New day - new start. Failed in a big way last night, a way so unlike me that I'm wondering what in the world I was thinking? I checked into my hotel room last night - around 1 a.m. "my" time ... and was just wiped out. I bought a Diet pop and a candy bar. A CANDY BAR!! I am typically not hugely tempted by candy bars - we have them around our office now and then for free and it's just not something that I ever pick up in an impulse aisle ... well I got to my room, unpacked my jammies and just sat there with cable tv and opened my diet pop and the 3 musketeers bar and bite by bite was thinking this is IT. This has got to stop. Tomorrow I get my priorities in order. But I didn't stop until the 240 dang calorie bar was done.

SO ... I'm going to aim to do my best and not just get through the days (well, it might be some of let me get through this morning without snacking). Between now and June 1 it's my crunch time and I have four weeks until I leave, so either a four- or six-week push ...but in all honesty I need to look at the individual meals and not look at the big picture too often because then I'll explain away the off meal or too many calories... Rambling here - apologies.

Free breakfast at the hotel and typically they have fine options - yesterday's fruit bar was fresh and delish. I never take something away from it but today I'm putting aside that and will take a banana or apple for an airport snack. I am eating lunch at the airport as well ... and I've looked up the options and found a few items I can get from Potbellys that seem like good options including soup, something I never consider at an airport. But i'm not chasing after toddlers, so that can be an option. Technology helping with today! :) I struggled with traveling with folks who order fries and fried food without a second thought. What did I do? I did the same for two meals - one small order of fries was split with someone else but I certainly ate my share ... and I ordered sweet potato fries yesterday since they came with my meal. I didn't even consider asking for them to be held. It wasn't a place that would have a fruit cup or alternate veggies. If they had, I wouldn't have considered it though, not in my frame of mind then. I split my entree with a coworker whose meal wasn't good, but still ate way more calories than I needed. This is the most disjointed note here. Free thinking.

THANK You all for being here, for not making me feel like a freak with embarrassing confessions. Thank you for your activity here - your support, thoughts, tips, friendship, sharing.

Good morning coaches,

Well my day hasn't gone according to plan so far. I got up early and was at the trail head by 6:15, but the bathroom was locked. I thought about heading out the trail, but knew it was not going to work this day without a bathroom stop. So, I just got back in the car and came home. I've decided since I'm backpacking tomorrow it's okay to be home and take care of some things.

So far I've done some laundry, balanced the checkbook, caught up the filing and packed my backpack for tomorrow except for food. I've got some errands to run, including REI and I'm just going to enjoy my day getting caught up. Tonight is an out to dinner with friends of friends. It's the last of the command performances that I signed my dh up for and he's glad it's the last one.

My sil invited dh and me up for a golf tourney the end of July in Washington. He will play golf with her and I will likely hike with my brother. Anyway, I though how can I turn this into a couple of weeks in Washington for myself during the hot part of summer. The rental car prices are kind of hefty that time of year. So, I asked brother and sister in law if I could borrow their 3rd car and they are fine with that. So I've got a trip to Washington in July, I'll go a couple weeks earlier and then fly home with dh. Then in August we'll go to Connecticut for a wedding and he gets to golf at Shinnecock Hills (which is huge for him), and then back to Washington very early September for mil's birthday and I'll leave from there to go to Spain. Now all I need to do is book the flights etc when it seems the prices are best. We are trying to take advantage of the ease of traveling while we don't have a pet. Next year's travel will likely be a pet friendly vacation to someplace.

Nationalparker I had a good on plan food day yesterday and I'm going to really try to be on a roll with you. My current plan is to eliminate sweets and extra snacks, but allow myself a beer or two if I sit outside with dh. The beer will essentially be my snacks. On backpacking days I may add in a sweet for the calories that I will burn, but not on other hiking days.

GardenerJoy I find it so much more challenging with meals out. I must check the menu of the restaurant we're going to this evening and make a choice before I leave the house. Since we have plenty of expenses coming up with travel, I've promised dh I will try to do almost all meals at home to save money. I'm glad you've got an easier week coming up.

