Good morning everyone. Glad to see some more faces here. I am definitely coming down with something. I keep saying that I know but I always feel that way in the morning and it's settling in my chest. I usually feel better when I'm out of the room but I have not had my usual energy so I guess I'm just keeping things at bay. Friends have been hit with the flu right and left. I hope I don't get it. It gives you a high fever and knocks you out for about four days. But I am coughing a bit and congested. Oh well, nothing bad yet. Being off sugar really, really helps I know.
Shanberg -- good to hear from you again. I did remember you are away from the computer on weekends so figured that was why we hadn't heard from you. Wish you would get a computer for home soon! How can you stand to not have one? That said, if it weren't for a friend having given me this one I would have been hard put to get one, being as financially strapped as I am. Your weekend sounded nice. Don't sweat the birthday party. They are special and playing with the kids sounds like great fun and you surely got some good exercise in there. Glad to hear you're feeling better and, more importantly, are ready to come back and fight again. I would stay away from the scale, well, if it bothers you, but maybe it doesn't. You know 2 lbs means nothing. I was just reading about a sumo wrestler here yesterday and he weighs 162 kgs (356 lbs) and he said he weighs 166 kgs (365 lbs) after eating! So that's 9 lbs of food he's putting away! He doesn't really look fat either. He's very tall and carries the weight really well. Must be very strong. He's from Estonia, not Japanese. Anyhow, not to compare you to a sumo wrestler or anything, I was just saying, 2 lbs is nothing and could well be due to food or water or anything. Don't let the numbers bother you. Also, you've been moving around and remember muscle takes up far less room than fat so if you are adding muscle or even just toning up you could gain weight and still be more streamlined. Anyhow, glad if something I said helped. I guess it's not so much that food is the enemy, it's that we turn it into the enemy by allowing it into our lives (and mouths!!) in ways that are harmful. So, yes, I guess, in that way you could say it was our enemy. Sorry for the analysis here. This is my habit!
You are right! You must be vigilant. As for my not eating sugar, it's not so tough now but that is ONLY because I am used to it. I have done this many times before now, was even off for a year! So, I don't want anyone to think that it's not hard and if they can't do it they must be losers or something. I'm just a veteran at it! In the beginning it took, as you say, constant vigilance and I was craving sugar. But I forced myself to see out really sweet fruit and I used to chew a lot of sugarless gum, but I realized the sweeteners were just prolonging my wanting the sweetness and a lot of that was mental. At first, I tried to stay away from processed foods in general. The sugarfree came later. I try to only eat natural foods, things I make myself, vegetables and fruits and rice, stonecut oatmeal, soy milk, tofu, that kind of thing. I am the food industry's nightmare!! But being here helps me TREMENDOUSLY! If I were in the States it would be hard because the supermarkets are so huge and so full of tempting things. The only way I could probably do it would be to live in New York or so with all the little shops or in L.A. where you have those wonderful organic shops. I loved them! How are the stores around you, shan?
stormy -- don't feel sorry for making me cry. You didn't make me cry. I did it myself and really I am happy to cry. How does that sound?! No, really, it is good to cry. It is a release and a touchstone to my feelings and of course I'm sad. All day long I'm out and about and I can't cry so I can't even allow myself to think of sad things. But I want to think of them, want to pay them tribute so to speak, want to think of Tetchan. So, you did me a favor by giving me a chance to feel and express some of that sadness, stormy. I dread the day when I can't cry. I dread that I should ever become so hardened, so given up, so apathetic that something wouldn't move me. Storm, you are amazing studying like that after work. You are driven! I wish you strength to get through this hard time in your studies. Great that you finished your research!
You will pull through. Just plug away. Put the pressure on yourself and you will do it. Best of luck to you as well!
Crime girl -- Yeah! Good to have you posting! Thank you again for the horoscope. I love this idea of change happening. I hope it's good change, but then I suppose most change is good, or at least allows good things to come in. It's freezing cold out there again so I have to really put on my warmest things to go riding. I would chicken out, my teacher has been so tough lately and really down on me. It makes my riding time such a test, so much so that I am starting to get nervous before riding. She doesn't allow me to take it easy at all. She is such a perfectionist herself and always looking for so much out of herself and the horse, more out of herself I suppose than the horse. And this is tough for me. Just getting to the stable is a major thing for me. It takes a lot of discipline. It's not easy. But there is so much waiting for me to do once I get on the horse. That, right now, is the hardest part I think. But it is stupid if I don't give it my all then because that is the WHOLE reason for all the other hardship! Anyhow, whoops, talking about me again. CG, I LIKE your goal for the day, NO HARM! Yes, this is so important. And this is a big thing. It's not a baby step. It involves all the things you need to do to lose weight, just in lesser intensity, but lesser intensity doesn't mean less. In fact, I think it's harder to do because it's subtler and you can easily think you're not doing anything and then just go hog wild. Sorry to hear about your dreams. The test is over, right!? Just forget it. There is nothing you can do now. What's done is done. Move on to the next step. You probably did fine. Nozomi is a strange little cat. She too I rescued. She was about to die from starvation. In the beginning she would never leave my side. She would follow me down the street when I left and I had to keep carrying her back and putting her in my room. Of course, the door is open so she would just pop out again and follow me but I would speak sternly to her and put her back inside and she seemed to need that. She learned to stay. In fact, it seems that's what she wanted, to be told she had to STAY with me, that she belonged with me and I wasn't going to abandon her, which I think is what happened to her in the first place. She was in a little park when I found her. She does not want to be held but she will sit next to me wherever I am unless she goes off to sleep somewhere. Right now she is sleeping with Shachi after I pulled him out of the futon because I had to put it away. He won't move from under the covers until I move him. I put him up with her where she was sleeping and she starts biting his head but I scolded her and she stopped and now they're sleeping curled up together so cute. Nozomi doesn't seem to really like Shachi the way she did Tetchan but she will be nice to him. So, I think she'll be OK. I tell them Tetchan died and that I miss him, give them hugs and I think they realize there is nothing to be scared of, it just is the way it is. Anyhow, sorry for the cat tales. You are right about keeping me out of the bars. Last Friday all the guys went out after work and I would have gone but had no money and really didn't want to because I knew inside I was feeling very sad and that would have surfaced eventually after drinking. I almost went but in the end didn't. The next day I was able to get to work OK and one of the guys was in terrible shape because it had turned into another all-nighter apparently. If I had been there I wouldn't have stopped either. There are four of us who will just go and go and go and though it's great fun, it's too costly, not only in terms of money, but calories, work, everything. But I want to do it sometimes because the socializing is fun. Unfortunately, these guys all have steady and apparently serious girlfriends so I'm afraid my spending too much time with them is not productive. I mean, it's kind of weird, to be out with married and perhaps soon-to-be-married guys and here I am single. Maybe again though I'm not really looking, which I'm not. Anyhow. . . do you think the drinking messes with the metabolism? I hadn't really thought of that. Well, I have to run now. You really should try to take care of yourself more CG, with your diabetes. It is not something you want to get worse and you CAN help it so much by diet that it would be as if it were no longer there BUT if you don't it will get worse. Use it to care for yourself more, a good reason, not just appearance. I would try to do it NOT out of fear, but out of caring for yourself.
OK, all, bye for now!