cammosley

I have always tried to live my life with no regrets.  As I think back over 45 years, I can only think of 3:

1. Not picking up the phone to call my grandmother when I was a freshman in college on a particular day where I felt an urge to speak with her.  She passed away the next day.
2. Working on a Saturday at my first “real” job out of college, while my other grandmother lay in a hospital bed 4 miles away.  She passed away before I left the office.  I was her only grandchild and should have been there.
3. My participation in a failed marriage.  I learned a lot and have a happily ever after life now, but I regret the pain that I caused to my first husband and our families during the sad end of that union.

But recently, I struggle with one additional regret that is bigger than all of the others combined:  not having more children.  I have come to know that the one clock you cannot beat is the biological clock.  Too often I have put my career first, and the result is that at 45 I feel my family, while amazing is somehow incomplete.  My daughter often asks me if we can “get a toddler to live with us”.  She wants a sibling.  I get it, because I grew up an only child and all of my life I wanted a sibling too.  If I could go to a store and pick up 3 children to add to our clan, I would do it and pay any price.  I realize that I should not have waited as long after Elizabeth was born to have number 2.  Perhaps if I had not been so afraid of my ability to successfully handle the sweet little baby she was, I would have tried sooner.  But I waited a year to try for number two and the result was years of disappointment and heartbreak.  Every time I got pregnant, I knew the odds were against us, but I hoped and prayed that a miracle would happen and I would become a mom again at 41, then 42, then 43, then 44.  Every year we had the hope of a pregnancy that ended in the disappointment of a miscarriage.  By the time 45 came around, I had finally lost hope.  We are currently trying to adopt, but our daughter is now six and I fear the gap in age between an infant and a 6 year old might be too great and she may not get the friend she was seeking in a sibling.

I am so blessed with a wonderful husband, a beautiful daughter, an amazing family, supportive friends, and a wonderful career.  I never take any of this for granted.  However, if you are a woman 25-35, I challenge you to make an investment in yourself and freeze some young, healthy eggs.  When I was in that age range, freezing eggs was not common and was generally done for people with medical issues such as cancer.  Thankfully, the technology has become more available.  I look at it like an insurance policy for your future.  You cannot guess what life will bring, but if  you have healthy eggs stored you have more flexibility to have a family later, if that is how your life works out.  I recognize that there are many religious and ethical issues with what happens to the eggs.  I am Catholic and know that for some this may be a religious deal breaker.  I have prayed long and hard on this and believe that a loving God would not make this scientifically possible if he didn’t want us to do it.  You will have to make the choice that is best for you.  However, if you do not meet that life partner who makes you want to start a family until you are older, having this insurance policy may allow you to have the family you always wanted slightly later in life.

I offer this advice as someone who purchased designer handbags and jewelry with my bonus checks in my 30s.  Now I wish I had spent that money on a baby insurance policy and had frozen some young, healthy eggs instead…

After a 10 month break from writing, I am back.  I have done a lot of writing in my head that hasn’t made it to this blog.  I have had a million ideas on topics I would like to share that have gone undocumented.  But now that will change.  Whenever someone tells me something has changed in business, I ask ‘why now and who will be held accountable?’  I have to ask the same of myself today.

I realize that there are some areas in my life that need a reboot.  My health, my relationships, work/life balance, and my overall quality of life.  In the 10 months that have passed, my dearest friend has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  During that same period, I have invested $20k to adopt a baby.  Also in recent months, I have become incredibly close to 3 young girls who live across the street, who lost their mother to cancer last year.  Unfortunately for me, those big things haven’t driven the personal change within me that is needed.  I haven’t seen my dearest friend as much as I would like and I don’t speak with her more than once every week to 10 days.  I haven’t finished the mountain of paperwork required to complete the next 2 very necessary steps in the adoption process, so the baby formula that is in my kitchen pantry sits unopened.  And now my 3 “adopted” daughters from across the street are moving back to Mongolia to live closer to their grandparents and I am heartbroken.

