Day four

Insights and news from the last 24 hours:
1. Down another half a pound..Sweet! Even if it is just water, it's nice to see the scale go in that direction.

2. I have an iron will and a firm resolve...until Bethany's mom shows up in class with muffins warm from the oven....it was the smell that melted all my resistance...

3. Ok, small muffin at seven doesn't mean I can't get back on track for the rest of the day...Smaller breakfast at 9:30, prescribed lunch at noon. Will be walking four miles today, though my right knee is not too happy at the prospect.

Day 3- Weird Breakfast

This morning it was supposed to be unsweetened cornflakes, a cup of milk, 2 tbs raisins, and 1/4 cup sunflower seeds. I don't like cornflakes, they get soggy too fast, so I got grapenuts instead. They don't have sugar and they are whole grain. I checked the calorie equivalent, and it turns out the listed half cup serving is double the calories of a serving of Corn Chex or Cheerios. Hmmm...So I measured out a quarter cup. It looked pretty lonely and small in the bowl so I added the raisins, then what the heck, dumped in the sunflower seeds too, then topped it all with the milk. (I confess I added some splenda, not ready to eat cereal with no sweetner)

And, oh my, it was soooo good! What a surprise! It took awhile to eat with all that chewy stuff in there and was really satisfying. I had toasted the sunflower seeds previously, and that flavor with the nutty wheat and the sweet raisins was really good. It kept me full until lunch too, no late morning 'tummy grungies"! I will do that again even when I don't have to eat that combination for a diet.

Day Two

Like I said, I'm more of a do-it-yourself gal when it comes to dieting...but I still learn a lot when I try to follow a specific plan like I am now. So you can guess it wasn't a perfect day, but I don't count that a failure either. I'll admit I'm not totally bought in to this jump start thing. The authors bill this as a motivation booster that takes off a quick couple of pounds and inches through dumping water weight and getting the intestines emptier by avoiding bulky foods and lowerin quantity. That's supposed to give me lots of enthusiasm going into the plan with the higher calorie count and fewer food restrictions.

I just figure the water weight that comes off fast is just a salt shaker away from coming back, and I need the fiber to function properly ;). Then too, I know for a fact that that initial quick loss boost won't be enough to carry me all that far. So I find myself not taking this part as seriously as the authors would like. I ate the breakfast just as prescribed, and only changed the lunch by adding some veggies. Then dinner was completely different, but close to the same number of calories and the balance of veggies, carbs and protien. The dangerous part was that I needed to use up some half and half, so I made a quart of strawberry ice cream, which I tasted and then packed away in the freezer. Hubby is not ready for the house to be clear of desserts, so that's a challenge, but then I do better if I can eat a taste of anything I want. That helps me keep from craving and binging.

I WAS down half a pound today, LOL, but I'll be more excited when I know I've actually lost some fat and not just some water..

Weight loss-Day one of a new start

This year's iteration of 'We're going to lose that weight this year" arrived in the mail mid-December, ordered by my husband-with my name on it?! I'm thinking, "Hey, if you're going to order a new weight loss plan, man up and put your OWN name on it!" I'm more the 'do it yourself' kind of dieter, and I've never found a plan yet that we could stay on for any length of time, so I'm sceptical. It all sounds good to Harry when he's watching the infomercial, but in practice he usually morphs the rules of whatever diet he's doing into a clone of Atkins, which lets him eat a lot of meat and bacon. What's worse, whenever we diet together he loses twice as much twice as fast on twice the food...no fair!

But that said, I read it over and since it comes from a major health magazine and will let me eat the occasional quarter cup of chocolate chips, I thought it might be good to give me a jump start. The thing I want to be different this time is that I don't want to go into this with that euphoria that dissipates after awhile along with any hope for long term change. I'm going to follow along with this plan and see what I can learn from it. I'm looking for slow, long-term change as I work on the issues that got me here in the first place. That means persisting and resolving problems as they come up.

So today is day one of the four day jump start start to the Flat Belly Diet plan. It is intended to be lower calorie than the actual plan that starts on day five. I want to do the four days today through Friday and then go easy through a weekend of time with family and grand kids, and start the main plan next Monday.

