Brunch

Sunday:

We went to a friend's house for lunch today, at least it was lunchtime but the food was bacon and eggs. Is it still brunch if it's after noon? And if you've already had breakfast? Anyway it was great company with I think nine adults and eight kids, our kids were the eldest. It was a nice summer day so the kids were outside most of the time while the grown-ups sat around and enjoyed adult conversation - like the worst toilets we've encountered in various countries around the world. And the worst flat-mates people had back in their younger days.

Then at home in the afternoon we played our family Dungeons and Dragons game. They followed the rumour of a scary ghost and found he was a noble knight guarding his master's tomb and not a threat unless you were a grave robber.

The only bad thing today was a very disappointing cut of meat for our Sunday roast. I'm not at all confident that I got the expensive cut I paid for.

My thighs are so sore from all those stairs yesterday! I can hardly get up out of a low chair. But I don't mind that, makes me feel like I got some good exercise in yesterday.

Report card:
Diet: Mostly good, and no food after 8.
Exercise: As I was about to write this post I realised I didn't want to have to say I broke my promise about exercise, so I got up and marched around the lounge room for five minutes. Not much, but it was something. Otherwise a very sedentary day.
Water: Good.
Sleep: Tick for CPAP. Seeing the technician tomorrow. Ok sleep. I slept in an extra hour this morning, which was lovely.
Mental health: Good. I listened to my meditation while dinner was cooking. Didn't hear most of it, of course, as I drifted off. But it still counts.

(Edit: I broke my no food after 8 quite late this evening, picking at leftovers then toast. I should have eaten more at dinner, but I was very unhappy with the meat.) (Further edit: that is just an excuse. I ate when I shouldn't have.)

I've decided it's time to step things up a bit. I think maybe each Monday I'll increase one or more of my promises. So from tomorrow I will start tracking my food, without a requirement yet for keeping within any calorie limit. I just have to track it. Also, with exercise I still have a requirement to do something, no matter how small, every day, but this week I will do at least half an hour on five of those days.

New clothes

Tuesday:

I had a very busy but productive day today. I spent basically the entire morning looking for something to wear to this wedding on Friday. I was running out of time to buy, especially as a lot of things I buy have to be altered to fit because I am so short. Today I was feeling much better, nearly over my cold, so I was up to stressful shopping. Clothes shopping is definitely stressful when you are unhappy with the way you look in just about anything. You have to compromise between finding something you think you look good in and realising that you are not going to look like Elle McPhearson no matter how many dresses you try on. Every outfit you ask "is this as good as it gets?"

I chose a pair of floaty black pants, very interesting actually and not at all like work trousers, and a floaty purple top. I felt a bit like a gypsy. It is going to be a stinking hot day but I decided I would be more comfortable in loose pants than with my thighs rubbing together. I was happy with my eventual choice.

Then I realised how late it was getting and rushed to my hair appointment without having any time for lunch. Happy with my haircut too. I'll take a picture when I'm all made up and not so much red nose and bleary eyes.

At 2pm (so late for me, I always eat at noon) I grabbed lunch, put in the trousers for alteration, got a script at the chemist and asked them to check my blood pressure. The lady tried four times but kept getting an error message. All that arm-squeezing pain for nothing! I'll have to wait for my doctor next week. My blood sugars have been consistently high yesterday and today (I hadn't checked it for a while before that) but apparently being sick can mess with that. If you're diabetic. I've booked in for the diabetes blood test I didn't have six months ago, next Monday when presumably I'll be completely over my cold so the results should be accurate. The great news is you no longer need to carb load for three days beforehand! I always hated doing that. But I am definitely a bit worried, my pre-diabetes had seemed to be improving last time I was tested 18 months ago.

I got home just minutes before the kids and their playdate guests, had a nice chat with my friend, took my daughter to dance, got a rotisserie chicken on the way home because I hadn't had time to do grocery shopping today, then had Dungeons and Dragons night. I'm really not enjoying it at all lately, my favourite bit is the combat and we get to do that about one session in four this campaign (usually it should be every session, or I think so anyway!). It's all debate about what to do next and how to achieve our goals. Hours of it. Boring. I want to charge in and kill the monsters! But we can't because they are usually too tough for us and we have to be sneaky and clever. Blah. I spend a lot of type rudely playing with my phone. But they know how I feel.

At least with the playdate and the games night I put out all the rest of the cake and party leftovers so that is all gone instead of sitting around tempting me. I'd already tipped chips into the bin to avoid eating the whole packet after I couldn't resist opening them. Gone now.

