Here I am… showered, vitamins taken, teeth brushed and face moisturized. I’m even wearing clean clothes. Finally, I found some “me” time to do the very basics.

Next steps: find more “me” time every day to improve my fitness and eat healthfully. That’s what it’s all about, after all. It’s about taking care of myself instead of spending all my time on kid or baby or husband duty, and putting myself last. The past couple of weeks, especially when my aunt was here visiting, I got some glimpses of what it would be like to tend to my own needs again.

This seems simple, but one day I ran into a friend when we were both dropping off our kids at day care. I strolled along with her as she walked over to her gym, and she even gave me a tour. There we were, two women, walking along together, no kids in tow (baby was with my aunt at home). We could set a brisk pace. We could jaywalk. We could worry about no one other than ourselves. And then there was the gym. It was small, but nice, and close by. Hmm… I’d not considered it in my earlier digging (probably because I’d been thinking a lot about the rest of the family), but I found it had definite possibilities, and its proximity to the apartment is a big plus. After saying farewell, I popped over to my favorite bakery and picked up a couple of muffins for myself and my aunt.

Then, another time, my aunt and I were walking home from Target and stopped off to have lunch in this cute little restaurant in my neighborhood. The baby (picture here) did us the favor of sleeping the entire time. So, we ordered two lunches, split them both in half, and each got a taste of both. One came with a free half-pint of a draft beer, so I picked a local brew, which was as tasty as I remembered. We sat in this small restaurant, with wooden booths, exposed brick walls and gorgeous decorative light fixtures… and I felt like myself. I love trying new restaurants and this was just classic Pamela. Oh, how these small moments have helped me recapture who I am and what I want my life to be like.

For those of you without kids, it might be hard to imagine how these seemingly mundane interludes meant so much to me. With being pregnant, and now having my breasts given over to producing milk for the baby — not to mention the constant demands of the now-3-year-old — there just is so little time for me to indulge myself in my hobbies and interests. (Notice how long I go between blog posts.) However, I’ll soon be getting back to work — we’ve hired a nanny to take care of the kids when I return — and life will be getting back to “normal.” In there, somewhere, I need to keep these interludes coming. Time on the treadmill or out for a walk. Manicures and pedicures. New clothes. A night out with a friend. I can’t wait….

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P.S. I’m down to around 223 at last weigh-in (after eating and fully clothed), which is about 10 lbs above my pre-pregnancy weight. Haven’t made much of a special effort, but I have noticed that pushing a stroller with the 3-year-old inside can be a really great core workout, especially uphill.

It says a lot about this new meal plan that I’m looking forward to leftovers for lunch, preferring whats in my lunchbox to anything I could buy fresh around here. And my packed meal is probably healthier than anything else I would eat, too.

So far, the dinners have taken a lot of time and energy to prepare — that’s the big downside — but they have both been big hits with the family. I’ve also probably started with the most ambitious and time-consuming of dishes, so I expect others to be faster and easier. Another observation: they make a mountain of food. It’s really too much for our little family. But the recipes so far have been freeze-able, and they also yield leftovers for lunch the next day. I have a feeling I’ll be very thankful for those frozen dinners someday soon, when I’m caring for a newborn as well as a preschooler.

When I first heard about the “Eat Like Me” blog, I have to admit I expected it to be a little self-satisfied and pretentious. Besides my natural distrust of “naturally skinny” people and nutritionists, I just couldn’t imagine anyone holding themselves up to the model of healthy eating. For every meal! But I checked it out anyway.

I’ve been so pleasantly surprised, and have found the Cristin’s entries to be so down-to-earth and just downright helpful to me in gaining a perspective. What do “normal” portion sizes look like? How often is it OK to “treat yourself”? What daily “indulgences” (2% vs. skim milk, for example) work? What’s great is that it usually helps me come down in favor of eating a little more — healthful stuff like peanut butter, smoothies, etc. — which makes it less likely that I feel the need to binge on less nutritious options. I’m definitely not following my own ideal to the letter right now (that previously-mentioned croissant was not an anomaly), but I feel like I’m working my way there, slowly but surely.

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While I am linking let me just say “wow” — Love Your Fat Self in the Utne Reader is just amazing. No time to really say more, but it totally rings true.

This morning was a doozy. The boy insisted he wanted to “watch tee-bee” rather than getting dressed and going to day care, and he physically fought our attempts to dress him. After we finally wrestled him into clothes, got him out the door and dropped him off, we headed down to the subway. We rushed to catch a train only to find that it wasn’t the one we needed. Instead, it was the Q — one that (on a very cold day) would have dropped me a couple of very long blocks from my office — so we passed and waited for the next train…. the next ill-fated train. (Note this deft use of foreshadowing…)

A few stops out, the train just stopped. We heard the train operators talking to one another over the PA system (sidenote: shouldn’t they have a private channel to talk to one another?), basically admitting that they didn’t know what was wrong. Then, after a few minutes of back-and-forth, and waiting, the train lurched back into action. But our exitement was short-lived. The train would be taken out of service at the next stop, we were informed.