I have to figure out a way to maximize my day, take better care of myself, and prioritize the areas that are important to me.  I need to get rid of a lot of “stuff” in my home/life and simplify.  I believe that if I do this I will find the laughter that has been lost in recent years and I will improve the quality of all of my relationships.  And it will all start tomorrow, which is 5 minutes away.  I am not sure how I will do it, but I will.  We will share the journey together.  And I will need your support, when I am tired.  So for now, I will say goodnight and I look forward to an amazing journey.

I travel a lot for my job.  I miss my family terribly when I am gone, but over the years I have had the opportunities to see some wonderful places in my travels.  A key element of business travel is eating.  The day usually starts at either the breakfast buffet with an omelet and bacon or a McDonald’s drive through.  Then mid day, we either eat out or have sandwiches/pizza ordered in, and ordered in lunch always includes cookies or brownies.  Dinner is generally a nice long meal at a restaurant or room service.

Since Sunday, I have been on business travel, staying in a required hotel that did not have refrigerators in the rooms.  Adding to my challenge, we had to be in a cold, dark conference room from 8am-6pm daily.  We then returned to our hotel to drop our laptops off and then we headed out to group dinners for 50-70 people at designated restaurants until 10pm.  No significant time allocated to workouts or personal time that would be enough to run to the grocery to purchase healthy options.

This week, I had to do what I could to make healthy choices among very unhealthy options.  For breakfast, I stuck with fruit and soy milk (offered at my hotel).  For lunch, they ordered salad for me, along with the other meals.  Generally, the salad was not enough.  One day, I took turkey off a sandwich and ate it.  Unfortunately days 2 and 3 were pasta and pizza.  Day two I had a salad, and a very small amount of pasta (5 bites, just enough to fill me up) and on day 3, I had one piece of pizza.  Thankfully, on day 4 we went out to lunch to a Mediterranean restaurant, so I had good options.  Dinners were very tough: a Brazilian steakhouse, Tex-Mex, and Italian.  I was able to resist appetizers on night 1, but nights 2 and 3, I was so hungry that I couldn’t.  The positive is that I made good choices for entrees and used good judgement in terms of portion control.  I resisted dessert every night.  Also, I didn’t drink anything except soy milk (morning), water, 1 Miller lite (I really needed a drink, but I just had 1) and caffeine free tea, all week.

So I will no longer hold the title of ‘Appetizer Queen’ (I usually order a lot of them), I will not select lasagna at Italian restaurants (it looked so good, but I opted for the broiled chicken – not as good), and I will not eat bread or desserts in restaurants at dinner.

The positive result of my travels was that my weight increased less than 1/2lb, going from 145.9 to 146.3, so I have still lost several lbs since the start of the program.  So I think that the program helped me to make the most healthy choices available to me while I traveled.  Here are some travel suggestions that I have to help you make your future trips more healthy:

1. Stay at a suites hotel that has a refrigerator in the room.  There are many options and are not usually more expensive than regular hotels.  This will allow you to go to the store and buy good breakfast options.  Some even have blenders and you could make a smoothie.  This would also allow you easier access to healthy snacks.
2. Bring small snacks such as cut carrots on the airplane.  This will help you resist the in flight Snack Box or airport temptations such as candy.
3. Bring some tea bags with you.  I like the Tazo Passion tea.  That way when you need a treat you can make your own if the caffeine free option if it is not available.  You can make the tea and then make it into ice tea if that is what you prefer.
4. Carry fruit & nuts.  I picked up a banana at the breakfast buffet each day.  It really helped me when the candy cravings kicked in mid afternoon.  Nuts aren’t on the challenge, but are very filling, so in a pinch they can help ward off cravings.
5. Tell people you are eating healthy.  I mentioned it to the meeting planner just before the trip, and while she ordered really bad for you meals for lunch, she always made sure there was a salad option.
6. Schedule meetings to start at 9am.  If you have any choice, push for 9am.  That way you can have 30 minutes for a workout in the morning, before you start the day.  Otherwise, it may not happen.  I carried my running shoes and several workout outfits all the way to Houston for no reason, because we started at 8am every day I just had enough time to get up, get prettied up (which for me takes 45 min-60), address a few emails, and get to my meeting on time, but not enough time (given that I was getting in at 10pm) add in a workout.