Prarie chicken Sounds like you made some good choices during your recent travel. Sure does feel good to do that . . . although I wouldn't know from my last trip.

Onebyone So glad you weighed and saw a number you're happy with. There is nothing easy about weight loss. The head games we play with ourselves are something else too.

Bill What a lucky man you are to have a little granddaughter! Just to clarify, the tent we were in was for the wedding. One of those big white things with chandelier's etc. We slept in the hotel, but it did have a nice balcony with a lake view including the snow covered Olympics.

Lizardnumbers and Beloved warrior Welcome! I hope you find the group helpful. For me it's great to see new ideas and also to know there are other people that struggle just like I do.

Love2garden Where in Washington was your daughter? And yes I totally hear you about how long it takes to lose weight these days. A friend and I were just talking about how quickly we would drop the pounds when we were in our 40's even on a healthy diet.

Well, off I go to run a few errands. It's a beautiful day here today although it's supposed to get into the mid 90's later today I think. Take care everybody and have a great day!

This unseasonable weather is wonderful for garden chores catch up. Tall Silver Grass was moving out of bounds. DH dug it up, I drug it back close to fence and replanted it. Lots of weeds in that area - some tackled, more will be removed when sun shades that area. Very, very good exercise and realize I'm regaining my gardening strength. Food OP, all logged and I'm feeling good about it even tho the scale is hardly moving.

What fun it would be to go to Washington, DC. Our middle daughter just returned and has lots and lots of stories to tell of her professional seminar as well as the Reston area where she had the hotel. They bused the huge group into DC and the galleries were absolutely wonderful. Haven't been there in ages, but so glad she could go. Good to have her home.

Time to get back to writing checks to mail tomorrow.

Food OP, Exercise good, and even spontaneous exercise is way above average. Surely next week the scale will reflect it. My sore muscles certainly do show it. Sandy

Hi Coaches!

Stepping out of the crazies for a few minutes to say hello. Personal life kooky as always bumped up a notch with 4 ft of snow in 48 hours last weekend. The Omega effect. We were in the bullseye. Spontaneous exercise was abundant. I shoveled the roof of my moms rental twice and marveled that I'm able to go up and down the big ladder. Credit. I worked for that.
We have a new computer at work, yesterday was the 1st day. I am working extra days as a co-worker had to travel out of state.
Delinquent tenants are almost out. I will check tomorrow. (Nationalparker, the "Writ" of Restitution was what the court gave us when they ruled in our favor. We delivered it to the Sheriff and they posted it on the residence. Come Thursday if they have not left the Sheriff will again deliver and we can move anything left inside out into the yard and change the locks.)
Best news-I dropped my DH off at the airport very early this morning for a 2 week trip to Denmark. He is meeting his cousins (4) right now in Seattle to Bon Voyage together. I've been very busy for the past few weeks getting many details together for this trip. I'm so happy for all of them. They are going to see where their Grandfather (and GreatGF) was born and look at Viking ships, etc.

Foodwise, I am staying my course, excepting this last week where choices got sloppy. Good news is I made my smoothie everyday and just got back on track this morning. Credit. Weight is as stable as it ever is just not going down. I have been tracking really well and keeping up with my 5 min. weights until last week and I'll start back again today.

I return to work tomorrow. I will check in when I can.

Welcome lizardnumbers!

love2garden, yay for lots of outdoor exercise! I have plants sitting in my living room waiting for the greenhouse. I'm excited for the season!

Kudos to all who post and work our program one day at a time!

Good evening coaches! I've run out of time this evening so I'm just checking in quickly to say hello. Better day than yesterday stress wise, but not feeling terribly motivated. Set my alarm clock across the room so that hopefully in the morning I will get up an actually get moving on my morning routine instead of lazing about with my rambling thoughts! As a side note, I am reading the pink book not the blue book like I thought. I'm reading the oldest one, I figured I'd start with the original and then read the others in the future. Still really enjoying it - having to slow down a bit on some days but I'd rather take my time and feel like I really accomplished each step. Still working on changing my environment but have also been talking with my in person diet coach today about how I hope coaching will go and some of my hopes for my diet plan, so credit for that! Hoping for more credits tomorrow :) enjoyed reading about everyone's weeks, lots of busy weeks going on. Good luck on Wednesday, I hope it will be positive and productive.