I made the 'Sassy Water' this morning and have been enjoying that, it's full of cucumbers, lemons, mint and has fresh ginger in it. Breakfast went well, actually a little more food than I usually eat. I was hungry at noon and ended up making some changes to it. I had an avocado on its last 'legs' (that's an image, and avocado with legs-I feel like that sometimes) So I subbed that and some cuke for the tomato and rolled them with the string cheese in the deli turkey. It was really good. I also finished up half a cup of tapioca pudding afterwards. That's gone now.

This four day plan is supposed to be followed precisely, so I need to do better than that. Even so, I was very hungry by mid afternoon when I got to make a blueberry smoothie. The chicken is thawing for dinner, and I'm set for that, but I'm not liking how hungry I am right now. I must have normally been eating more than I thought I was. The dieters in the book all sounded like they white-knuckled this part, so I'm with them, it's only four days. I should be able to do anything for four days-right? Hmmmm. Not so far. We'll see.

I did the usual weigh and measure this morning. Uggggggg. That's motivating. At least I didn't gain over the holidays, and I'm not at my highest weight. That's something new for me. Some of my work on causes must be helping.

What to do with my day?

For anyone out there who's thinking that all you have to do is get the kids raised/not have to go to work and then you'll have plenty of time to get all those things done that you can't get to now, guess what? It ain't happening. At least if my life is anything like typical.

I'm not working this week, the patient load is at an all time low, which is not unexpected for this time of year, and of course having one 20 year old at home is not much impact compared to all those years with all those kids in the house. That easier schedule has been in place much of the past year, and I find myself still with plenty to do and then some. It's actually a pretty cool dilemma, one I have longed for for years and years, and I'm loving being able to add some things to the old to do list that could never fit there before. Still, prioritizing is more difficult thatn when I only had time for the essential necessities. It's pretty easy to prioritize when you only have time to work, eat and sleep, more difficult when there is extra time to use.

I try to plan out these suddenly emptier days to be productive and balanced, and maintain an ability to switch in a moment to other things that crop up. Today I had a great experience teaching. I was so grateful for the help I got from the spirit in teaching the lesson. I had only just had time to read it a couple of times earlier in the week. I got serious after nine last night to sit down and get it nailed down to specifics. As I read through the chapters again, (Alma 17-19, some of the best Book of Mormon stories), I realized that the way I'd planned to blend two lessons together weren't going to be adequate to cover the material. So I read and marked the chapters, formulated some ideas,and went to bed still not firm about what I was teaching beyond the historical account. I ended up with a principle to focus on that wasn't mentioned in the lesson manual at all. So I was looking for extra help from the spirit.

It ended up that I wasn't able to do the scripture chase game I planned, and my summary and application were more hurried than I hoped, but half the class passed of their scripture memorization for the week, and in the teaching of the lesson, I found the flow was spontaneously going from one scripture to another, back and forth in the chapters in a way I hadn't planned out, but was unified, engaging, and covered all that needed to be covered with some important insights coming out. I was definitely teaching beyond either my ability or my prepartaion. I was relieved that the material was all covered and the foundation laid for Kim to continue on with Chapter 20.

So back home with a rough plan for the day. Breakfast, finishing up the pictures I uploaded here last night, a needed half hour snooze, (five hours sleep last night) and then finishing up visiting teaching filled up my morning. I got home hungry, and got a call from Harry asking me to go into Tacoma with Chris's tire and to get all the tires on my car replaced. Whoops! There's the monkey wrench. A quick lunch-today's the first day of my New Year's eating plan, so no burger at the drive through...cleaned up the kitchen, and then off to Tacoma.

I was home by two thirty with new tires all around, which was pretty good time-wise, and even with all the other things I want to do, I decided that my resolution to blog more consistently needed to be honored. The only way to blog consistently is to sit down and do it. I'm trying to figure out exactly where and how much blogging I want to committ to, and not get spread too thin, but see what fits in with what I want to create in this medium. This is my experiment. This entry is too long, but it maybe lays a foundation for future entries...