100° Degrees

That's how hot it is outside: 100 degrees. That would be about 38 celcius...it's hot! Since I stopped counting WW points I've lost another two pounds, but I think it's mostly due to having no appetite except for fruit and water.
We went down to the south of Italy to go see my homeopathic doctor. I love him. He's about 75 years old and very sweet. He found a few things that needed to be attended to (one kidney not functioning well, one ovary blocked) but mostly said that I was run down and gave me a cure to build me back up. He told hubby not to leave me alone so much. P laughed as he got on the plane to go to Spain for the week... After only a week of the new drops and sticking to my anti allergen diet, I feel 100% better. I did take a week off of running, also because I caught a super cold. It really sucks to have a cold when it's hot as hell outside. You can't get under the covers and sleep, you just have to be miserable and hot and sneeze a lot.

This week I'm working on my "Get Light" list. I love self help books and they do work for me since I follow instructions well. The new book I have is on self coaching yourself and the first exercise she has you do is to list 60 things that are dragging you down. It can be anything from sewing a button on a shirt to paying an outstanding bill. Just all of those things that you think about all the time and put off doing. So far I've only come up with about thirty but I'm still working on it. Some of them are easy. Next to my kitchen door that goes out onto the yard I have this wire shelf. It was PILED with junk that needed to be put in the right places or thrown away. Every single time that I walked past it (approximately seventy times a day!) I would say to myself - I hate this, I need to clean it - and then not do it. I did it yesterday. It took me about forty minutes and now it looks beautiful. And I feel lighter. My list has some simple things (clean this, file that) and some very grave items that I have shoved to the back of my list for a million years. The biggest is that I have to get an Italian drivers license. Now I have an American drivers license, but they want me to actually take the Italian test as if I didn't know how to drive. I've known this for years...So as part of the effort to lighten the list I went yesterday to get an application form. Today I made an appointment for the obligatory doctors visit and saturday I should be able to hand in the papers and they'll give me a pink slip so that I can drive with someone so I can "learn". The test is two part: written and driven. I'm not concerned about the driven part since I've been driving for thirty years. It's the written test that freaks me. I'll get over it though...and I'll feel so much lighter when I have that license in my hand!

Weigh In #11

Well, I faithfully followed seven days on the Weight Watchers points plan. I’m now down to twenty base points which seems like so little to me. Last year when I was breast feeding I got a whole TEN POINTS extra. Now that was nice! Anyway, I ran regularly and counted the points for that too, which were never above seven. I also ate all my extra points – their name fails me right now- which are thirty five more. When I went for my Wednesday Weigh In I had loss zero pounds.
This sort of surprised me because all week the scale had shown a loss. Yes, I weigh every day and I need to address this problem too, but we’ll get to that when I’m ready for it. The scale variation was by as much as two kilos (four and a half lbs...), but Wednesday I dutifully recorded my 68 kg into my excel sheet. The next day I was down a kilo. Today I’m down two kilos again, which would be my original target weight.
I think that at this point of the game, I am better off not following a “diet”. I have really good eating habits. I eat all the right foods and I haven’t binged in so long I can’t even remember the last time I did it. My exercising is regular, probably even more than your average person. I’m running well. I can really tell the difference from a few months ago when little places would jiggle all the time, and I’m definately faster without those extra kgs on. I fit into all of my clothes, even those size ten red shorts. I really can’t think of a whole lot of things I can improve on right now. Of course I’d love to be firmer and I would really love to lose some more on my thighs and butt, but it’s not going to happen counting points. I feel liberated.
Now I have to decide what to do with this open diary. Keep it and write about maintaining my weight and continueing my running?

Mind Games

I've discovered a really important thing about my dieting self this week. If I follow an eating routine because I think that I need to drop five pounds in order to fit into a pair of pants, all I can think about is eating a bag of chocolate chip cookies. If instead I think that I'm eating to keep up my energy and improve my health and get that Boston Qualification, I pretty much don't care about food and skip on the ice cream 'cause it might put a few pounds on me that will eventually drag me down during a run. This is good...