Wednesday - Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium (France, 1902)
 

Diet Coaches/Buddies – Walked, CREDIT moi, to inspect a new four-story building that was constructed in one week from preformed modules. The hole has been nurtured for months and months and then trucks started arriving with mobile home sized boxes that were stacked. Now it's a building. When the outside is finished with brick, then they'll stack a few more modules behind the building and call that a single family home. Looking forward to an open house to see what it looks like inside.

Food was OK. I did have a snack but balanced with a smaller serving for dinner. There was a small serving of roasted peanuts sitting in a jar staring at me. Now there isn't. Oh Well.


onebyone – What a neat idea to take pictures of snacks instead of eating them.

Joy (gardenerjoy) – Sane perspective, "so I refuse to panic about the scale reading."

Debbie (Lexxiss) – I can well imagine that 4 feet of snow in 48 hours makes life "kooky." Congrats for moving forward with the eviction process.

nationalparker – Kudos for finding a good breakfast at the hotel buffet. I've been known to find the Danish pastries there and then regret it.

Karen (karenrn) - LOL at "Well my day hasn't gone according to plan so far" - happens a lot.

Sandy (love2garden) - Yay for "regaining my gardening strength."

Prairie Chicken - Yep, Kudos for leaving the alcohol-calories to OTHERS. I love the notion of visiting your old college haunts while in town for your DS's fraternity Mom weekend.

lizardnumbers - Kudos for working with your real life diet coach. When I went through the 42 days of the Pink Book it took me much longer than six weeks. I had to work on some strategies a while to get them.

Readers -

trust
 

Coaches

Great night at my art business class last night. It was jam packed with information. We were discussing branding and branding ourselves. What it really was was an exercise in know yourself. Basically who are you, describe that, put it into 3 words and there's your brand. So, describe you, describe your art, how do others describe you, then choose 3 words and these will be your brand, or the start of it cause it's not easy. I'd have to say last night two of my words would have been judgey and sarcastic. Yes, true. Also impatient. I forget that not everyone is as comfortable with words as I am and for many English is not their first language making it even tougher. Many, and I mean many, used "kind" and "friendly" and "trust-worthy" and hard-working to describe themselves and their art. What does it say about me that none of those words were on any of my lists? I ended the night with these three: curious, surprising, and challenging. I like those three. As you can imagine it was an interesting session.

Foodwise, yesterday's experiment with my new temp foodplan went well. The only thing was I was ravenous at about 7pm during class. Like super-hungry. AND there were the most snacks ever. I'm not kidding: three plates of cupcakes with frosting and sprinkles, one plate with two different kinds of mini quiche, one bowl of chips, one box of mandarin oranges, two plates of cookies, one box of sweet bread and coffee and bottles of water. I couldn't bring myself to take their picture. It just seemed obscene the amount of food. I didn't really even want to look at it too much. I had a food cutoff time of 8pm and at 7:15pm we took a break and I was feeling almost light headed so I chose two mini quiche It was a fair choice. I'd already had two fruit so didn't want a third. I took a bottle of water too. It was the perfect amount for me. When I got home I added up my carbs and it was ok for the day. My range is 20-100max and I was at 70. I'm not usually that high but I did everything right and was 100% on plan so all I had to do was TRUST it would be fine.

This morning I got on the scale and saw 263.7. Yay! A new number to look at. Yay! My goal for the month of April is 262.3 so I may get there yet. Today is another day to bring me ever closer. I have already done my 15 min of moving so any more will be bonus. I'm ready to get back into my artwork and get some more paintings made for my show. I am getting excited about this showing. I think I have some good work happening.

lizardnumbers My favorite Beck book remains the pink workbook. I stayed on the tasks that were hardest for me until I felt I had them down consistently. Some are tougher than others. And a few I deferred until I had the right day to try them (hunger experiment was one of those). Beck is deceptively simple and I think people read it an say "Oh I know that. Oh yeah, I've done that." And really, they haven't. We all know to eat sitting down. And to eat slowly. Even now I catch myself eating by the stove, by the counter, basically standing up. The difference is I catch it and even if it starts mindlessly I stop it and acknowledge it. That's a far cry from where I was before.