I am going to stick on the Healthy Eating Challenge phase 2 for a while.  I am going to add almonds and maybe an egg if I need it, but otherwise I am staying off carbs, bread, pasta, processed sugars, candy, etc.  I am also going to really try to exercise.  I need to add it in and this weekend is a good time.  I still haven’t had soda and I am really not going back this time.  Not having Diet Coke, is the hardest element of this challenge for me.  Really.  I see someone drinking one and I want to grab it out of their hands and drink it.  At my meeting I was noticing that not one of the people drinking diet coke was actually skinny or trim.  Interesting.  The people who looked the healthiest to me were drinking water, juice, or tea.  I have been sleeping well, because I have been eating better and working a lot.  I hope this continues.  It is great to be off sleeping aids entirely.

It was wonderful to be home to my family.  My daughter’s hug makes my heart melt.  I am so blessed to have her as my inspiration for longevity.  I look forward to my veggie soup this weekend and getting back on track with the challenge.  I see positive changes and I want to keep it up.  Maybe I will even take time to cook some of the recipes.  I am sure that the soup that I made will get old after a while, so I need to diversify.   One step at a time.  Until tomorrow, may your will be strong and your heart be happy.

As I finished my first work week without caffeine and junk food, I felt great.  Super hectic week, not a lot of free time, but I ate and drank what I needed to in order to not fall back into my old habits.  Today was the start of the second phase of the challenge.  Difficult for me as I had breakfast and lunch meetings at restaurants.  For breakfast, I only grabbed a banana and an unsweetened, caffeine free tea.  Not optimum, but sometimes you do what you can.  For lunch I selected Lebanese Taverna, a wonderful restaurant for my meeting.  They have a wonderful chicken shawarma salad  that is gluten free.  I had to hold the feta (which is almost a sin in my 1/2 Greek household) and hold the dressing.  But it was super yummy.  As a treat, since I was very good not to have any of their AMAZING bread, I allowed myself 2 spoons of hummus on my salad.  It was wonderful!  For dinner I was back home and finished off my soup from earlier in the week.  I feel good and neither hungry or full.

Tomorrow I start exercising.  A big day for me.  I will also try to follow the phase 2 menus for the next 2 days.  Unfortunately, I have to go on a business trip Sun eve – Thur nite and the hotel doesn’t have refrigerators in the room.  There is a grocery down the street, but I will have limited ability to have items that I will need in my room.  So I will be relying on the salad bar at my company’s office and smart menu choices at the restaurants where we are eating each night.  Not optimum, but I know I can make it work.

Now off to bed.

Shockingly my willpower has been strong this week.  I have not had a diet coke since Sunday, and with the exception of 2 starbursts on Monday, I haven’t had any candy for 4 days.  As I type I am looking down, the Swedish Fish and package of Gummy Life Savers sitting on my desk.  They are bribes for my young daughter that I removed from my crowded handbag yesterday (and I always wonder why it is so heavy, perhaps I should clean it out more often).  The great thing about this program is the mental aspect of cheating and feeling the need to admit it to people, which I don’t want to do.  Whatever deep inside is motivating me to stay dedicated to the program, appears to be working and for that I am thankful.  The other thing working for me is soup.  Julie posted a recipe for soup and I made some.  It tastes great and is on the program.  I haven’t grown the love smoothies but I do love soup, so I eat it a lot.  It gives me tons of veggies and some protein and fills me up, so I am sticking with it.  The fresh avocado added to it when I eat it, is lovely.

I have 2 big challenges ahead: a 5 day business trip starting Sunday and my need to start exercising.  I have a funny relationship with exercise.  I used to do it all the time and was someone you would consider to be very fit.  I ran races all the time and have a gym in my home.  Then when I got pregnant with my daughter I stopped because I was a high risk pregnancy.  In the 4 years since then, I have never gone back.  I wear a fitbit every day, but I cannot seem to get back into the swing of working out.  So that will be my challenge starting tomorrow.  Work out for even 15 minutes a day.  I need to make it a habit.  Hopefully combining it with this next phase of the program will help me do that.  Looking at my schedule, I don’t think it will happen today, but Saturday seems to be a nice day to start and then I will keep it up at the hotel during my trip.  If I can come out of this program making healthier choices, staying off diet coke (definitely the hardest thing for me) and exercising regularly, I will call it a big success.  Now off to work….

