasing things from me I normally drop my own needs to finish everything I'm asked to. I inherit this from my Mum, an amazing, strong woman who would literally walk through fire for others and then go and do their shopping too, and at times its a great trait for both of us enabling us to cope with a lot and keep going. But sometimes it causes both of us to neglect ourselves, believing that our need to relax isn't as important as helping someone else. Sometimes this might be true, but often I admit it's not. I very much doubt that the world around us would collapse if we once said 'No. You go and do it, I need a break'. However, I recently learned some meditation techniques through an exploration of Buddhism and tried them a few times when I was feeling good, and felt even better. Then on that busy Monday suddenly my brain woke up and thought 'Hey, if they worked when we didn't feel stressed, maybe ... bear with me here, but maybe, just maybe, they'll work when we are stressed.' The rest of me agreed this was a worthwhile idea, so that night I tried it out, and, much to my surprise, it worked. I felt better.
After that the week presented some other challenges which were difficult, but with the new realisation that taking out 10 minutes for myself I could feel a lot better I handled it pretty well.
Then came Friday. Friday was my 23rd birthday. And I had a great day, my husband spoiled my rotten, my friends took me out for the night - it was great. But cake dammit. My colleagues at school bought me a cake, one of the parents of a student bought 8 handmade fairy cakes, icing and all. I don't know about your resolve, but its hard not to eat cake on your birthday. I'd exercised 4 days in the week, I'd cooked fresh, healthy meals every night. So I decided that sod it, it's my birthday I'm having some cake.
The control, in case you'd paid attention to the title of this entry, was that I had one piece of the cake. And I exercised and cooked again the next night. Also, I lost 1.5lbs this week - not bad, not bad at all.
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