As Lazy As A Koala

oOoOps, went away on vacation and neglected to blog...

Well, at first when I returned from vacation I was up 5 pounds. So I was discouraged. I figured that I just had blown it with all the eating out, although I thought I'd made mostly good choices and geez, what about all that walking (like all day at the San Diego Zoo). That's where this koala picture came from!

But yesterday at a doctor appointment, the dreaded accurate medical scale said something I wasn't expecting. And this was with my clothes on. So I came home and weighed myself and lo and behold I'm now down two more pounds which makes ten, count them 10 altogether. Yay me!

So I am no longer discouraged. I am thoroughly encouraged. Which is good. Because I need to keep this effort up and I don't want to quit now. No self-sabotage. No dilly-dallying. Just slow and steady exercise and trying to make the best eating choice everytime I have to make one.

And trying to plan ahead for eating. This turns out to be one of my biggest challenges of all.

I am so not a meal planner. Never have been. I thrive on being spontaneous in my kitchen. Hey, it is 7:30pm, what's for dinner? And I go whip something up with whatever is in there.

I occasionally will get on a kick of taking recipes from magazines (like Sunset) with me to the store to attempt to buy all the arcane ingredients, or actually writing up shopping lists, but that doesn't ever seem to last.

So this is a place that I'm having a lot of resistance in the way I'm used to managing feeding myself (and my family). Intellectually I can understand how much sense it makes to plan your whole week of meals, and look at the grocery store ads and make a shopping trip based on what's on sale. But I guess I'm just lazy, and blessed with enough extra cash to not have to make this effort. I kid myself by thinking that I'm oh-so-spontaneous but really I get in a rut even with my devil may care modus operandi in the kitchen.

As sometimes a new approach works for making changes, I'm going to attempt this week to use the little grocery list pad that came with my goRed winnings and see if that helps me to make better choices at the source, where I'm buying what is coming into my house (and thus into my mouth!).

Oops, skipped a week

Sorry about that, neglected to post last week. And I had such success, losing two pounds! Perhaps I was so shocked, I couldn't update the blog? Um, no, I actually don't remember exactly why I didn't post last week. I went and did the BetterU stuff, but then just forgot I suppose. So if you're keeping track like I am, that is 8 pounds down altogether.

This week no change, but that is good too. I had a few days of lots (and lots) of walking in San Francisco on a family vacation, which was also accompanied by eating lots (and lots) of fabulous food. So calories in vs. calories out ending up balancing out. I do feel my legs and rear-end are a lot stronger, so that is good. I wore my Earth tennis shoes, which gives you an extra workout when you are walking, and they also make my lower back functional ( a good thing when you want to walk around!). They certainly aren't pretty and made me look very touristy, but too bad, I wanted comfort not style. So at the end of a day of walking around, my feet and legs are really tired, but not hurting, which is okay by me.

I had a chance to have ice cream at Ghirardelli Square, but I was full from lunch, and so were my boys, so instead of forcing ourselves to go enjoy a wonderful hot fudge sundae, we took a pass and walked around the docks instead. This is a major thing here. I don't think I have ever in my life gone to Ghirardelli Square and not eaten anything. After all these weeks of not having nightly ice cream, could I be losing my intense craving for it? That would be a very good thing!

A big thing with this short trip to San Francisco was it was the first time I've ever done that, taking my boys somewhere overnight all by myself. I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up with them, or would have to poop out and rest too much, but that didn't happen. We paced ourselves well enough, took enough short sitting rests and/or transit options, and it was just fine. That was a real boost for my self-confidence to know that I could physically handle this short outing, mentally it was stressful but that is just a teenagers will be teenagers kinda thing.

I also had a visit with my fabulous doctor. I told her all about the GoRed/BetterU stuff and she was very interested as she has a really holistic practice and likes to make sure her patients are as educated as possible so she said she would be passing it on to other women who need to make changes to look after their heart health.

I'm going to be getting bloodwork done in a couple weeks, so I'll get to see if the dietary and exercise changes I've made have impacted my cholesterol levels. Hope so, because I really really don't want to go on cholesterol meds. Major side effects are muscle fatigue and soreness, and I have plenty of that all by myself thankyouverymuch. Also, my blood pressure was down into the high end of normal range again (yay!), and the weight on the official doctor scale matches mine at home. I always wonder about that, if I have a "magic scale" or if it is within the range of an actual close-to-true measurement.

I also am going to have surgery within the next month to remove some lumps, I'm really dreading it, but the location of these particular ones are becoming really bothersome. Right in my sit-upon. ahem. I know the recovery isn't going to be fun, but I have to get them out before they grow any larger.

Goals for this week are to keep moving and eat all the produce we currently have from our organic farm and my garden. There are a LOT of greens hanging around thinking about getting wilty, and I want to use them instead of compost them! These beautiful strawberries are from my very own garden and oh were they ever sweet! No added sugar needed here.