That sums up the last four days.
No tracking whatsoever. I've stuck to crackers, rice, the odd bit of chocolate and a bag of crisps. Anything I've eaten or drunk has exited pretty rapidly, which has been enormous fun! Three days in bed, yet so much galloping to the bathroom has been done that I'm not really that short on steps for the week!
I got up and had a shower this afternoon. I ate breakfast and nothing happened, so I got showered and dressed and went bowling. I was terrible. I went shopping. For food firstly, then I went hunting some below the knee Capri pants sort of things. I found the perfect pair, and bought two, one navy and one white. I also bought a pair of Aztec print black and white wide leg pants in a linen/rayon mix. It's just too hot for jeans between April and October, and I'm not yet back into my more fitted Capris and shorts.
I see no shame in buying drawstring waist trousers. There's always enough room, and I can still wear them when I've dropped a dress size or two.
Back to tracking today. Not the healthiest of choices, but still coming in under budget!
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Monday, April 13, 2015
Chipping away at it
Not really all that much to report. It's been a bit of a naff couple of weeks since I hurt my knee, I've not been able to get as many miles in as I'd like to each day. And of course, we are now firmly in the wet season and the temperatures are climbing - although not as fast as the humidity, which is through the roof. Get out the shower, towel off, and then do it again. And again. And a third time after you pull your knickers up, and again between each item of clothing. Yuck!
That's one big part of the reason for losing weight. I just can't cope with the humidity at all, not on top of the heat.
Anyway, I've been eating a little more and moving a little less, so the rate of loss according to Fitbit should have slowed down. I haven't tried those jeans on again since last Wednesday, it seems a little pointless really.
Had a fantastic dinner last night! Bluefish fillets with a chili/lime rub, pan fried, served on a bed of salad inside a soft flour tortilla that had been baked in a pie tin to make a crunchy bowl. Oh my goodness, it was amazingly tasty, especially drenched in chipotle ranch dressing....Freshly caught fish, too, very nice indeed. I'm pretty sure it could be lightened up, I will have to discuss with the chef (handily that would be our nephew, the boys' dad).
Wish I'd taken photos of it now, it was that good!
That's one big part of the reason for losing weight. I just can't cope with the humidity at all, not on top of the heat.
Anyway, I've been eating a little more and moving a little less, so the rate of loss according to Fitbit should have slowed down. I haven't tried those jeans on again since last Wednesday, it seems a little pointless really.
Had a fantastic dinner last night! Bluefish fillets with a chili/lime rub, pan fried, served on a bed of salad inside a soft flour tortilla that had been baked in a pie tin to make a crunchy bowl. Oh my goodness, it was amazingly tasty, especially drenched in chipotle ranch dressing....Freshly caught fish, too, very nice indeed. I'm pretty sure it could be lightened up, I will have to discuss with the chef (handily that would be our nephew, the boys' dad).
Wish I'd taken photos of it now, it was that good!
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Whoohoo!
Knee still sore. Managing not to eat my own bodyweight (considerable) in crap to compensate.
Bowling sucked tonight.
I have my third cold since mid-January, which is threatening to turn into bronchitis AGAIN.
But...but!
One of the main inspirations for actually getting my arse in gear and trying to take control of my weight again is a pair of jeans. Yeah, common tale. Well, last year I bought a pair of Lee Riders in a size 24, which were actually a size bigger than I needed. They were really comfy, so I bought a second pair a few weeks ago. Pulled them up and they fit great over my bum, hips and thighs; I just couldn't fasten the zip or the button. There were three or four inches of belly flab getting in the way!
Tonight, after two weeks and almost two full days, I got the button fastened on those jeans. Not quite able to pull the zipper closed, but not very far away from that at all, I reckon another two weeks and the zip will go all the way up, and maybe another month after that I will be able to wear them comfortably.
That's what we on the WW UK site used to call a Non-scales Victory, or NSV. I like it!
Bowling sucked tonight.
I have my third cold since mid-January, which is threatening to turn into bronchitis AGAIN.
But...but!
One of the main inspirations for actually getting my arse in gear and trying to take control of my weight again is a pair of jeans. Yeah, common tale. Well, last year I bought a pair of Lee Riders in a size 24, which were actually a size bigger than I needed. They were really comfy, so I bought a second pair a few weeks ago. Pulled them up and they fit great over my bum, hips and thighs; I just couldn't fasten the zip or the button. There were three or four inches of belly flab getting in the way!
Tonight, after two weeks and almost two full days, I got the button fastened on those jeans. Not quite able to pull the zipper closed, but not very far away from that at all, I reckon another two weeks and the zip will go all the way up, and maybe another month after that I will be able to wear them comfortably.
That's what we on the WW UK site used to call a Non-scales Victory, or NSV. I like it!
Sunday, April 5, 2015
A Day Off!
It had to happen sooner or later, but I refuse to beat myself up about it. Yes, I had a day off track. I actually started tracking - having not planned ahead - but gave it up when I decided that I was going to be Really Bad. I'm not sure it was even really that Bad, but it did involve eating nothing until the fried chicken and potato salad, macaroni salad, crisps, French onion dip, drinking Jim Beam and ginger ale and downing a shot of orange cream vodka.
Once we got home, I had a sandwich skinny with a couple of pieces of bacon. After that came an afternoon of more crisps and Cadbury's mini eggs - which I didn't count out to control my portion size, nor did I weigh the crisps. Dinner was six slices of buttered toast and four soft boiled eggs.
Ah well, as I say, I refuse to beat myself up about it. I can't say I've eaten healthily today, either, but I have stuck within my calorie limit and it's a new week tomorrow.
With that in mind, I already have a jar of overnight oats for breakfast in the fridge that was supposed to be Saturday's breakfast. I'll make up a couple more jars tomorrow afternoon when I get in from work. I have all that I need to make my usual lunch of a sandwich skinny with cheese and turkey, and plenty of healthy evening meal material.
This week's dinners will include:
turkey meatballs with a fat-free cream of mushroom soup and fat free yogurt sauce (seasoned with allspice and nutmeg for a Swedish meatball-style flavour) with spaghetti;
chilli made with lean minced pork and beef, onions, carrots, peppers and tomatoes and plenty of chilli pepper, chipotle chilli pepper, cumin and maybe a hint of roasted ground coriander, not forgetting smoked paprika, served with rice one night and used to fill large tacos to make baked burritos another night. The burritos are made with refried beans and a cheese sauce made with yogurt, milk and shredded cheddar. I had the thought that I might make a kind of Tex-Mex lasagne with the large tacos, layering the chilli, tacos, beans and sauce instead...;
turkey breast fillets cooked in the slow cooker in barbecue sauce with a couple of spoons of honey added to it, again with onions and peppers. Great shredded and served over rice or pasta, makes enough for two nights. (Could use that with the large tacos instead, actually, we'll see);
pork rib steaks - not sure whether to just cook them in a sort of casserole or make barbecue ribs.