After lumbering off the train and braving the super-crowded platform, we decided to surface and find a new subway station. Twenty minutes of freezing-cold adventuring later, we stood on another platform, and up pulled the Q train… the one I’d earlier passed up in favor of the one that would (allegedly) take me closer to the office.

By the time I was walking that long couple-of-blocks to the office, I began to think that maybe I deserved some kind of treat, some kind of consolation, for my awful morning. There’s an amazing French bakery near the entrance to my office building. Perhaps one of their super-rich almond croissaints would do. Hmm… I thought to myself… my usual breakfast of eggs on whole wheat toast is much better for me. It’d help me power through the morning with a little protein. But the croissaint is so good, I considered, and I’ve had a rough morning. On the other hand, the croissaint is also more expensive, and the last time I had one I almost felt sick from the amount of sugar. But I deserve a little indulgence now and then, don’t I?

Long story short(er), I walked into my normal breakfast place, not the French bakery, and the short-order cook recognized me and asked, “eggs on whole wheat toast?” All I had to do was nod. After all, real love is feeding myself something that will sustain me, and nourish me, and keep me going for a few hours. That’s what I really need after a rough morning.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I must report that I did end up getting one of those fabulous croissants later. But, thankfully, it wasn’t out of some desire to console myself for a bad morning.

In other news, we finally unearthed our scale from one of the boxes and I found out the damage from pregnancy (and holidays) so far. I’m now up at 221, an 8 lb gain. Not ideal, but not terrible either, at 19 weeks (and counting!). Also, a doctor’s visit today — the first at new (old) NYC doctor — went well.

And… I’ve been wondering when I’d receive DietGirl’s widely-celebrated new book, which I pre-ordered back in the summer. It took me some time (and reading a blog post) to realize it had probably been sent to our previous address. Indeed, I checked the site, and it is likely winging its way toward me now, due to the magic of mail forwarding. Hope I receive it soon because I’m dying to dig in!

Well, um… what a week. I think I am through it, except, of course, the everlasting repercussions of being pregnant, which I have totally not begun to come to terms with. Denial, it is my friend. At least the part of the time when I’m not avoiding alcohol and taking my daily pre-natal vitamin.

DietGirl seems to make a very timely point today, when she says the key to successfully making “lifestyle changes” is the ability to adapt. When to zig? When to zag? This week, for me, it’s been about getting over my illness and my son’s illness — his illness affects me tremendously when it comes to sleeping and/or getting up early, given that he has been spending most nights in bed with me. Can I slip out from under his head and disentangle his little hands and arms without waking him? Because once he’s awake, exercise (”me” time) is pretty much out of the question.

Meanwhile, we are still shooting for moving at the end of November. Of course, we don’t have a place to live; we don’t have a place for the boy to go to day care/pre school; and we are nowhere near to even beginning to pack. And, yet, there is that goal. Partly because I am completely sick of being apart from my husband. And I’m just ready to get it over with.

I’ve had two pretty terrible days, diet-wise, and I’m not feeling the love from TBT. Example excerpt from e-mail: “Ya had a cupcake, a muffin, and a cookie…these are treats…not entitlements…there’s a reason people are overweight b/c they eat these kind of treats…it’s not good for our body’s or else it wouldn’t make us gain weight…I Need to know WHY. We’ll overcome this…”

Why? [Update: TBT didn’t know the following when he wrote the above.] Well… It was my birthday? That’s part of it. I was also at a work conference and didn’t have control over what food was available. I am also down because my husband is back in NYC, after spending a week with us. A week was just long enough to imagine what it’d be like to be back as a family again — but an idealized version, because he didn’t have to work during that week. Anyway, these aren’t valid excuses, really. I’m OK with having that stuff on my birthday or occasionally. But, that’s over now. Now what?

I need to get back on the horse, on the wagon, or follow some other Western-type metaphor. The shift that really needs to happen, long term, is that I need to stop thinking of cookies, cupcakes, etc. as “the good stuff” — as in, the stuff that’s universally acknowledged to taste best, and which I want. I need to think of it as “the bad stuff” — as in, the stuff that makes me feel like crap (and not just psychologically, but physically, too). But that’s tough for me. Is my body-to-brain feedback loop missing, somehow? Or does it just take the feedback a LONG time to make it from body to brain?

