One small success

Today I have a success worth mentioning.  I have been practicing a new diet and exercising more, and I have been losing weight.  I weigh in each morning using Wii Fit (I also weigh in on the more accurate bathroom scale, but Wii Fit is more fun).  As part of the weigh in procedure the screen displays your BMI on a visual scale.  I have been off the top of the scale since I began.  Yes, I confess, my BMI was over 36.  But today I weighed in and discovered – I’m not off the top of the scale any more!  There is a small line of color above the marker.  A very small line, true, but I am not off the top!  Woohoo!

I do not know if I should attribute this success to my new diet, to the fact that I am now drinking plenty of water (averaging about 80 ounces or more per day), to my increased exercise, or to the fact that I seldom eat anything in the evenings now.  It has been more difficult than I anticipated to create food I can eat when I get home. 

Whatever the reason – I am on the chart!  Woohoo!

Another week gone

Good morning, everyone.  Happy Saturday! (or Thursday, or Monday, or whatever day you view this post)

It has been a week.  I have been up, I've been down, I've been stressed and depressed, and I've been relaxed and happy.

I started my elimination diet this week.  You can read all about it at my Sweet Life blog, so I won't duplicate myself.  It has been interesting though.  I've learned a few things about myself.  For instance, eating healthy gives me a headache.  Literally.  But the headache goes away and I start feeling much better about myself.

Eric lost his phone on Wednesday, so on Wednesday evening we went searching.  He went out and looked and I used my cell phone to call it every few seconds.  Eventually he answered.  (He'd dropped it by the road when he was putting out cones during their hazmat incident.)

Apparently Eric has his cell phone programmed to play bagpipes when I call.  Some people might be offended by that.  I happen to know Eric loves bagpipe music.

I am having a very interesting time at the moment.  I am lying on the couch, with my laptop against my legs, typing.  My cat wants snuggle time to she has come and is sitting on top of my arms on my stomach.  So I am essentially typing around my cat.  It must not be too bad, she's purring.

Oh, you want to know about the hazmat incident?  There was a propane tank leaking on a property just outside the entrance to Pacific Beach.  Mostly I understand it was a case of cordoning off the area and re-rerouting traffic while they stood by in case anyone was stupid enough to get close and spark something.  The school nearby was evacuated as a precaution.  No injuries.  That's the way I like to see emergencies handled.  Almost no one even knows it happened, it was that well managed.  The person responsible on the other hand - hmmmm.

Well, the cat has moved, and I have stuff to do.  I have to plan what I'm going to eat this week.  That is going to take some time.  And I only have half an hour before we leave in which to do it.  I'd better get going.

New Blogs

I am trying to post more regularly.  I am also starting a special blog.  You can find it here.  It's about my elimination diet.  That's right.  I'm going to be restricting my foods to a very few.  For a few months.  It's all about finding out what I can and cannot eat.  I won't bore you with details.  Not since you can read it there.  I'll blog about other stuff here. Like the fact that my tree is still up.  I think I need to work on that. :)

I am also restarting my virtual journey.  I started it on my own in 2008.  Then I got sidetracked.  I think I actually lost the blog info, so I didn't keep posting in it.  Then I started the same kind of thing with my TOPS chapter.  Now I want one that more people can be a part of.  You're welcome to join.  Check it out here.

See you there!

:)

Success of the Day

Today the depression is not winning.  Evidence – I am here! J

It has been a long week.  And it’s only Thursday. 

Yesterday I attended a military funeral.  A friend’s husband.  It was a very simple and very moving ceremony.  I sorrow for my friend.  But I know she has a very supportive family. 

I intended to write all about the funeral, describe the ceremony and all particulars, but I can’t somehow.  I was able to describe it fully for my husband, and I can still see it in my mind, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to put out here.  Maybe at a different time and a different venue.  I will tell you that if you every drive a stick shift to a funeral, make sure you are not in the procession.  Doesn’t work.  Not very well anyway.  Or maybe it was just me.  I have also discovered that stick shift and Tacoma city driving are not a happy marriage.  Especially in the rain.  Too many hills with stop lights.  :P

I am using a new meal planning website.  It’s called Plan To Eat and it has the advantage that it helps me create meal plans.  So far I like it pretty well and can attribute to it the fact that after driving to Tacoma, spending all day in stressful situations, mostly driving in the rain and in heavy traffic, I was able to come home, realize I had not purchased the deli chicken I had intended to feed my husband for dinner that night, and then pick another menu for which I had planned and shopped, and fed my husband a decent meal.  15 minute stroganoff and broccoli gratin.  Not a bad choice.  It took more than fifteen minutes to make, at least partly because 15 minute stroganoff starts with cooked meat and I had a frozen chub to start with, but it was a good meal.  And it did not rely on frozen processed pre-prepared meals that are made with either too much salt or too much sugar or both.  That was a success. 

Maybe that’s why I slept well last night and feel much better about the world this morning.  The world is a much more positive place today.    

Victorious again!

