Weekly Weigh In & Movement (July 10)

 Weekly Weigh In & Movement (July 10)

Goal Weight:  115  112  (Revised slightly downward)

July 10 Weigh In:  117.6

Weight Lost Last Two Weeks:  1.4 pounds 

Weight Left To Lose:  2.6  5.6 pounds

I revised my weight loss goal downward by three pounds, from 115 to 112 pounds. I did this after running my stats through an online Body Mass Index calculator. At 112 pounds, my BMI would be at the low end of the range tagged as 'Healthy.' 

It looks like I can go as low as 110 pounds and still be in the Healthy range. Any lower, however, and I'd drop into the 'Underweight' category, which I don't think is advisable for my aging bones.  😐

At my current rate, I should be able to make the new 112 weight target by mid-August.

At which point, I'm going clothes shopping!

Weekly Mileage/Movement

• Fri- 3 mile walk
• Sat- None
• Sun- 5 mile walk
• Mon - 5 mile walk
• Tue- None
• Wed- 4.5 mile walk
• Thur - 6.5 mile walk
• TOTAL FOR WEEK: 24 miles
• TOTAL FOR JULY:  26 miles

No Sugar and Less Food Efforts

I'm pretty much humming along at this point, with regard to my No Sugar effort. Saying 'No' to myself, whenever sugar crosses my path, is really no longer an issue for me after four months, which does feel like a miracle, given my sugar-heavy past.  

So my latest effort has been to see if I could silence the post-dinner Food Noise that would sometimes cause me to look for something to crunch, even though I wasn't really hungry. And, I hope it is helpful that I can share that similar to having to get through those first few nights of saying 'No' to sugar, I'm having similar results with regard to Food Noise. After working hard to ignore the brain messaging for a couple of nights, the noise is fading. And doing so much faster than my sugar addiction did. 

Meaning that after just about a week, I no longer feel compulsions to find something to nibble in the evenings, which was way faster than I'd expected.

I found the following article really helpful in researching what I was experiencing, and how to stop it- 

How To Combat Food Noise

About my weight loss efforts in general - my current rate of progress has occurred by working diligently to get myself into a new mindset. A mindset where I'm deliberate and aware of what I'm eating, and one where I'm trying as hard as I can to avoid what I experience as mindless eating.

I'm also working hard to shift my focus away from food being viewed as a reward. Instead, I'm working to focus on how much enjoyment I'm getting from picking out my clothes, and how much happier I am about the way they look on me, with some 12 pounds shed. Iced black coffee is my pick-me-up treat, which I genuinely enjoy. And I'm having some fun trying out new coffee spots as I'm out and about.

Food just cannot be the/my focus going forward, if I want the weight to remain off. I have had to come to peace about this, which I think I have. I am increasingly comfortable having just one full meal on days we have social events that include food, and then doing a semi-fast for one or two days afterward, until any weight gained from food-heavy events has been reversed. This approach allows me to enjoy eating out, while still managing my weight and/or weight loss.

Weight loss might come easy for some, but it most definitely does/has not for me. The mental work I've had to exert to accomplish even a fairly modest 12 & 1/2 pound weight loss has somewhat shocked me. I'm doing it, and I'm very happy with the results, but it has been hard.

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If you are likewise on a quest to improve some aspect of your dietary or fitness life, please feel free to share here. The more we can work to support and encourage each other the better!

Happy 4th Of July + Lots Of Family Fun

Happy Holiday!

It's been a wild week with four extra people in the house, two of them little people with way more energy than their grandparents!

The Fourth of July was a great day. Exhausting, but great! We started the day with a three mile roundtrip walk to the beach, stopping at Starbucks on the return to fuel up the granddaughters with frappuccinos. 

We then headed to the harbor for Water Wars, a decades long tradition that brings out the kid in everyone. People paddle out on everything from SUP's to jet skis, and proceed to shoot water at each other, and the dry land crowd, from any and every type of water device. The folk on dry land do same in return, and it is a great and wild time.

The granddaughters loved it - I had bought them pink high powered water guns - but I think my son-in-law enjoyed it more. The kid in him definitely came out. 

After we returned home here, we headed to the HOA pool for an afternoon of swimming. For dinner, we enjoyed grilled burgers, corn on the cob, watermelon, and homemade ice cream (them, not me 🙂 )

Fireworks viewing was enjoyed from our balcony, which, I'm not going to lie, was awesome. So stinkin' easy!

