Are we there yet?

I remember going on trips when I was a child.  My dad would have to use his leave time and we always drove.  We lived several hours away from my mom's parents and about 15 hours away from my dad's parents.  There were six of us in the car (no vans or even seat belts back then).  It was usually summer.  No air conditioning in the car either.  It was hot.  It was crowded.  And I often got car sick  (nice euphemism, no?).  One or the other of us kids asked (with what I realize from my adult perspective must have been annoying frequency), "Are we there yet?"  or  "How much longer until we're there?"


I'm feeling a little like that in my weight loss journey.  No, I'm not almost there.  I know I've got almost 20 more pounds to lose to reach my WW goal.  I'd like to lose 10 or 15 pounds beyond that, so I'm really more like half way there.  But it's hot, it's crowded, and my tummy's feeling rocky.  Well, not really.  But I still feel so much like I'm on the road trip part of the vacation.  I want to be at the destination part of my vacation--going to the beach, or canoeing on the river, or eating watermelon with my dozens of Nashville cousins.


What brought all this on?   Today started out fine.   I pushed snooze and put off my early morning run until afternoon.  The weather is still cool, so that was fine.  After church  I decided I would have a tomato sandwich for lunch.  I had a few gorgeous tomatoes left from my trip to the farmer's market last week and decided to forego my usual cottage cheese for a special treat.  The sandwich was awesome.  After that I decided to do a little gardening before my run.  The weather was perfect for gardening.  It had rained a little in the morning, so it was a good time to pull weeds.  I pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, sawed some limbs on our trees,  and deadheaded zillions of spent blossoms.  After two hours I was a mess--muddy, sweaty, hot and tired.  I took a long shower.  When I came back downstairs, DH reported that our ceiling leak was back.   Aaarrghh,  I called the plumber guy back and he came about 90 minutes later.  We don't have the final answer yet.  We're hoping that it's a simple fix (some caulking).  But maybe it's the pan under the shower floor, or maybe it's the drain inside the walls.  The plumber is coming back tomorrow to do some testing.  Meanwhile, we're not using that shower and I have a large plastic sheet on the floor of the office.  And I feel a little unsettled about ditching my regular lunch for a sandwich.  I've been avoiding bread, even the whole grain bread I used.  And I didn't get in my run.  I probably could have, but  I was tired from gardening and it was my brother's last day and I wanted to put some time into making a nice dinner. Dinner was delish.  Lamb loin chops, and sauteed spinach with whole wheat orzo and flash roasted cherry tomatoes. 


Typing this , I realize that these are not big problems. I have a wonderful life. I'm making good progress on losing weight and learning how to live the way I want to live for the rest of my life. AND, I know, in my head, that this journey (road trip) is what it's all about.  Things are not going to change dramatically when I "get there." I'll still exercise almost every day.  I'll still have to think about my food and make good choices.


One of the things I really like to do now is to go on road trips.  DH and I much prefer driving to flying.  We plan our trips well and take interesting side trips.  We're also very apt to stop to read "historical markers" or to follow the signs to local sights.  We stock a cooler with healthy snacks, and have our favorite CDs or a great book on CD to listen to.  We enjoy the journey. I need to remember that. I need to enjoy the journey. The tomato sandwich was fine (I don't want to be so rigid in my eating that I can't substitute another perfectly healthy alternative). Working hard in the garden for two hours is certainly exercise.  I don't have to run or bike or do my weights routine to exercise.  I can be spontaneous.


I have to remember that I AM there.  No, not at my goal weight, but there in a good place.  I'm doing what I need to do.  What I want to do.   I need to remind myself that I like road trips.  I need to keep myself from getting sucked into rigid routine for this journey.  That won't work now and certainly won't work at my "destination."   Also, from what I've learned from those of you farther along the road, the destination (goal) involves its own challenges (maintenance) and is really just another stage of the same journey. And even at the destination there will be days when I have to deal with ceiling leaks.


Lots to think about.


What do you do when you get tired of the journey?