Apart from all of that, there's a pizza in the freezer, a couple of chicken pot pies (individual chicken pies which can be cooked in the microwave), lots of fish fillets, a roll of refrigerated biscuits (the Southern-style sort which are kind of like savoury scones), frozen oven chips and frozen vegetables.
My knee is still bothering me, so the amount of exercise has been pretty much zero. We were at a 30th birthday party in the park yesterday morning and early afternoon, hence the fried chicken and sides and the alcohol; it was our nephew's party, and it is his two little boys who I look after during the week. I spent a little while following the one year old around and pushing him on the swings, but most of the time was spent sitting down and chatting with people. It was really good to see some of his extended family again, as his parents are both remarried and have younger children, and his grandmother was there too.
It's pretty cool to have married into a relatively large family, even if they are pretty far flung, which is why we're hoping to be able to make the trip up to Vermont and Rhode Island in June or July to see my husband's son and daughter and their children. I don't think we'll make it to New Orleans and then up to Texas as well, not this year, although his sister (who is in Louisiana) usually makes it to Florida once a year. Her two daughters are in Louisiana and Texas, one has two children and one has four.
In Florida we have my other sister-in-law, her four kids and two grandkids (two boys and a girl, all grown up, the oldest girl being the mother of the two boys I look after), her son-in-law (oldest niece's husband and in whose honour the birthday party was thrown), and his father, step-mother and two younger sisters. His mother, step-father and their eleven year old daughter are up to the north of Atlanta, in Georgia. His grandmother has a home in the north of Florida but also spends time on the road in her enormous RV. There's also my sister-in-law's ex-husband, who we see pretty seldom but is a fairly decent sort.
Anyway, here's to a new week! Lots of appointments coming up, so plenty of running around with two small boys and the husband. I will report in on how the tracking is going, of course.
Once we got home, I had a sandwich skinny with a couple of pieces of bacon. After that came an afternoon of more crisps and Cadbury's mini eggs - which I didn't count out to control my portion size, nor did I weigh the crisps. Dinner was six slices of buttered toast and four soft boiled eggs.
Ah well, as I say, I refuse to beat myself up about it. I can't say I've eaten healthily today, either, but I have stuck within my calorie limit and it's a new week tomorrow.
With that in mind, I already have a jar of overnight oats for breakfast in the fridge that was supposed to be Saturday's breakfast. I'll make up a couple more jars tomorrow afternoon when I get in from work. I have all that I need to make my usual lunch of a sandwich skinny with cheese and turkey, and plenty of healthy evening meal material.
This week's dinners will include:
turkey meatballs with a fat-free cream of mushroom soup and fat free yogurt sauce (seasoned with allspice and nutmeg for a Swedish meatball-style flavour) with spaghetti;
chilli made with lean minced pork and beef, onions, carrots, peppers and tomatoes and plenty of chilli pepper, chipotle chilli pepper, cumin and maybe a hint of roasted ground coriander, not forgetting smoked paprika, served with rice one night and used to fill large tacos to make baked burritos another night. The burritos are made with refried beans and a cheese sauce made with yogurt, milk and shredded cheddar. I had the thought that I might make a kind of Tex-Mex lasagne with the large tacos, layering the chilli, tacos, beans and sauce instead...;
turkey breast fillets cooked in the slow cooker in barbecue sauce with a couple of spoons of honey added to it, again with onions and peppers. Great shredded and served over rice or pasta, makes enough for two nights. (Could use that with the large tacos instead, actually, we'll see);
pork rib steaks - not sure whether to just cook them in a sort of casserole or make barbecue ribs.
Apart from all of that, there's a pizza in the freezer, a couple of chicken pot pies (individual chicken pies which can be cooked in the microwave), lots of fish fillets, a roll of refrigerated biscuits (the Southern-style sort which are kind of like savoury scones), frozen oven chips and frozen vegetables.
My knee is still bothering me, so the amount of exercise has been pretty much zero. We were at a 30th birthday party in the park yesterday morning and early afternoon, hence the fried chicken and sides and the alcohol; it was our nephew's party, and it is his two little boys who I look after during the week. I spent a little while following the one year old around and pushing him on the swings, but most of the time was spent sitting down and chatting with people. It was really good to see some of his extended family again, as his parents are both remarried and have younger children, and his grandmother was there too.
It's pretty cool to have married into a relatively large family, even if they are pretty far flung, which is why we're hoping to be able to make the trip up to Vermont and Rhode Island in June or July to see my husband's son and daughter and their children. I don't think we'll make it to New Orleans and then up to Texas as well, not this year, although his sister (who is in Louisiana) usually makes it to Florida once a year. Her two daughters are in Louisiana and Texas, one has two children and one has four.
In Florida we have my other sister-in-law, her four kids and two grandkids (two boys and a girl, all grown up, the oldest girl being the mother of the two boys I look after), her son-in-law (oldest niece's husband and in whose honour the birthday party was thrown), and his father, step-mother and two younger sisters. His mother, step-father and their eleven year old daughter are up to the north of Atlanta, in Georgia. His grandmother has a home in the north of Florida but also spends time on the road in her enormous RV. There's also my sister-in-law's ex-husband, who we see pretty seldom but is a fairly decent sort.
Anyway, here's to a new week! Lots of appointments coming up, so plenty of running around with two small boys and the husband. I will report in on how the tracking is going, of course.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Ow ouch bugger!
Somehow, I've managed to hurt my right knee!
I don't know quite how (it may have been while chasing young chickens that had wriggled from rather than flown the coop on Monday afternoon, at our niece's house), but it hurts really quite a lot. Just under the knee cap, right leg, to the left of centre. Hopefully it's just a pulled muscle and nothing more horrible than that; it seems to be responding to ibuprofen, though naproxen sodium didn't touch it last night. Then again, last night I was very stupid and tried to bowl through the pain. Coach had to be very, very firm about my stopping after the second game!
Despite that, and doing my best to actually rest my leg today, I'm still going to very likely manage to log up 10,000 steps today. (Newsflash: I just limped round the house a few turns and am now sitting down again). All I've done is take the boys to collect the husband and take him to an appointment, took them to lunch, took them back to the doctor's office to meet up with their daddy and collect the husband, go round Aldi to get some groceries, go to Walgreens pharmacy to get some supplements, go to Publix to drop off a prescription and grab a couple more things that we couldn't get at Aldi, then go back to Publix to collect the medicine, swing down to Subway to get a sandwich, then home again.
Sounds like quite a busy day - although I had a sleeping baby on my chest for three hours which led to a baby-induced two and a half hour nap this morning. *g*
Still on track, which is good to report. Not much to say, really!
I don't know quite how (it may have been while chasing young chickens that had wriggled from rather than flown the coop on Monday afternoon, at our niece's house), but it hurts really quite a lot. Just under the knee cap, right leg, to the left of centre. Hopefully it's just a pulled muscle and nothing more horrible than that; it seems to be responding to ibuprofen, though naproxen sodium didn't touch it last night. Then again, last night I was very stupid and tried to bowl through the pain. Coach had to be very, very firm about my stopping after the second game!