Arsenic hour

Monday:

I was so cranky tonight at arsenic hour (it is traditional for toddlers to be tired and hungry in late afternoon/early evening when mummy is trying to cook dinner). Not enough sleep last night - what a difference that makes! - and Thor getting under my feet. I ended up tying him to the kitchen table. Then I cut my finger on the aluminium foil around a tub of cream cheese:

 I took the photo because I was so cranky I was thinking about suing the makers of Philadelphia cream cheese and I wanted evidence! Well my husband is a lawyer.

Here is Thor being a good boy:

 Investigating the strawberry patch, one of his favourite places to wrestle plants into submission:

And in his second favourite garden bed, the herb patch:

 

We had our games night one day early because some of our friends are moving to another city tomorrow, their house was all packed up so they said they might as well come over. I ate too much again. This is a pattern that must not continue. I am totally for occasional treats, but not eating so much unplanned. It looks like we are continuing Dungeons and Dragons with the four of us left, for the time being at least, so managing my supper consumption is something I still need to work on. The rest of the day I did very well, even being tired and cranky. At least I don't automatically turn to food anymore - unless it is right in front of me. 



Games night

Wednesday:

I didn't do quite so well yesterday. Firstly, the puppy totally defied my attempt to pin down his routine. He decided to completely change it up. Instead of spending all morning and a fair bit of the afternoon napping, he only slept for an hour then was up and active until after lunch, and only had a couple of short naps later. He was really busy all day and wanted to play with me or at least follow me around the house. I guess he is growing and changing rapidly at this age. But I didn't get much done.

Then for some reason I got really hungry in the afternoon and ate quite a few extra calories. And then some more. And then we had our weekly games night and I'd decided to eat very little - maybe one square of chocolate - because I'd already had treats several days in a row. Instead I ate about 400 calories worth of stuff. There were Doritos. Damn you Doritos. I ended up quite a bit over my calorie limit for the day. It was the first day I really felt I'd done quite badly.

But what were the positives? Firstly my extra afternoon snacks were not just random junk. I didn't grab sugar. I went for filling healthy protein - a little tin of tuna in water and then some cashews. And then in the evening I ate too much but I did stop way short of past binges. I stopped eating when there were still plenty of Doritos in the bag. I limited myself. It could have been much worse. And I never at any point gave up on my diet or decided to just start again tomorrow or next week or next year.

But still, that makes four days in a row when I have had treat foods when I had only planned for one. Time to rein this in.

I don't expect to lose weight this week. My official weigh-in is tomorrow but as of this morning I am slightly above last week's weight. That is sad, but I have to keep pushing forward.  It reinforces that I have to stick to my plan pretty closely or I won't lose weight. I won't be surrounded by temptations again for a while, so that helps.

Dungeons and Dragons games night might be ending very soon. Two of the six people in our group are moving to another state next week and can only come one more time. Four people is enough to play, but one of them will be home with a new baby in a couple of months. We've been playing for about eight years now, a long time, with this core group of four and lots of others who have come for a year or two then left (the women don't usually last very long!). I am quite bored with it and wouldn't attend if it wasn't at my house, and all the junk food is hard (we occasionally try to clean that up but it doesn't last long) but it is nice to have a social evening every week. So I don't know if we'll be looking for new people or taking a hiatus.

I have had two pretty good night's sleep in a row and I will use that energy to do better today.

Day 13: Treat day

Tuesday:

A much better night that I had dared to hope for! Thor woke at 1:30 and was only up for a very short time, then slept through until nearly 7:00am! Totally awesome! I woke a couple of times in the night, amazed that he was still quiet, then happily went back to sleep. So that was an awesome treat!

So I am feeling a million times better today. Not nauseous with sleep deprivation anymore. Still not particularly hungry though. Part of that is constant distractions. I had a very small lunch and was looking through the cupboards for something else (not recommended practice) but then Thor woke and I took him outside for a while. By then I wasn't hungry anymore and decided to wait until afternoon tea.

I've finished dinner having only had around 800 calories again today. It is games night so I am going to allow myself 200 calories of treat food again, plus maybe a bit of fruit or something.

Eating clean, and then not

Tuesday:

Got up and did a half hour walk this morning. It was a good, brisk walk - although the time I took indicated it wasn't as brisk as I used to walk. It felt like I was pushing, though, which is the important thing. I had the usual voice in my head telling me that a half an hour walk was nothing, pathetic, couldn't even start to combat the other 23 and a half hours I spend sitting down, I wasn't going fast enough, just NOT GOOD ENOUGH. The thing is, I get that voice no matter how much I do or how hard I push myself. Run/walk a 5K? Not enough. Two gym classes back to back? Not enough. Pushing hard enough that I am getting dizzy and nearly vomiting? Not enough.

