Saef-- I have an insane number of work emails.... I finally deleted tons of them after I kept getting blocked from incoming and outgoing emails. I just always think I may need to reference back to them.... I probably need to purge again-- thanks for the reminder.
I'm constantly reminded (at least for me) how much weight loss and maintenance is a head game. I was at a low weight for about a week (118) and was starting to feel a little smug-- like-- I may have to gain a few pounds if I go any lower... then, this week, I've had dh's birthday, and multiple days I couldn't exercise for various reasons. Of course, my weight is up several pounds and isn't budging back down. Now I've got Friday evening looming (we almost always go out for sushi) and the SuperBowl (which dh is deeming as his birthday weekend and wants to celebrate with lots of amazing food). I'm hoping to keep things somewhat under control and get more exercise in, but it is a wake up call to myself....
Dh has been home since Thanksgiving as he had his knee surgery December 2. I haven't had him home for this long in decades. He will start traveling again in a couple of weeks, so I am trying to enjoy having him home, knowing that I can buckle down once he heads out.
Michele, I've been great about deleting emails for 24 hours now. I took care of my inbox fairly well until the reorg last April. My former manager quit and suddenly, I was the only resource available to explain to the new owners what my former department had done. Also, I had to take on the people whom my manager had been managing. I had 10 direct reports and I was bombarded with emails full of questions daily by other managers for many months. It was all I could do to keep up with answering them, let alone practice good email hygiene.
Saturday, and I could have slept way past 5 AM, if I let myself, but it's better for my weekday sleep to keep roughly the same hours over the weekend.
Weigh in: 140.8, a nice drop of just over a pound and a half.
Meals for Today
Breakfast: Pineapple and cranberry steelcut oats; egg bake with broccoli, ham and mushrooms; half of a papaya WITHOUT ANY SEEDS IN IT AT ALL; and yogurt.
Lunch: Arugula with roasted vegetables, cold asparagus, toasted pecans, half an avocado, quinoa with spinach and several spoonfuls of hummus
Snack: Huge Cortland apple
Dinner: Chicken leg quarter, roasted cauliflower and roasted butternut squash
Dessert: Cookies and cream Quest bar that tasted strongly of protein powder. Either this was an off batch or it was something I ate beforehand that contrasted with it.
Exercise for Today:
Workout 6A2 of the Strong Curves Advanced program, then 20 minutes on the arc trainer, which is backward from the way I usually do it, and then a 60-minute Pilates mat class. The class was thronged on this sunny day after yesterday's snowstorm.
I have the absolute worst e-mail hygiene. I think my inbox has just under 40,000 messages in it. I delete stuff as I go along and use (some) filters, but I get around 20 per day that can't be deleted or that I might want to refer back to some day. Assuming I can find them: the now-not-supported Eudora search function was light years better than Outlook's.
I tweaked my traps (trapezoids) at Friday's workout, so yesterday I just took a walk rather than doing squats/deads. This morning the scale read 143.8, which is less than when I left for vacation in mid-December. It'll bounce around over the next few days, but it's nice to see a number solidly below 145.
Sunday, alternating between drinking in the peacefulness of the streets and the temperate weather and dreading the coming week. If I can just get a few hours of work around lunchtime, I won't be uneasy in the evening.
Weigh in: 141.6, back up just over a pound.
Meals for Today
Breakfast: Pineapple and cranberry steelcut oats; egg bake with broccoli, ham and mushrooms; the other half of that seedless papaya, and yogurt.
Snack: Two yellow guavas
Lunch: Arugula and spring mix, roasted vegetables, walnuts, hummus and a lot of guacamole, in honor of the Superbowl, which I won't watch and don't care about, but it feels like a national holiday.
Dinner: Large piece of miso-glazed salmon, steamed asparagus, mixed curried vegetables
Dessert: Chocolate chip cookie dough Quest bar
Exercise for Today:
Workout 6C of the Strong Curves Advanced program. Falling over when trying to do one-legged RDLs with dumbbells because I have poor balance due to my burnt-out left ear. But still doing them anyway.
At work, I use Thunderbird for email. I learned a really good way of organizing mail, and use it to this day. I have folders for each vendor, contractor or general thing (like business insurance, health insurance, etc.). As I get an email, I read it and act on it and then file it in it's proper folder. If it needs no action and doesn't need to be referred back to, it gets deleted. It only stays in my inbox until it is done with. Then, if I need to refer back to it, a simple search within the appropriate folder makes it appear quickly. I'm not so good with my personal email, but most of that is junk anyway. I tried to teach my tactics to DH and set him up like mine, but he won't take direction. He keeps EVERYTHING--including advertisements that are just junk.
Thunderbird. I file in folders, business and personal, like Allison does. I do it as soon as I can. The inbox can fill up from time to time but I delete whenever I have a spare moment. And I use colour tags for priorities.
Office 365. I used this when I was guesting at a university last year. What a perfectly terrible system. Sympathy to anyone who has to use it.
Monday, with snow in the forecast, and a bad black feeling inside me because of a spat with someone at the gym who used a weight bench to hold her water bottle & towel while she wandered off to do something else entirely in the mirrored-wall studio, and I moved them off to use the bench. She did not like that. At all.
Weigh in: 142.6, up another pound. Same weight as last Monday.
Meals for Today
Breakfast: Pineapple and cranberry steelcut oats; egg bake with broccoli, ham and mushrooms; excellent Chilean blueberries with cinnamon and yogurt.
Snack: Braeburn apple
Lunch: Quinoa with spinach and curried vegetables and toasted pecans
Snack: Three quavas
Dinner: Chicken leg quarter with yet more curried vegetables (it's a big pot) and steamed broccoli
Dessert: Cookies and cream Quest bar
Tuesday, after working from home because it was snowing and I worried, but then it stopped and I felt dumb. I am reworking a proposal that I wrote up on Sunday for contract labor we'll need to engage to create Sales enablement material. Tomorrow I teach an all-day writing & peer review workshop and I need to look at the curriculum again.
