What's kept me away

What you are about to witness is my journey to truth and an attempt to explain, but not excuse my behavior for the past month or so.  I would like to start off by saying that February is historically the worst month of the year for me.  I grapple with all the things that everyone else does.  February is bleak and horrible for the following reasons:

• The days are short, the sunshine is infrequent (don't ever let me move to a cloudy/rainy climate, I will wilt) and its blustery, cold and stupid outside.  
• We had over 16 inches of snow in one week...can you say recipe for comfort food?  
• I hate Valentines Day for several deep-rooted reasons that started in my teenage years and continue to this day.  In a nutshell, it tends to make single people feel overly lonely and couples feel artificially obligated...I think its a rotten, pressure-filled holiday.  I long for February 15 pretty much as soon as I see the first pink-red-purple-heart-shaped candy hit the store.
• Due to the dreaded V-Day madness, there are temptations galore which hit me in my weak places.  Chocolate covered everything, truffles, enticing cupcakes, frosting, frosting and frosting... its a sweets addict's worst nightmare.

The past 4-5 weeks have been a series of false starts for me.  I would start the week or weekend with weak resolve to maintain a clean eating/exercise program and then the downward spiral set in...the self-loathing and frustration would take root and refuse to budge.  Too much pressure!  Pressure to have my act together, pressure to be mentally/financially/emotionally/professionally fit and I was failing all over the place.  It was a darkness that I didn't fight (or at least didn't fight hard enough) and before I knew it, I had gained back the weight I lost during the 21 day challenge in December.  And I hated myself for it.  Of course I tried not to let that show, I put on my very best Mary Poppins face and told everyone that everything was fine.  Fine, I tell you!  Except it wasn't fine and I lost my fighting spirit.

I took a week long stay-cation at the end of the month and it proceeded to dump the remaining 12 inches or so of snow on the ground.  While I definitely made some more poor eating choices, I used this time to give myself the room to breath that I needed.  It was a time to take stock of my situation and identify the root cause, rather than the symptoms, of my bad habits.  A friend of mine coined this time my "sweat lodge" journey which is funny because it was so stinking cold outside and I kept having this mental image of Dr. Quinn's hunky Sully squatting in a sweat lodge with Cloud Dancing, but she was right.  I needed to marinate in my pain a little to figure out what was wrong and why I wasn't doing anything about it.  I was able to see and understand many of the unresolved things in my heart/mind that needed to be addressed so I could move forward and heal.

Of course, the very next week, I left for a business trip in New Orleans...A fun fact about me, I like to immerse myself in the food culture of each place I visit so that I can see what all the fuss is about.  I did exercise almost every day of my trip, but I definitely enjoyed the local cuisine.  New Orleans is not my kind of town when it comes to the nightlife/entertainment (Bourbon Street is wretched and it smells like Satan), but man, those folks know how to cook!  I didn't have one meal that wasn't absolutely delightful and it wasn't even all Cajun (thank you Yelp and TripAdvisor for steering me toward German, Italian and Comfort Fusion flavor nirvana).

So this week, I am back and it feels good to see 'me' again.  I've missed the 'me' that isn't so entrenched in frustration and pain.  I'm taking each day, each moment at a time like I did in the beginning.  Back to the basics because, yeah, the basics freaking work.

And can we just eliminate February from the calendar already?  I mean, come on, its 28 days...sometimes, except when its 29...that's weird.  We can just make the other months longer and they can absorb February.  V-Day disappears, everyone who was born in that month can have a brand new birthday and Leap Day can be tacked on at the end of December when everyone likes to take a little extra time between Christmas and New Years anyway.  People, I think this could work.
(my apologizes to anyone who was born or married in February, I don't mean to hate on your month, but seriously, it started it with me...so not my fault).

:)