Month: January 2017

Some times I just do things that don’t make any sense. But they are such an ingrained response that I do them anyway. For example, when I’m really, really upset about something – not just irritated or peeved, but really upset –  I make something chocolate to eat. Of course, in hindsight I can see that this was a very bad idea. But I just do it.

So I had an entire jelly roll pan full of these thin little brownie-like bars, frosted with my amazing homemade chocolate frosting. I put them in the freezer, but that didn’t really hide them. It made it a couple steps further to get to them, but that doesn’t really slow me down at all. I ate a lot of them. Hence the bad weigh in. I told myself I wasn’t going to have any yesterday, but I didn’t listen to myself (big surprise!). Today I’m wavering between throwing the rest in the garbage or leaving them for Don to enjoy. But that doesn’t do either of us any good. I should really throw the rest away. I think I will….

But the lesson to be learned here is that I have to recognize habits that serve no purpose. I’m not sure what to do when I’m that upset, but taking a hot bath or even taking one of my relaxation pills would be better. Making something sweet that will be a temptation for days and totally ruin my weight loss efforts is not a good solution. It is just making an additional problem. And who needs that?

I had planned to take about the first 5 or 6 weeks to get rid of sugar in my diet. Sugar as a main ingredient, that is. If there is just a little sugar to make something taste better, that is okay. But if something is “made of” sugar, that is not okay. Last week I only had one thing all week that fit that category – an ice cream cone from McDonald’s on Friday night. I had planned for a treat on Sunday, as well, but decided what with the weigh in on Monday that I would just wait and have the treat on Monday.  I found a couple pieces of cheesecake in the freezer from back before Christmas and we are going to enjoy them tonight.

So, what do I have for snacks? I have Greek yogurt with cool whip (both are a variety that are very low in sugar), diet pudding and cool whip (same here), cereal, toasted cheese sandwiches, and fruit. I’m happy eating the same things over and over, so that is plenty of choices. They are already planned in my menu, so it is just a matter of seeing what I have planned for that particular snack. Generally I have fruit in the a.m., then have something with milk in it in the afternoon. The evening could be anything, but what it is NOT is ice cream or cookies or other such stuff! I will probably add popcorn after I’ve lost a bit more weight, because I do enjoy that. But I also tend to eat too much of it, despite it not having any sugar in it.

It is hard for me to accept the fact that, if my realistic goal is to lose a pound a week,  there are going to be many days where I don’t see a loss at all. I have been the same weight 5 days in a row now, despite sticking with my “weight-loss” plan perfectly. Five days. I know I will eventually see a loss, but it is very frustrating!

On the plus side, though, my cravings for sweets and especially chocolate have all but disappeared. I went five days with no sweets at all. I don’t plan them in my menus, so when I have a sweet, it is going to be something I’ve added. But I didn’t between Sunday afternoon when I had a treat at the talk we went to at the library and last night when I had a McDonald’s cone on the way back from the concert. For me, that is huge progress!

I went grocery shopping yesterday after a full day of work (so I was a bit tired). Even before I got there, I’d decided that I was going to buy myself a treat. I was thinking a brownie of some sort. So I started looking at the different options, which all, of course, have the calorie counts. I wasn’t really expecting to consume quite that many on one smallish item. So I decided against that.

But I did run across something in the cereal aisle that looked interesting, so I bought a box. It was “Girl Scout Thin Mints” cereal – not sure who makes it, but I know it is a “limited time” production. I love Thin Mints and I love snacking on cold cereal, so I figured it was a good bet. Anyway, I opened them on the way home, since I didn’t have a brownie to eat.

And I ate, and ate, and ate, and ate them. One after another after another. I’m sure I had at least four servings of them, one handful at a time, before I got home and put them away. I would have been better off just buying one of those 500 calorie brownies and enjoying what I was really in the mood for. Because, although the cereal was really, really yummy, it wasn’t what I was really craving, so it never quite satisfied me. But I kept trying, yes I did!

When I got them home, I measured them out into ONE serving bags, which I can use as a reasonable snack (100 calories) when I have some extra calories left at the end of the day. And I learned the lesson that it is better to just eat what I am craving than try to substitute something close just because I think I’ll save calories.  Because in the end, it may not.

Taking responsibility for my actions is working out pretty well so far. I mean, after one day. Not exactly a streak, but all good things start somewhere.

Before I left after lunch (I worked at school 3 periods today), I told Dad I wanted hot water when I returned, so I could make a cup of tea AS SOON AS I got home. I also had my snack, but that is long gone and I’m still working on the tea. That is the thing about hot “snacks that you drink” – they take a while to finish, and by the time you are done, chances are the urge to eat something has passed.  So, I am trying to plan ahead and be ready for those times when I might be tempted to overeat.

Because it is up to ME to lose this weight and every action has a consequence.  The consequence of having a cup of tea, rather than scrounging the cupboards for something to eat, is that I am feeling more relaxed without causing myself any guilt. Plus, I can check off another of my cups of tea for the week to make that one goal.

