Just 40 Days

It's Wednesday and I have eaten restaurant prepared meals for three days in a row.  It is always my goal to make healthy choices when eating out, but that is not always the case.  For instance, on Monday, I chose a bowl of vegetable soup.  They brought me chicken noodle by mistake and I didn't send it back.  Instead, I rationalized "I haven't had chicken noodle in a long time, it's okay."  I know there was a huge difference in calories as the vegetable soup had zero meat and noodles/rice.  The noodles in the chicken noodle soup were the homemade hungarian kind.   (It was delicious.) Yesterday, my friends and I were at Olive Garden.  I had three breadsticks!  I love bread.  I also had plenty of salad and some lasagna fritta (fried lasagna!) and loaded pasta chips (an Italian version of nachos).  I would not consider any of these as 'healthy or clean eating'. The fritta alone is nearly 200 calories a piece and I had four! ...

Down 1 I worked really hard this week and I'm glad it paid off with downward movement on the scale.  It is disheartening I don't get the results I expect. Sometimes it's as if my brain thinks "you've eaten so clean this week, you must be a size 8 by now!"  Really?  I know wight loss is a long process. It took me five years to become 50 pounds overweight.  And I did that without even trying! (Humor me and laugh with me as I laugh at myself.) So, if I want to loose it in a shorter period than that, I'll have to work hard. A one to two pounds a week loss would be great!  I am worth it!

Some days, I forget to drink enough water.  I get busy, or I forget to take some with me, or I just choose not to make it a priority. 

I am my own worst enemy!  When it comes to eating, I can rationalize anything.  I tell myself these things when I choose to EAT something after dinner: Peanut-butter toast is good for you!  Have a bowl of cereal, mom always did.  You still have 300 calories to go. No matter what I say to myself, it is what it is - rationalization. 

Pretty soon, all of my nutrisystem food will be gone.  Then I will need to have portion control myself.  I have a scale, I know the amounts of a serving.  But during December and January, I've flexed more than I've followed the plan.  The results of that has been weight gain.  So until I run out of food, the only thing I should be flexing is my muscles.

Okay January, I started off at 197 pounds and now I'm nearly at 199 pounds. Sure I gained and lost two or three pounds in the past 21 days, but this trend has got to stop.  I'm in control - no I'm not in control, as I give in to my want of peanut butter toast before I go to sleep.  I 'allow' myself to indulge once a week with my friends.  Something has got to change before I see 200 pounds on the scale.

I had a busy day yesterday.  I was fortunate enough to visit some of my cousins.  First of all I did a little driving south.  It was a beautiful day for driving, blue skies and sunshine.  When I got to my destination, I was fed a fabulous meal of meatloaf, baked potatoes and green beans.  One of my most favorite meals!  (Thanks Bill!)  We told stories and visited for most of the afternoon. I headed home and stopped to visit my dad for while.  It was there I receive a text from another cousin who was in town visiting her grandchildren.  So I headed home to feed my dog and then back out to visit again.  We shared stories while enjoying adult beverages and playing a game of spoons. Fun was had by all.  It's so good to talk to my cousins. 

I weigh in on Monday mornings.  It isn't good when the number on the scale is higher than the Monday before.  I even put the scale on the carpet because I knew it would weigh me less.  (It did - see below.)  How can carpet be so magical?

One of my MOST favorite things to eat of all time is peanut butter toast.  I love how the peanut butter melts and practically drips into my mouth.  The grainier the bread, the better, as it makes for a crunchier toast.  Two slices add up to be around 300 calories. If I do not have this after school treat during the day - I find myself making it after 9:00 pm.  This is NOT good for my health...to eat that many calories before going to bed.  Especially when I'm working on eating healthier and dropping the extra pounds I've packed on during the past 5 years.

I'm learning to appreciate the recumbent bicycle.

I try NOT to let it bother me, but for the past couple of weeks I've been seeing or following more and more Ford Focus' on my way to work.  ...Trigger...   So what happens in my brain when I see the word focus on the back of a car?  I lose my focus of driving! I start thinking about Haylee. I start thinking about the irony of a person driving distracted, by texting on her phone, while in a car with the word focus on it.  Then I realize I'm distracted by this while driving to work and try to focus. And then the entire sequence starts all over again.  I do not like triggers in my life.

After six weeks of moving up, the scale this morning said I was down two pounds!  This is encouraging me to stay on plan.  Yeah me!

I woke up this morning early enough to catch some of Mass on TV.  It used to be on at after 10 am and moved to 5 am a couple of months ago.  Needless to say, I don't catch it very often and I'm pretty sure no one else does either. Yesterday was January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, the day we celebrate the Magi, three wise men, or kings, honoring Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. I believe that this feast, Epiphany, has been around longer than Christmas.

My eleven year old granddaughter Carly came home from her Christmas vacation today.  Besides visiting San Francisco and seeing family, she announced that she learned how to play Euchre.  We asked a few more questions like: Who was your partner? (Grandpa) Did you win? (Yes) and decided to test her out!  It was Carly and her dad against Paul and me. Fun was had and hopefully Carly learned a bit more about Euchre.

I'm a child of the 60's.  I was one of eight children in a house with one television and one telephone.  There was no remote for the television that received 5 -7 channels.  The telephone had a dial on it.  We used to play records (45 rpm) on the player in the basement and we listened to AM radio. So the technology of our television brought our family together.  We all watched the same thing together.  We only had to chose between a half of dozen channels, so compromising didn't take too long.  (Whatever mom or dad wanted to watch.) Having only one telephone also caused us to learn negotiating skills and patience.  We also learned time limits and memorized all of our friends phone numbers.

It's so cold outside that schools are delayed.

I have to admit that I lose focus sometimes.  I think when I realize that, I'm able to refocus.  So as I sit here at lunch, thinking about how many things I need to take care of, I have decided to set little goals for myself.  The first of which is to stay on plan.  I just realized that I can use the Walmart gift cards I received from work to purchase nutrisystem products!  The next thing I realized was that it took me six weeks to gain six pounds, so I will give myself the same amount of time to lose it!  I'm determined to be healthy!

I gained six pounds during the six weeks of vacations and holidays.  I could feel like a failure and beat myself up over this or I can pick myself up and march on.  I already know that I feel awful - eat like crap, feel like crap.  As I already know that when I eat well I feel well! So I will continue on my pursuit of health.  Eating as clean as I can, counting calories/logging my food intake, drinking enough water and getting back to an exercise regimen I can live with. Those are good goals.  I can do this.  I am worth it.