It's a Good Thing Popcorn is a Whole Grain

Yes, I made a big bowl of popcorn and ate the whole thing.   I used to eat the 94% ff microwave popcorn, but I was leery of all the chemicals in the ingredient list, not to mention all the sodium.  And the smell, if it happened to burn, made you know there was bad stuff in there.  I read a rave review of the PowerPop Microwave popcorn maker and decided to give it a try.  Awesome.  You just add the popcorn and stick it in the microwave for a couple of minutes.  Voila.  You can use it with or without oil (I use 1 tsp of canola oil) and anything else is optional.  The popcorn doesn't have that too dry, styrofoam taste I associate with hot-air poppers.  I add a sprinkle of popcorn salt and, if I want a "kettlecorn" taste, a couple of packets of splenda.  When I first lost weight, two years ago, I had an entire bowl of this popcorn every single day.  I used to make it and take a gallon size baggie of it to school to ward off the snack machine munchies. Now it's an occasional treat and I try to share the batch with DH, but sometimes . . . .   Anyway, popcorn was calling my name today and I stepped right up to answer the call.  [this is an entirely unsolicited and uncompensated review]

One of the reasons I was vulnerable to the siren call of popcorn was that I got back from a Costco run to find a long line of water droplets dripping steadily from the ceiling in our office.  It took me a few phone calls to locate someone who would come investigate today and a few hours of waiting for the person to show up.  I called the company that had installed our new AC (in the attic) because we figured that it was probably a leak in the condensation line.  It turned out to be a plumbing leak from one of the fixtures in the upstairs bathroom, but, fortunately, the AC company also does plumbing.  They finally left around 8:30 tonight.  We now have two biggish holes in the ceiling, and they pulled out lots of soppy insulation.  I need to call my friend the painter tomorrow to see if he can come repair the drywall ceiling and re-paint in that room.  Did I mention that we're having ~30 people at a choir party at our house next weekend?  I don't need this.  Oh well, the popcorn helped, somehow.

Little E could have used her yellow umbrella with pink and green polka dots to good advantage had she been here today!



We took a nice hour-long bike ride tonight after dinner (leaving the plumber working--he assured us he'd be there for a good long time).  We rode by our new house again.  We checked out the very nice community pool and biked by the house several times to get an idea of what we might want to do in the garden and yard before we rent it out.  Our realtor let us know that they (the sellers) had found their dream house and were negotiating on it today, so maybe we'll close a lot sooner than we thought.

On the biking, when we don't have plumber-guys working in our house, I want to start going out a little earlier and biking a little farther to work up to feeling confident about the 35 mile route we'll do over Labor Day.  The weather today was so nice--not the muggy hot we've had recently, but very nice not-muggy high 70s.  Yay! We're going to take the bikes to the 'bike spa' just before we go to make sure they're all tuned up and ready to go.

Thanks for your comments re blogger posting issues.  They helped.  After yesterday's comment about slow traffic on weekends, I had a nice amount of traffic today, so I'll keep posting on Saturdays for now.  I'm also thinking that posting regularly at night before I go to bed is a good thing as my posts will appear at a more uniform time and also, the 5 hour delay doesn't matter so much.

I'm hoping for another nice weather day tomorrow so I can run comfortably in the afternoon.  Grilled lamb loin chops, sauteed spinach with sultanas and toasted pine nuts, and whole wheat orzo with roasted cherry tomatoes on the menu for dinner tomorrow.

Do you eat a special dinner on Sunday nights or is it the cook's day off?

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Well, my Friday Focus plans to spend a day tuning up and strengthening my exercise and diet met with mixed success.   To quote Robert Burns, "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, gang aft agley."  My plans started to "gang agley" [go astray] when Jay woke me up to let me know that he'd missed his bus.  This never happens.  He's awesome about getting himself up, dressed, fed, and ready.  Usually he's ready an hour ahead of time.  Every day but today.  Sigh.  I got up, threw on my running clothes, scarfed down my breakfast and drove him to his work--45 minutes away.  