We woke to dense fog this morning, in VA.  Looking out of my window, I felt that the weather reflected the two prior days for me.  I battled headaches from the lack of caffeine and felt like a stranger invaded my home and left a bunch of raw veggies in my fridge that I wasn’t sure what to do with.  I was also tormented by some blueberry muffins that my daughter and I had made, that were sitting on the counter.  Ultimately, they ended up in the trash can and I completed days 1 and 2 successfully.

Day 3 posed a new challenge: dinner out at a restaurant.  Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday so we decided to go out for dinner with her.  We went to her favorite restaurant: Bistro L’Hermitage, an excellent spot in Woodbridge, VA.  I have my normal very unhealthy foods that order every time and I usually don’t even look at the menu.  But tonight was different.  I looked closely at the menu and selected a beet salad (dressing on the side) and a fish dish (hold the pasta).  I ate all of the salad except the candied walnuts and I used only a very small spoon of dressing.  I ate 1/2 of the fish (which was excellent) along with some spinach and veggies.  For dessert, I had a small bowl of blueberries and strawberries.  Overall a wonderful meal.  I left full (although I am a bit hungry as I go off to bed), and I have some fish left for tomorrow.  This experience is teaching me that there are healthy options on every menu and even with them portion control is important (they served me a lot of fish).  I am generally not a big fish eater, but clearly in this journey, I need to learn to appreciate it more.  I also need to continue to build the will power to resist the bad choices on the menu.  My biggest victory of the day was resisting the amazing fresh, warm bread that they serve at the Bistro.  I let my daughter have 3 pieces and I lived vicariously through her!

Today I feel like I came out of the fog both literally and figuratively.  My head did not throb as it has been during the past two days, I am sleeping without sleeping pills or Nyquil, and I am generally starting to feel better.  I am optimistic that day 4 and beyond will bring even greater clarity of how I can start living a more healthy life.

Today was my second day of the eating challenge.  In the morning, I was a bit rushed, so I didn’t smoothy.  Instead I had 1/2 of an avocado, a banana, and an apple.  I was pretty full until lunch because I was drinking a lot of water.  Unfortunately, work got busy and lunch was a quick trip to the kitchen to grab the other half of the avocado and an egg.  Thankfully, my dear Julie posted a recipe for soup that was quite inspiring, so during a 15 minute break in my conf calls in the afternoon, I ran downstairs and threw a bunch of veggies and some chicken in a pot.  The soup was wonderful for dinner and I have enough for a couple days.  Being able to make healthy meals ahead of time, are key to my busy lifestyle.

My challenges for the day included blueberry muffins that taunted me from their spot on my counter, the ever present urge for a diet coke and a glass of milk, and my strong desire for a snack (toast, cookie, pasta).  However, I was victorious today.  No soda, no junk food.  Just good stuff in perfect portions.  I did suffer from a headache for most of the afternoon and evening.  Thankfully, 2 advil saved me.  I don’t normally take it so when I do, it works well.

In addition to another day without junk or soda, I also set up a fridge in my home office that my husband got me 6 months ago.  It has been sitting up there for months hoping to be plugged in.  Today, while listening to a conference call, I cleaned up an area and moved the fridge and got it plugged in.  I think it will be great to have some carrots, celery, and other veggies right next to my desk.  I also like cold water and ice, so the fridge with the small freezer will be a help, as I ran out of water a couple times today.  I don’t always have time to run down to the kitchen from my office between calls (my house is spread out with my office as the farthest room away from everything).  This is a win for me.  To accomplish some organizing that will help me stick to my plan is a small victory that I will embrace.  I have a lot of organizing in my home office, but just like this healthy eating program, I recognize that small victories are great and I should celebrate them.

