Hi Guys! I hope everyone had a great second week and is off to a great start on week three!

I apologize I have not blogged in such a long time! I was so busy last week that I can barely even remember what actually took place! In the midst of a 50 hour work week, I somehow managed to vacate my apartment, get it all cleaned and turn my keys in over my lunch hours and after work last week! Although I am overjoyed that last week is history, as well as one less thing for me to worry about, I was just sitting here wondering why I never have any time for anything but work, house work, errands and bills? It didn’t take me long to figure out that this was happening because I am apparently incapable of telling anyone, “no”, for any reason, EVER!

I do not know why I do this to myself, I guess it is because I always think I can squeeze one more thing into my day, in addition to the fact that I always want to please everyone. I often wonder how much crazier my life would be if I actually used my lunch hour for what it was intended for, you know, eating lunch. Instead I see how much I can get accomplished in 60 minutes, and often times see how many miles I can put on my car in the shortest amount of time possible…For those of you who don’t know me well, this is my attempt at sarcasm.

You are all probably wondering where the heck I am going with these thoughts of mine? I decided that because I am already this busy and I don’t even have children, I really need to start learning how to tell people, “no”, and start spending more time focusing on and caring for myself. One thing I did make time for last week was my meeting with Sandy, a Tobacco Treatment Specialist with Alegent!

Throughout the course of my meeting with Sandy, we were able to establish the fact that my addiction to nicotine is mostly psychological, meaning that I think I need nicotine more than I really do. I was not surprised by this but was very happy to have someone confirm my thoughts were correct. I found that the amount of carbon monoxide in my body was an 8, not having anything to base this number off of I asked Sandy about it and she let me know that a 0 would indicate no carbon monoxide in the body but that she has seen as high as a 40. With that being said, I was pretty happy!

I remained strong throughout the week last week, and while the end of the week and the weekend was much harder for me, I made it through on two packs! Just for my own excitement, I did the math, (2 packs or 40 cigarettes / 7 days = 5.71 cigarettes per day), which equals WAY less than week one!! I am going to meet with Sandy again this Thursday to get some more goals in place and discuss my progress thus far. I am also planning to attend Toni’s nutrition class tomorrow evening and am very excited to learn something new!