I didn't get started on my hoped-for long run until 11.  It was a little warmer than I'd hoped for, but I'm proud to say that I ran 7.5 miles AND I also met my goal of cutting out some of the walking bits I've gotten into the habit of taking.  I ran the first 2 miles and the last 2 miles without any walk breaks and allowed myself a one minute walk on each of the middle miles.  Score.


By the time I got home, got my shower, and had my lunch, it was almost time to go visit my Dad.  I always go on Fridays and sometimes go an additional day, but today was the day.  My brother went with me.  We stopped by his former house (where my son and his family now live) to pick some figs.  Daddy loves them and this fig tree was from his mother's house.  He enjoyed the figs and we sat with him in his "activity"--a sing-along featuring songs from the 40s and 50s.  Dad liked it and sang some of the songs.  We sat on either side of him and held hands or patted his back.  It was a good visit.


We left there at 4:30 and I stopped by the Safeway on the way home.  I never got time to do any reading, so I decided to make a Sweet & Sour Shrimp--faintly novel because I haven't made it for a few years.  I enjoy cooking and have enough experience to be able to throw something together.  My version featured lots of tender/crisp veggies (red pepper, snow peas, broccoli, red onion, & shitake mushrooms), pineapple,  a sprinkle of roasted almonds, and some "tiger" shrimp (15-21 count) that was on sale for $11.99/lb.  I used Kikkoman Sweet & Sour sauce (35 cal/2 TBSP) thinned with a bit of chicken broth.  I served it with brown rice.  It was very good. 


I totally failed in my plan to read in a few of my diet/fitness books and to scout out new recipes in recent issues of Eating Well.  Oh well, maybe tomorrow.  

To give equal time to my adorable older grandkids, here are J & B, my Laura's two oldest, in their "hungry squirrel pose."  Note the glorious nimbus of shiny curls on J.  Of course she yearns for straight hair, and I'm very envious of any curls that don't have to be (wo)man-handled into my super straight locks by burning or chemicals.  


To add to the catalog of weird word verification words that people have come across, I got PIGOUT the other day on one of the blogs in my blogroll--diet and fitness blogs for the most part.  LOL  Although I tend to take things literally, I'm hoping this was not a subliminal message to me from the blogosphere.


Traffic really slows down on Saturday.  Depending on what today shows, I may just stop posting a Saturday post.  If you read this and comment, please let me know how you handle the slowdown.  

Friday Focus

FOCUS

It's Thursday night as I write this and and tomorrow I intend to FOCUS my actions and my thinking on my diet and my exercise.  I won't have the grand babies.  I need to visit my Dad at some point and spend some time with my brother, but I intend to spend a lot of this day on myself.  I want to center my thinking and make sure that I'm doing all I can to make progress toward my goals.  I think I've gotten sort of lax about things and I feel the need to tune up my game to do my best.

The forecast promises mid-70s in the morning and maybe rain.  I'm going running.  I want to challenge myself to see if I can cut out some of the walking breaks I've been taking in all my recent runs.  I also want a good, long run--maybe 7 or 8 miles.  This is one of the few days during the week where I don't have to squeeze my run in before the children come or I have to dash off to WW or to church.  


I also want to take some time and do a little intentional reading in two or three diet/motivation books that I have.  I also have a few months worth of Eating Well magazine that I want to take some time with and find some new recipes to add to my repertoire.  


As a sop to the idea of doing some housecleaning, I want to spend an hour working on my closet.  I've got clothes to give away and clothes to bring back to the front of the closet.  I need to do some serious weeding of my T-Shirt pile.  I grabbed one this morning that was a 2X--I'm sending all my X's to live in Texas (or at least to the Goodwill store)!


Breakfast and lunch will be my usual, but I want to discover some new ideas during my time with the magazines and cook something wonderful and new for dinner.  I'll let you know!


The ants have gone completely away.  I haven't seen even one ant in the past two days.  Hurrah!  Maybe I can hold my head up again when the cleaning ladies come tomorrow!  Someone asked me what the recipe for the Ant Poison was. I got it from a Wiki How article (google  "get rid of ants").  They had several ideas, but the one I used called for 1 cup water, 2 cups sugar, 2 TBSP Borax.