Despite that, and doing my best to actually rest my leg today, I'm still going to very likely manage to log up 10,000 steps today. (Newsflash: I just limped round the house a few turns and am now sitting down again). All I've done is take the boys to collect the husband and take him to an appointment, took them to lunch, took them back to the doctor's office to meet up with their daddy and collect the husband, go round Aldi to get some groceries, go to Walgreens pharmacy to get some supplements, go to Publix to drop off a prescription and grab a couple more things that we couldn't get at Aldi, then go back to Publix to collect the medicine, swing down to Subway to get a sandwich, then home again.
Sounds like quite a busy day - although I had a sleeping baby on my chest for three hours which led to a baby-induced two and a half hour nap this morning. *g*
Still on track, which is good to report. Not much to say, really!
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Another trip to Turkey Creek
On Monday morning, I leapt out of bed with the lark at 5:30 am, got dressed and took the dog for a walk before work. I took him for a walk when I got home from work at 3:15 pm, too. I was worn out by 9:30 pm and didn't take him for his night time walk, poor mutt.
This morning, the alarm went off, I groaned, hit 'dismiss' and went back to sleep for forty more minutes....My husband had been awake all night, and had let the dog out several times, so he didn't really need a walk for toileting purposes.
Anyway, as I'd been lazy this morning and because I'm back to taking care of the Terrible Twosome (I love them to pieces and they're really not at all terrible, most of the time), and it's Tuesday, we had a Day Out. The significance of Tuesday is that at 11 am it is Story Hour at the local library, and the library is right next door to Turkey Creek. So, we packed up a picnic lunch and took ourselves off to the library. We made Easter baskets, filled them with fake grass and chocolate eggs, a Peep each, listened to some stories about Easter and then had an egg hunt outside the library.
After that excitement, we wandered over to Turkey Creek and had lunch in the picnic pavilion, then hit the boardwalk (much easier with the stroller, the littlest boy is fourteen months and not up to walking almost two miles). No alligators today, but we did meet that raccoon again, and this time he really posed up for pictures! I think he could smell the leftovers from the picnic in the bag in the stroller's lower basket, because he ran straight up to it.
It was a lovely couple of bright, sunshine-filled hours spent outdoors, which always makes me feel a bit better about life. We met lots of people today, which probably explains the lack of wildlife!
Tonight was 'eat what's in the freezer' night, which meant half a pizza for dinner. The good thing about planning ahead is that I can actually afford to eat that, although it's almost double the amount of calories I'd normally have for an evening meal! I worked some of it by taking the dog out, although it was only half our usual distance as my right knee is really aching. It's been sore for the last couple of days; I slipped in the garage while doing laundry, and landed with my right foot in a basket full of clean laundry, which slid out away from and dumped me into another basket of clean laundry. Yes, I loathe folding it and putting it away. Yes, I know I need to do it. I've actually folded quite a lot of it, but one of the drawers in my husband's chest of drawers needs repairing and he still hasn't done that, I need to clear mine out, and so there's not really anywhere much to put all of this stuff. I did actually put towels, bedding and sofa throws in the linen closet last week, but there's a whole wardrobe full of clothing out there still. Anyway, I think I tweaked my knee when I slipped, and it's been exacerbated by bowling practice on Sunday and the walking I've been doing. I'll just have to hope that I can bowl properly tomorrow!
This morning, the alarm went off, I groaned, hit 'dismiss' and went back to sleep for forty more minutes....My husband had been awake all night, and had let the dog out several times, so he didn't really need a walk for toileting purposes.
Anyway, as I'd been lazy this morning and because I'm back to taking care of the Terrible Twosome (I love them to pieces and they're really not at all terrible, most of the time), and it's Tuesday, we had a Day Out. The significance of Tuesday is that at 11 am it is Story Hour at the local library, and the library is right next door to Turkey Creek. So, we packed up a picnic lunch and took ourselves off to the library. We made Easter baskets, filled them with fake grass and chocolate eggs, a Peep each, listened to some stories about Easter and then had an egg hunt outside the library.
After that excitement, we wandered over to Turkey Creek and had lunch in the picnic pavilion, then hit the boardwalk (much easier with the stroller, the littlest boy is fourteen months and not up to walking almost two miles). No alligators today, but we did meet that raccoon again, and this time he really posed up for pictures! I think he could smell the leftovers from the picnic in the bag in the stroller's lower basket, because he ran straight up to it.
It was a lovely couple of bright, sunshine-filled hours spent outdoors, which always makes me feel a bit better about life. We met lots of people today, which probably explains the lack of wildlife!
Tonight was 'eat what's in the freezer' night, which meant half a pizza for dinner. The good thing about planning ahead is that I can actually afford to eat that, although it's almost double the amount of calories I'd normally have for an evening meal! I worked some of it by taking the dog out, although it was only half our usual distance as my right knee is really aching. It's been sore for the last couple of days; I slipped in the garage while doing laundry, and landed with my right foot in a basket full of clean laundry, which slid out away from and dumped me into another basket of clean laundry. Yes, I loathe folding it and putting it away. Yes, I know I need to do it. I've actually folded quite a lot of it, but one of the drawers in my husband's chest of drawers needs repairing and he still hasn't done that, I need to clear mine out, and so there's not really anywhere much to put all of this stuff. I did actually put towels, bedding and sofa throws in the linen closet last week, but there's a whole wardrobe full of clothing out there still. Anyway, I think I tweaked my knee when I slipped, and it's been exacerbated by bowling practice on Sunday and the walking I've been doing. I'll just have to hope that I can bowl properly tomorrow!
Sunday, March 29, 2015
What a great day!
I've had a lovely day. It's a shame that my week off has come to an end (not that I exactly work, although looking after a one year old and a four year old even if closely related by marriage is still a fair amount of labour), but I am relaxed and refreshed and definitely caught up on my sleep! It also feels as though the exercise is being to have an effect on my mood, or and indeed more likely that the doubling of my anti-depressant is starting to show an impact other than make me mildly nauseous and colder than usual.
Whatever, today has been a good day. A lovely long sleep, a lazy morning, a late breakfast of overnight oats, quick shower and change and head for the bowling alley. I was only going to spend an hour there as it was already about four o'clock when I arrived, but our team's anchor and coach was already there and bowling league-style over two lanes. It would have been rude not to join him, and he's usually glad of the company. I bowled a couple of games with him, which were pretty horrible, and took ages because midway through the second the lanes were oiled (which takes a little while) and we were switched up a couple of lanes as a result. He decided he was done, as his mood wasn't the sunniest and although he wasn't scoring badly by most people's reckoning, he has something like 13 300 series in 45 years of bowling and so scoring 180, 190 is Not Good Enough. Considering the physical limitations he has to deal with, I think he plays pretty amazingly: the night I scored a 169, which at that time was my highest score ever, he scored a 268.
