Being okay

Yesterday and today turned out rather differently than expected, I've not had much time online before now really. Watched a bit of football yesterday with a friend, and some House, MD, which is my current obsession. I didn't make great food choices, but for the most part I didn't have a whole lot of say in the meals, but I did make some effort and tried to control portions. I had most of my flex so even tho I wasn't able to count, I'm not calling the weekend a write-off by any means. I really must get back to exercising regularly, no matter about my elliptical being broken, it will probably help balance things out. I've not slept well the past few nights and I'm really tired tonight. My back has been aching because my period was looming, and now that it's started I'm hoping the aches and the cramps will stop. I'm also hoping I get to sleep easily tonight and that the insomnia that has come back to plague me buggers off and lets me get to bed at a decent hour. If I end up staying awake all night I'm sure I'll end up hungry and having cravings, I had a really early and light supper today. Fingers crossed for sweet dreams tonight!

When did Saturday happen??

I know the time is passing quickly, but this week went super fast. I keep getting disoriented about what day it is, and I'm always behind. I only have a few minutes but I wanted to post since I didn't have a chance to do it yesterday. I got a call from the building manager yesterday and she told me that contractors would be by in the afternoon to fix my heat, which was a very welcome call. Two very nice, polite young gentleman showed up and sorted it out for me and now I have a few thermostate and a new hole in the wall because the wires were such a mess inside they had to do some sort of a bypass, but they put a plate on it and it is tidy enough, they even swept up the mess from the carpet. Right now I'm on my way out the door and my ride just showed up. I just wanted to let the record show that I did go out to dinner last night, and wasn't able to count the points, but I did however take a lot of care to try and control my portions, and ate as slowly as I could manage and waited a while before seconds and drank lots of water, so go me!

Momentamum

I got a surprise yesterday when I logged onto the WW site to access the food tracker so I could sort out my meals, and discovered that WW has done a bit of an overhaul to their program. I used to follow the Points system, but now they're calling it Momentum or some such. What used to be very straightforward is now less straight forward, however, after some reading and frowning I discovered that it is more or less the same ideas, just structured a little differently. The main change is that WW is now (THANKFULLY!!!!!!!) talking about the specific kinds of foods that people should be eating. It talks about 'filling foods' and how there are foods that make you feel full longer and that it is good to try to incorporate as many of these into your diet as possible. It gives a list of sorts, but it is an excellent framework, particularly because they gave none before, aside from the 8 Healthy Guidelines. It took me a lot of reading and researching to learn about what types of foods I should be eating, and I was honestly very disappointed and frustrated that WW gave so little nutritional information. The filling foods list is made up of whole grains and specific types of veggies and lean meats and such, many of which make up the brunt of my diet, but let me tell you, it took months and months before I realised which foods are better for me. It's one thing to say eat fruits and veggies and stay away from high-fat/cal food, but for those of us who are clueless about nutrition, it is actually really hard to know which foods give you the most gain. I'm on a budget but it takes a lot to fill me up, so I was really motivated to find foods that give me the most bang for my buck. It's good to see that WW is putting emphasis on these types of foods, even tho most of my foods already come in on this list, I'll still be able to get some new ideas from it. Interestingly the food tracker now has a hunger tracker, and while they only give you options for a specific number of meals a day, I'm still going to give that a try. Yesterday I made a supper meal but ended up boxing up the rice dish because I felt full by the time I got to it and so I'll have it for supper today. It was nice to be full and satisfied but still have food left, all my food yesterday came off the filling foods list, looks like I've been making good choices!

As long as your toes aren't blue, you're fine

I've embarked on the delightfully fun task of battling to get my thermostat fixed so that hopefully this winter I don't have to use the oven to get warm sometimes. I was informed by the maintainence guy today that the company who owns my building have decided in the past that they don't have to do anything as long as you are getting the legal minimum of 72 degrees of heat. He said this after insulting me rather thoroughly by asking me what the problem was, ignoring my explanation, and then giving me a lecture on how to operate the thermotat (apparently you turn it up higher to make more heat come out...no wonder I've been cold!). I have a headache and I'm dealing with food cravings and I really wish this heat problem resolves with little fuss. I've two days of clean eating under my belt (or would if I had one). I've been craving potatoes like mad, so yesterday I bought some (first time I've done that) and had some with supper. I need to work on the recipe tho, they came out too liquidy. I had some difficulties last night when I was feeling incredibly driven to eat even tho I don't really think it was hunger. I honestly had trouble telling. I decided to have a snack, and used flex for it, and am telling myself that it's going to take some time before I get my groove back. I'm feeling good about it tho, I'm determined to make it through and hopefully in a few weeks my once-loose jeans will stop being snug.

