Oh happy days :)

Yes I am in the middle of the hell weeks I formerly mentioned, and yet I keep having good fortune and happy things happening to me :)

My happy things:
1.  I was offered another summer internship interview, this time at Cornell
2.  I was awarded another scholarship, this time specifically for lab animal medicine
3.  My group got 39/40 on our 2nd homework assignment (this is especially awesome because we received a D on our first assignment)
4.  Nathan is taking me to see Beauty and the Beast next Thursday at the Orpheum :)
5.  I was offered the internship position at the U of I - Chicago :D !!!!

Yep.  Happy times.

In other news, I've also started another weight-loss journey.  The stresses of vet school and certain things happening in my life lead to a ridiculous cycle of me eating anything and everything that sounded moderately tasty with zero regard for portion control.  I recognized this pretty quick but decided I didn't care.

Then I stepped on a scale, saw the number, and decided I'd be okay so long as I didn't get back up to X (the number I weighed before starting Weight Watchers back in the day).

Then mid-February hit and I had been avoiding the scale but decided to jump on to see where I was at... and the number was X+1.  As soon as I saw that I noticed that yeah, my pants weren't fitting super well and yeah, I was getting more tired and lazy with exercising Duke (a lot more fetch, a lot less walks - which I had been blaming on the cold weather).

So then I realized I should actually do something about it, but I decided I was going to be more realistic about things and take it slow.  So I gave myself February.  I literally made the conscious decision that I could keep eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted up through February 28.  But come March 1, that was it.  I was on a diet.

So March 1st came and it was a Sunday that I had to work.  I drive by a Culvers on my way to/from work and the Flavor of the Day was Cookie Dough Overload and I thought to myself, well what's one more day?  Thought about stopping on my way back all through my shift, it was the thought of that delicious frozen custard full of delightful cookie dough that kept the smile on my face while dealing with rude and ignorant clients.  And then I got in my car to drive home (with my pit stop) and realized what I was doing.

I didn't go to Culver's, I went home and ate scrambled eggs instead.

That was a pretty proud moment for me and my motivation.  Since then I've been counting calories every day and keeping within my range of desired intake.

I realize it's only been 5 days, so it doesn't really seem like a big deal.  But for me, that's pretty damn good, especially compared to the last few months.

On the down side of that, while my current weight is X-4 (it dropped during February despite my laxity - I was probably still semi-conscious of it), it hasn't changed by an ounce since March 1st.  Which is disheartening, I don't expect to drop pounds every day, but it's just frustrating to see zero progress with all of my hard work.  Again, I know it's only been 5 days.  It just feels like longer.

Anyway, my goal is to keep tracking my intake for all of March.  I might do little changes as far as activity goes (like taking the stairs more, walking Duke more, etc) but that's not my focus for this month.

On April 1st though my plan is to add regular exercise into the mix.  Again, I'm going slow with this, and I'm debating giving myself a non-tracking day (1x/week, 1x/2 weeks, or 1x/month??? not sure yet) but I'm thinking in April I will start focusing more on the activity side of things.  I also think it might be easier to do it then, hopefully the weather will be nicer and more enticing by that point.

Well I think that's enough about me.  Time to try to refocus on this current pharmacology lecture (actually fairly entertaining this time).