After he left, I decided I would practice a while longer and worked on my left arm position and on getting behind and through the ball on my release, as well as making sure my right hand stayed on the right hand side of the ball all the way through the backswing to the release. Coach has been trying to get me to cradle the weight of the ball in my left hand as I take my first step, something that allows for a more natural backswing and thus a more shall we say solid delivery. I've found that quite hard, as my left shoulder was partially dislocated for a good five years and so my left arm is a little weaker, not to mention my elbow was completely dislocated as a three year old and is still a little sort of odd! Anyway, I have come round to the idea that maybe I can manage to do this without it being too painful or putting too much stress on my arm, so I thought I'd have a concerted crack at it. 140, 130, 137.That's a pretty fair three-game series for me, as my league average is 113 (I gained a pin and lost a pin in successive weeks, having been languishing at 112 for weeks on end). It still feels odd, and my left arm was SO tired by the time I finished, but I can really see the difference and understand how to make it work. The fact that I didn't always get the ball into the right hand pocket is by the by, I can see and feel how it should all fit together, and the proof of it all is that I was consistently getting a ball speed in excess of 10 mph, even on spare balls with my plastic ball.
All that bowling racked up a good 6,000 steps or so, then I nipped in to Aldi on the way home and picked up a few bits and pieces we needed. I'd already put dinner in the slow cooker around noon, and it was all ready to eat when I got in. Very good indeed it was, too, and I finished it off with 40 g of Cadbury mini eggs and some sour fruit chews - and am a little over 400 calories under my daily calorie intake, which compensates for the couple of days where I've been a little bit over.
I finished up my day with a nice walk with the dog. Having done that, and got up to 11,500 steps for the day, I made my breakfast (overnight oats with strawberry, PB2 powder, chia seeds, oats, yogurt, milk, and pumpkin pie spice), made my lunch (cheese and turkey sandwich skinny), put the coffee on for the morning and then sorted out the cat boxes. Just have to log the food for tomorrow and then I can go to bed!
That's one whole week under my belt, and I'm delighted with it! I feel good, I can already feel the difference in the way my jeans fit and I'm just feeling brighter and more positive about life in general.
Whatever, today has been a good day. A lovely long sleep, a lazy morning, a late breakfast of overnight oats, quick shower and change and head for the bowling alley. I was only going to spend an hour there as it was already about four o'clock when I arrived, but our team's anchor and coach was already there and bowling league-style over two lanes. It would have been rude not to join him, and he's usually glad of the company. I bowled a couple of games with him, which were pretty horrible, and took ages because midway through the second the lanes were oiled (which takes a little while) and we were switched up a couple of lanes as a result. He decided he was done, as his mood wasn't the sunniest and although he wasn't scoring badly by most people's reckoning, he has something like 13 300 series in 45 years of bowling and so scoring 180, 190 is Not Good Enough. Considering the physical limitations he has to deal with, I think he plays pretty amazingly: the night I scored a 169, which at that time was my highest score ever, he scored a 268.
After he left, I decided I would practice a while longer and worked on my left arm position and on getting behind and through the ball on my release, as well as making sure my right hand stayed on the right hand side of the ball all the way through the backswing to the release. Coach has been trying to get me to cradle the weight of the ball in my left hand as I take my first step, something that allows for a more natural backswing and thus a more shall we say solid delivery. I've found that quite hard, as my left shoulder was partially dislocated for a good five years and so my left arm is a little weaker, not to mention my elbow was completely dislocated as a three year old and is still a little sort of odd! Anyway, I have come round to the idea that maybe I can manage to do this without it being too painful or putting too much stress on my arm, so I thought I'd have a concerted crack at it. 140, 130, 137.That's a pretty fair three-game series for me, as my league average is 113 (I gained a pin and lost a pin in successive weeks, having been languishing at 112 for weeks on end). It still feels odd, and my left arm was SO tired by the time I finished, but I can really see the difference and understand how to make it work. The fact that I didn't always get the ball into the right hand pocket is by the by, I can see and feel how it should all fit together, and the proof of it all is that I was consistently getting a ball speed in excess of 10 mph, even on spare balls with my plastic ball.
All that bowling racked up a good 6,000 steps or so, then I nipped in to Aldi on the way home and picked up a few bits and pieces we needed. I'd already put dinner in the slow cooker around noon, and it was all ready to eat when I got in. Very good indeed it was, too, and I finished it off with 40 g of Cadbury mini eggs and some sour fruit chews - and am a little over 400 calories under my daily calorie intake, which compensates for the couple of days where I've been a little bit over.
I finished up my day with a nice walk with the dog. Having done that, and got up to 11,500 steps for the day, I made my breakfast (overnight oats with strawberry, PB2 powder, chia seeds, oats, yogurt, milk, and pumpkin pie spice), made my lunch (cheese and turkey sandwich skinny), put the coffee on for the morning and then sorted out the cat boxes. Just have to log the food for tomorrow and then I can go to bed!
That's one whole week under my belt, and I'm delighted with it! I feel good, I can already feel the difference in the way my jeans fit and I'm just feeling brighter and more positive about life in general.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Silence on the blog front does not equal disaster!
On Friday, I was pretty tired and achy and decided I would be a lazy mare and just relax. It was a nice, vegged out kind of a day, mostly spent in pyjamas. My husband has been a little under the weather, so he has been sleeping an odd pattern, and I took the opportunity to have an afternoon nap while he was snoozing.
When we both woke up, I mentioned that either Denny's or Golden Corral had a seafood special running, $11.99 for all you can eat seafood. He was very keen on that idea as he adores shrimp (prawns, if you grew up in Britain), so I did a bit of Googling and discovered it was Golden Corral.
Now, my husband really isn't that big a snob. I swear he isn't. But, GC is one of those chains that he's always looked down his nose at and so we've never visited it before. He had said in the past that it was a buffet-style restaurant and generally the clientele were from the less-affluent end of the market as you could eat as much as you like for a low price. I wasn't really expecting all that much from the experience, but as he was keen despite his previous comments we decided to go.
It was pretty much as you might expect: two and four seater tables, plastic plates and glasses, half decent silverware had it been thoroughly clean. Think school canteen or college refectory crossed with self-service buffet, and you're pretty much there. You line up to pay as you go in, and pick up your drinks at the same time (you get free refills on all sodas and water and coffee). Then you find an empty table, grab your silverware, plonk down your cutlery and your drinks and head for the buffet, plastic plate in hand. It was like being in Morrisons cafeteria, but without the charm and decor!
Husband was happy enough with his plate of popcorn shrimp and jumbo breaded shrimp and piece of baked fish, to which he added some sort of sausage and a few other bits and pieces. The seafood spectacular was basically those, some breaded and fried catfish (a very Southern food), hush puppies (seasoned lumps of deep-fried dough) and that was that. Not terribly spectacular, although it had been mentioned in the on line advertising that not all dishes were available at all venues.
