Appetite on calm setting today, even after Pilates...and whoa, smaller salads at Wendy's, yay!

720 days, 7 hours, 48 minutes to go...

I didn't feel all freaky hungry today, which is always a happy thing.

I had my egg whites with cheddar sprinkles and protein lower-carb hotcakes with sugar free syrup for breakfast. had some green magma, Solgar Whey with amazing grass before my Pilates training session.

After the session, I got a sugar-free vanilla latte, grande, and headed to Wendy's to get some salad. Noticed I could get a smaller size plus a side. Got a salad for me and the side for later or tomorrow (chili). Got a salad and side for hubby, too. He can have it for a light supper or just take it to work for lunch tomorrow. Great. Makes life easier.

Considering that the larger, original size versions of these salads can top 600 cals, it's a very good idea to offer the downsized ones.

Gotta give Wendy's props for having salads that are edible (unlike some other fast food eatery salads which are wretched). I've tried 3 of the revamped four (haven't tried the one with cranberries and nuts and chicken) and they're all tasty. They don't even need dressing with all those topping. Just toss the dressing or save it for some salad you make a home. If you're doing low to lower carb, the cobb has egg/chicken/bleu cheese/bacon/tomato on greens. Who needs dressing with all that fat and protein?

I think the smaller size is great for lunch. And if you have the caloric leeway, you can pick a side to have as a snack later or use for breakfast. Example: if you get the baked potato side, you can pack it with broccoli or ground beef or chicken with some lowfat cheese to have for dinner. You can take it for lunch similarly packed (easy to nuke, right?) Or if you want it for breakfast, you can heat half in a pan with olive oil and drop an egg or two in there. Voila...breakfast skillet. And you still have half a potato to use up.

If you prefer the chili (yay, fiber with your protein!)...that's fine by itself as an afternoon "keep the blood sugar steady" nosh. Or you can just have it for supper with a side of your choice. Or you can pour it over that half a potato you saved up from before. :D

I like having leftovers. Hubby likes taking lunch to work and anything that makes it easier for me to make my fella happy in his Chococat lunch ensemble, hooray.

Weigh-in yesterday was in the right direction. (I check every other day to see how that's going.) I hope the fast food sodium isn't badly reflected on the scale tomorrow. (Water, water, and some potassium rich coconut water should help.)

Lots of interesting stuff in the "diet news"....and maybe I'll address that tomorrow.

Happy Monday...and may this week be healthful for you. Please encourage a dieter today. It's a touch undertaking no matter how you cut it....

Ta...

Remembering a Day of Tears, Anticipating the Days Without Tears

I don't want to feel what I felt on 9-11 of 2001. I don't want to feel how I felt the bleak weeks after. It's too awful and I am already tearing up typing this.

There's a painting by an artist I like a lot--Melanie Weidner--that LOOKS like how I FELT that day 9 years ago. It's called "Willing to Weep."  (at left)  (She has a lot of hope-inspiring work, so visit her online gallery if you're feeling really down over this day's memories.)

Broken. Cracked in the heart. Spilling out. Psychically damaged. Unable to function.

We waste a lot of life and lives hating. They hate us. We hate them. They kills us. We kill them. Young people snuffed out. Men and women, babies and old people--they all suffer because we humans have a propensity for violence, distrust, misunderstandings, jealousies, greed, lust, and ...hate.

Fortunately, we also saw on that bleak day and on those bleak weeks and months and years after the fall of the towers and loss of thousands of innocent lives that people can also be courageous, unselfish, compassionate, generous, merciful, and hopeful. And resilient.

We can learn and move on.

But that day, and those weeks, and these past years, have left scars on our soil, in our hearts, and in our minds--and even on the bodies of some who survived. We can still weep. This is a good thing. To forget is not always wise. To be unable to cry is...to be dead. To hope and long for healing and progress is to be alive.

On the anniversary of every painful event in my life, my favorite Bible verse comforts me. It keeps me looking to a better day, when all these terrible things will be a shadow left behind, a memory erased, because there is no room for hate or evil or bombs or wars in the World To Come. I asked them to read it at my mom's funeral 6 years ago, and I am thinking of it today as we remember the awful events, the awful sufferings, the terrible massacre that happened 9 years ago today:

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

--Revelation 21:4

Maybe that can comfort you, too.

Go comfort someone today in some way, small or large, via words or hugs or smiles or a note or by painting something for someone or by singing a song to someone or by a donation to a charity that assists the victims of war-torn lands and lands oppressed by the hate-filled and tyrannous . Pray that those who lost loves ones that day have comfort today. Pray that those who have lost loved ones in battles that followed 9-11 and continue to this day are comforted. Give comfort...and you get it.

Until our tears are wiped away forever....

My First Bloggy Award for 2Y2HWA

723 days to go...

Thanks to Midori of Midori, Mighty Warrior blog (who has just days ago entered Onederland, so go congratulate her!)

Award works this way--

I thank the person who awarded me
I list 10 things I like
I nominate ten bloggers for the award

I have on occasion flaked on award thingies, mostly cause I don't like the way it reminds me of chain letters. So, I will happily  award it to blogs I like, but I don't expect them to do anything about it. I'd rather there be no sense of obligation. I won't even feel obligated to comment. Really, I believe awards should just be awarded without duress. So I will accept without obligation, and award without obligation, and say thanks to anyone who enjoys reading me. THANKS!

10 Things I like:

1. being loved by my sweet toots (ie hubbypie)
2. loving my sweet toots (in all meanings of "love", heh)
3. reading (especially books on art, science fiction, fantasy, health, poetry, history and Christianity, and reading all over the web).
4. dark sky meteor showers
5. a really good sermon that fills me with encouragement
6. a cool, bright, sunny day with a soft breeze for sitting by the bay with hubby and just love being alive...
7. singing
8. hearing good live music performed in a small, intimate setting
9. having someone cook great food for me
10. winter in Miami

Blogs I toss this award to:

Pick ten from my sidebar blog roll. I put ones there that encourage me, make me wanna keep going, give me good recipes, make me feel not alone.