I made reservations today for a beautiful inn on Maryland's Eastern Shore.  We're going Labor Day weekend.  We'll load up our bikes and take advantage of the flat terrain and bike-friendly conditions and do some serious biking.  We regularly do 14 or so miles a couple of times a week, but the farthest I've ever biked is 17 miles.  There's a 35 mile bike trail that includes a 25 minute ferry ride and lots of biking along the water.  It sounds really nice.  I've got to get DH to read some of Lori's posts so that he gets into the idea of interspersing serious biking with bagels and fro-yo and other wholesome treats!

For your viewing pleasure:  Here's a picture of DH and me during a trip to Astoria, Oregon.  In May 09, when this was taken, I weighed about 5 pounds less than I do now.   








PLEASE~~~Can Someone Help Me with a couple of technical Question about Blogger??

1)  Why does my blog typically take 5+ hours to update to the newest post on the blog roll (my own and yours--I've checked)?  This happens almost every time.  

2) Why do I sometimes have huge spaces in my blog even tho the preview and the compose view don't show those spaces and I can't eliminate the spaces without deleting lines of my post??

Happy Anniversary

Jeannine and Norman

August 12, 1940

My parents were married on this day 70 years ago.  It amazing to me how young they look in this picture.  Mom was 19 and had finished her junior year at Stanford and Dad was 23 and one year out of West Point.  They moved to Fort Sam Houston, Texas and made their first of many, many homes.  They were the best parents I could ever imagine.  They taught me about love, and faith, and family, and loyalty, and integrity.  If I ended up  with any good qualities, they are largely responsible. Mom died 17 years ago and my Dad is in a nearby nursing home with severe dementia.  I love them both and miss them terribly, every day.

My parents were my first cheerleaders.  Neither of them (nor any of my 3 siblings) ever had any weight issues.  Yet they were always supportive, helpful and understanding.  As I once again work on conquering this life challenge of discovering and embracing a healthy lifestyle, I know that part of me is wanting to finally succeed and to justify their lifelong confidence in my ability to achieve that success.  

Thanks to you Mom and Dad, I know I can do this.

Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe

My oldest child was born on a Wednesday and I decided the day she was born that the old saying quoted in today's post title is full of malarky.  Our Laura has always been overflowing with joy and happiness and optimism.  So no Woeful Wednesdays in our household. Today was no exception.


I didn't sleep well last night.  We made an offer on a very nice house that we want to buy as an investment.  We offered, they countered, and we counter-countered yesterday, ending up with the ball in their court at 10 pm last night.  I  was thinking about all this, a little excited,  a bit anxious about my WI today, and generally just not sleepy, so I got up and read for a couple of hours.  Then I went back upstairs, still not sleepy, and tried on clothes in my closet for about 40 minutes.  I found a few nice "new" outfits that fit again and finally went back to bed at 5 am.  I woke up about 8, had my usual un-frosted mini-wheats, a sliced peach, and skim milk breakfast.  I ran along the river (and Sharon, the trail you described is exactly where I love to run) for about 50 minutes.   When I got back from the run, I got an e-mail from DH letting me know that the sellers accepted our offer on their house!  We gave them a generous time to find and purchase a new home, so we probably won't close for three or four months, but I'm already itching to get in and start working to get it in tip top shape so we can rent it out.  The house is actually in very nice shape, but I want to put my own stamp on things like paint colors and landscaping.

At the end of yesterday's post (in very small print) I wrote that I do believe in magic.   Not really magic, per se, but in happy endings, in optimistic outcomes, and in miracles.   My belief was rewarded today at my WI.  I was down two sticks o' butter!   Take that, Paula Deen!  I'll work hard not to take this as some validation of out of control chocolate indulgences.  I've lost 7 of the 12 pounds I set as my goal in the Summer Diet Buddies Challenge (see red box link in right sidebar). I've got just 4 more weeks to lose the remaining 5 pounds, but, maybe, without the excess chocolate baggage, I can do it.  I definitely like seeing the number on the scale go down, feeling slimmer,wearing clothes with smaller numbers on the labels, and being able to exercise and feel fit.


