Yesterday was less sloppy. Today defies planning, so I'm glad I got in a better place yesterday and that tomorrow is likely to be better in that regard. I can get through one day making good decisions on the fly, so that's my plan!

Exercise +25, 1210/1400 minutes for March

Saturday - Passover begins at Sundown
 

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Walked, CREDIT moi, to my barber for a haircut. First customer of her day. She's a delightful Vietnamese woman who takes small steps - that I associate with nobility. She commented, as she always does, "It's been a long time." Felt good to be light headed. When it's been way too long, I over tip thinking I need to help compensate for her financial loss due to my negligence. As a full vaccinated person, I didn't wear a mask while she cut; she wore one. Half normal.

DW had four friends over to plan their work for the Spring in a public area that they maintain. A proper ladies' tea it was. Each brought something; she got out her best tea cups and saucers instead of our friendly set of mugs that guests usually are served. I got several leftover treats with my evening snack.

Eating was on plan with no daytime snacks, CREDIT moi. Daytime snacks were difficult to avoid since the tea party cookies were sitting right out on the kitchen counter. I waited; sorta had the thought that I'd get the same share by waiting that I would by gobbling right away.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Ouch for a day that "defies planning" - some days are just like that.

maryann - Ouch for the complications of teaching in the COVID era. Will have to ponder, "boring as sin" - I'm remembering racing heart beats for mine; maybe you need some new suggestions.

Karen (karenrn) - Neat to have a second bit of sleep after your DH left for work. Sad thought of your friends who just moved to a new area before getting sick.

curlyjax - A good night's sleep is a great start for your day.

Penny. - That's a lot of weekend working. If this forum is part of what you need to drop out of, we'll miss you - but wish you the best finding your path.

Readers -

I did get some things done around the house yesterday so I feel a bit better, including arranging to donate my old car. The tow truck should come Weds. I need to take the license plates off so I better do that this weekend before I forget. I bought a few groceries for DD who is zipping home today to work, so I’ll make a healthy salmon for dinner tonight. It’s going to be a nice day out so I have got to get outside.
I will put my food in the WW app today and start tracking again.
Maryann- the attendance does sound complicated, geez!
Karen-you are very right about the honeymoon period. So fun to be planning your trip in July!
Bill-yay for fresh haircut. Good for you waiting on the treats.

Today is much easier to plan. In fact, I wrote my to-do list last night, which I rarely do. So, I have a food plan, too!

Exercise +35, 1245/1400 minutes for March

Good Morning, Coaches.

I woke late and will head up to Truckee after i get some coffee in me.
Food was grazing - never good. Mom and my sister came up to watch a movies and I made pizza. That was fun. A fully vaxed crowd. School was not as nightmarish as the day before but I woke up worried about it. I had to take Monday off for a health appt. for DH.

curleyjax: credit for getting food back into the WW ap. I'll do the same in MFP.
BBE: yeah for stretching the resistance muscle even for a few hours with cookies.
Karen: i have not hiked the Rim. At some point in yr life hike around Desolation Wilderness. I go out of Rockbound pass from Wright's lake. So many beautiful tiny lakes.

Off I go

Good morning coaches,

Just got back from a nice kind of moderate hike with a couple of friends. Food was on plan yesterday and weight is holding. Tomorrow a friend I've known since 1st grade is coming to visit with her guy friend. She is in Arizona for a couple of weeks traveling around. I usually see her at least once a year, most often in Washington. Hard to imagine we have known each other for over 60 years. I got a message from a program director for the Tahoe Rim Trail association who has offered to help plan our trip. I'm going to take her up on it.

Maryann I'm glad school was a bit better. Have fun in Truckee.
GardenerJoy I've kind of slipped on doing a to do list. I had better get back to that.
Curlyjax I'm glad you have gotten some things done and feel good about it. Somehow being productive and being on plan food wise often go together.
Bill I'm sure it feels good to have a fresh haircut. I bet the treats were good.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Sunday - Turkish cities Constantinople and Angora renamed Istanbul and Ankara (1930)
 

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Eating was on plan with no daytime snacks, CREDIT moi. Dinner was pork chops grilled outside. Evening snack included the last of my share of the treats left over from DW's tea party - a modest serving. I could add that much to my life each day and gain 15 pounds a year. I've never desired to be a lumber jack, although I've often desired to eat like one. Lunch was the last of last week's pot roast made into a sandwich on toasted whole wheat bread ends. Heavenly.