Have a great day everyone.

I did okay on the meals that I ate out...and, then, ate too much for snacks at home. Sigh. I pulled this Response Card out of my archives to use when I have similar challenges later this week:

WI: +0.1 kg, Exercise: +30, 645/1000 minutes for April, Food: 70% op, Read my Advantages and Responses: yes

Arrived home after 11 last night and was met by a dog who apparently hadn't seen me in a year. Nice :) When DH and I return, she's all over HIM, so I got my share of loving nudges and paws from her this time. And the biggest surprise was a dozen red roses and a wonderfully mushy card AND letter from DH. Made me tear up!

Weighed and 174.4 this morning ... so we'll see which way the scale moves in the next few days. ON it so far today. It's early, I know.

Have PT this afternoon, which I completely forgot about. Tonight will update my weekly appt. book with a lot of things I just think I'll remember but don't. Too busy right now.

DH found out that they are doing the 7 days a week schedule (not optional) until June most likely, but has heard rumblings that they'll get off a week at the end of June ... so we're going to tentatively plan something. I'd like to go camping, to Canada, to the Tetons, to a beach, to San Diego, to ... :) We'll see if/when they make it official. I love anticipating something. But I also dread things.

In a short work day today, so will aim to get on there this evening to post personals and get caught up more with everyone. I enjoy reading and need to take the time for some notes! A mid-week date night for us so we'll see what that holds.

Coaches,
 

Phone check in. I have a hard time with perspective. I have put several great OP days together then slip a bit and seem to be back to square one. I know everyone on this blog feels the same. So what can I do? I can start this minute, inventory the slip and move on. In my case, it started by making gingerbread for the boys. So for this week, I will do no baking. Sushi last night added water damage but I now have five days off to get back on track.
I did have a pretty good awareness yesterday. DH is going through much grief. His ranch manager and second father has cancer. DS and I walked with him for awhile and DH felt much better. Awareness was DH needs and wants a wife to support him not a wife who is ten pounds thinner. It is what it is. Bought two pairs of jeans that fit me for summer at consignment store. I'll have plenty to wear until I can release this weight.

Good evening coaches! I had a pretty good day, though not as productive as it could be. I went to Aldi on my lunch break though and didn't buy myself junk food, so credit for that :) I also stuck to my planned lunch and afternoon snack, but did have some evening slip ups. Read my ARC cards and worked on updating my environment - got my work snack drawer turned into a mostly coffee and tea drawer with a couple of emergency snacks like oatmeal packets that aren't too tempting for me and aren't too big of a deal if I do decide I have to have something. Got some fat free milk to keep at work so that I have have coffee in the afternoon when I'm feeling sluggish. My boss is out of town the next two days so hoping not too many emergencies crop up in the office and perhaps I'll have a quiet and productive rest of the week. Getting up early in the morning to work on some cards and reading. Hope everyone has a good night.

Onebyone I totally agree - I love my increased awareness already of some of these issues - I never would have given eating while standing a second thought before, but now I do. I am happy to hear that I'm not alone in taking my time with the book, I really want it stick in my head, and goodness knows I can be stubborn when it comes to learning something I'd really rather procrastinate on.

Thursday - Romulus and Remus found Rome (753 B.C.)
 

Diet Coaches/Buddies – Walked, CREDIT moi, to an evening event. It's still light around here at 7:30 p.m. but I get to enjoy the dark on the way home at 10 p.m. I read a long article in the New Yorker by Gay Talese, The Voyeur’s Motel, about a voyeur who walks the streets at night peeking in windows (as well as from the attic of his motel). Now I wonder how many folks assume that anyone walking at night is a voyeur.

Food was OK. I had nibbles from the table of snacks that sat before me for two hours in the evening. I had less than my brain told me to have - CREDIT moi for that much.


onebyone – I like the brand: " curious, surprising, and challenging." Did Picasso have a 'brand' or did he just paint?