So far, I’ve done great getting back into “regular” eating. I passed up a bagel this morning, in part because I’d already had (cereal) breakfast. But now there’s a damned company barbecue for lunch. Hot dogs are NOT what I need to be eating. The defeatist POV is: “the deck is stacked against me.” The positive POV (which I will adopt) is: “thank goodness there are good choices for me, even at a BBQ.” Hopefully that will be prove to be true. Someone’s walking around saying “BBQ, BBQ, BBQ” and clapping her hands, so I think that means it’s time for lunch.

So I return from the children’s hospital emergency room this morning (the boy is fine, but what a scare), and I check my e-mail to find feedback from the body tutor (TBT). Couldn’t you have eaten fruit instead of popcorn at that truck stop, he asks, and, oh, by the way, he says, walking doesn’t count as exercise. Does it count if you’re dragging a 2-year-old in one hand and hauling his Spiderman tricycle in the other, while you desperately try to keep up with your nieces, who speed along on their bicycles… in 90+ degree heat?

Aargh, I’m discouraged. Already. I mean, I hired this guy to kick my ass, but can we have some compassion, please? [Update: he, of course, had no idea of current state of mind upon receiving the e-mail, because he was just reacting to last night’s e-mail from me. He also hadn’t gotten the full description of the walking extravaganza described above.] I am exhausted after a 5-hour drive plus a 2-hour plane trip (plus a 1 hour travel delay). I got in at midnight-ish; the boy woke up at 6; and then we got to go to the hospital all emergency-like this morning. (Imagine trying to keep an energetic 2-year-old entertained during hospital-like waits.) The kid himself even fell asleep before we pulled out of our parking space. But I don’t want to be the kind of person who makes excuses…

Anyway, I’m really just letting off steam. I ate just fine when I got home — eggs + chicken on a whole grain tortilla. (We passed up stopping for fast food, though it was very tempting.) And now, excuse me, I must be getting back to work.

P.S. I should add that (besides letting off steam here) I DID go back to TBT with my request for compassion, and I got some more encouraging feedback. Mood lightened a little already.

It’s almost midnight and I’m jusst home from the trip. Eating went GREAT, in part because of that accountability thing, but also because my brother and his wife are also trying to lose weight. So there was a lot more mindfulness and a lot less junk at hand. (Except for the kids’ fare, but that’s another story…)

It wasn’t a perfect few days, by any means, but I made generally good/better choices, even though 3 meals in 5 days were eaten at McDonald’s. My favorite comment from Adam, the body tutor, was that the BEST choice was not to go to McDonald’s at all, but if you must go… Anyway, sometimes, when you’re a guest in someone’s house, you’ve got to go with the flow a little. (Though we did go shopping and bought good snacks, foods, etc. to have on hand at home.)

Anyway, I am exhausted, and also starting to get a little hungry, so I’d better go to sleep. All in all, a very successful start and I am feeling really good about the longevity potential for this eating plan. Just knowing someone’s out there — someone I can talk to about my daily diet and concerns — that’s really great, Good night.

Over the past few days — since my last post, I suppose — I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Between exchanging e-mails and playing phone tag with Adam, the body tutor, I’ve been wondering about whether I’m really ready to do something serious and sustained about my eating and exercise.

From moment to moment, I’ve changed my mind. One night, I went to sleep when he was a few minutes late calling me, consciously avoiding the day of reckoning. Then, I considered delaying my entry into the program, thinking perhaps I should put it off until after our upcoming Labor Day weekend trip. It’s like I know this might really work, and I’m afraid. Some of it is, I think, fear of failure. But I suspect there’s also a little fear of success, and change. But, I finally decided to go ahead. Why not start now?

Tomorrow is day 1. Every night I will write a feedback e-mail to Adam, telling him what I eat and how I exercise. And, in the morning, I will get feedback from him, and suggestions, and encouragment. It’s this whole accountability thing that seems like it will make the most difference for me. Anyway, I’ll shut up now because I know very well that the proof is in the sustained good habits. We’ll see.

As BlogHer approaches, I’m getting more and more excited, especially as I see a decent number of “fatbloggers” TM that I read, or have recently started reading, are attending. So fantastic.

Speaking of weight, I’m done with Harry Potter, so I won’t be hauling around the extra 9 pounds are so that the Deathly Hallows represents. Not that I would have much time to read, anyway, given that my time on the plane will be taken up by talking in funny voices for the sheep puppet (who loves nibbling on the boy’s neck and making him giggle), in a bid to avoid getting yanked off the plane for his saying “bye bye” one too many times. Between the sheep puppet, the video ipod and the fancy schmancy seat restraint system, I am set for a 4 hour flight. (fingers crossed)