Well, another Monday schedule done. Not such a big deal, but they’re long days, followed by early mornings. We did our last set of AutoCAD drawings today, and my average for the 15 is… 100%. There were an occasional 98/99, but the overall number ends up at 100. Next Monday will be the final class for it, which includes some type of final drawings/hand in templates. I’m not that worried about it though.

Oh, and we finally (long story) got our results from last week’s Processes class. I ended up with 78 (boo hiss), but the average mark was 56% (yes, that’s a fail) and I did end up 13th out of 124 people who wrote. It’s actually pretty scary in that only 51 people got a passing grade. Can you tell that I’m trying to convince myself that I should be happy with a 78% average?

Anyway, since tomorrow is an early morning, I’m going to call it an early night. Tomorrow afternoon (since I’m now finished with the project… for now) I’ll get some lifting in. Oh, I ran into the Communications teacher in the afternoon, and he seemed very impressed with our submission, so that’s good. Well, it’s only a third of the group project, but it’s a good start. Now I just have to resist my urge to do the slide show myself. I handed the report, and some graphics over to the guy doing it, so now I’m going to do little to nothing on it (and we’re presenting Friday).  I’ve decided regardless, I’ll probably do the extra credit assignment (masochist that I am).  I’ll take a look at it on Wednesday and if need be, finish it on the weekend.

Food for the day:

Total: 1999 (25% fat, 37% carbs, 37% protein)

Breakfast: protein shake with oatmeal and frozen cherries (358)
AM Snack: fruit & nut square (98)
Lunch: whole wheat tortillas, mustard, smoked beef, apple (464)
PM Snack: fruit & nut square, carrots, hummus (276)
Dinner: chicken curry, bean/carrot blend, butter, salad w/dressing (527)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (276)

So, after getting on the treadmill yesterday, I didn’t lift today.  I kept getting pulled away doing other things, and just ran out of time.  Of course, some of that was because I didn’t get up until almost 10am, but hey, it was the weekend. The patio chairs and umbrella are in the garage now, and the table is all covered up for the winter.  It feels like officially fall is over.

And yes, the report is complete.  It turned out pretty nice looking, and I think the content is pretty good (considering we all know little about the topic).  I think I’m ahead enough in school stuff that I can maybe go back to the Tu/Th/Su lifting schedule this week.  I’m a little behind in Math, but I think if I spend some time on Wed with it, I can get caught up.  Looking around here though, I should probably clean up my desk area before it’s time to start studying for finals…  

Food for the day:

Total: 1996 (31% fat, 35% carbs, 33% protein)

Breakfast: egg/egg white omelet with cheese, zucchini bread, jam, clementines (473)
AM Snack: fruit & nut square (98)
Lunch: whole wheat pizza with tomato sauce, turkey sausage, olives and cheese, apple (446)
PM Snack: carrots, hummus (178)
Dinner: sirloin steak, corn, butter, salad w/dressing (510)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (291)

The Sunday to Sunday gain this week is 1.4lbs. So, I’m pretty much where I was two weeks ago. Oh well, can’t go back, can only go forward. The 9-week loss is 12.8lbs (1.42/week) which is usually the ‘number’ I look at to see how things are going overall. The other little compulsive number I look at is how many days I’ve been ‘on plan’ primarily with food. I still consider the maintenance week ‘on plan’ since I accomplished what I wanted to. So, since I started keeping track this is day 4 on plan with food. Yes, after 318 days on plan, I had a couple of off plan days this last week. Again, proving that when I really go off plan it can be brutal. So, I’ve picked myself up, dusted myself off, and back to the task at hand.

On the project - I did get the introduction this evening, and a logo for the front page.  I had kind of made a joke about it on Friday, but one of the team members came through.  I’ll have to make a point to give her credit tomorrow.  It’s weird, but you have to rank your group members at the end of the process.  She hasn’t contributed a lot, but is always looking for tasks, and in the end is the only one I’ve got content from at the moment.  She’s just very quiet though, and I’m not sure that the others know she’s contributing.  So I’ll make a point to make sure that they do.  I might not have mentioned it earlier, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that she ended up in my group.  I think I was supposed to keep an eye out for her and include her.

So, I got more (and less) accomplished today than I had planned.  I played with AutoCAD for a while, and did a lot of baking.  I was on the last container of ‘grab and go’ snacks, so I stocked up.  I made a batch of blueberry bran snack cake (that’s the muffins revamped), zucchini spice cake, and two batches of the zucchini chocolate cake.  That should keep the two of us going for somewhere between a month or two.  I’ll do bread on Wednesday I think, although I think I still have a loaf outside in the freezer as well.  We also stocked up today on steak, chicken thighs, and fish (for my mother) so we’ll finish portioning them up and getting them in the freezer tomorrow as well.