Joy (gardenerjoy) – Thanks for the reminder that special events can serve as an opportunity to eat less since so much is happening.

maryann - Sound Beck-like plan: "inventory the slip and move on."

nationalparker – Just WOW - your DH sounds like a keeper. Love the range of your list of ideas for a vacation week.

lizardnumbers - Changing a snack drawer at work into a coffee and tea drawer is a neat Environmental improvement - Kudos.

Readers -

omg. whatever.
 

Coaches:

I was reminded by the scale this morning that the body does what the body does. And no amount of wishing, hoping, self-confidence, willpower, whatever you want to add to this, will change the number on the scale in the way that you want/hope/expect/need it to. Sometimes it just shows a number you simply don't like. And so? SO??? So you continue on. One day it will say a number you like and then later on, not so much. It's over time that it really matters. The reason behind this whole preface was my scale showed me up 2lbs overnight. 265.7. I do remember earlier this year when my high scale weight was 274 and before that it was 276. So those days are gone. And these 265 high days will go too. I need to remember this as it was very discouraging to see the 2lb rise after really really trying to get that lower 263 from yesterday. Whatever. The number on the scale cannot help me complete my artwork for my show. it can only make me feel down and zap my energy which will not help me get my artwork done for my show so I need to drop this and go out for my walk. I'm going to do that now. Bye!

My inner saboteur played a sneaky little trick on me. Since I'm determined not to have seconds of stir-fry dishes, she gave me a too large first serving! I hate to start measuring if I don't have to (but I will -- so, thing about that, inner saboteur!). I think I can solve this by making the intention to serve 3/4 of the bowl or less. I wrote that intention as a side note on my Best Practices card about no seconds.

I had the consequence of sleeplessness and bloatedness in the wee hours. I'm making note of that because I ignored my body for most of my adult life. I truly believed that what I ate didn't affect me in any way. This symptom isn't new -- I just notice it now that I've finally had some experience of what it's like to not have that symptom. I don't want to let myself fall back into the habit of not noticing the negative effects of eating too much.

CREDIT for running errands and not having a single snack, even in places that I associate with food. That assertion of will power may have contributed to my other too big servings at home, but too much food at home is much better than too much food away from home for me. And, much easier to rein back in before things go really haywire. So, I'm going to take credit where it's due and work on the rest.

WI: +0.1 kg, Exercise: +30, 675/1000 minutes for April, Food: 80% op, Read my Advantages and Responses: yes

Good Morning, Coaches.

Made it to my weekend. These long weekends will go away next year when I start teaching full-time. But I believe that doing the right job five days a week is easier than the wrong job three days a week. I think this is true. We'll see. And as my husband says, "You can always make another choice." I need to remember that with everything. I can always make another choice. For now, I am looking forward to the change.

Wearing the consignment jeans (after a double sanitizing wash) and they fit well and look good even if they are not a size I want. Oh Well. There are other things i want more. God can put these first on my early Xmas list: Health and peace for our ranch manager who has cancer and worked his last day yesterday; comfort and strength for DH who was beside himself in tears last night walking through the grief of losing this man's companionship and also fear that he won't be able to bring the harvest in without him; grace and strength for all the wonderful teachers at my school as they work with children that have been thrown away by parents and community. On and on I can go.

But first things first, getting overwhelmed helps no one and there is no situation that a compulsive bite of food can't make worse. I watched the Mother Teresa movie. The content was powerful, the craftsmanship of the movie was like an afterschool special. Still, her words rung through: we can help people one by one. So, I'll call a friend suffering with the loss of his husband. I'll also remember the face of the little special ed boy who won some prizes in my reading contest. He looked just like DS when he was young yet had difficulty speaking. After that, I'll move on to much lighter topics: my new hair color, a few new recipes with my evaporated milk I have to use up in my pantry challenge, and my new book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I'll give you the review tomorrow.

PS The gal in BBE's excerpt of food pushers who needs to keep up with her friend's drinking does not realize her friend could quite possibly be an alcoholic. Alcoholics are the only ones who feel judged by others' abstinence. Just saying :)