We went to two auctions Saturday. One was a house auction, followed by a regular auction of some, but not much, of their personal stuff, since they had just moved into a much smaller house. The second, held Saturday evening, was a consignment auction , so it was pretty much all small stuff. Obviously, we don’t need a lot of stuff, but we got some really cool things.

First of all, when we walked through to get a feel for the house (we are going to house auctions to understand the process for when we decide to buy something in the future.) Anyway, there was an electric keyboard sort of like mine, Kylene’s and Erica’s in the basement family room. It wasn’t marked as being for sale, but we stayed around to the bitter end and when the auctioneer started going through the house and auctioning off some of the remaining furniture that hadn’t been moved outside, he put that up for sale. We started at $10, and no one bid against us, so we got it for that. The reason we got it (other than the unbelievable price) is that the choir director was looking for another piano so I can rehearse with the girls and he can rehearse with the guys without having to take the guys all the way across the school to the auditorium to do so. He was tickled pink that I got it and for so CHEAP.

Then there was an electric pressure cooker/rice cooker/slow cooker combination that I’d been looking at getting for quite a while. It was basically new – dusty, but didn’t look like it had ever been used. So we decided we would bid on that. There were several boxes of other appliances and things that no one would even bid $2 for, so he put it all together and we came out on top of the bidding at $25 for the whole lot of it. (The pressure cookers cost over $100 new). When we got home and unpacked it all, it turned out we had a deep fryer, this coffee pot that keeps the hot coffee (or water) inside the tank until you dispense it a cup at a time, a waffle maker that you can flip the plates over to make a grilled cheese sandwich maker, some really nice fry pans (heavy stainless steel), a small stainless steel mixing bowl, a heavy double boiler a bit smaller than the one I have, and one of those chopper things like you see on T.V. Everything in all the boxes turned out to be something I will use. That might be the best $25 I’ve ever spent.

From the evening auction, we came home with a bunch of boxes of small decorative things, as well as a sewing machine in a table that we got for $5. Again, no one else was interested in it. Our total cost was around $35 – not as good as the morning auction, but still good. There is a gorgeous crystal butter tray, some really unique vases, more pillows for the couch, a little remote controlled helicopter, a little stainless steel wastebasket that I’m using for a little hamper for underwear and socks in the bathroom (so I don’t forget them on the floor), and other things that were just cool, not necessarily valuable, like a metal egg with a beautiful rooster painted on it, a dragon made of brown marble, a cobalt blue inkwell to go with my blue glass collection, and a couple of beautiful brass and porcelain candle sticks.  We hadn’t gotten there early enough to look at the contents of the boxes, and although there was a camera sort of showing the stuff, it was still hard to see what all was in the boxes. We did throw quite a bit of it away, but we still definitely got our money’s worth.

Altogether a fun day! But Dad really needs to get a job if we want to do this again!

Last week I had an undeserved good weigh in and today I had a bad weigh in. Probably deserved, although I tried really hard the last 3 days. Still, it is difficult to make up for a bad Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. By Friday, I had several pounds to lose just to break even. So I was glad to be back down and a scant 0.2 pounds under last week’s weight.

This week I’m going to try to be “all in.” That is one of those things that you are or you aren’t. You can’t be “partly all in.” That just doesn’t make sense. So I had to think hard and a little bit long before deciding I wanted this weight loss enough to actually be ALL in. Just a few minutes ago, I decided I was “really hungry.” Last week I would have said, “Well, 2:00 is close enough to 3:00 to go ahead and eat my snack.” But today I said, “It is only 2:00. Have something to drink and 3:00 will be here before long.” I knew that eating that banana at 2:00 was going to mean I would be really, really hungry by supper time and would most likely eat something that I wasn’t supposed to between 4:30 and 6:00.

I reviewed last week’s eating, since I write down everything I eat and when I eat it. It was easy to see what happened. Afternoon happened. Down time. Two of the days I was a bit wired from being at school most of the day. But it was ME that made the decision to react by eating. And it has to be ME that makes the decision to react by doing something more appropriate. One of the big problems was the M&M’s that just “showed up” in my candy jar where I usually have mint lentils that are so expensive I don’t eat many. So this week I gave Dad his super sized dark chocolate candy bar he’d bought yesterday and asked him to put it somewhere that I don’t know where it is. I could clearly see the evidence that, once I start in on chocolate, I don’t stop until I’ve had way too much.  And yesterday, walking into Walmart, when Dad said we needed to get ice cream, I replied that he was in charge of that because it wasn’t on MY list. We got home with none, which I see as a good situation! And he doesn’t really care if he has diet chocolate pudding or ice cream anyway.

So, I’m off to a good start again this week, as I was last week. But I’m am more prepared to expect to be wired when I get home from school tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. And I have this really cool new coffee maker (that I got from an auction Saturday), so I can have hot water just sitting there waiting for me whenever I need it! Now, when I decide to have a cup of coffee instead of an early snack, it is a much easier decision to make because I don’t have to wait 10 minutes for the tea pot to heat up.