I had shrimp, catfish, baked fish, a dollop of mashed potato and some sauteed yellow squash. I didn't have very much at all as I wasn't sure how it might taste and didn't want to waste food. It was actually pretty good, in fact it tasted surprisingly good! I was still hungry after that, so I tried the Bourbon Street chicken, mushrooms, cauliflower and a few sweet potato fries. The salad bar looked deeply unappetising, and to be honest ever since my uni days when I had a salad from a supermarket salad bar and ended up with food poisoning that left me ill for a week, I've avoided salads from a salad bar or buffet. I was disappointed to find that much of the food I'd been hoping to try wasn't available locally, actually. There was no Chinese food, the Mexican food was taco beef and taco shells, there was no roast meat other than chicken pieces, there was pot roast and meat loaf and that apart from pizza was about that. There was a lovely looking salmon and steak option, but those were not available buffet style and I must not have possessed the golden ticket because the guardians behind the glass wouldn't even make eye contact when I paused hopefully.
Having eaten very sparingly all day, I ventured forth to the dessert buffet and dipped three strawberries and three marshmallows in the chocolate fountain. I also snagged a piece of chocolate fudge which was amaaaaaaaaaaazingly good, and a tiny piece of chocolate brownie which was also decadently good. I shared that with my husband who is not a big eater of cakes or desserts, and he was so impressed he got his own!
We finished our meal, got in the car, drove home - and he galloped past me in the doorway in an urgent dash to the bathroom. Some time later he emerged, pale and wan, and said he'd been gripped by a sudden and severe need to visit the smallest room. He looked dreadful, but drank some water and took some anti-diarrhoeal tablets and managed to doze off. I sat up and watched a bit of television, played a couple of Facebook games, until about ninety minutes after we arrived home, when I was hit by a horrendous wave of nausea. It was so bad I dashed for the bathroom myself, thinking I was about throw up, until my stomach reversed itself and everything I'd eaten for what felt like a week exited from the opposite orifice to my mouth.
So that was my night until about six am; every time I lay down in bed, my stomach would start cramping all over again and I'd be back in the bathroom.
Unsurprisingly, I've spent most of Saturday sleeping that off and generally staying in bed and eating things like apple sauce and dry toast. As husband woke up starving in the early afternoon, I cooked meatballs and pasta with a tomato sauce for dinner, which we ate around 8:30 pm. Just small portions so as not to overload the system. So far all seems good, so whatever ailed us both likely passed as quickly as it arrived.
My tracker for the last couple of days looks pretty good as a result, barely over my allotted calories on Friday (which is a self-imposed limit) and today I'm within range, too. The exercise front has been a two-day bust, so I am planning a good long walk with the dog at Wickham Park for tomorrow afternoon, and bowling practice in the morning before that.
I'm a little ticked off as I opted to try the free week of Fitbit Premium on Friday evening, so I've completely wasted my first day of it! Oh well.
As Saturday has been an odd sort of a food day, I've planned ahead for Sunday and already have a jar of overnight oats in the fridge. This time I've added pumpkin spice seasoning to the oats and milk, a little sweetener, and a tablespoon of dried cranberries. I'll add a pot of apple sauce to that in the morning and hopefully it should be pretty good. I really enjoyed the peanut butter and strawberry version I ate on Friday morning, so I have high hopes for this batch! It will also be a handy breakfast to grab and go on a weekday morning, as I leave the house way before the time I'm ready to eat. Lunch is going to be a sandwich skinny with turkey and cheese, and dinner is going to be rotisserie seasoned turkey breast fillets cooked in the slow cooker with barbecue sauce, sliced peppers and a couple of sliced onions. I tried that out a couple of weeks or so ago and it was really tasty and good. That should make enough for dinner on Sunday and the leftovers we can pop into a flour tortilla and have with salad for Monday's dinner.
I like this planning ahead idea!
When we both woke up, I mentioned that either Denny's or Golden Corral had a seafood special running, $11.99 for all you can eat seafood. He was very keen on that idea as he adores shrimp (prawns, if you grew up in Britain), so I did a bit of Googling and discovered it was Golden Corral.
Now, my husband really isn't that big a snob. I swear he isn't. But, GC is one of those chains that he's always looked down his nose at and so we've never visited it before. He had said in the past that it was a buffet-style restaurant and generally the clientele were from the less-affluent end of the market as you could eat as much as you like for a low price. I wasn't really expecting all that much from the experience, but as he was keen despite his previous comments we decided to go.
It was pretty much as you might expect: two and four seater tables, plastic plates and glasses, half decent silverware had it been thoroughly clean. Think school canteen or college refectory crossed with self-service buffet, and you're pretty much there. You line up to pay as you go in, and pick up your drinks at the same time (you get free refills on all sodas and water and coffee). Then you find an empty table, grab your silverware, plonk down your cutlery and your drinks and head for the buffet, plastic plate in hand. It was like being in Morrisons cafeteria, but without the charm and decor!
Husband was happy enough with his plate of popcorn shrimp and jumbo breaded shrimp and piece of baked fish, to which he added some sort of sausage and a few other bits and pieces. The seafood spectacular was basically those, some breaded and fried catfish (a very Southern food), hush puppies (seasoned lumps of deep-fried dough) and that was that. Not terribly spectacular, although it had been mentioned in the on line advertising that not all dishes were available at all venues.
I had shrimp, catfish, baked fish, a dollop of mashed potato and some sauteed yellow squash. I didn't have very much at all as I wasn't sure how it might taste and didn't want to waste food. It was actually pretty good, in fact it tasted surprisingly good! I was still hungry after that, so I tried the Bourbon Street chicken, mushrooms, cauliflower and a few sweet potato fries. The salad bar looked deeply unappetising, and to be honest ever since my uni days when I had a salad from a supermarket salad bar and ended up with food poisoning that left me ill for a week, I've avoided salads from a salad bar or buffet. I was disappointed to find that much of the food I'd been hoping to try wasn't available locally, actually. There was no Chinese food, the Mexican food was taco beef and taco shells, there was no roast meat other than chicken pieces, there was pot roast and meat loaf and that apart from pizza was about that. There was a lovely looking salmon and steak option, but those were not available buffet style and I must not have possessed the golden ticket because the guardians behind the glass wouldn't even make eye contact when I paused hopefully.
Having eaten very sparingly all day, I ventured forth to the dessert buffet and dipped three strawberries and three marshmallows in the chocolate fountain. I also snagged a piece of chocolate fudge which was amaaaaaaaaaaazingly good, and a tiny piece of chocolate brownie which was also decadently good. I shared that with my husband who is not a big eater of cakes or desserts, and he was so impressed he got his own!
We finished our meal, got in the car, drove home - and he galloped past me in the doorway in an urgent dash to the bathroom. Some time later he emerged, pale and wan, and said he'd been gripped by a sudden and severe need to visit the smallest room. He looked dreadful, but drank some water and took some anti-diarrhoeal tablets and managed to doze off. I sat up and watched a bit of television, played a couple of Facebook games, until about ninety minutes after we arrived home, when I was hit by a horrendous wave of nausea. It was so bad I dashed for the bathroom myself, thinking I was about throw up, until my stomach reversed itself and everything I'd eaten for what felt like a week exited from the opposite orifice to my mouth.