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My scale is doing some wild ups and downs this week, so I don't even know where it will land on Wednesday. I'm on schedule, within my points and exercising, but that doesn't seem to mean very much to this 'ole body lately...

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I've also started to do some daily strength exercises. I'm only planning them out one week at a time. As a matter of fact I'm thinking of changing them every week so that I don't get bored. With static exercises (sit-ups and such) I tend to have these big plans that piddle out after a few days. But I really need some help in the hip, thigh and butt area. Again, if I think it's going to help my running, I'll probably do it. If I think that it's for weight loss it'll piddle out after two days...We'll have to analyze this behavior someday...

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I have a "babyjogger" for the baby that I've only recently started to use. When my daughter was born I used to tow her in it for every one of my runs. I even trained for a marathon, pushing her up to two hours at a time. She loved it and would take naps in it while I ran. Of course I would bring juice and snacks for her - she had a blast. Evan on the other hand couldn't stand to be in it. This last summer twenty minutes was his max. I used to time it daily and I was never off. This last week he's been asking to be pushed in the stroller. He uses it as a sleeping mechanism since he only asks when he's tired and then he nods off after about ten minutes. It's a nice way for me to get a walk in during the afternoon though.

Weigh In #10

If habitual readers have been attentive, I stopped counting WW points the week before my marathon, exactly one month ago. I didn't want to worry about how many points I was eating that week. I also knew that I wouldn't be gaining anything so I took the plunge. Ever since then I've been very good about my eating, but I've only lost one pound for the month of May. While I'm REALLY happy about losing a pound... I want to get this over with! I only have 2 kgs (4.5 lbs) to go but as I've said in the past, I want to be able to take them off in a natural way. I don't want to be hungry, I don't want to do a diet that I can't maintain in the longrun. So this week I'll be counting my WW points again to see if something moves. I'm a little apprehensive to do this because if I DON'T lose something (say, at least a pound) I'm afraid it might trigger some bad eating which, to my great surprise, I haven't done in months. Anyway, I'll give it a go and update here as much as I can this week (more for me than for you!). If anybody wants to join me, we can do it for just ONE WEEK. One week won't kill yah!

Weigh In #9

My twelve year old daughter started her menses this last March. As she was gearing up to “D – day” it was like watching a scientific experiment. In the month before she was, of course, as nasty as could be. She talked back all the time, ran into her room to cry every day, told me that I probably didn’t really love her, and absolutely never helped around the house. I can’t tell you how unpleasant it was to be around her. She was also always hungry. Always. She’d have a full dinner of chicken and potatoes and salad and fruit and then thirty minutes after getting up from the table she’d be back in the kitchen trying to find something else to eat. I don’t keep junky food around the house but I sensed that this was exactly what she needed, so one day I bought this twelve pack of these little fruit pies. She ate them ALL in a matter of hours. I thought something was seriously wrong and I was starting to get worried about her. She’s not overweight at all (1,60 mt x 53 kg) but at the rate she was going I didn’t know where it was going to all go. And then her period started and everything went back to normal…until thirty days later!

I read once that in the week before your menstrual cycle your body needs approximately 250 calories more per day, which is why we feel hungrier and more on edge the week before. After watching my daughter I started to pay more attention to my own hunger needs in the week before
My period. I always used to try and tame my hunger, ignoring it or pretending it wasn’t around when in actuality my body was just asking for some clean fuel so that it could go about the task of popping that monthly egg out. This week I gave it cherries, cantaloupe, bananas and an occasional
Ice cream. When it finally arrived it decided to stick around for eight whole days (I’m pretty sure I’m headed toward perimenopause…) so I just kept feeding it that extra bit. Surprisingly ( or maybe not…) the extra that I ate always worked out to about 250 calories.

My weight stayed the same this week and I’m happy with that.