Reaching One Goal

Entry #24

Weight 225. Two pounds lost!

This was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't sure if I would lose anything this week and if I did, thought it would be a pound or less. But, I'll happily and gratefully take the two pound loss.

Last week was a good one in terms of diet and exercise, but I'm noticing that it's getting easier to "cheat" a little and get away with it. A few times I popped a handful of sweetened cereal in my mouth as a quick snack, added a little extra fruit to the cup that had been measured out and ate extra chicken. Just for the record, no calories were added to my list for any of these snacks. This is one reason the two pound loss was a little surprising this week. This kind of snacking will have to end. It's too easy to justify it and, eventually the portions and frequency will increase.

Yesterday was a bit of a challenge. This past weekend was St. Stanislaus' Annual Fall Festival. It's a weekend long celebration. On Sunday they hold a live auction complete with all kinds of items for the home, weekend getaways and live cattle. It's fun and I usually find a few things to bid on. The challenging part is that while the auction is going on people with various types of drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and trays of goodies such as cheese cubes, slices of Portugese sweet bread, meats, and fried dough circulate through the bidding sections. I had a couple of pieces of cheese, a piece of sourdough and a few slices of meat. But the fried dough looked awfully good. I was able to resist it, but just barely. Before leaving the festival I stopped in to buy a chicken dinner to go. It had a half chicken, small cup of beans, a roll and a salad. When I got home I tossed the salad out as I didn't want to add the calories for dressing, put half of the chicken away for lunch today and ate the rest. It was very good. I didn't count calories yesterday but felt okay about it as I hadn't eaten any dinner on Saturday night.

On Saturday I worked at school for about seven hours, spent a couple of hours with my Mom, went to the library to check out a book and came home. When I got home I had a bowl of cereal for lunch, took my book to bed and read for a few minutes. At about 3:00 I put the book down and took a nap. At around 6:00 I woke up, but didn't get out of bed. I fell back to sleep and didn't wake up again until 3:30 a.m. I'd slept for about twelve hours! It was a strange feeling. From now on my naps will be taken in my recliner which only allows for two hours at the most as it isn't all that comfortable. I felt like I'd wasted my day.

Another week begins and I plan to make it a successful one. Last Friday I made 45 minutes on the treadmill at 3.4 mph. Now the goal is to do the whole 45 without holding onto the top of the machine at all. I found myself resting my hands on the top of the machine every now and then and it makes it a little easier to keep up the pace. I'm up to nine minutes on the elliptical, so this week I'll bump it up to ten at Level 2. I still need to add at least one weekend day to my workout schedule. I'll add that to my list of short term goals.

I want to thank all of you who continue to check in with my blog and comment on it. It helps to know that others read it and it will keep me accountable in my efforts.