School's Out...

For the Summer!

Hence, a new entry appears. I have learned so very much in the past six months of teaching. I've tried to verbalize this experience to numerous people, but I always feel that I can't quite communicate all that I am experiencing. I want to include every detail so the person can understand, and I end up feeling like I'm prattling. This is particularly frustrating because I want to share this with my friends and family. I need to share this because it is such an important time in my life. I expressed this frustration to my mentor teacher whilst on the phone this morning: "Unless you are a teacher, you can not truly understand the internal effect of this craft" ("They don't really feel this sh*t son!").

The most important lesson that I've learned is that teaching is my gift and I feel complete when I fully express it. However, I am also excited to have a much deserved break from these heathen children ("Children of the Corn" is my pet name for my kids. They're too young to understand the reference. The review "frightfully entertaining" is a perfect description my first 1/2 year of teaching.)

I am refocusing on my diet. I have not gained any weight, but I haven't made progress in losing weight. I could lie and say I am at a plateau. I'll sacrifice pride for honesty and admit that I've had neither the time nor the commitment since April.

Living a healthy lifestyle is a part-time job. When I first began my commitment in January, I swear I put in at least 15 hours a week in to planning, exercising. cooking, and convincing myself not to have that second glass of wine. Once I began teaching / working full time, I could not commit as much time as I needed. If you're thinking those are excuses, I'll say they are damn good ones. Now that I have a couple of weeks off, I can refocus on shedding these last 20 lbs. The goals for this week are as follows:

Step 1 - Eat

Weight Watchers is back. I enrolled again for a refresher course on planning my meals and watching my portion sizes.

Step 2 - Exercise

Working out 3x a week

Step 3 - Document

Document everything: inches, pounds, food, workouts.

This is really the hard part. I am not a record keeper. To further elucidate my point I will make confession. I'm a hard worker, borderline workaholic, so I have always received stellar performance reviews on my jobs. Unfortunately, when it comes to turning in paperwork on time I ALWAYS receive a "needs improvement." I always resolve to work on it, but paperwork always seems to fall to the bottom of my to-do lists. Therefore, I realize that this goal is going to be a b*tch on wheels, but I need to be able to troubleshoot any errors and measure my success. It's too easy to forget that 10th chicken wing at happy hour.

I also want to really focus on strength training, and the only way you can do that effectively is to document your routines.

I'll hit you off with a recipe later on this week.