Anyhow, the fun with them continues here for another week. I'm exhausted (LOL!) but they are all having a blast, and already talking about returning next 4th of July. Actually, my older granddaughter considers it a given, so I'm not sure her parents will have much say in the matter!

I hope your holiday was absolutely fantastic, wherever you are, and however you celebrated!

Weekend Wrap Up - Lots of Cooking!

Weekend Wrap Up - Lots Of Cooking!

Well, another vibrant weekend is in the books! As a retiree still trying to live a big life (I can rest when I'm dead, as my Dad, who is still going strong at 88, always reminds me when we chat.), I often wake up on Monday mornings with gratitude that the life I've worked hard to build since we moved here eight years ago is now at a place where it pretty much moves along without me needing to be push it quite so hard. 

Everything we did this weekend built off of earlier efforts I/we made to establish a connection with friends or community. I say that simply to encourage any who might be struggling a bit in retirement. You do have to work to get things going, but you can then take your foot off the throttle and pretty much coast.

Friday - I spent a really enjoyable morning at our new fitness center. This is the first gym we've belonged to since retiring that I am actually enjoying. During my working years, I loved going to the gym in the early AM because lots of my friends and work colleagues were also there, and we'd chat as we worked out. That changed when I retired and stopped going in at 5AM, and I've been struggling a bit since to find my gym mojo.

But I really like our new fitness center. It feels lively, but not in any sort of look-at-me way that a lot of gyms do. There are just lots of active people of all ages, they are friendly, and I now look forward to my indoor workouts after many years of not.

My workout consisted of 10 minutes on the StairMaster, from which I'll begin to build, 3 miles on the treadmill, about 1/2 mile of which I ran, and a full body weight workout.

I stopped by two supermarkets on the way home in order to 'steal' their advertised loss leaders -

• Two containers of Thrifty ice cream at $2.50 a container
• 5 ears of corn at .50 cents each
• A pound of Hormel bacon at $5.00
• A small watermelon at $2.00

All of the above are in preparation for our soon-to-be-here younger daughter and her family, which includes my two (yeah!) granddaughters.

We officially kicked off the weekend in the late afternoon with a visit to our membership winery's new waterfront location. As we took our glasses of complimentary wine out onto their new patio, I thought, 'Oh my goodness, I am not going to hate this new location whatsoever!'

Dinner back home was another of my frozen stash of Pot Pie savory dinner pies, plus some roasted asparagus.

Saturday - I met my regular walking group for a four mile walk along the beach, during which we observed a Paddle Out. A Paddle Out (described in greater detail here) is a ceremony where people paddle out to the waves, form a circle, and honor the memory of someone recently deceased. I've seen several of these over the years, and they are always moving to observe.

Post walk, we all gathered for coffee where, surprisingly, a robust discussion about Shakespeare occurred. I was delighted, as I've read and attended about a dozen Shakespeare plays since retiring, one of my retirement goals that stuck. 

The process I follow before seeing a Shakespeare production is to download the play we are going to see, and read it while simultaneously reading SparkNotes online to assist with understanding the dialogue as written.

After returning home I spent the afternoon baking Ina Garten's Carrot Cake with Candied Ginger Mascarpone Frosting for a social wine event we were attending.

The event, once we arrived, turned out to be lots of fun (it actually always is 🙂), and my fancy carrot cake ended up being voted the Dish Of The Night, which earned me a $40 bottle of Pinot Noir, yeah!

Sunday - Spiritual services in the AM, then home to prepare to host my Book Club. For tonight's meeting, which I host once a year, I made a slow cooker honey beer pot roast with carrots and potatoes, steamed green beans, warmed Challah bread slices, and this Giada de Laurentis Ricotta Orange Amaretto Pound Cake that I served alongside small scoops of orange sherbet.

The book club discussion  - How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn - was interesting and robust, and the dinner turned out really nice, with seconds enjoyed by several of the guests (including me!). Clean up afterward, which my lovely husband did since I did all the cooking, was considerable, so we headed straight to bed once he finished.

Today, Monday - 

Although I didn't have any dessert, I did eat more pot roast than I should have last night, so I'm headed out the door shortly to try and undue any damage with a long walk. I'll weigh myself tomorrow! 😄

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How was your weekend???

Breaking In To Share A Brief Moment Of Success

Posting my weight loss efforts here on this blog has been such an incentive to keep going, particularly on the days when I really, really, really want to eat, so, a sincere and hearfelt . . . 

Thank You!!!