I felt like I was having a really bad day yesterday afternoon, because I was really wired after getting home from 3 90 minute classes at school, first time back this semester. So I was sort of eating everything in sight. Fortunately, there wasn’t much available to eat. My biggest digression from healthy eating was the big piece of chocolate cake at the Abingdon Community Center dinner. So my weight this a.m. was only up a pound, which wasn’t really bad at all. And I’m having a great day today, so I should be back to losing again by tomorrow.

I realized, after the fact, that I’d reached my first prize-worthy weight at 195 and the prize for that is a brownie tower (to split with Dad) from the bakery. I didn’t get down there to get it yesterday, because I knew I’d have dessert at the Abingdon C.C. dinner. Then I had to make the decision as to whether I can still have a prize if I hit a prize-worthy weight, then am not that weight any more when I finally get around to getting it. My decision was that as long as I’m not more than a pound higher, it is okay to still have it. So I need to get down to the bakery today and pick up that brownie tower for tonight. It will be better to have it earlier in the week like this than to wait until closer to the Monday weigh-in!

This was the most pounds I had to lose between prizes. Most of them are more like 3 or 4 pounds, and this one was 5 pounds. But early on, I wanted to have to work harder to get to it. And they are not all food prizes – some are shopping things and really big ones are events.

How often do I see another loss the day after my weigh-in, especially when I’ve had a surprisingly good weigh-in?  Not often, by today was one of them. Down another pound to 195 today. Maybe it was the run I took yesterday. It wasn’t very fast, but it was running and my body has historically lost a lot better when I was running regularly than when I wasn’t. I’d forgotten that, since it has been so long since I could run at all regularly. Or at all, really.

Also in good news, I have no stiffness or soreness from the running I did yesterday, so I’m excited to be able to do a little more on Friday. For today, it was bike riding. It was the coldest day that I’ve been out (33 degrees when I left), but I bundled up really well with a scarf and boots instead of shoes (it was my feet that got really cold last time) and Don’s warm gloves. I was toasty warm the whole time. I was a little out of shape for doing hills. I realized that I’d been going down the hill then on the flat pretty much the rest of the time until the last four blocks of hills at the end. Today’s ride included a lot more hills and I was really bushed when I got home.

I am going to post here about my weight loss, mostly for a record for myself of the ups and downs. I also journal by hand in a notebook, but this will be more detail, since I don’t write by hand very good, so I tend to be brief.  If it is encouraging to you, feel free to read; if not, don’t feel you need to!

I stepped on the scale with a lot of trepidation this morning, since I’d had a very discouraging week, weight-wise (I do weigh every day unless I forget and eat first) and was delighted when the slider went down and down from 198, where I’d hoped to be, to 196. As frequently is the case, I’m puzzled about that extreme loss between yesterday and today, because I didn’t do anything differently than the previous days.  But, hey, I’ll take it!

The real joy of the day was when I went for my walk/racewalk/run. I’d done an easy workout Friday, then taken off from all exercise Saturday and Sunday to let my sore knee/leg rest and it was feeling pretty good. But I did decide not to do any racewalking, because that is what irritated it in the first place. So I substituted jogging for the racewalking for the first entire mile, which was a lot further than I’ve run in a long, long time! That was very exciting for me, because I miss running. So I’m hopeful that when I get this weight off, I will be running regularly again for longer distances. My feet still got pretty numb by the time I got home, but I tend not to notice that anymore, since I’ve had it for so long.

I enjoyed what I’d planned for meals and snacks last week. We had soup and a salad every day for lunch, but alternated between canned green pea soup and lentil soup (Progresso), home-made potato soup, and home-made chicken vegetable soup. I discovered my new favorite food – smoked salmon. I can’t explain just how good that tastes to me!! I sampled it at Sam’s Club and bought some, even though it is about $15.00/lb. (maybe more…). I just flake off a little and put it on my salad and that flavor overpowers any other flavor, so I can enjoy it while still only eating a small amount each day. Seriously, if you haven’t tried it, you really should. Dad thinks it tastes like Kipper Snacks, but I disagree – to me it is way better, but it does have that smoky flavor of Kipper Snacks.

Being stuck in this house, unable to go outside (like we were for Saturday and Sunday) is like being in a tiny calf hut that they put the veal calves in. Even walking from one end of the house to the other is only about 20 steps and walking from the living room to kitchen or bedroom is half that many. So we don’t get hardly ANY activity on those days. That’s one big disadvantage of a small house. So I was really glad I could get out today. We did go to Michael’s on Saturday afternoon, so we walked around a little there. And yesterday we went to Walmart, which was a bit more walking. But the days were mostly sitting. UGH!

I got a lot of crafting done, though. I modge-podged a bunch of craft tubes to use for holding my electrical cords; I did some knitting on big needles – working on a scarf for me. I finished a hat for Dad on the knitting loom and started another for someone. Maybe today I’ll also start on a page for the scrap book I’m making on raising my kids. Dad gave me the book for Christmas and I have a LOT of pictures that I could put in it!