The latest issue of Nutrition Action lists veggies by their criteria of usefulness. Mustard Greens is number one. All the leafy green veggies rank high; potatoes and corn are toward the bottom. But they're clear that all veggies are good for us. Mass manufactured food doesn't contain veggies because they're expensive to incorporate into anything.

A minor success was installing four LED light bulbs - replacing the curly ones that are no longer sold. I've grown to hate them because of the pause before turning on. I had a box of them in new-in-plastic-packaging in our basement. We put the whole box of a dozenish bulbs on the curb. About half are already gone. I won't miss them.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - To-do lists work for me until I add items equivalent to "Resolve World Hunger" and then the whole list idea collapses. At the office, I'd make realistic to-do lists for the day - an unemotional task.

maryann - Love the notion of a full vaxed crowd. Glad to hear that school is going in the right direction.

Karen (karenrn) - Yay for having help planning your trip on the Tahoe Rim Trail. Friendships of sixty years are rare indeed.

curlyjax - Congrats for arranging the donation of your old car. Healthy salmon for dinner sounds good to me.

Readers -

Good morning,

Two days on plan. Woot! Haha

I had a headache last night but managed to get through grocery shopping. My items were vegetables, potatoes and beans. Now if I can stick to those items and not touch all the trash food added to the cart by my teens.

Last day of work before my stretch of blessed days off.

Good Morning, Coaches.

Happy Sunday. Yesterday was beautiful weather up at Truckee. I did the reverse of my previous diamond trail which meant doing a herringbone up the steepest part. Credit. That meant I had a longer, luxurious down hill. Today, i will actually wear a back pack with water and snack. I am going to try to go for the longest loop. Weight was near ticker even though food continues to be sloppy. Like Penny, I have the right foods in the house. Now i just need to eat the right amount.

I did something I have rarely done in 30 plus years of teaching. I counted the days till summer. I actually just counted the "in person" days till summer. Wednesday is full distance learning for cleaning. I am just going to have to reconcile myself with the fact that I will not be able to do what I could do if I had the right tools and environment. I don't want top be overly dramatic. My kids are not in a high poverty country and they are being fed and clothed but many are lost. I had meetings the last two days: One girl jumped out of a moving car, ran away and is now in a respite home. Another boy is threatening suicide and is at home 12 hours a day by himself. My suggestion for both was allow them to come to school four days a week. (The other students are only coming two days a week.) I need to work on the prayer and meditation to keep my sanity. I must let my ego not control me. At my AA meeting (in a park) I read the following passage:

"Shakespeare said, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” He forgot to mention that I was the chief critic. I was always able to see the flaw in every person, every situation. And I was always glad to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did." The answer is not perfection but acceptance.

And Acceptance does NOT mean approval. It just means these 32 "in person" days are going to teach me more about myself. I will grow. If I don't look at things this way I turn to food to solve my problems. A three minute feeling of euphoria from sugar and then regret for the crap I put into my body is not how I want to live my life.

Wave to all.

Yesterday went reasonably according to plan, including a walk in weather that felt like summer followed by a thundery evening, which means today won't feel like summer at all.

Today is about planning a fairly complicated week for us. We'll make our first in-person visit with MiL in an entire year, which we're doing instead of a family Easter celebration. Gathering the family would have the complication of vaxxed and un-vaxxed people (including the under-age-6 people who are the stars of such events). So, I'll want to plan a little something to make our small Easter feel more special.

Exercise +40, 1285/1400 minutes for March

Good morning coaches,

Food was NOT on plan yesterday in kind of a big way. We had an invitation to meet for happy hour on the patio of a golf course restaurant and went. I had a couple of drinks and a salad for dinner, but stopped at the store and bought a brownie and some ice cream which we shared. Most often when that kind of thing happens it is after a couple of drinks. I did a 6 mile hike this morning and we have company coming in an couple of hours. I decided we're going out for lunch/dinner since I just don't feel like fixing anything. Dh has agreed but went to the golf course to hit balls for a couple of hours. I know he wishes we weren't having company, but I think the biggest thing is we just aren't used to it after this past year. The good news is they aren't staying the night. I think the guy sounds like a really nice guy and I bet we'll enjoy it.