Oh, and I did end up using the treadmill, so that was good.  Although it did show me how long it’s been since I used it.  Even in October, and the little cardio I did earlier in the month, it was outside.  It was actually kind of hard getting used to the more regular pace.  Oh well, I have all winter to get used to it.

From the HR Monitor:
30m, 212 cals, Max: 140(79%), Avg: 131(74%)
30m, 229 cals, Max: 146(82%), Avg: 134(75%)
Total: 60m, 441 cals

Food for the day:

Total: 2156 (28% fat, 35% carbs, 34% protein)

Breakfast: egg/egg white scramble, cracked wheat oatmeal bread, clementines (399)
AM Snack: fruit & nut square, blueberry bran snack cake (201)
Lunch: whole wheat tortillas, mustard, turkey, apple (424)
PM Snack: protein shake, carrots, hummus (358)
Dinner: corned beef & cabbage, butter, salad w/dressing (498)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (276)

It is official, I hate my group! Well, not all of them, but most of them. I was the only person who showed up with formatted text. This didn’t surprise me. The girl who had asked for something to do at least had done what was asked (wrote an introduction). Although I didn’t look at it, one of the other guys started working with her on punching it up (I did think it would need it). The fellow who has barely spoken offered to do the power point though, so this is good. We’re set to present that next Friday. The guy who was supposed to have the second half done is still sitting there with printouts and a few scribbles. He does say that he’ll have it formatted tomorrow and I suggested that he might take a shot at the conclusions/recommendations. And he says, not kidding, “I wasn’t planning on doing that much work over the weekend.”

Excuse me, what work has he actually done (that we can see). I think he realized this was not a good comment to make, and backed off a bit. I did let him off the hook slightly and told him to at least jot down some ideas, that I would flesh out what he started. I mean, sheesh. I’m definitely doing the extra credit project as well (this weekend if I can).

Our final exam schedule is up…. 6 exams over 5 days, although it’s pretty much confirmed that I won’t have to write one of them. So my last exam is on the 12th. Originally I was going to take a rest/maintenance week during that time frame, but I think my plans for that have changed. Assuming that I stay back on plan I likely won’t do one for 12 weeks. What I will do is take a few ‘relaxed’ days, which I’ll state here (to try and make me stick to them). They should be:

Dec 12th, if we go out to celebrate exams
Dec 13th, party/dinner at the neighbours
?? Xmas dinner attempt with some friends (not sure if that’s coming together)
?? Dinner with an ex co-worker, to commiserate over how busy he is (long story)

Anything else, I’ll likely just work into my daily plan. And those four days I’ll plan protein-heavy days and still keep them in check. That last one I’ll have little to no control over where we eat (as I’ll visit the town he lives/works in, and let him choose). Who am I kidding - the Christmas meal with friends will likely be in my city, and I still couldn’t pick a restaurant. I just don’t eat out much (that’s not really new).

Anyway, that’s me for the evening.

Food for today:

Total: 2003 (16% fat, 46% carbs, 32% protein, 3% alcohol)

Breakfast: protein shake with oatmeal and sour cherries (343)
AM Snack: fruit & nut square (98)
Lunch: whole wheat tortillas, mustard, turkey, apple (424)
PM Snack: honey oat scone, jam, jack daniels & lemonade (289)
Dinner: meat sauce, whole wheat pasta, parmesan cheese, salad w/dressing (612)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (237)

The one thing I promised myself this time was that no matter if the days were good or bad, I would track them.  That was my downfall the last (reasonable) attempt I made to lose weight.  I would track on good days, and not on bad days.  It meant when thing were working (or not working) I really couldn’t tell you why.  So, not tracking wasn’t an option.  The thing was that I could feel the almost inevitable slide last week.  It started with not planning the next day’s meals before bed, eating a meal or two before doing the rest of the day, etc.  I’m still finding the timing sucks for exercise.  I have to work something out for that.

I didn’t end up lifting today, but the food was in check.  I spent way too much time working on my section of the Communications project.  It’s been a long time since I did any kind of report with APA formatting (if I ever did) including in text citations and I formatted the bibliography entries.  Not sure that they’re right, or that it’s even readable, but we’ll see tomorrow how much the rest of the group has done.  I’m still very concerned about getting this done by Monday (without me getting pissed off and saying that I’ll do it).  I’m planning some cardio on Saturday, and will lift on Sunday, and next week should be slightly quieter for school, but only slightly.

So, since I’ve had my evening snack I suppose I should just get to bed!