I told you I'd break the rules. :)

Face The Truth Fridays: Met Loss Goal, Didn't Meet Activity or Intrinsic Motivation Goals, Hubby noticed shrinkage, and Thoughts after watching THINTERVENTION...

724 days to go...

FACE THE TRUTH FRIDAYS: First Friday


Oh, sorry for not posting for a couple of days. Had a family event Wednesday (brother's post-surgical recovery, sister's "real" birthday day, family visitation) and just felt so hot and miserable Thursday after Pilates (got a heat rash again). I'm not handling heat well since the start of perimenopause  and in-menopause. Not at all. I had to get a steroid shot and prescription steroid cream mid-summer, and now as summer is waning (but the heat and humidity is still daunting for my heat-intolerant body), I can only peer into the cooler-weather horizon with great longing.

Okay, FACING UP TO IT:


The scale says;  256.6


For a roller-coaster week (two bad eating days, both when I got together with family, too) and a week with only ONE day of exercise, well, I should just say, THANK GOD I LOST!

Start Weight:  258
Goal Loss: 1 pound

Week's Loss: 1.4 lbs

Goal Met

Since I intend to stay goal-oriented, I plan to weigh-in on Fridays and see if I met the goal(s) or not.

I had a goal of 3x a week exercise. I only did one. (Canceled Pilates on Monday as studio was closed for holiday, didn't do anything at home. Nada.)

I have not worked on my intrinsic motivation--well, scratch that, as I did work on it ONE day this past week. Pfft.  I need to make sure I set time out every day to work on this, because I need not just to control snacking and plan meals, but to MOVE MOVE MOVE.

Okay, been making some solid choices for dinners. I usually binged at nighttime, and making lower carb dinner choices, or a combo of high-fiber with carbs, has kept me feeling less binge-y in the evenings. I do my WonderSlim puddings or shakes if I get a nosh-need while watching PrimeTime tv. No sugar to make me go into a snack frenzy. So far. Yay.

One nice motivator is that after hubby got home last night, I was taking off my workout top and was walking away in my Danskin bootleg workout pants and my bra, and hubby ways, "Oh, I can really tell you're losing weight. Your middle is smaller." Heh.

 Anyone watched THINTERVENTION?

I like Jackie Warner. Well, the JW I saw on episode 1 of THINTERVENTION.

She kind of looks mannish--I don't wanna be that Amazonishly muscled and hipless--but I like how she talks to her clients and how she says stuff to them as they exercise in a very controlled, but emphatic manner. She's not annoying me the way Jillian Michaels does (on TBL she got on my nerve!) I like her a lot better than Bob (who started off as the softie then got super-annoying, too, so I had to stop watching TBL.)

Now, I don't know if Jackie will wear well-I saw a passing remark about her being a b***h, but didn't read the article-- but I just find her really likable in the series debut: serious, tough, even-tempered, not freakishly emotional/nasty/camera-playing/etc. I know she had a previous reality show (didn't watch it, don't know if she's a raging maniac in her personal life), but I dig her as a trainer.

Jackie Quote: "The number one thing working against you is your MIND, so overcome it!"

And I like how she told the mommy in the show that you don't show love to your kids by setting them up for obesity, too, with chocolate and candy and junk. JW  QUOTE: "If you want to give them love, you give them berries, you give them apples."

Yes. Let's stop getting kids used to junk. We are all to used to using sugary things as ways of showing love or giving rewards. Not such a great idea to connect love emotionally with unhealthful foods.

Let's get them used to reaching for a wedge of cheese, a tbsp of peanut butter on an apple, some high fiber crackers with no-sugar added preserves, some oatmeal with berries some no-sugar added yogurt and nuts. Let's stop poisoning the livers of the little ones.

Okay, nuff sermonizing about kids and junk. :)

Watching the show made me think having someone do the whole shebang--come to your house, tell you where the traps are, assists you in choosing more wisely, then tells you what you need to do exercise-wise, is a basic, good first step--and every fricken health plan should REQUIRE THIS for it's obese (or overweight) clients, even if it's a prerequisite FOR STAYING on the health plan to schedule and accomplish this, even if it requires a copay.  (Yeah, I'm a tyrant now, sorry, but if that's what it takes to motivate us, so be it.  People sometimes just won't do things, even basic health things, unless carrot-stick methods come into play.)

A home visit a fridge/pantry check, a discussion of good foods and meals according to preferences and medical issues, and ONE introduction to exercise session with a personal trainer. Just one day to do all that would probably do a lot to set people into a better mindset. I suspect many people out there just don't know WHERE TO START soundly, at home or at the gym. (Gyms can be hellaciously intimidating to us fatties.)

I think for health plans to pay for one day with a trainer/nutritionist to do this would probably pave the way to reducing health costs. Maybe a follow-up visit with both. After that introductory set of lessons, send the patients to a website to log intake, exercise, ask questions. Probably charge a minimal amount to let clients do this.

Maybe that's pie in the sky, and I realize it's ultimately up to people--ie ME, YOU--to want to change and follow-through. But still, I really suspect people need a professional nudge in both directions--diet and exercise.

Maybe add a consultation with a behavioral therapist to get some tips, materials.

We have an obesity epidemic. It's past time to really take action and require action be taken.

Okay, so there it is. I met the loss goal. Didn't meet activity and motivation goals. Got a hubby acknowledgement of changing body. And found a weight loss show to check out weekly.