Thursday, November 29, 2018

I have been awake since 4:10 when DH was wandering around the room. I finally got up at 6 (I'm usually up at 6:30). Good thing I don't have to work today, though I do have projects to do (of course) along with picking up a friend at the airport.

Weight 121.2 (-.2) calories 718. I stuck to my de-carbing diet yesterday though I REALLY wanted some nut thins and chocolate hummus at 8 last night. I had sweetened homemade cottage cheese instead.

My next project is putting navigation maps of the area under the glass on the coffee table and end table. They are blah brown right now. I'll do a picture if they look good.

Too early to chat much more (brain is not awake yet).

Have a thoughtful Thursday!

Weight up.....don't know true weight because I was up and dressed before I stepped on the scale but it is probably around 136. Booooo! I have been eating like crap lately and it is starting to show up on the scale.

Today is my only week day off this week. Picking up some extra shifts here and there to help out. Extra money and PTO earning doesn't hurt either. Still wanting to save up my PTO for round 2 of plastics.

I ordered a coat with electric (battery powered) heating elements in it. Hopefully it will help me survive these brutal WI winters. I so hate the cold!

I'll have to go back and read the last few days of posts to try and catch up with you all. I don't get on here nearly as often anymore!

Paula

Greetings Early Birds

Well it must be National Wake Up Early Day. I woke up at about 5 am - something I rarely do. Got up and puttered a bit (no eating) and then decided I was cold and went back to bed and back to sleep. The new TIVO should arrive today so all our TVs should work again allowing me late night tv if I need it to sleep. I find that if I turn on CNN really low so I can barely hear it, the constant drone of talking puts me to sleep.

Yay Peps, congrats on your success with the opera people. Hey my BA was in fine arts and I became a lawyer. Creativity was very useful. I have always believed that all knowledge is valuable and makes your brain better and stronger even if Russian liturature is not a part of your job description. I remember law school colleagues who had never heard of so many famous artists. All they knew was accounting. (sound of stepping off soapbox).

Down a pound today. However it is due to some intestinal distress that I suffered yesterday. My fitbit steps mainly consisted of walking to the potty and back. But I am fine today and will get out and about.

Yep Diamond, 2 inches is not a snow day. More like 10. But that light stuff sure can be super slippery. be careful and stay warm. Yeah we all kind of hang around with our age groups and talk about the current issues of life. We should all try to make friends of different ages. Its amazing how the people at the studio who became my buddies all were born in the same year as me.

Maps under glass sounds fun Liz. I love maps. I like to see where I am in relation to other things. Thats why I have having the phone tell me where to drive. A disembodied voice ordering me around is not my idea of a good thing.

Since I was a little under the weather yesterday I had plain boiled barley for dinner. Thats because it was the only bland thing I had in the house. No bread, rice, pasta or potatoes available. Kind of proud of that.

Watched the last of House of Cards last night. Geez, could they have made it any weirder?

DH has his lunch buddies today but wants to make sure someone is home all day so I will do noon duty. The new TIVO arrives and we want to make sure no porch pirates get it. There have been a number of break ins recently in our neighborhood as reported on our facebook group. Makes me nervous.

Paula, good to hear from you. Glad you are getting some extra work hours if thats what you need. Plenty of people want holidays off so fill in needed. But don't overdo it.

Well my SIL has her surgery today. I did talk with her and it all makes a little more sense. The low hemoglobin was discovered in pre op testing. One doctor told her it was the lowest count he had seen in someone still alive. Geez. I am kind of worried but not much I can do 1800 miles away. Fingers crossed.

Well time for more coffee. I have enough stuff that must get done that I will make a list. Always calms me because then I don't run around thinking I am forgetting something. Cheers all. Diane S

Agree with everything you said, Diane -- from Russian Literature majors to all your shoutouts to House of Cards ... WTF?!

Ann

Hmm, so I started House of Cards, and it's been slow, but now I guess I'm going to have to fini**** to see just how weird it is!

Weight: 133.2
Macros: Cals - 1,196, Carbs - 115, Fats - 31, Protein - 95, Fiber - 24
Sleep hours: 8 (and boy, does 8 hours of sleep make me feel GREAT!)
Vegetable/Fruit Servings: 8
Water glasses: 5.5
Exercise: 12,000
Meditation: Yes

Wow! Eight hours of sleep is the best drug in the world. Even better than coffee, and that is saying a LOT!

Yesterday's "Lose Three Pounds in Ten Days" inputs were good - water was back up. In fact, it would've been 6.5 glasses (not 5.5) if I hadn't spilled most of my bedtime hot cup of water all over me and the bed. As a result, I moved over to DH's side of the bed, and slept amazingly well. In fact, I'm staying over there! ;)

As I mentioned before, 1,200 calories/day still isn't feeling that different from 1,700 cals/day in terms of satiety. It just takes a little more planning and making sure I eat all my V/Fs.