I'm afraid I had better get cleaned up. I may only have 50 minutes until they are here. Would hate to be caught dirty in hiking clothes. Personals tomorrow.

Monday - I. M. Pei's pyramidal entrance to the Louvre opens (1989, Paris)
 

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Our walk was cancelled due to rain. Ouch. DS and DIL stopped by for 'tea' instead. To my delight, DW served purple seedless grapes instead of cookies or cakes. I didn't add sugar to my tea. Made it an on plan day with no daytime snacks, CREDIT moi.

Dinner was Chana Masala from our Christmas gift from our DS and DIL, served with Chinese Broccoli, Green Salad, and Oyster Crackers. The Oyster Crackers were a definite clash but we're still working on the bag we bought a few weeks ago. They are still crisp; I'm impressed. DW was moved to show that their hexagon shape makes a perfect tessellation. Playing with food at the table is pretty rude. I suspect that a year of isolation has reduced our social skills. Hope they return.

Spent all idle time at my computer watching for news of the attempts to re-float the container ship in the Suez Canal. What a pain to the world that is. I keep trying to envision its 400 meter length. That's a nice hike from one end to the other. The news this morning is that the stern is free and that the bow is improved. Yay for tides to lift ships in distress - a very old idea.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Ouch for the reminder of the complication of gathering vaxxed and un-vaxxed people; hoping that'll be ending soon.

maryann - Congrats for doing the difficult herringbone climb up the Diamond Trail. I thought of you teaching when discussing the two weeks added to a ship's journey by going around Africa. When my teachers were trying to get me excited about that idea, I was like Meh. Now I think of it as two long weeks with cargo aging, crew needing to be fed, and the perils of the far south Pacific to be faced. Thanks for the "chief critic" analogy.

Karen (karenrn) - Yay for company that visits but doesn't stay for the night. Kudos for managing a Happy Hour that can be difficult.

Penny. - Congrats for staying your plan despite teens adding food to the shopping cart.

Readers -

I went for a morning walk with a friend yesterday which was great. She has a date this week with someone she met online and we giggled about it like high schoolers. I'm very glad for her; she's been on her own for a long time. She likes playing golf and watching sports which is a big advantage when meeting men. We timed the walk just right before the rain. I felt very content afterwards which was nice. I talked to my BIL on the phone and made tentative plans to visit him in the summer. He didn't seem to get the fact that it takes a long time to get an appt here for a vaccine; my kids will be eligible to sign up April 19, but who knows when they'll actually be able to get it.
Food was pretty on track I think- I didn't track it but waited to eat until I was hungry, and didn't eat anything sweet.
DD was home over the weekend. We end up arguing about money quite a bit-kind of the same arguments over and over. I have money I can pull out and have been doing so, but that isn't sustainable forever. I need to make a money plan but I keep putting it off.
Penny- great job two days on plan!
Gardenerjoy-great idea to see MIL early. I can't believe Easter is Sunday!!
KAren- good plan to go out, and yes indeed, yay for company that isn't overnight.
Maryann-great attitude about a tough situation. You are my role model for avoidng sugar.
Bill-I get the Nutrition Action newsletter too! I saved that page for a reminder. The newsletter seems shorter than it used to be.

I'm checking in late today for no particularly good reason. So far, I'm following my plan but I did have a snack on the early side, so I'm here to pledge that if I get hungry before supper, I'll eat an apple.

Exercise +35, 1320/1400 minutes for March

curlyjax: Would it help to pull DD into the process of making a money plan? My dad didn't pull me in until quite late in my parents' lives and I wished he'd done it a lot earlier. I think it would have helped my personal financial education if I'd watched my parents work through their ways of doing things. There was a huge privacy issue in my family, which kind of felt like a huge non-issue at the end when I was managing everything for my mother after my dad died.

Good afternoon!

loving my lazy day at home. I had to clock in for work eight out of the last 10 days and my lazy self did not like it.

Eating is going well. Penn Jillette's book talks about eating nothing but potatoes to reset your stomach and taste buds for healthier flavors. I'm not going to eat only potatoes but I bought a variety of them for eating in place of junk when I get hungry later in the day. And I'm not eating them plain. I have a low calorie green salsa and Tabasco for them, which is not too much salt.

They are pretty yummy, and back to my goal of eating whole, plant based foods.