In the middle of the night

It only took one day for me to miss a day of my avowed "at least one sentence" posting that I added to my Perfect 10 challenge. Wednesday was a crazy busy day at work, after which I went straight to PT, then to a meeting with a friend, and on to dinner out with that friend (where I stayed totally on plan). I had a 20 ounce coffee at the 5 p.m. meeting that normally wouldn't affect my sleeping, but apparently tonight it did.

I got home from the long-full-day-into-evening around 8:30 and was probably asleep by 9:30; but it's now 2:30 a.m. Thursday morning, and here I sit bright eyed and bushy tailed, unable to go back to sleep after waking up a bit ago for a bathroom trip. I was lying in bed thinking of how I forgot to write my "one-liner" here yesterday, so finally decided to just come downstairs for a bit and wait for sleep to return.

Thanks for enduring my rant/verbal tantrum/whine of a post Tuesday. While others were likely suffering through my ranting and raving, I felt better and went on to have a clean food day, followed by one yesterday. And so far, despite my paragraphs claiming different, I have been blessedly free of food-obsessive thoughts. YES! I know they'll return, but every day where it isn't a struggle to stay clean is a true gift. The catharsis of unloading my pent-up negative energy with the written word is truly therapeutic.

As I was lying in bed a bit ago thinking about missing Wednesday's post, I was also aware for the first time in weeks that my stomach feels empty. Truly gnawing empty. It's taken 3 and a half full very clean days for me to experience that feeling since my wanton holiday eating ended. I've said before on this blog that resisting true empty stomach hunger is much easier than resisting the emotion-driven food obsession that hits at times. The empty stomach sensation feels somehow normal and even righteous - an expected physical state when one isn't maintaining an ongoing food intake that prevents that feeling from happening. I feel it as I sit here now, but am in no way tempted to eat. I'm grateful for it as it tells me I'm doing the right things!

I'm loving physical therapy! Since my gym visits are still curtailed for rehabbing the knee, PT is providing me with the physical outlet I've come to need in order to stay sane and not too irritable...smile. Each day I go, Katie is giving me more and more to do, and increasing my stationary bike (with no resistance) time by 30 seconds. I'm up to 9 minutes - woohoo! Not exactly the hard driving 45-50 minutes on a fully inclined treadmill or the elliptical, but at least it's something. Yesterday I asked her if I could begin stationary biking on my own at my gym - she said that would be okay. Never one to not push the envelope, I asked if I could go for 25-30 minutes. She said, "Well, you can build up to it. You're at 9 minutes now, so you could go to 10, then 12...build up slowly....". HMMPH! Why build up slowly when I can powerdrive it and end up screwing up the knee again?! As hard as it is for me to be patient, I'm committed to following directions here - for once in my life. I want to move beyond this so I can begin to add the really good workouts back into my program. "In time, my little pretty...in time."

I think that's it for now. I mentioned considering posting body pics to begin tracking my progress a couple days ago. Committment: I will post pictures Friday when I update my Perfect 10 progress. If I don't, know I'm full of sh*t and avoiding it...and feel free to call me on my crap (but be sweet about it!). Actually I'm thinking it will be a good thing and give me, as Steve said, the same visual impact of my progress that others see. And with that, I'm going back to bed!