One day I hope to be able to turn that voice down so I can hear the other voice, the one that tells me I am doing a good job. Because the one that tells me I am not doing enough really isn't a good motivator.

I took the kids to see another movie, "Walking with Dinosaurs". I found it quite boring, but they enjoyed it. They had a treat each but I took in some grapes for myself. It was lunchtime when we came out but we still had some things to do before going home. I couldn't see anything in the Food Court that seemed like a good option for me. Some things could have been ok but I had no way of knowing what was really in them so I had a handful of almonds to tide me over while the kids had Happy Meals. I am a bit worried that I have linked "going to the movies" with "eating junk" for them. We did a bit of shopping and went to the library before finally home and I could eat a late lunch - I was starving!

Just a banana in the afternoon then a healthy dinner and so ended the official eating day well under available calories. When my weight went up (again) over the past year, my calorie tracking app changed my allowed calories from 1340 to 1750. This seemed like a big jump to me. Of course I still regularly went over this higher limit. But today I decided to manually change my allowance down to 1400. And I was comfortably under that.

And then Dungeons and Dragons supper happened. Doritos and chocolate happened.

I was feeling frustrated with myself that yet again I had failed, I hadn't even managed one full clean healthy day. I really felt like giving up (again). But I plugged in the calories I had eaten.

And you know what? I had still only eaten 1600 calories today. Sure, it was more than I wanted, and not entirely the type of food I had planned, but because I had eaten so mindfully all day my binge wasn't the total disaster I thought it was. I'm not saying it's ok that I ate a lot of junk, but that number consoled me enough so that I don't want to give up any more. I'll keep going, keep tracking my food both good and bad, squash down the voice that says I can't do it. Good day plus supper is better than bad day plus supper. Every slow dragging step is one step closer to my goals.

Dungeons and dragons

Sunday:

Having a quiet weekend home with the family. We decided to introduce the kids to Dungeons and Dragons. We don't let them play violent computer games but they watch us play some (nothing too bad) and they're allowed to play games designed for kids, some fighting but no actual blood. The younger child is about to turn seven. D&D, if you don't know, is a game of the imagination. One person, the DM or "Dungeon Master" (me, in this case) creates an adventure and the other players create characters and decide what to do. You have certain skills and you roll dice to add a luck component to actions. [So for instance, to see if you could balance on a narrow bridge over a ravine, you would add your dexterity to your training in acrobatics and roll a 20 sided dice to add a random element. If the total number is high enough ("high enough" determined by the DM) you walk over successfully, not quite high enough means you stand still wheeling your arms for balance and can have another try on your next turn, a lot too low and you fall into the ravine.]

I made a short adventure where they had to rescue some people from kobolds (little lizard people). It involved fighting, but nothing too scary or adult in theme. It's good maths practice for them, lots of adding and subtracting.

They loved it! We played for about four hours on Saturday afternoon, and they wanted to play again today so I worked out another little adventure and we played for another couple of hours, this time not finishing the story yet. Tim and I play every Tuesday night with some friends and have done for years, it is a great game. A campaign, or long adventure, can go on for years. I've heard some Christian groups object to D&D because it has supernatural elements, but most people play as heroes, defeating the forces of evil, so I don't see how anyone can object to that. It's like getting to be a superhero.

The only bad thing about D&D is that it is nearly always accompanied by junk food!

Overstuffed

Monday:

D&D was moved to last night this week, instead of Tuesday. Lately we've been mainly snacking on fruit plus chocolate, but last night -- whether because it was the weekend or because we were all taking a break from our diets or something -- just about everyone turned up with junk. Raspberry chocolate muffins, cheesy crackers, chips, chocolate, alcoholic cider. We all gorged. It felt great at the time. I'd almost forgotten how great that overstuffed stomach can feel. Until it stops feeling great.

Up during the night with upset stomach. Like I was last Tuesday after D&D. Hmm, coincidence?

Did some dancing today as my exercise. I unlocked an alternate version of "You're just too good to be true" that featured a man in a pro-wresting outfit (purple tights and hood) doing an extremely effeminate dance. It was hilarious and dancing along was a really enjoyable few minutes. I was smiling all over my face. So exercise doesn't have to suck.

On the other hand ... off to bed so I can get up early for my running session. At least it hasn't rained for a few days so I won't be wading through soggy muddy grass!

Wednesday weigh-in: 78.1 kg

Wednesday:

Arg, only down 100g. Earlier this week my weight was going down down every day, to a low of 77.3 on Sat morning. Then I twisted my ankle. Since then it's gone up up up each day. So annoying. It's also TOM and I ate too much at D&D supper last night. But I am getting back on track now.

