A win for me!

My husband and I got into a fight last night.  But that is not what this post is about.  I have to explain what happened in order to disclose a personal achievement for myself. 

For me, this week has been extremely stressful at work.  On Monday they announced a reorganization within our work area.  I thought I was handling the stressful news fairly well until the dooms-dayers come into my office.  You know the people... the ones that take bad news and make it worse.  In this reorg no one is losing their job, in fact there is an opportunity to move up by applying for a newly created supervisor position or a chance to move to a different section and learn something more (or even something new).  Sounds positive, right?  Not for the people that have a hard time with change (hey, I'm one of those people, but this was one time I was going with the flow).  Those "I-don't-want-to-change" people became the "this-is-going-to-be-awful" people.  Spreading rumors that we won't be doing our same jobs, or we will lose certain parts of our current jobs, etc.  Also had people coming into our office gripping about moving offices around.  Anything they could find to be negative about, they were happily spreading the negativity. 

That would be difficult to handle on a good day, but for me, this is a stressful time of year because I'm working on a fairly large project that needs to be done by the end of the year.  I'm trying to get it done sooner so I can take a few days off around the holidays and be able to hang out and relax at home.  The project, which I have done two or three times before, is not going as smoothly as it has in the past.  Working with new people on getting it completed, little issues cropping up here and there, and I'm starting to stress about getting it in done in the time required. 

And, as many of you may have noticed, it's the holiday season.  If this fact has escaped you, you had better take a look at the calendar.  One week from today is Christmas Day.  So to add to my work stress is the normal holiday stress of shopping, wrapping gifts, getting card addressed and in the mail, and working with Hubby on organizing a small Christmas luncheon for my family (and my family is whole other stress in itself).

So, what is the point of post?  I'm getting there... patience, please. 

Yesterday was a fairly stressful work day, which I was trying to get through on 5 1/2 hours of sleep (I need 7 1/2 to 8 hours to be fully functional).  I finally leave work after putting in 9 hours, headed home, and planned on a quiet evening of finishing up our Christmas cards.

Unfortunately, Hubby was also having a bad, stressful work day.  He had worked from home all day, but realized he would need to go into the office after dinner to run some reports.  So after a 9 to 10 hour work day, he still had several hours to go.  Also, he's been so busy with work he hasn't really gotten to the Christmas shopping or other holiday activities, so I'm sure that has added to his stress.

Two stressed out people in one small house.  Yeah, doesn't take much to cause a normally happy couple to turn on one another.  Unfortunately our little fight took place while starting dinner prep.  Hubby became angry and decided to just go into the office instead of waiting until after dinner. 

Which left me at home, fully charged and emotional.  And hungry. 

Normally this would send me over the edge and I would have been ordering Domino's Pizza before Hubby even got his truck started.  But all I could think of was the fact that I had to weigh in today.  And that I couldn't deal with weight gain stress on top of everything else.  So... I cried... contemplated ordering pizza... cried some more... contemplated raiding my candy stash... hugged the cats and told them my sorrows... thought about what I could make for dinner... worked on the Christmas cards... realized as hungry as I was, I was still emotional and eating anything might trigger a binge... so I finished up the cards and picked up the living room... settled on the couch with cats... and finally, about 7:30 ate a protein bar. 

I went through a very emotional evening and did not give into the comfort food temptation.  No junk food.  No candy.  I made it through without turning to food. 

Victory for me!

I'm hoping that having conquered one emotionally charged evening without food, I will have the motivation to get through more situations without turning to food. 

But for now, I will sit in the glow of knowing I can do it and was successful last night. 

As for my weigh in at Weight Watchers this morning... well, last week I weighed in after drinking 24-36 oz of water and wearing jeans.  This week, I skipped my morning water, but still wore jeans (it was cold out this morning!) and was down 4.8 pounds.  Yep.  In one week.  So despite only two really good days of eating and tracking, I still lost.  Yea me! 

Now... to get through another stressful work day without diving into the holiday goodies that are around this time of year...