I'm a dyed in the wool optimist.  How about you?   Do you focus on the positive accomplishments or on the length of the journey still to come.

184.2

Do you believe in Magic?

With a nod to the wonderful Lovin' Spoonful for their great oldies hit,  I'm hoping for a little bit of magic. My WI is tomorrow and my scale is doing its best to prepare me for the probability that I'm not going to lose or even maintain.  In fact, it's not only my scale auguring bad news; my food journal, too, is doing its best to show me, in black and white, just why I probably won't lose tomorrow.  I'm in Trouble.  Trouble with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "C" and it stand for CHOCOLATE!   Yes, I've gotten into some Trouble with my old nemesis, chocolate.

It started with a picture.  It seems to me that several of you (yes, you--all you slim, successful, sensible, talented, bloggers that I follow) have built in a dark chocolate snack often luringly featured in a photo in your posts.   Well, I'm trying to learn to eat the way I plan to eat for the rest of my life.  I like dark chocolate as well as (or, truthfully, much better than) the next person.  Dark chocolate is actually good for you. Why don't I add in some dark chocolate to my daily menu too.  So a week or so ago,  I bought a small, 3.5 oz bar of dark chocolate with orange peel added in.   I portioned it into 4 pieces (less than an oz is a good portion size, no?). The first bite was heaven.  Absolutely amazing.   I had one each day for four days.  I lost at my WI last week; my clothes are fitting better.  This is great! I thought, all this and chocolate, too!  


So, when the chocolate was gone, back I went to Whole Foods.  They have at least 12 linear feet of aisle space devoted to chocolate.  I couldn't find my wonderful dark chocolate with orange.  So I got another kind--well, I got two other kinds, trying to find the one closest to my beloved orange bar.  And when I got home, I tried kind #1, but it wasn't nearly as tasty as, "orangie," so I opened up kind #2 and tried it, too.  No good.  But not so "no good" that I didn't have 1 oz of each kind for the next 3 days.  And then I went back, still in search of my long lost "orangie."  


This time I ended up buying 3 bars.   Well, there's an inevitable sad ending to this story.  I woke up this morning and weighed myself.  I compared it to my weight on the day before WI last week and, instead of a nice drop in weight, this week's weight was UP!   Then I really WOKE UP and realized how foolish I've been.    Sigh.


I'm destined to fall victim to the First and Second Laws of the  Law of Physical Diets as knowledgeably enumerated by Charlie in Back to the Fridge this morning:

Law I. Weight returns at five times the velocity at which it was lost.
Unfortunately, most of us are all too familiar with this law. In some ways, this seems impossible. “How can it take five days to lose two pounds and only one day to get it back!? That’s not fair!” Well, unfortunately, life isn’t fair and this is just the way it works. Why? Because you can’t eat fewer than zero calories per day but you can eat five thousand or more if you really put your mind to it. What to do: If your diet is going well, here’s a helpful tip: don’t blow it. How? Well if I knew that, I’d be king of the world.

Law II. Any dietary straying, no matter how seemingly insignificant, causes instantaneous Diet Reversal.
Oh, we’ve all experienced this. You do well all week long then on Friday night you figure you deserve a little treat. So you have pizza. Oops. Does your body forgive you? Are you allowed to take a mulligan? Of course not. What to do: Giving yourself a food treat for losing weight is a lot like winning a Million Dollar Bake-Off and then shredding the check to celebrate your win. What’s wrong with you?

Go to Charlie's post to read all FOUR laws.  He's a gifted writer and quite insightful about this whole weight loss scene.

I've learned my lesson--yes, a little (<1 oz) chocolate is okay occasionally, and NO, don't go tasting every chocolate bar on earth trying to re-create that first, great bite of "orangie." I'm the 'sadder but wiser girl' today.     but I do believe in magic . . . .  




tune in tomorrow.