Speaking of D&D supper, I did a quick calculation last night and we ate an average of 1000 calories each. Not great for a snack! We'd had mainly healthy food a couple of weeks in a row but last night we were back to corn chips and chocolate and lollies. I am not blaming anyone else, I am definitely the worst offender. But at the end of the evening I did bring up the subject. Not sure how much agreement there was.

This morning was our children's "learning journey" at school so we went and looked at their classrooms and workbooks to see what they have been doing for the first 3/4 of the year. Then I dropped Tim at work and went back to the shops to exchange and/or return a few of the clothes from yesterday that didn't fit. It's a bit hard to guess without the child there to try on the clothes -- for instance one size 8 was too big for her but another size 8 from the same store was much too small! -- but it is still easier to shop without dragging bored kids around.

By the time I got home it was lunchtime, and still no exercise yet apart from a bit of walking around. The day was getting away from me. This is supposed to be my exercise-full time! Life keeps getting in the way but no more excuses. After lunch I got into my gym gear and did an hour of Just Dance 3 on the Kinect. I got 5 stars in every song on easy earlier in the year, now I am working on the hard setting. Mostly getting 4 stars first try, I'll get them all on 5 stars eventually. It was a great workout, and the time went pretty quickly.

I picked up the kids and we had afternoon tea (strawberries!) then went to the gym for Club Gecko. I did 30 mins on the elliptical, getting to 4.2 km again. I felt like I was really working hard but couldn't beat my previous time. When I got home I was ravenously hungry, and grabbed a few snacks before dinner was ready.

So I managed my two hours of exercise today, including half an hour of walking the kids to and from school. After a cloudy morning it was a lovely spring day, I want to get outside into it more. I know I need to apprieciate it now because I hate the heat (and inevitable sunburn as I am lily-white) of summer. I can feel that I did a lot today as my legs are aching a bit. Excellent.

Walking to the library

Tuesday:

This morning I continued with my new plan of walking places instead of the car. I took three books back to the library (it used to take me at least 40 mins pushing a toddler in the pram, but alone it took me 25), collected one that was waiting for me, and then walked over to some shops a couple of blocks away. I bought a grainy bread roll, and ate half of it topped with some slices of brie cheese I brought from home. I usually like fluffy white bread but for some reason creamy brie goes really well with grain bread or grainy biscuits. Then I shopped, again chose only what I needed for today (dinner tonight plus D&D supper). I had hoped the celery would be ok sticking out of the top of my mini backpack, but that made the zipper keep unzipping all the way so I ended up carrying it separately. Maybe I need a bigger backpack if I'm going to shop with it!

I paused RunKeeper at the library and shops, and my total walking was 5 km in just over an hour. Walking the kids to & from school will mean an hour and a half today. Nice. I was pretty tired when I got home, and a bit sweaty. Lovely spring day!

I bought vegetable sticks and dip for D&D tonight, and there is still chocolate left over from last time. Trying to be a bit healthier.

Binge and consequences

As usual, we had people over for supper on Thursday (last night) - we play Dungeons & Dragons. It is my binge night, unfortunately I always seem to give myself permission to stuff myself with junk.

I had spent the afternoon baking with the kids. I had bought some raspberries so we made banana raspberry muffins, some with choc-chips (the kids had a couple for afternoon tea, I didn't have any); then raspberry creme brulee, planned for dessert tonight; and with all the leftover egg whites I made lots of little meringues with cream and raspberries on top. We had some for dessert last night then the rest were my contribution to the D&D supper.

I ate one when they came out of the oven, two for dessert after dinner, and I think another three over the course of the night. I don't usually have much sugar - I'm more of a salt and fat kind of girl - and by my sixth meringue I was feeling a bit nauseated. I also had a lot of twisties. I had a cup of chamomile tea which I thought helped.

My digestive system rebelled. It has been delicate since the stomach bug picked up in China a month ago, and I had my third relapse last night. At 2.30 am I was up with stomach cramps and diarrhoea. If it follows the path of the other relapses it will last 12-24 hours. My abdomen feels bloated and crampy, and I'm amazed that there is anything left in me but apparently there is.

I stayed in bed until 10 am, the kids have been playing computer games all morning. I don't think I will be taking them anywhere today; a sad and boring end to the school holidays.

On the up side, maybe my body didn't have time to absorb all those millions of calories before my body rejected them?...

The school holidays have been full of junk food. We had fast food twice, lollies at the movies twice, biscuits at home, treats when we are out shopping. We always have some stuff, but a lot more than usual these past two weeks. So unhealthy for all of us. It is no "treat" to feel sick and fat and unhealthy. I just have to remember that.