Week 17 Confidence

Apr 12, 2011

Yesterday was momentous.  I had a job interview in DC and I went to it wearing a size 14 suit.   So what that the company was business casual.  I looked fabulous in my black pinstripe, with conservative white blouse, pearls and pointy toe pumps.  Just donning the uniform made me feel confident, and I know I pulled it off in the interviews.  Best of all, no one I met had any preconceived judgments about me or knew that I was morbidly obese just four months ago.  They just saw me as someone that is overweight (by about 40 pounds) like most of America.  Hey, I look pretty normal now!  Victory!

Looking employable for interviews was one of the reasons I had the RNY surgery.  I've been unemployed for about 2 years and I'm looking for a fairly highly compensated management position.  I know that people in general perceive obese job candidates in a negative manner and that the offers are lower in number.  I wanted to leverage my chances by losing weight.  In addition, I've gained confidence.  I'm sure it translated in my body language, my speech, my ability to answer tough questions fluently.  I hope, I pray, I get the job.  I need that confidence booster.

The idea of moving to DC is somewhat mixed.  I love big cities, but don't like the traffic hassles.  I also don't want to move away from my DS and DDIL here in Charlotte.  But DC is so fab.  It has tons of museums, restaurants, cultural activities like plays and music and festivals.  I would really love to live in the midst of it all.  But the job itself, is somewhat of a risk.  It's a smaller firm and the stock market is not trending great right now.   Oh well, worry about that later if I get the offer.

It's also great that I had the energy to sustain myself all day.  I got up at 4 for my 6:15 flight (it was raining on my drive to the airport).  I had back to back interviews with 9 people.  My flight took off for home at 9:50 and I arrived back at my house by 11:45.  The one negative was the shoes I wore.  Not good for walking in the amazing maze that is Dulles airport.  Ouch, I've got some mega blisters today.  I did great with food during the day.  I had a skinny latte at SB, and a protein bar as my breakfast (waited my 30 min to eat my bar), water on the plane, water throughout my day (but not a lot).  I had a soup/salad combo for lunch (didn't eat all of either), and a crab cake and a couple of fries at the airport for dinner.  I was nervous about the crab cake, but it ended up gurgling and churning through my system just fine.  The one thing I forgot to plan for was my vitamins.  Didn't take them at all yesterday, just plain forgot.

Today I start my new running training program.  I finished my couch to 5K, and just signed up for a coached program on Runkeeper.com that is supposed to get you to a 30 minute 5K.  Now that would be a miracle, because I just finished my first 5K in just under 40 minutes.  So that's a lot of time to shave off.  But even if I can shave 4 minutes, I'm happy, taking it down a little bit at a time.  My next 5 K race is May 21st at the beach!

Honest to goodness, I lost 5 pounds this last week.  I have upped my calories a bit, I haven't sloughed off any of my workouts, and I'm sure I expended 2 pounds of weight just yesterday in nervous energy.  I also had a stuck food incident on Sunday.  I ran with my DH in the morning for 1 hour, my longest sustained run so far.  I was ravenous when I got home, and I ate my lunch too fast.  Well it came back up over the course of Sunday afternoon and evening.  I react pretty severely when stuff gets stuck, and it takes hours of retching to clear it from my system.  So Sunday's meal plan was practically nil.

All in all, I'm feeling great, have tons of stuff to do today.  Off I go.

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