So that was my night until about six am; every time I lay down in bed, my stomach would start cramping all over again and I'd be back in the bathroom.
Unsurprisingly, I've spent most of Saturday sleeping that off and generally staying in bed and eating things like apple sauce and dry toast. As husband woke up starving in the early afternoon, I cooked meatballs and pasta with a tomato sauce for dinner, which we ate around 8:30 pm. Just small portions so as not to overload the system. So far all seems good, so whatever ailed us both likely passed as quickly as it arrived.
My tracker for the last couple of days looks pretty good as a result, barely over my allotted calories on Friday (which is a self-imposed limit) and today I'm within range, too. The exercise front has been a two-day bust, so I am planning a good long walk with the dog at Wickham Park for tomorrow afternoon, and bowling practice in the morning before that.
I'm a little ticked off as I opted to try the free week of Fitbit Premium on Friday evening, so I've completely wasted my first day of it! Oh well.
As Saturday has been an odd sort of a food day, I've planned ahead for Sunday and already have a jar of overnight oats in the fridge. This time I've added pumpkin spice seasoning to the oats and milk, a little sweetener, and a tablespoon of dried cranberries. I'll add a pot of apple sauce to that in the morning and hopefully it should be pretty good. I really enjoyed the peanut butter and strawberry version I ate on Friday morning, so I have high hopes for this batch! It will also be a handy breakfast to grab and go on a weekday morning, as I leave the house way before the time I'm ready to eat. Lunch is going to be a sandwich skinny with turkey and cheese, and dinner is going to be rotisserie seasoned turkey breast fillets cooked in the slow cooker with barbecue sauce, sliced peppers and a couple of sliced onions. I tried that out a couple of weeks or so ago and it was really tasty and good. That should make enough for dinner on Sunday and the leftovers we can pop into a flour tortilla and have with salad for Monday's dinner.
I like this planning ahead idea!
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Keep on Tracking!
Today has actually been a pretty enjoyable day! I had plenty of sleep for once, over seven hours of it in fact, and actually woke up feeling quite refreshed for once. I was awakened various times by cats jumping on and off me, the bed, the headboard (and thus knocking books on my head), but that's normal in our house.
I got up and pottered around for most of the morning, drank a couple of nice big cups of coffee and made myself baked oats (a recipe posted on Instagram by the lovely soupdragon, I will ask her if I can share it). Then I made a few phone calls that needed making, and decided that as it was still looking quite nice outside and was only about 2 pm, that I would finally after eighteen months here go and have a wander around the Turkey Creek sanctuary.
Turkey Creek is around 7 miles from our house, in the middle of Palm Bay, and home to all sorts of wildlife such as alligators, manatees, raccoon, squirrels, anoles, Florida cooters (turtles), gopher tortoises, otters and so on. I saw lots of cooters, a friendly raccoon, plenty of squirrels and anoles and an alligator! I was lucky enough to catch him with the naked eye, he was not at all easy to spot and it was thanks to meeting three very pleasant ladies - one of whom kindly lent me her binoculars so I could see it up close for myself - that I was able to get a really good look.
It was a lovely, mostly quiet and peaceful, wander through nature. I reckon to have walked around three and a half miles - I never did manage to set up my Fitbit correctly to take my stride length into account, I should really do that. I followed the boardwalk to the turkey oak trail, not realising there is a whole two thirds more to the boardwalk (there were people in the gazebo which is where the boardwalk continues on, so I walked straight past), then decided to do the boardwalk again when I finished the trail as I'd not walked as far I'd hoped (obviously!) and felt quite fresh.
This time I walked the whole of the boardwalk and was able to overlook the creek from several spots.
I got up and pottered around for most of the morning, drank a couple of nice big cups of coffee and made myself baked oats (a recipe posted on Instagram by the lovely soupdragon, I will ask her if I can share it). Then I made a few phone calls that needed making, and decided that as it was still looking quite nice outside and was only about 2 pm, that I would finally after eighteen months here go and have a wander around the Turkey Creek sanctuary.
Turkey Creek is around 7 miles from our house, in the middle of Palm Bay, and home to all sorts of wildlife such as alligators, manatees, raccoon, squirrels, anoles, Florida cooters (turtles), gopher tortoises, otters and so on. I saw lots of cooters, a friendly raccoon, plenty of squirrels and anoles and an alligator! I was lucky enough to catch him with the naked eye, he was not at all easy to spot and it was thanks to meeting three very pleasant ladies - one of whom kindly lent me her binoculars so I could see it up close for myself - that I was able to get a really good look.
It was a lovely, mostly quiet and peaceful, wander through nature. I reckon to have walked around three and a half miles - I never did manage to set up my Fitbit correctly to take my stride length into account, I should really do that. I followed the boardwalk to the turkey oak trail, not realising there is a whole two thirds more to the boardwalk (there were people in the gazebo which is where the boardwalk continues on, so I walked straight past), then decided to do the boardwalk again when I finished the trail as I'd not walked as far I'd hoped (obviously!) and felt quite fresh.
This time I walked the whole of the boardwalk and was able to overlook the creek from several spots.
This friendly little chap had been enjoying some food, courtesy of a couple of courting teenagers. I had my back to them and was down a level near the canoe deck, and it was there that I saw the alligator. I stood there and watched the fish and turtles for quite some time. I love the water, and being near it is very soothing. At the moment my knees are horrible as I'm carrying so much extra weight, but once I have some level of fitness back and can manage to scramble in and out of a kayak, I am going to hire a kayak and explore it all from water level.
I also spotted a blue heron, lots of dragonflies, butterflies, various birds which I mostly couldn't identify and several types of lizard.
The turkey oak trail was fascinating; it's an opportunity to get a feel for the old Florida, before swamps were drained and land built over. Palm Bay is a small but growing city, with a little over 103,000 people at the last census in 2010. It's actually the biggest city in Brevard County. It's not on the coast, quite, but it is close to the Indian River lagoon system of waterways, beyond which are the barrier islands where lie the beaches. So Melbourne has Melbourne Beach across the river, Cocoa has Cocoa Beach, and so on. Our favourite beaches are at Indialantic and Sebastian Inlet, where you can snorkel and see all kinds of aquatic wildlife, including manatees if you are lucky.
It was great just to get out of the house and see something different, and to have some time to myself in the fresh air.
Food wise it's been another day on track, with sausage casserole for dinner, eggs cooked in the microwave as a protein-rich snack and a 200 calorie pack of trail mix as a post-dinner treat. Oh, I had some french toast sticks as a wee treat, too. I've been consistently around the 1,700 - 1,800 calorie mark each day so far, which is right around where I wanted to be, so that's all good. It may of course be that I am not actually eating enough calories; all I can say is that I haven't been particularly hungry, except for yesterday evening as it was a very late dinner due to bowling until almost 10 o'clock and then having to run a team mate home. There were a few tummy rumbles mid-match, but I didn't order a portion of fries as has been my habit over the last few months. I was quite proud of myself for that!
