Miscellany - 15 March 2002

So, I'm sitting at work, minding my own business, making sure everyone else is doing their job (that's my job) and I get hit with someone who decides to brag about the fact that his class on reports beat my class on reports by 100 faq's written.

Having eaten far, far too much sugar and having had far, far too much caffeine, combined with far, far too little sleep, I'm a bit edgy and anxious (to say the least).

So, I ask him what he's talking about, having no clue in my sugar/caffeine befuddled, sleep deprived brain.

I'm then informed that the training classes which I set up and arranged for reviewing different reports available with our system, and in which we spent time looking at reports and writing FAQs about the reports in hand, had been in direct competition with each other for a dress-down day.

I feel rather offended as my class, the first one held, hadn't been told about any competition and the fact that we didn't know we were in competition, but overnight it had been arbitrarily decided that the classes were in competition, unfair to us as I'm sure we could have come up with a great number more questions had we known.

Yes, the above paragraph is a result of too much sugar, too much caffeine and too little sleep. My apologies.

In other news, I'm walking again at lunch.

I've known I needed to do something more active than wandering around the department, but I've been putting it off.

Recently my weight-loss has stalled and I've been getting more slug-like and depressed while losing energy and enthusiasm and increasing stress. This indicates a need for a release - thus the walking. Hopefully it will improve my mood enough so I'll leave the bad habit of eating when I'm not hungry behind me again.

I've been reading a book called "The Weigh Down Diet". It makes some very good, common sense points. The basics of the diet include identifying appitites. See, when you're hungry, you're not always hungry for food, you might be spiritually hungry for God. (sorry all you agnostics and athiests). One of the keys is identifying which hunger is which.

Another key dealing strictly with food is this: eat what you're hungry for and onl until you begin to feel full. This might take some time to figure out, but generally it takes much less food to feel full than you might think. My biggest problem has been getting over the eating when I'm stressed/depressed and the "clean your plate" syndrome.

Does this approach work? I've lost 31 pounds doing it so far, so yeah, it works. And the best part is that I get to eat anything I want - fries, chocolate, ice cream, steak... I just have to pay attention to when I feel full. It works! I've also noticed that now, when I begin to feel full, the food doesn't taste as good as it did when I started. But, I highly doubt anyone wants to hear about the diet.

On another note, I've got my tickets for my trip to Montana and this weekend I'll probably be making hotel reservations. I'm getting really psyched about this!

Gotta go!