I hit a new low threshold this morning (118.6), got all excited, and took a quick photo just before heading out to meet my Saturday morning walking group. 

I still have a few more pounds to go, but d@mn it, after so many weeks and months of self-deprivation, I think I've earned the right to enjoy a brief moment of success!  😆

Edited to add: I want to quickly clarify that I don't consider giving up sugar to be a form of self-deprivation. That was/is a form of self care, due to the way sugar was negatively impacting my life. I'm thrilled to finally have that monkey off my back, hopefully for good.

Weekly Weigh In & Movement (June 27)

Weekly Weigh In & Movement (June 27)

Goal Weight:  115

June 27 Weigh In:  119

Weight Lost This Week:  1.2 pounds

Weight Left To Lose:  4 pounds

Weekly Mileage/Movement

• Fri- None
• Sat- 2 mile walk
• Sun- None
• Mon - 5 mile walk
• Tue- 1 mile walk
• Wed- None
• Thur - 5 mile walk
• TOTAL FOR WEEK:  13 miles
• TOTAL FOR MONTH:  66 miles + 1x weight training

My walking mileage for the week was low, primarily due to our super busy weekend, but because my food intake was also low, I did still lose weight, just a bit over a pound.

With several major celebrations now behind us, I look forward to returning to larger mileage walks, beginning this weekend, which should help to keep the weight loss momentum going.

Today's Action Plan: Gym workout- 10 min on stairs stepper, 3 miles speed walking on treadmill, and a full body weight workout.

No Sugar and Less Food Efforts

No issues with sugar this week. In fact, I'm now scaling back on what I call Level 2 sugar - catsup primarily, but also BBQ sauce. It was interesting to discover that dramatically cutting back my usage of catsup resulted in me not even caring to finish my fries. Twice now this has occurred, which begs the question, Was I simply having fries with my catsup, rather than the other way around? 😏

The Less Food effort, though, does continue to require focus. Even at my current, lower weight, the food noise in my head continues, and I have to consciously work to avoid eating when I know I'm really not hungry. It's particularly brutal in the evening, for reasons I don't understand.

I've been successful in stopping most of my eating for the day at around 4:00 PM, at which point I begin sipping herbal tea. I do continue to have whatever vegetables are on my dinner menu each evening, but that is it. And if the food noise gets really bad, I enjoy a few frozen berries, or some grapes. So, progress for sure, even though it's can be ridiculously hard to ignore my noisy brain.

I find the food noise to be really interesting, from a biological perspective. I'm going to spend some time this week trying to understand where it comes from, and why it occurs. 

I like my leaner face, but oooff - those wrinkles!
The results of a childhood spent in the sun.
Kids, don't do that! 😄

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If you are likewise on a quest to improve some aspect of your dietary or fitness life, please feel free to share here. The more we can work to support and encourage each other the better!

Weekend Wrap Up - Why Yes, It Involved Wine!

Weekend Wrap Up - Why Yes, It Involved Wine!

This was one of those weekends that I might not believe if I hadn't actually lived it. I'm sitting here on Monday morning with a clear calendar, which I am desperately in need of after the last three days!

Friday - We woke up and got ready early in order to drive to Temecula, about a 90 minute trip, and attend a winery event being hosted by one of the entities we do personal business with. It began with a tour of the winery's growing and production facilities, then moved into a private room for a series of wine tastings paired with charcuterie. 

One of the wines we tasted was a Cabernet sauvignon that we both loved. So we knew it was going to be pricey, lol. And it was, at $90 a bottle. However, if we found someone to go in with us on a case, the price dropped to $55 a bottle. We chatted with the business contact that had invited us, and he said he and his wife would love to share a case with us. 

Then they ended up comping us our six bottles. Totally unexpected, but very, very, very much appreciated!

From there we returned to Orange County, and headed to a new steakhouse near us that was getting rave reviews. We were primarily interested in their Happy Hour menu, not one of their pricier full blown meals, and had read that we needed to get there early if so, right at or before their 4:00 PM opening. So we got into line at 3:40PM, and were first to do so. However, by 4:00 PM, as they opened their doors, the line was long, and every table in their beautiful bar area, where Happy Hour was held, quickly filled. 