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Another day on track
Tracking today has at times been a chore; Fitbit's website has been up and down for maintenance, so for some of the day it's been tricky to log food. I try to plan ahead as much as I possibly can in order to make certain that I don't eat more than I ought to. Not so much "If you bite it, write it" as "Plan and write what you intend to bite" - cute, but nowhere near as pithy or memorable!
I seem to recall that eventually logging and indeed planning ahead becomes a chore, then a bore, then somehow doesn't get done. One sure fire way of getting around this is by working out a menu for the week and shopping to that menu, so you pretty much know what you have to work with. It also comes in very handy if you're working to a budget. I've had the luxury up until eighteen months or so ago of not really having to worry about budgeting, but now I have to pay attention to what's coming in and going out and make sure that everything gets paid and that we can buy food, gas and take care of the cats. It would definitely be a lot cheaper and easier if we'd stopped at three. Well, okay, five. Except five became six, then eight, then we adopted two foundlings who lost their mother to a car, and that was ten, and THEN our vet said 'What's two more when you already have ten?' and we went up to twelve...after that, we stumbled across a Hemingway cat and she decided we were her humans. And then I was looking at dogs at the local humane society as our niece's dog had died and she wanted to get another dog asap as the surviving dog had never been an only dog, and after looking at dogs I had to look at cats and found a very cute and interesting rare breed. We went to visit her, she decided we were her humans, but when we visited her another cat climbed into my handbag and told me 'Hey, Mom, I'm coming home with you guys too, okay?'
My husband is an enabler. Honestly. He occasionally looks at me wistfully and asks 'Are you sure fifteen cats is enough? Isn't there room for maybe one or two more?' I said we had enough when we had eight! Couldn't pass up nine and ten, though, and eleven and twelve were just soooooo adorable...and at a certain point you realise that it doesn't really make much difference if you add another cat or two.
(That was quite the diversion off topic!)
Anyway, I had an idea as to what I'd have to eat today as it depended pretty much on what was in the fridge. Low fat sweet Italian turkey sausages (sweet merely denotes 'not spicy' in this instance), made into a casserole with lots of carrots, onions, potatoes, rubbed sage, pepper, bay leaf and chicken stock. Oh, and a couple of chopped fresh plum tomatoes. That was dinner. Breakfast was eggs microwaved with a little cheese stirred through; lunch a sandwich thin with turkey and cheese and a large mixed salad with fat free dressing. I had a beer at the bowling alley. I had a bowl of granola with sliced strawberries, a tablespoon of chocolate morsels and a little bit of natural yogurt for dessert, which was very nice indeed.
I overdid things yesterday and was footsore and weary-legged today. I also flagged quite badly in the last game of bowling tonight, and scored horribly, which was irritating. Yes, I am becoming quite the American: Disneyland, bowling, days at the beach, that sort of thing. Six practice games the day before league is not a good idea, I must remember this!
Anyway, here's to another day on track tomorrow! I believe it will heavily feature leftover sausage casserole, as my husband wasn't hungry tonight and I made loads in the mistaken belief our nephew who bowls with me would be staying over - he isn't!
I seem to recall that eventually logging and indeed planning ahead becomes a chore, then a bore, then somehow doesn't get done. One sure fire way of getting around this is by working out a menu for the week and shopping to that menu, so you pretty much know what you have to work with. It also comes in very handy if you're working to a budget. I've had the luxury up until eighteen months or so ago of not really having to worry about budgeting, but now I have to pay attention to what's coming in and going out and make sure that everything gets paid and that we can buy food, gas and take care of the cats. It would definitely be a lot cheaper and easier if we'd stopped at three. Well, okay, five. Except five became six, then eight, then we adopted two foundlings who lost their mother to a car, and that was ten, and THEN our vet said 'What's two more when you already have ten?' and we went up to twelve...after that, we stumbled across a Hemingway cat and she decided we were her humans. And then I was looking at dogs at the local humane society as our niece's dog had died and she wanted to get another dog asap as the surviving dog had never been an only dog, and after looking at dogs I had to look at cats and found a very cute and interesting rare breed. We went to visit her, she decided we were her humans, but when we visited her another cat climbed into my handbag and told me 'Hey, Mom, I'm coming home with you guys too, okay?'
My husband is an enabler. Honestly. He occasionally looks at me wistfully and asks 'Are you sure fifteen cats is enough? Isn't there room for maybe one or two more?' I said we had enough when we had eight! Couldn't pass up nine and ten, though, and eleven and twelve were just soooooo adorable...and at a certain point you realise that it doesn't really make much difference if you add another cat or two.
(That was quite the diversion off topic!)
Anyway, I had an idea as to what I'd have to eat today as it depended pretty much on what was in the fridge. Low fat sweet Italian turkey sausages (sweet merely denotes 'not spicy' in this instance), made into a casserole with lots of carrots, onions, potatoes, rubbed sage, pepper, bay leaf and chicken stock. Oh, and a couple of chopped fresh plum tomatoes. That was dinner. Breakfast was eggs microwaved with a little cheese stirred through; lunch a sandwich thin with turkey and cheese and a large mixed salad with fat free dressing. I had a beer at the bowling alley. I had a bowl of granola with sliced strawberries, a tablespoon of chocolate morsels and a little bit of natural yogurt for dessert, which was very nice indeed.
I overdid things yesterday and was footsore and weary-legged today. I also flagged quite badly in the last game of bowling tonight, and scored horribly, which was irritating. Yes, I am becoming quite the American: Disneyland, bowling, days at the beach, that sort of thing. Six practice games the day before league is not a good idea, I must remember this!
Anyway, here's to another day on track tomorrow! I believe it will heavily feature leftover sausage casserole, as my husband wasn't hungry tonight and I made loads in the mistaken belief our nephew who bowls with me would be staying over - he isn't!
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Fresh start, new blog
Way, way back in - let me think, May 2010? - I joined WeightWatchers online and went on to lose the best part of 80 pounds over the course of about fifteen months. I then spent another nine months going up, down and round about, never quite getting back to my all-time low but still dropping dress sizes due to exercising like a fiend.
As has been previously documented, I became thoroughly disillusioned and completely fell off the wagon. And so here I am, ninety sodding pounds more than my lightest weight in 2011 and extremely annoyed with myself. I'm even more annoyed by the fact that I've managed to pack on eighteen of those pounds in the last two months!! I'm pretty sure it's entirely due to eating far too much and not being terribly active, but I did have my annual blood test on Monday and if there is anything amiss that should flag it up.
I could make a hell of a lot of excuses for having reached this weight, but I'm not going to do that. As my sister-in-law is fond of saying, it is what it is. This is where I'm at, and this is what I have to deal with. All I can do is get on with it!
I've actually been thinking about what to do for several months. Quite literally: I have a notebook in which I've been jotting thoughts and ideas as to what works best for me. I have in the past followed Weight Watchers and Slimming World, and like them both (I found the discipline of WW much more suited to my greedy ways!), and there can't be too many other diets that I haven't tried.
