There's a war going on up in here!

For the last few weeks, my eating has been out of control. Eating out. Pizza and cookies at work. Ice cream several times. I've been above a comfortable weight since before I started working, but to every over indulgence I said "meh." "Whatever." Inside, a small part of me was screaming "Noooooooo!"

That small part of me fought back this past week, and took my wallet hostage in the process.

I'm quite poor right now. The new job barely pays enough to cover my bills, credit cards, and the student loans which have now come out of deferment. I spent my 401K, my reserves, and my savings being unemployed, and racked up a few credit cards along the way. I cannot afford new toys.

Late Monday night, I found myself once again looking at the Body Media site. You'll remember part of the reason I purchased  a heart rate monitor was because I wanted to know how many calories I actually burn in a day. I chose the wrong heart rate monitor for that. I learned about the Body Media Fit Link from this post, and was instantly fascinated.

Does anyone who knows me not know I am gadget girl? And that I like data? This thing measures your movement, temperature, and electrical conductivity, which helps it track how many calories you burn in a day. It also tells you how well or poorly you slept? Count me in!

I originally thought it kept track of heart rate as well.
I was mistaken.

This thing is also expensive. Count me out! I've been drooling over it since the beginning of August, though. Then Monday happened, and now there's this:

all it took was a coupon and a late night...

I don't know if it's due to the Fit Link device, or the return to running as my main form of exercise (over the P90X and Insanity), but I had a better exercise week than I've had since March. The eating? Meh. At least the last 2 days have been good.

It definitely acts as a reminder that I have goals and I"m trying to do something here. It's not tight, but I'm constantly aware of it on my arm. That may be the best benefit yet.

So the plan now is to run every morning, then roll out and do ab work, push-ups and pull-ups in the time between finishing my run and getting ready for work. The ab work is from the video series. I also do at least one video a week, usually Yoga, stretching, or Kenpo when I'm at Superman's in the morning.

Running every morning. I think I finally figured out what my problem was with running too much or too hard. I've been focusing on making sure my glutes are firing when I run. I ran almost 19 miles this weekend, without injury, hip, or knee pain. I ran more miles this week than I have in any week since March. No pain, other than tired glutes!

In addition, this past week I've  been using the handicap stall in the bathroom at work to do push-ups on the bar. I know. That stall is not for able bodied people. However, we almost never have anyone visit the office who doesn't work there, and no one who works there needs that stall. I'm not comfortable doing push-ups in my cube, and I haven't found a better place. Also, I can't do a real push up yet anyway.

That's about all I'm doing at work, to move. I walk on my little half hour lunch, but I rarely take my little half hour lunch. Mostly I sit at my desk from clock in to at least a half hour and sometimes an hour after I'm supposed to clock out. I get up to go help the other guys, who sit one and two cubes away from me. One of them laughed at me for putting a reminder to stretch on my calendar. Considering how engrossed I get, and how much sitting I'm doing, it's necessary!

As for real life, I'm very excited to see Monkey Boy, who's home on leave starting this coming Saturday. I'm also working on getting everything together for Superman's and my annual birthday bash over Labor Day Weekend. I'm trying to decide if the purchase of several large tissue boxes and ping pong balls will be worth the promised hilarity, if I can get people to participate in my little game.

I'll let you know how that goes!