Health and Fitness Update

I have some positive results to report, and some not so positive results to report.  First the positives:  I've increased the intensity of my workouts lately, and I definitely feel stronger and I think certain body parts are starting to look more toned.  I've been increasing the amount of weight I'm using during my strength workouts, as well as the number of reps, so I'm actually pretty happy with the way my arms look at the moment.

I also purchased a fit tracker this week since I can get reimbursed for it through the wellness program at my job.  The first day I used it I logged 15,397 steps.  Yesterday when I did weights instead of a walk or run and work was so crazy that my hips hurt from sitting at my desk, I only managed 3,905 steps.  Today I was over 5,000 steps by 8:00 am, and over 10,000 by 3 pm.  I may even surpass Wednesday's total.  I've also been tracking my sleep, and I was not imagining how frequently I wake up and move around.  Although the tracker only counts time as "awake" if I get out of bed, the light blue bars on the graph are all the times I was moving around in bed, and I was definitely awake for much of that time.  I'm hoping that tracking this will help me to sleep better or identify a pattern that maybe a sleep specialist can help with; because I need more rest than this!

Yes, I was lame last night and went to bed before 9:00!

None of the intense workouts or steps are translating to the scale right now though, because I have been stress eating again.  Yesterday at one point I actually looked at the food I was eating and told myself, "I'm not even hungry right now and my body doesn't need this; I'm just doing this because I'm so upset and stressed out."  However, not even that self-talk stopped me from actually consuming the food.  So I've basically negated all of my progress on that front again.  I was eating fairly healthy food, but some healthy foods are still really high in calories, and I'm taking in more than I'm using again.

I can't really share everything that's causing stress right now, I'll just say that both at home and at work I feel like I've got some issues that need to be changed, but I don't know how to go about solving them without making things worse.  I HATE feeling like I can't fix things, so when I feel like I have a problem and can't work towards a solution, I spiral down pretty hard.  But I had lunch with one of my closest friends today and she reminded me how many good things I have in my life for which to be thankful.  So I'm going to keep that in mind as I try to reign my food consumption back in over the next couple of days.