So now on to the "Trust Me!" topic, which it seems some of y'all are interested in. Day by day, it's getting more and more interesting to me, too. And subtler. And more obvious. And more helpful.

First, let me try to clarify something, which will probably require further "clarification" as I come to grok this even better down the road: "Trust me" doesn't mean "throw away all the post-op WLS tools I've built," which are weighing regularly (daily, in my case), planning my daily menu, tracking in MFP, eating slowly, not drinking with meals, etc. - you know them all as well as I do.

Instead, "Trust me" means: "Ann, you're doing a good job. Regardless of what the scale said this morning, you're generally eating well. Over the last four and a half years you've built skills, your intention to remain healthy is very strong, your track record has been good, and you've demonstrated to yourself that you can splurge sometimes and then get back up on the weight maintenance horse and lose your holiday weight. You're enjoying the many physical, psychological and spiritual benefits of your hard work, so remember to notice how good your life is now and how much stronger you've become. Smell the roses. Be grateful. Enjoy the confidence you've earned. This moment right now is all you will ever have, so be here now. You are perfect." (That last sentence is hard to write, but according to everything I've been reading it actually seems to be true. It's just hard to believe, but I'm flirting with the concept.)

Back here in the non-woo-woo world ... a couple of things occurred to me this morning that are oddly relevant to "Trust Me!" First thing was this: After yoga class I went to see my optometrist, because overnight my right eyelid (over the unoperated-on eye, in which I am using a contact lens) got red and puffy and was hurting a bit. My optometrist diagnosed an "allergy" of indeterminate source and prescribed an antibiotic/steroidal salve. No big deal, eh? On my way to the pharmacy to pick up my Rx, I thought about the word "allergy" - which is just a word and might even be a stand-in for the word "infection" in this case, although the medicine he prescribed probably would have been the same for either "word." Then I thought of juxtaposing "allergy" for another A-word ... "addiction." And then wondered, what if I thought of those "scary" foods that I avoid (by not buying them for my home), but feel great tension about when they appear in other settings I can't control (like in friends' homes, on restaurant menus, in hotel honor bars, etc.) not as foods I'm "addicted" to, but foods I'm "allergic" to. Not quite sure this is the earth-shattering difference it felt like when it first occurred to me. However, I/we do embue with great power the words we use to describe things that impact us a lot. Somehow, "chocolate allergy" feels easier to be causative over than a "chocolate addiction."

The second thing (and it's much shorter to describe) is that because a good graphic is better than a book chapter, I thought of turning my "Trust Me" homework for my psychotherapist into a graphic that will illustrate clearly the change(s) I wanting to make and the benefits / personal growth they will help me achieve.

Today's Amazon Prime playlist is Steely Dan's "Can't Buy a Thrill." Because ... duh!

Today's theme: Eight hours sleep - better than sex? :)

Not much to say yet today, other than I am super committed to following through on getting through the day without sugar. On the way to school today I thought more about intentional eating. Eating with a goal in mind vs. eating by reaction.

Here's a little ah ha that came with this morning's thoughts about eating: It's not so much that I love food. It's that I love to eat! There is a big difference there if you think about it. Stereotypically the French are food connoisseurs. They enjoy fine food and are known to savor small portions, but eat anything and everything they so choose. The French historically are a thin nation. I on the other hand seem to value eating more than food. Yes, I like good food, but I find often I am drawn to the act of eating rather than to savoring a particularly delicious food. The exception for me is when I crave protein - usually beef - then it is really a food thing. Most of the time, really, it's about the act of eating. That's got to be the addict brain, right?

I don't know if Liz's strategy of substituting the sweetened cottage cheese is an example or not for her, but it is something I do simply so I can eat SOME THING. As a matter of fact I did that last night. I think I do it every single damn day! I will have to analyze when I am eating for the sake of eating or whether I am eating to enjoy the food.

Meals are not included in this self analyzation. My meals are usually functional, nutritious and tasty. It's the "in between meal eating" which needs analysis.

See what you and your therapist are doing to me, Ann? Told you it was an intense subject. Bless you, my friend. But at the same time, sigh.... the work continues.

Yes, it (the work) does (continue).

:)

I love the act of eating too. More than the food itself and I love the food a lot...

Me again. Thought you all would appreciate this: I was getting dressed and thinking about how high my dogs could jump. Then I decided to see how high I could jump. Big mistake. I was not dressed on top and the boob slap about knocked me over! Do not try this at home. LOL. ds