Food for today:

Total: 2000 (26% fat, 38% carbs, 34% protein)

Breakfast: two scrambled eggs, cracked wheat oatmeal bread, jam, clementines (439)
AM Snack: none (0)
Lunch: whole wheat tortillas, mustard, smoked beef, apple (464)
PM Snack: protein shake (180)
Dinner: spicy meatloaf, roasted potatoes & onions, bean/carrot blend, butter, salad w/dressing (547)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (369)

Well, for all my consistency, I learned something about myself this week. I am most certainly a stress eater. I would have said that I wasn’t, but I was obviously wrong.

Shit.

On the good side, I did fine on the math (37/40), my Cad is still good (sitting 99.6% average on the 12 drawings we’ve done). However, I had my third test in processes tonight and I’m not confident I’ve pulled it over 80%, and I’m ready to kill most of my Communications partners for the report (that I feel I’ll be finishing up this weekend because with the exception of one of the four, they’re pretty much useless). We’ll find out when we need to present Friday (worth more than the report), but we have nothing done for it. It’s possible we may need to have it done for Tuesday (report due Monday). I’ve also decided I’m going to do the extra credit proposal, since I don’t have a lot of confidence that we’ll do well on the project/report.

Okay, back to the stress eating. I’m not sure why I went off the rails yesterday, but it started in the grocery store about 2:30pm. Bad choice to go in on my way home, but I’ve done it before. Although to be fair, I usually eat my lunch in the car at school before driving home. So bad options in the cart, and then an inability to not eat the fucking things. Bad day #1.

This morning wasn’t any better, started bad, went worse. Tomorrow I need to get a handle on it. I’ve sat down and planned for a lifting day. The only positive thing is that the congestion is gone, I haven’t coughed all day, and I should have enough calories in my system that lifting tomorrow should be fantastic.

I’m not going to post the details (although I have logged them in FitDay). So, remembering that maintenance is somewhere around 3000 cals, the totals for the days were:

Tuesday - 4754
Wednesday - 4636

I didn’t get on the scale today, but I will tomorrow. It won’t be pretty, and I know from the past it will take probably a week to right itself. Tomorrow will be day #1 of being back on plan.

Now I’m off to sleep. I actually only have one class tomorrow (11-1pm), so I’ll lift in the afternoon and then work on my Communications report in the afternoon/evening.

So I don’t think that I accomplished all that I set out to do today.  Mainly on the studying.  I did get the homework done, and have started the studying for Wed’s test.  I’ll take my stuff with me tomorrow in case I have some free time.  Anyway, I promised myself I’d be in bed by 9:45… so I’m pushing it.

Food for today:

Total: 2002 (31% fat, 31% carbs, 36% protein)

Breakfast: egg/egg white scramble, zucchini bread, jam, clementines (495)
AM Snack: none (0)
Lunch: whole wheat tortillas, mustard, smoked turkey, cheese (414)
PM Snack: hummus, carrots (178)
Dinner: sirloin steak, corn, butter, salad w/dressing (652)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (262)

The Sunday to Sunday loss this week is 1.4lbs. I’m back to my normal deficit calories, although I will hold off on the weights until I feel like I have some actual strength. The 9-week loss is 17.0lbs (1.89/week) which is usually the ‘number’ I look at to see how things are going overall. The other little compulsive number I look at is how many days I’ve been ‘on plan’ primarily with food. I still consider the maintenance week ‘on plan’ since I accomplished what I wanted to. So, since I started keeping track this is day 317 on plan with food. And yes, I consider even with last week’s raise in calories that I’m on plan. Primarily because I made a decision based on how I feel physically. It wasn’t an ‘I’m hungry, I’m going to eat more’ situation, but one made based on the concept of making me feel better faster. Although I’m not so sure that it worked.

I seem to be running behind these last couple of days. By the time the evening comes I just want to lay down, and haven’t bothered to post my food for the day. Yesterday I did some school work, a little baking (fruit & nut bars) and tried a nap in the afternoon. I think after playing with the fruit and nut bars that I don’t think I’m going to try another attempt. I’m not quite sure what I don’t find tasty about them, but between the blueberry bran snack cake and the zucchini spice cake, and the chocolate zucchini cake… it loses every time. So today, to use up the yogurt, I’ll make some of the blueberry bran cake and probably Wed I’ll make some (or both) of the zucchini cakes.

Now, it’s laundry, more studying, some notes summary, and maybe a practice at my CAD drawings for Monday. That wouldn’t be so bad if it were 9am, but it’s noon.

Food for today:

Total: 2000 (25% fat, 38% carbs, 33% protein)

Breakfast: two fried eggs, cracked wheat oatmeal bread, clementines (427)
AM Snack: fruit & nut bar (98)
Lunch: turkey spaetzle soup, cracked wheat oatmeal bread, apple (505)
PM Snack: zucchini snack cake, ruffles chips (176)
Dinner: chicken with tomato/wine sauce, cheese blend, bean/carrot blend, butter, salad w/dressing (503)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (291)