It begins

Monday:

Not a great weigh in this morning; 80.3 kg is 0.1 kg UP from last Monday after lots of fluctuations all week. But there are reasons for it, one that was in my control and one that wasn't.

The "out of my control" is that it's a time of the month when I retain water. It happens, it will go again in a few days, I'm not worried. The "in my control" was yesterday's eating! We had a very busy day and breakfast was the only meal at home. In the morning we went to see baby Lucy - so cute! She was very small when born (no one seems to know why, she was full term) but is growing rapidly and at three weeks old looks like a perfect porcelain doll.

Then we dropped Jasmine at a birthday party and went to lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant. I did make careful choices, I thought, but the entrée (starter) chicken wings turned out to be crumbed and deep fried (I should have asked questions!) and my Thai beef salad was delicious but I'm sure had a lot of sugar in the dressing. I don't think I overate, and my estimation of calories was around 500 which is high for one meal on my current WOE but not terrible, but nevertheless afterward I felt tired, bloated and headachy. I wanted a nap. And then I wanted to EAT. MORE FOOD NOW.

We spent the afternoon finishing the gardening work, I am now covered in scratches and mosquito bites and have sore arm and pec muscles, and I snacked on some cheese and an apple. Hungry but trying hard. Then we went to my sister-in-law's for dinner, they did a BBQ and I was completely in control of what I put on my plate, I had a little more meat than I probably should have but also plenty of salad and no dessert so I think I did ok. But when I got home I shovelled in a big serve of mixed nuts. It was way more food than I have been eating and I kept wanting more. Might be a bit of PMS but I'm mainly blaming the sugar.

Today Tim and I sprang out of bed early because the guy with the excavator said he would be here at 7:00. At around 9:30 I called and was told Phil was just finishing up another job first and yes I had time to go out for an hour before he got here. So I went and did the grocery shopping. Phil came with the excavator at noon. That thing is huge, no wonder we had to do so much work to clear a way through to the backyard!

My favourite bit was when Phil used the excavator to build a ramp for itself, pulling rocks and soil down from the backyard wasteland. I wish Aiden could have been home to watch.

Then he set to work levelling out the backyard. Compared to the tree removal, the excavator isn't that noisy which is great, I was expecting more headaches. The site manager Angelo came and marked out where the pool goes, then Phil spent the rest of the afternoon digging. He is down to solid rock, so it's going to be harder from now on.

Lucy

Tuesday:

One of the four heavily pregnant women in my family had her baby on Sunday (or Sat night maybe) and we just found out her name is Lucy. We haven't seen her yet, apparently she is a little small, not sure why as she is not early and her mother had gestational diabetes which is more likely to result in a large baby. I don't really have any details. Anyway, she is doing fine but still in hospital and we haven't seen her yet except for a cute photo. Crossed fingers everything works out well.

Another mostly-rest day for me but I did get out and do the grocery shopping and I'm fine really. I've made follow-up appointments with my GP and gyno.

I tried an interesting recipe for lunch - pizza with the base made out of broccoli. It took a long time but I suppose the dough kind does too. I food-processed the broccoli until it was rice sized, steamed it in the microwave, let it cool, mixed in an egg and some cheese, flattened it out, cooked it for 25 mins, added sauce cheese and shredded chicken and cooked it again. By this time it was 2:00 pm and it wasn't really seeming worth it! The crispy bits round the edge were pretty yummy but the whole middle was too moist and fell apart. I'd thought it was dry enough and didn't do the "squeeze the steamed broccoli in a tea towel" step. Silly me! I could get the same flavour by cooking some broccoli with cheese on it in the oven, so not sure if I will go through all that again. Still have half left though to reheat for another lunch.

I'm still going strong on the low carb Mediterranean diet, tonight I had my first square of (70% dark) chocolate for over a week, surely a new record!