149.8, 38%.  The two numbers I saw when I looked down at my fitbit scale this morning to start my healthy eating challenge.  Weight is only my secondary motivation in this effort, but a very powerful one when you see numbers like 149.8 lbs and 38% body fat.

My primary motivation for participating in this challenge is to live longer than I might if I stay on my current path.  My husband is 6 years younger than I am, and having had my baby at 39 puts me about 10 years older than other parents of children Elizabeth’s age.  It didn’t occur to me until after I had my daughter at almost 40 that I may not live to know my grandchildren or even attend my daughter’s wedding.  Hindsight being 20/20, I now realize that I should have tried harder to have her even a year or two sooner.  So now looking forward all I can do is try my best to get to my healthiest place and enjoy the hopefully many years I have with her and my husband.

Today was pretty difficult.  I enjoyed my smoothie for breakfast.  I just threw a bunch of good stuff into a blender and it tasted good.  It lasted me until nearly lunch time and I wasn’t hungry.  For lunch I had an egg, some sauteed kale, spinach, and zucchini.  I didn’t feel hungry because I was drinking a lot of water.  But then around 3pm my candy craving tried to over take me.  I allowed myself 2 starburst candies + some almonds + some carrots.  I realize that I wasn’t hungry, but rather the stress of my day made me long for sugar.  Dinner was tough as my baby wanted me to make her spaghetti, which I did.  For me, avocado and veggies.  I miss milk, as I always have a glass at night with my daughter.  I also miss diet coke.  For today, I resisted the urge for both of them.  Overall, I am pleased with day 1, as I made it through with only a minor headache and I only ate the 2 starburst and almonds + 1 egg that were not on the list.

Tomorrow, I will try even harder.  I want to be the active and fun wife & mother my family deserves.  Changing my poor dietary ways will help me get there.  Looking forward to a good night’s sleep and day 2 tomorrow!

It’s January, so many people make New Year’s Resolutions and goals for self-improvement.  I am no different in my desire to make 2014 the best year ever.  For the first time since 2007, I am not trying to have a baby.  Not because I don’t want to have a baby, but rather because my doctor and I had a ‘come to Jesus’ talk last week.  She told me that my eggs were too old and if we kept trying to have a baby, we would keep having the heartbreak of failed pregnancies.  I am blessed to have a beautiful 4 year old daughter to show for my years of effort and I am coming to terms with the idea that she may or may not have a sibling.

So I have decided that things need to change in my life.  I need to balance my work, home, and personal responsibilities better.  I need to do more things for me that include: getting a good night’s sleep, exercising, eating better, and getting organized.  This is all very easy to say and much harder to do.  I have had many stops and starts in these areas over the years.  So I am going to try to be incremental in my approach, so that I can have small victories that hopefully lead to larger ones.

My friend Julie turned me on to the healthy eating challenge.  I need it more than most.  Every morning I go to McDonald’s and start my day with an egg mcmuffin (without meat) and a large diet coke.  I have given up diet soda during the 4 times I was pregnant, but I consider it my worst vice.  It is my one true addiction and will be the most difficult part of the healthy eating challenge.  For lunch I have something frozen, from a can, or some combination of left overs, as I hate to waste food.  For dinner, we order in, or I try to cook something but I have a fairly limited number of go to dishes that my husband likes.  My daughter doesn’t like much, so I have to cobble together some combination of fruits, carrots, cheese, maybe chicken (which she will eat sometimes) and pasta or rice (with no sauce).  My husband is a snacker.  He loves candy (so do I) and snacks.  They are all over our house.

The healthy eating challenge will be very tough for me.  In addition to my busy life, I have a business trip right in the middle of it.  However, I am going to do it as a first step.  A first step to a new year.  A first step to getting my body back.  I am not sure where my size 4/6 self went, but now she is a 10/12.  Once I start to get my body and health back, I will continue to work on organization and other “areas of opportunity” in my life.

I am excited to get started and will need and appreciate the support of those doing the challenge with me.  More to come as we start the challenge on Sunday, 1/12…..