I don’t know if I should apologize for my absence or pretend it never happened.  I will strike a middle ground.  I will note that I was absent but not apologize.  Doesn’t work?  Okay, sorry I was gone.

Have you ever suffered from depression?  It is an amazing thing.  When I am not depressed, which is relatively often, the world goes on and I go on and everything works.  Then I get depressed.  And suddenly the smallest things become huge.  Molehills become mountains.  It is not just the way I perceive them.  It is actually more difficult to move my body.  It feels like trying to move through molasses, as if the air has become heavier.  And some days I ache all over.  Even my skin hurts.

And the most amazing thing is that I know underneath that it is only depression.  I know somewhere inside that the mountain is really a molehill.  But I cannot reach between that little place inside and the outer place that is making the decisions and taking action.  Somewhere inside I want to move faster and think faster and be faster and I     just    can’t.   Do I really need to tell you I hate being depressed? 

Sometimes I can do something to prevent it or change it.  Sometimes I am depressed because I did not get enough sleep or am not eating right and if I go to bed on time or eat healthy meals at the right time then I will not be depressed.  And if I am depressed a little food (not chocolate, no matter what my brain says) or some sleep can break the cycle.  Sometimes.

Then there are times when nothing can fix it.  I am helpless, swaddled in blankets that are cold, clammy, and utterly overwhelming.  It doesn’t matter how much I eat or what I eat, how much I sleep or how well, the depression is there.  And because it’s there the food I eat doesn’t taste as much, the sleep doesn’t feel as deep or as refreshing.  I have difficulty thinking of what comes next.  What can I eat, am I supposed to go to bed now?  And so it gets worse.

I want to change the cycle.  I have changed it some.  I’m taking medication that helps and I’m trying to exercise and get outside more.  But still, some days.  And an unfortunate side effect is that I find things like blogging far beyond me.  So I am back.  And I’m going to try not to let myself disappear again.  If I do, please be patient.  I will be back.  And hopefully with more insights in how to defeat the beast.

As for today - I am victorious.  Today I managed to fight it off.  It threatened, with breaths of anxiety and fear, but I won.  I am here.  And I will continue to fight the good fight.

See you again soon.

After Thanksgiving

I heard that the average American eats over 5,000 calories at Thanksgiving dinner.  That's a full two days worth of calories and then some.  One pounds equals 3,500 calories, so the average individual gains about a pound.

Am I too incredibly smug if I say I did not eat 5,000 calories?  Or gain a pound?  This morning, I wrote down everything I ate yesterday.  I ate 2,256 calories at dinner.  Still more than a single day's allowance, but it was almost all I ate all day, which makes up for it.  And I weighed in Thanksgiving morning, and I weighed in this morning.  I actually lost weight.  Mostly water weight, it's true.  But still . . . .

:)

Thanksgiving

Today I cooked my first thanksgiving dinner.  Now, I have cooked all the foods that go into thanksgiving before.  Even all at once.  But never before was I in charge of the thanksgiving day feast.  Today I was.

Remember my last post - about being laid up sick?  I'm pretty well recovered now, but during that laid up time I also caught up on my favorite shows.  Including Good Eats.  And they had a thanksgiving day special.  They've had them before, but this one promised 4 hours of cooking on the day, stress free.  So I followed the plan.  There are a couple of hours pre-preparation, and the turkey has to be thawed four days early so it can brine, but on the day itself, four hours.

I pre-prepped.  I brined the turkey.  I chopped vegetables and peeled potatoes, and had bowls of things in the fridge waiting for turkey day to arrive. And I wrote down his instructions, complete with times to start doing different things.  I printed it all out so I had a checklist.

Wow.  It worked!  Four hours of cooking, with a few breaks in the middle.  No stress, plenty of mess.  Dinner was on the table at the appointed hour.  And it didn't taste half bad!  And I learned a few things in this process.

One - yellow potatoes and Yukon Gold potatoes are not the same thing.  I cooked the yellow potatoes for the specified amount of time and they were not soft enough to rice.

Two - potato slices do not mash in a mixer.  Not very well.  Unless maybe you have one of those guards that make everything that wants to fly out of the mixer fall back in.  On the plus side, the dog was quite happy to eat potato slices off the floor.

Three - "smashed" potatoes taste as good as mashed potatoes.  They just aren't as light and fluffy.

Four - Using a shopping list made up of the ingredients from the recipes does not include beverages or ice cream for the pie.  Oops.

Five - giblet gravy may taste good, but it looks gross.  Next year, the giblets may flavor the gravy, but they won't be IN the gravy.

Six - It is possible to have cleanup for thanksgiving dinner take twice as long as cooking it.  Of course, there are the long waits for the dishwasher to finish a cycle.  Still . . . .

All in all, dinner was a success.  The turkey was good, nobody was upset about the smashed potatoes, the panzanella (which was made in place of traditional sage stuffing) was approved.  I think my mother-in-law was grateful that dinner was at our house instead of theirs, so I got the major cooking and cleaning up to do and maybe she was not unhappy that I didn't do a perfect job.

I think this was successful enough that maybe I'll do it again next year.