We ordered the wedge salad, and then their house made burger, both to share. The salad was lovely, but the burger blew our minds. The restaurant compile their burgers using leftover trimmings from the various prime sides of beef they cut on site, including Wagyu. Plus the burger came with a generous smear of truffle aioli. And the total bill, including a beer for my husband, plus tax and tip, came to just under $50, which I was super pleased with. See later for where I am happy to spend money, large quantities of food just not being it for reasons of my scale. 😊

The beautiful bar area. We were happy we were able to snag a private table,
but the folk sitting directly at the bar seemed happy as well.

Saturday - My mom came over to spend the morning walking the beach and visiting a surfing festival with us. The walk was lovely in that the skies were just clear enough for a little sun to come through on an otherwise brisk morning. The festival was a lot of fun, with oodles of vintage surf boards, a classic Woodie car show, and live music that included a ukulele band . . . the later of which I loved, and have decided to join after chatting with some of the musicians!

Although I don't currently own or play a ukulele, the group encourages and welcomes new players. And because I do already own and play a guitar, I've read that the transition should actually be fairly easy.

So, another fun activity to dive into, which makes me quite happy!

After returning home, my husband and I got cleaned up and then headed to a Hawaiian themed dinner at a cooking school we both much enjoy. As usual, we had a lot of fun with the chefs and our fellow students, all couples this particular evening, and made lots delicious food. The chefs seat us at a long table after we cook the meal components, and then serve us, which is also so much fun. My favorite item of the night (they always ask) was the sweet potato and ginger soup. My husbands was the Luau fried rice. Both remakes here at home for sure, once they send out the recipes a little later this week.

Sunday - Spiritual services, then off to the ballet to see Swan Lake. And here is where I can state that I am happy to spend money! We had front row seats, and to me they were worth every penny. The ballet was absolutely gorgeous, and we were close enough to feel the passion and energy coming from the performers on stage. 

Gosh, I just loved it so much. We'd seen Swan Lake in Russia when we visited St. Petersburg some years back on a cruise. However, not only were we not even close to being in the front row, we realized after seeing the full four act production on Sunday, that what we'd seen in Russia was simply a sampling of Swan Lake. It wasn't remotely the full length version. It was apparently the Russian tourist version!

We returned home to a simple dinner of Curry Vegetable pot pie that I'd bought and frozen last week from the Pop Pie Co, plus salad.

Today, Monday, I'm thrilled that my weigh-in this morning indicates I didn't gain any weight over our fairly food centric weekend, meaning my daily calorie planning on where to cut back calories early in the day, in order to enjoy more later in the day, appeared to work. I'm thus fired up to dig deep this week, in order to be back in the 'teens' by Friday. 

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How was your weekend???

Friday- Weekly Weigh In & Movement (June 20)

Weekly Weigh In & Movement (June 20)

Goal Weight:  115

June 20 Weigh In:  120.2

Weight Lost This Week:  +1 pound

Weight Left To Lose:  5.2 pounds

I have been giving thought to how hard losing these last few pounds has become, and in doing some research, came across this article from the Mayo Clinic, discussing how each plateau reached (119-120 for me currently) may necessitate creating a whole new diet plan.

Getting Past A Weight Loss Plateau

Weekly Mileage/Movement

• Fri- None  (Left at 8 AM for an event)
• Sat- 7 mile walk
• Sun- 3 mile walk
• Mon - 6 mile kayak
• Tue- 5 mile walk
• Wed- 5 mile walk
• Thur - None, though I did do about an hour of yardwork.
• TOTAL FOR WEEK:  26 miles
• TOTAL FOR MONTH:  53.5 miles + 1x weight training

Many of my miles this week occurred at our local harbor.
I am so enjoying all the children now there, many taking sailing
lessons, such as in the yellow-masted sailboat in photo.

No Sugar and Less Food Efforts

I had one night of mild sugar compulsions, the first in many weeks. I'm not sure why, exactly, other than overall general hunger perhaps.

It was a bit rough, but I managed to silence the sugar compulsions by eating a half cup of frozen berries (comprised of raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and cherries) at about 40 calories. I really enjoy this as a treat - it requires patience to allow the berries to soften. I enjoy them slowly, one at a time, and the flavors range from mildly tart to mildly sweet. 

I admit I'm a little frustrated to have stalled a bit this week, in that I track my calories and know I'm not exceeding 1200 on any given day, inclusive of exercise calories. So, I'm going to try something a tad radical, since I happen to have all the ingredients here in the house already, the Pink Salt cleanse.

I'll let you know next week how it goes!

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If you are likewise on a quest to improve some aspect of your dietary or fitness life, please feel free to share here. The more we can work to support and encourage each other the better!