What I've decided to do is to allot myself a set number of calories that I HAVE to eat each day, in actual nourishing food terms, and an additional 200 calories a day that I can have if I want them. Where I'm going with this idea is in basic terms vaguely similar to the WW plan I started off on (the last time around; I've done a fair few different WW plans in my time!). By this I mean that it used to be the case that we had a set number of daily points, but could choose to save some of them or have a splurge and use some one day and have fewer points the next. It's been five years, so I am hazy on the amount of points you could save (I want to say four a day, but no more than twelve in total could be saved and they had to be consumed within that week). The plan then changed to give you a set amount of daily points and an additional 49 weeklies; it may seem exactly the same, but trust me, it isn't. For me personally, it encouraged poor nutrition and bad choices, because I would normally end up spending all my weeklies on complete rubbish (crisps and chocolate!) rather than on extra proper food, and somehow I had developed this habit of saving several daily points to spend on rubbish, too.
Anyway, I wanted to take a more nutritionally sound approach to what I eat. Slimming World used to annoy me because it takes (to my mind) more planning than WW, and Healthy Extras and a restrictive approach to certain carbohydrates were definite sticking points for me at times. I did have a go at Extra Easy, but it seems to me that the information I was given to follow it online was incomplete - I never bothered to chase that up, and to be honest with there being so little US presence, I didn't want to sign up to do that online again over here as it was not the best-presented web site and there were really not that many folk following it so not much in the way of online support.
Say what you will about WW, for site layout and ease of use, it is pretty good, and there are a great many wonderful folk who've passed that way. Some have become friends, and a great source of support and comfort through not just weight loss but the general guff that life likes to throw at us.
I have a Fitbit Charge. I use that to track my steps and other activity and to monitor my sleep pattern (atrocious at best, I'm afraid). There is the ability to log food, weight and the like using the Fitbit Dashboard, and now that there's a Windows Phone app I can log food wherever I am.
My basic idea is that I try to eat no more than 1,600 calories a day of 'real' food, and 200 calories of whatever I please. According to today's log, I've eaten 1,862 calories and could in theory have consumed 3,016 calories given the amount of steps and active minutes I've logged! Hmm....I'm also trying to get a minimum of 10,000 steps in, with sixty active minutes each day (today was 110 minutes and over 16,000 steps).
I may expand on this in more detail, once I find out if it actually DOES work for me!
Apart from having blood drawn on Monday, I had my annual check up. Blood pressure 150/100 - not at all good. Admittedly this was before the blood draw, I had taken 15 mg of valium because I have such an awful phobia of needles so didn't *feel* scared, but I'm pretty sure there was a part of my brain that was gibbering in a corner somewhere about the big scary needle that was soon to become intimately enmeshed in my poor vein! At any rate, we doubled that medication and also doubled my anti-depressant because I'm experiencing symptoms of depression and have been for some time. I don't think I'm having a major depressive episode (I have dysthmia, which is a persistent low mood with the occasional huge black hole into which I sink; usually these holes crop up every five to seven years, and I am overdue for one; I just seem to be angrier and less my usual self, rather than actually feeling horribly, overwhelmingly low.) I've been on a pretty low dose of an anti-depressant for the past nine years, and last changed meds about seven years ago, so I am overdue a review. I'm waiting for a psychiatric referral which will likely take a couple of months to come through.
Before anything else, though, a nurse weighed me. I expected to be 200 and something pounds - I was a hair less than two months ago. Somehow I've managed to cram on almost twenty pounds, and am juuuuuuuuuust over the 300 pound mark by a hair. I am seriously annoyed with myself about this, and determined to change that. As my own scales had surfaced but have been reburied in the garage during a general sorting-out (we moved over eighteen months ago and half the stuff we brought is still in boxes in the garage, there's no room for the car in there!), the physician's assistant was quite happy with my request that I pop in and nip on to their horribly accurate digital scales once a month. I'd rather weigh myself once a month, as I find the weekly weigh in somewhat onerous at times, especially when it's been an up and down sort of a time or a plateau.
So that's it for the time being: I'll likely blog as and when something occurs to me to blog about, to record milestones, post interesting recipes and so on and so forth. Not that I'm expecting much in the way of readers!
Say what you will about WW, for site layout and ease of use, it is pretty good, and there are a great many wonderful folk who've passed that way. Some have become friends, and a great source of support and comfort through not just weight loss but the general guff that life likes to throw at us.
I have a Fitbit Charge. I use that to track my steps and other activity and to monitor my sleep pattern (atrocious at best, I'm afraid). There is the ability to log food, weight and the like using the Fitbit Dashboard, and now that there's a Windows Phone app I can log food wherever I am.
My basic idea is that I try to eat no more than 1,600 calories a day of 'real' food, and 200 calories of whatever I please. According to today's log, I've eaten 1,862 calories and could in theory have consumed 3,016 calories given the amount of steps and active minutes I've logged! Hmm....I'm also trying to get a minimum of 10,000 steps in, with sixty active minutes each day (today was 110 minutes and over 16,000 steps).
I may expand on this in more detail, once I find out if it actually DOES work for me!
Apart from having blood drawn on Monday, I had my annual check up. Blood pressure 150/100 - not at all good. Admittedly this was before the blood draw, I had taken 15 mg of valium because I have such an awful phobia of needles so didn't *feel* scared, but I'm pretty sure there was a part of my brain that was gibbering in a corner somewhere about the big scary needle that was soon to become intimately enmeshed in my poor vein! At any rate, we doubled that medication and also doubled my anti-depressant because I'm experiencing symptoms of depression and have been for some time. I don't think I'm having a major depressive episode (I have dysthmia, which is a persistent low mood with the occasional huge black hole into which I sink; usually these holes crop up every five to seven years, and I am overdue for one; I just seem to be angrier and less my usual self, rather than actually feeling horribly, overwhelmingly low.) I've been on a pretty low dose of an anti-depressant for the past nine years, and last changed meds about seven years ago, so I am overdue a review. I'm waiting for a psychiatric referral which will likely take a couple of months to come through.
Before anything else, though, a nurse weighed me. I expected to be 200 and something pounds - I was a hair less than two months ago. Somehow I've managed to cram on almost twenty pounds, and am juuuuuuuuuust over the 300 pound mark by a hair. I am seriously annoyed with myself about this, and determined to change that. As my own scales had surfaced but have been reburied in the garage during a general sorting-out (we moved over eighteen months ago and half the stuff we brought is still in boxes in the garage, there's no room for the car in there!), the physician's assistant was quite happy with my request that I pop in and nip on to their horribly accurate digital scales once a month. I'd rather weigh myself once a month, as I find the weekly weigh in somewhat onerous at times, especially when it's been an up and down sort of a time or a plateau.
So that's it for the time being: I'll likely blog as and when something occurs to me to blog about, to record milestones, post interesting recipes and so on and so forth. Not that I'm expecting much in the way of readers!
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