Because I am. Panera bread's Mediterranean Veggie Sandwich. Half a sandwich is 295 DELICIOUS crunchy spicy calories. We had a meeting at work, and they brought lunch in for us (nice) so not only was it delicious but it was FREE. I saved the second half for tomorrow, YAY!

Here's a shot of the family after Tyler's graduation.


We went for Italian afterwards, and I had the lobster ravioli which I'm sure totally put my over the range for the day, but the VICTORY is that I ate accordingly in the morning, and tracked it. Granted, I had to guess for the lobster ravioli, but I'm pretty sure I'm not exaggerating it at around 1,000 calories. It TASTED like it had that many...cream sauce.

I'm still not really back on the exercise horse - I haven't made the time, but I am really feeling a sense of urgency about it. I am afraid taking a few weeks off has erased all my progress as far as stamina and strength. There's only one way to find out!

One of the commencement speeches at Tyler's graduation has stayed with me. The young lady who was the Salutatorian spoke about being fearless. She said, "Fearless isn't absence of fear, it's feeling your fear and living your life in spite of it." Wise, wise words from someone so young.

That led to a conversation at our celebration dinner with the "Old Lady Trifecta" - Tyler's grandmothers and his unofficial step-grandmother (my mother!) about fearlessness. Randy's mother said she didn't like the unknown. My mother said how she was always very fearful and shy growing up and then she smiled and said to me, "You didn't get that gene."

But she's wrong! I mean, sure, I'm not afraid of public speaking, new places, new people, not knowing what I'm doing - I'm not afraid to make an ass out of myself or to look stupid. I'm a big believer in owning my "beginner's mind" - if I think I know everything, how am I going to learn? I know I'm not afraid of what many people ARE afraid of...and because of this, most people - even those closest to me -think I'm not afraid of anything.

But I am! I am afraid of brown recluse spiders, mutant freaks that live in the woods, being stabbed, traumatic head injury, and being struck by lightning. I'm afraid of bad things happening to my boys. I'm afraid that I have been a horrible parent and my kids are going to grow up to be criminals or Yankees fans (just kidding about that part). But mostly I am afraid of failure.

Not the kind of "fear of failure" that drives someone to be an overacheiver - -I wish I had that version of it. I have the kind that says, "Why bother, you're going to fail, so you might as well stay just where you are." Of course, part of my fear of failure has come from failing so many times. Thomas Edison said each failure was one step closer to success...you learned how not to do something. Someone else once told me that they looked at each rejection as one step closer to a "yes". I once lost 90 pounds, I looked great, but my head wasn't on right, and I regained the weight back, and then some.

What a huge crushing visible failure that was. I think I'm still struggling with this -- I think that's why I had my little detour, because I'm so afraid to lose this weight only to turn around and regain it.

There's things I can do this time that I didn't do last time to prevent this -- I mean, I have Sparkpeople now, and all kinds of knowledge about nutrition and the mind-body connection. The biggest thing I have to do is TRUST MYSELF. But it's like asking someone to trust a boyfriend that's cheated on them constantly. HOW? How do I trust myself after ** I ** have been the one who has let me down the most?

I guess I'm going to have to figure that one out along the way. Do you trust yourself? How did you get there? These aren't rhetorical questions, I would love to know. XO