Weigh-in: 144.3, not a good feeling but unsurprising because I felt so stuffed yesterday after dinner.
Meals for Today:
Breakfast: Apple steelcut oats; egg bake with broccoli, ham and mushrooms; more Chilean blueberries with cinnamon and yogurt
Snack: Braeburn apple, a bit soft
Lunch: Curried vegetables with cashews
Snack: Three guavas with seeds that stick in my molars
Dinner: Ground beef and sauerkraut soup
Dessert: Cinnamon roll Quest bar
Exercise for Today:
20 minutes arc trainer, then Workout 7A1 of the Strong Curves Advanced Program.
I went out for a work dinner last night, and have to give myself a NSV for making good food choices: spinach salad with a few blue cheese crumbles (no dressing, though), sea bass cooked in broth, bok choy, water, and coffee for dessert. I have a boatload of these dinners coming up, so I'll need to continue to make good choices.
Still doing well on lifting and cardio, with appropriate rest days. I'm bouncing between 143.5 & 145, and my "thin pants" are comfortable.
Wednesday, and I'm feeling the usual nerves before teaching in an all-day class.
Class over, and I am so done.
And I'm tired and angry. Management says it's going to not give credit to writers in the dept for work published in December because it's synching the old department's calendar (from November through December) with its ongoing calendar (January through December). Thus their December work is now ineligible to be counted toward their metrics for 2016. My head hurts. Is this even ethical? And why wait till February to tell them that?
Weigh-in: 144.8, totally in the wrong direction and reflective of stress, tiredness and midwinter malaise, and also lots of sodium in my system.
I am gaining a little bit more & a little bit more, the opposite of this thread.
Meals for Today:
Breakfast: Apple steelcut oats; egg bake with broccoli, ham and mushrooms; blueberries with cinnamon and yogurt
Lunch: Spring mix with roasted butternut squash, brussel sprouts, walnuts, chicken breast
Snack: Braeburn apple, again, just a bit too soft
Dinner: Ground beef and sauerkraut soup
Dessert: Cinnamon roll Quest bar
Exercise for Today:
20 recumbent bike, then Workout 7B of the Strong Curves Advanced Program.
Thursday, and my morale is bad today and I am not looking forward to my staff meeting.
Weigh-in: 144.1, at least downward a little.
Meals for Today:
Breakfast: Apple steelcut oats; egg bake with broccoli, ham and mushrooms; blueberries with cinnamon and yogurt
Snack: Three guavas that could have been riper, with the usual issue of seeds in my molars
Lunch: Arugula with roasted butternut squash, peppers, cauliflower and brussel sprouts, and tuna
Snack: Braeburn apple
Dinner: Ground beef and sauerkraut soup
Dessert: Mint chocolate chip Quest bar
Exercise for Today:
30 minutes elliptical, up to 9, alternating backward & forward. And then afterward, like a bro, some random curls 3x10 with 20lb dumbbells, plain curls, cross curls, hammer curls.
Friday, feeling a little better after getting my compensation statement for 2016: My bonus will come through at the end of February, and the merit increase starts on April 1st.
And it's a three-day weekend, which means I should get at least one full day off.
Weigh in: 143.1, reflecting either adaptation to stress or a slight falling-off of stress.
Meals for Today:
Breakfast: Apple steelcut oats; egg bake with broccoli, ham and mushrooms; blueberries with cinnamon and yogurt
Snack: Braeburn apple
Lunch: Curried vegetables and toasted pecans on quinoa with spinach
Dinner: Picadillo with steamed frozen mixed vegetables on top of Spring Mix
Dessert: Chocolate chip cookie dough Quest bar
Exercise for Today:
20 minutes on Stairmaster, then Leg Day, doing Bulgarian split squats and one-leg kettlebell RDLs for a change-up.
Saef-- they had the Pumpkin Pie quest bars on clearance at the store and I thought of you. I *thought* you didn't like them much but I couldn't remember. Then, I looked at the calories and they were higher than my usual ones so I skipped them.
I'm wearing my "skinny" jeans today which I haven't worn in a long time! They are TIGHT but my other jeans were falling off, so I'm officially between sizes-- they are the same brand... I'm hoping these loosen a bit, and I'll wash the bigger size and hope it tightens up some.
Tonight starts several days of meals that may or may not be off plan.... Hoping to stay focused and not gain a bunch as I'm finally happy where I am currently.
Michele, you're right, the Pumpkin Pie Quest bars are the ones that I don't like, though because I do like markdowns and bargains, I would've struggled with that situation more than you did. My issues are simple:
They have nothing whatsoever to do with pumpkin pie.
They're way too much like a candy bar, which bothers me psychologically in my semi-eating-disordered state.
And yes, the calories are higher than the standard bars.
Saturday, at my desk in a drafty zone in my apartment, hearing the high keening sound of those arctic winds. It's that incredibly dry, brilliantly sunny, dangerously cold weather. Thus commences my three-day weekend, and of course, I'm already working.
Weigh in: 142.8, down just a fraction.
Meals for Today:
Breakfast: Apple steelcut oats; egg bake with broccoli, ham and mushrooms; blueberries with cinnamon and yogurt
Lunch: Spring mix, roasted vegetables still warm from the oven, quinoa with spinach, walnuts, hummus and guacamole
Dinner: Picadillo with roasted cauliflower
Dessert: Cinnamon roll Quest bar
Exercise for Today:
20 minutes on recumbent bike, then Workout 7A2 of the Strong Curbves Advanced program, and then my Saturday class, a Pilates mat class.