Ix-nay on the ocolate-chay

I did really well yesterday food-wise, I had planned out my meals, but I ended up pushing aside my supper after only eating half of it. That was not an issue because I had planned a big meal and had been using flexies to take care of it. I was just so hungry most of the day that I figured I'd be extra hungry. I'm glad I didn't eat it just because I could, one of my biggest issues is wanting to eat till I'm stuffed.

I had to white knuckle it a few times yesterday tho, one time in particular while talking to a friend and a lengthy conversation about food ensued, with a big focus on chocolate and included detailed stories about chocolate shops and emporiums and eventually I had to insist the conversation move away from the food because it was definitely triggering massive cravings.

I have such a weakness for chocolate and dessert, it's one of the big things I'm struggling with right now. I suppose my brain is low in seratonin and is extra motivated to think about the chocolate, but knowing the why of it doesn't help me much, other than telling me I should try to up the level of my cheerful chemicals some other way. It would be so much easier if I could just drink a bottle of seratonin and call it good...I wonder how many calories it would be?

Cancel the fanfare, please

I've gone another long stretch without posting, so now I'm going to try something completely radical...posting earlier in the day!

Well okay, so maybe it's not THAT radical of a concept, but I have always and forever posted here at the end of the day. I wanted to keep that up (did I mention I can be resistent to change??), mostly because I felt it would help me get back into my old routine.

So here I am finally admitting that the old routine is dead and in the past and that I need to mourn it and think of it kindly because it served me so well...and then move on.

Right now my priority is getting a routine back, period. I have said a few times that my life is different now than it had been over the year I was losing the majority of the weight, but I suppose I have not truly appreciated just HOW different my life is. In some ways I actually have a lot more time on my hands, but at the same time there are some very different factors. Not being employed means I can structure my day however I want, but it also means that I am feeling too demotivated and depressed to want to do anything with my day at all. I also find that I have a tiny bit of a social life, so while before my evenings were always spent at home if I wasn't working, now I find myself with plans a lot of evenings, which has been one of the main reasons that my whole comfortable routine of writing in my journal at the end of the day no longer works for me. Add in that I like to write about what I did, and I've not been successful at doing much of anything lately, and the end result is no journalling at all.

I've struggled with it, but I am still so much of a perfectionist that it often hampers me and reaching my goals. The thing I don't like about writing early in the day is that I'll probably spell out all my goals and things I want to accomplish that day, which is awesome, but what happens if I slack off and don't do any of them?? That means the next day I'll have to admit to that. It is easier to say what you've done at the end of the day then to say what you want to do, because in one you're just reporting, but in the other you're actually committing yourself *cue scary music* How terrifying that I might actually have to follow through on something...I might fail! Then I'll look like a failure! And feel like a failure! And probably actually BE a failure!! Ohh, the woe!

But then I suppose there is an alterative to all the scariness..I suppose I could just write without actually going crazy on spelling out all the wonderful productive things I'm going to do with my day, and instead just play it by ear. Tho admittedly, it wouldn't hurt me to make a few small committments, and then stick to them. Today I had been planning to eat completely OP, but a big part of me would also like to try to get some activity in, mainly because I have been battling insomnia again, and sweating more during my day will very likely make it less difficult for me to fall asleep at night. I'm just not sure how to go about it; I was getting into a groove over this past month of getting back into activity, and I was starting to log some great regular time on my elliptical and was getting into a routine with it, when the damn thing broke, and I need to find a new bolt for one of the steps someplace because the old one is stripped. I was honestly very pissed when this happened, because walks aren't much of an option for me right now, and I loved having the option to get high intensity cardio right here at home.

But whatever, I'll get that sorted when I can, I'll have to figure out something else to do. It's a beautiful winter's day out (read, cloudy and snowing...mmm!), and I'm going to make the most of it...non-specifically!