Is it HOT enough for you?!?!

My goodness, but it is HOT out! And, to add insult to injury, it's very humid too. This has been going on all week, and I think we have several more days of it in store. The good news is that my squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and other vine-y type plants are doing good with this weather. My other plants look a little wilted. I didn't get to water for the past 2 nights, so maybe I'll do it this evening after it cools off. Or, if I can stand it, I might carry jugs of water to them and just water around the bases during the day. That's a lot of carrying, but it counts as exercise, so I just might give it a try. While I dislike the carrying, it beats watering everywhere and giving the weed water too.

I've gotten the scale to nudge down a little bit more, to where it actually shows pounds lost on the sidebar. Yippee! I hope to see some improvement after this weekend too. I have a TON of things to do outside in the garden & yard. The other day while doing some chores, I spotted something floral that was near the back toward the woods. It looked like a big burst of cream color, so I investigated. It's some type of bush with these cream color clumps of blossoms that are 4 or 5 inches across. The flowers smelled wonderful! I noticed yesterday the blossoms have passed by, but I am definitely considering relocating it closer to the house.

Then, there is the forsythia that needs to be trimmed. This has been on my list for weeks. There are two of them that have not been trimmed in....maybe forever. I attacked one of them back at the beginning of the month, and left a lot of bare branches with just some foliage at the top. The first benefit after doing that was I can actually mow around the thing with our riding mower. Before, I had to use the push mower and go all around it and push the mower in underneath it as far as possible, over & over to keep things looking semi-neat. Now, I just noticed yesterday that the bare branches are all sprouting leaves, which of course I knew they would. As soon as I can hack away at that 2nd bush, I'll do it. It's bigger and wilder than the 1st, but it will look so darn much better!

Then, there is the lawn that needs its weekly mowing. That takes a good solid 3 hours, even if I don't trim anywhere with the push mower.

I guess I'd better quit goofing off inside where the A/C is and get out there and SWEAT!!

Avoiding temptation

I've gotten back on track again, and I'm happy to say that having a scale I can weigh-in on at work really helps out. I'm trying not to overdo it but I weighed 2 days ago and found I'd gained about 2 pounds with my weekend binge. I started looking back over what I was eating when I lost a few pounds, and recycled the menu. Yesterday I was back down a bit, and then I weighed first thing after I got to work this morning, and it had nudged down a little more.

That made it MUCH easier to resist the 2 temptations I ran into today - cake and ice cream! And it wasn't like I had to avoid 1 event either. I saw the cake in the break room at work, leftover from some celebration. Man it looked good. I was in there getting ice water, so I just turned my back on the cake and remembered how nice it felt to see the scale go down. Fifteen minutes later, they announced an ice cream social taking place in the parking lot. OMG! What are they trying to do to me?!?!

It was easier to resist both than I thought, so I'm proud of myself!

Yippee!

If I didn't mess it up when I got home from work today, I'm headed down again in the weight department.

After my last entry, I got brave one day and weighed on the same scale as I'd used for my weigh-in at work. It was down several pounds!!!! I've been doing exercise nearly every day, and sometimes for a few hours a day when it's gardening & lawn maintenance activities which I really enjoy. I'm sure some of it is not all that strenuous, but it must be doing me some good. The past few nights (but not tonight), I raked rocks out of the area of our garden where we'll be planting more tomato plants. THAT is work! I was really working up a sweat.

The reason I hope I didn't mess it up tonight is that I was starving on the way home from work. I convinced myself not to stop for Chinese food for hubby & me, mostly because I didn't want to spend the money. I considered a grocery store stop for grapes, which are 99c a pound this week, but decided against it because so many other tempting things lurk in the store when you're hungry. So what did I do? Came home and ate many, many saltine crackers with peanut butter & jelly. Yum, but ugh! I'll just have to do better this weekend, and it should be easy enough to do since I have so much to keep me busy!

1340 for today

I started counting calories again today. I really don't like doing that, but I think it's a necessary evil now. I hope I didn't miss anything in my list, but I was pretty careful to keep my notepad with me all day.

Breakfast: 1 c cereal + 1/2 c skim milk = 230
1/2 pbj on light bread = 170
Snack: 1 banana = 100
18 wheat thin artisan crkrs = 200
Lunch: ww meal = 260
1 c cantaloupe = 60
Snack: 12 wheat thin artisan crkrs = 140
Dinner: 4 oz baked chicken, b/s = 120
2 c broccoli = 60

Some of the calorie counts came from the products themselves and I paid attention to serving sizes too. The cantaloupe count came from http://www.nutritiondata.com.

The Weight Watcher meal was Picante Chicken & Pasta. I found them reduced to $1 at Walmart and had coupons for $1 off 5. I bought a bunch of them (after I brought one home & tried it first). Cheap lunch, and quite tasty. It's very spicy, though, so if you don't like spicy, don't try it!

I also walked at lunch, had 4 glasses of water (that's a record for me!), and planned chicken & broccoli leftovers for tomorrow's lunch.

I'm my own worst enemy

After figuring out what I wanted to do to help get things under control in my last entry, I faded away for awhile. I sure am very inconsistent. I've planned my snacks better a few times, but then gone astray many more times. I'm my own worst enemy! A friend just announced that she'd lost 20 pounds over the last several months. The kicker? She didn't even NEED to lose weight, at least not in my opinion. I haven't seen her in a long, long time (out of state) but she's always been roughly the same size & weight in all the years I've known her.

I read all sorts of things about setting big goals and small goals, and focusing on the goal above everything else. It all sounds good in theory, but I have such a hard time getting past the "want-it-now". I've been a little down in the dumps lately too, so that's not exactly inspiring me to do better.

For more thought-provoking ideas, I've read multiple times about strategies for cutting spending that involve just asking yourself a few questions before making a purchase, things like do I need this and do I have anything else that serves the same purpose? Other people say if they want something, they put it back and wait a few days or a week to see if they still want it just as bad. I think the same logic can be applied to bad eating habits. I usually don't NEED to eat, unless it's been hours since a prior meal and I'm feeling a little weak. I should ask myself if I have anything else (i.e., healthier to eat) that serves the same purpose. Or, the best, wait awhile (not days or weeks, but minutes or hours) and see if I still want it. Focus on the goal!!!

What will I look like?

I survived the auction yesterday without buying ANY food from the concession stand. I brought a sandwich and fruit salad and diet cokes, and that's all I ate for lunch. I had an apple later in the day that I'd brought too. I didn't end up going for a walk during the auction, but I did a lot of back & forth walking between the two sales that were in progress. My feet and legs ached by the end of the day, so hopefully the walking back & forth was enough to do me some good!

Here's a neat tool for motivation. It's the Weight Loss Simulator tool by Prevention, so you can see what you'll look like after weight loss. http://www.prevention.com/mvm/main.html Try it! It's pretty neat. Of course, if you're like me, you can just look at pictures of yourself from several years back and see exactly what you'll look like after weight loss...except the face has a much younger appearance in those pictures! LOL