Sorry about your ankle Felici. I guess slow and steady wins the race.

For now. For sure.

Friday

Breakfast 7:30 2 weetbix, 1/3 C diced peaches , 1C low fat soy milk. 1 slice wholemeal toast with plum and cinnamon jam. Boiled egg . 2 x coffee with 40 ml Hilo milk.

Snack: 1 coffee with milk.

Lunch: 1:00 3 slices toasted wholemeal Vienna batard. 30 gm low fat cheese, 1 1/2shaved slices double smoked ham, tomato. Carrot, snow peas. Diet apricot yoghurt. Coffee with milk.

Snack 5:00 . McDonald's cappuccino.

Dinner prep: 2 fresh carrots.
Dinner: 8:30 Grilled, thick cut rump steak, red wine vinegar, worcestershire sauce, poached pear, wholegrain mustard. Roast potato, carrots and broccoli.
Slice of thickcut raisin bread, toasted.

10:45 Coffee with milk.


Exercise:
9:00 am Walk at Warwick (east). This was definitely intended as exercise – I'm not sure if it ended up counting as such. I walked for about 45 minutes in the bush, mostly slowly, delighting in finding a patch of rabbit orchids coming into bloom. These are not uncommon but don't bloom every year, and were an unexpected find. The walk was slower and longer on account of all the flower hunting.
6:00pm Warwick (west). 25 minutes. A proper short, sweet walk.

I saw the physio again. She's definitely speeding up the healing. Today she massaged my calf as well - a bit of a painful experience at the time that made it feel wonderful as soon as she stopped. I so would like my whole body to feel like that!

I'm back! and it seems you are doing well. You've lost a lot since the last time I was using this forum. CoNGRATS!!!

I so love to spend time staring at the ground. Even though it was this morning, every time I close my eyes now, I see shiny green leaves, and spiky buds, and sand and pale green, furry stems. It's a peaceful vision for bedtime.

Hello bmohearn!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel my loss is slow. Well I know it is lately. Yet I chucked out half a wardrobe full of baggy old clothes tonight. So I know something has happened! And I still have faith in myself for the long haul here.

It's good to see you!!

*wanders off to look for bm's thread*

Oh that dinner sounds sooooo good!! I love roasted veggies. Sometimes Feli, talking a walk regardless if you stop and go, is going to do a body good. We all need fresh air, and we all need a little stress relief, and it sounds as if you got both of those. I just wish I had those pretty flowers to look at when I walk around here, we just don't have any flowers to exciting. Right now all the roses are doing well, and flowering trees, but that's about it. It sounds like you must be losing some inches currently, if your clothes are getting baggy. You know for me it was really slow the past month, but I to lost another few inches here and there, even thought the scale only went down 3 pounds. It's frustrating, but I have this feeling, when I look back this time next year, I'm going to be so thrilled I stuck with my workout and eating, as I'm probably going to be exactly where I want to be, even though it took me 7-8 months longer than I thought. Maybe, that will mean it will stay off of us and not sneak back on later. They say the longer it takes, the likely it will stay off. So I'm fine with it, and I hope you are as well. Have a lovely weekend Feli!!
HUGS
Kim

You know, in the summer of 2001 I bought some shirts I really liked. After they hung in my closet all this time, they now fit so I didn't buy any new shirts for school, but I do have to buy a whole lot of new dress pants. Throwing out (Or better yet giving away) the old stuff is such a rush. Thanks for always being so supportive Felici.

Hi Kim.

I'm sure every walk is good for me - slow ones and all. In fact I'm feeling like I could do with a pick me up tomorrow and rereading your post has reminded me that I was planning to go back into the bush in the am and that will almost certainly do it. My husband found bee orchids are out already!!

Living in the middle of the suburbs and at the same time near the bush is lucky for us and also I guess, something we did intentionally. I doubt anyone would think it's pretty at first glance. I imagine many of you would wonder why I am EVER excited by a patch of grey scrub, but I genuinely am. I was even more excited on Friday as I thought I was about to buy the camera I wanted, but on reflection it seems I may do better to wait for another model which will be available soon. I need to check again Monday. It's good to have narrowed my choices down so much anyway.

Roses and flowering trees sound like something I could get pretty excited about too though. I love roses. I could also go on about them for a while!! But I will hold myself in check.

Canon

It was good bagging those clothes up that's for sure. I have just as much to wear now as I did yesterday - and now I don't need to buy new hangers! I'm very appreciative of your support too. It's funny how this place works for us all - and it does work!!

Saturday

Breakfast 8:00 2 weetbix, 1/3 C diced peaches , 1C low fat soy milk. 1 slice wholemeal toast with plum and cinnamon jam. Boiled egg . 2 x coffee with 40 ml Hilo milk.

Snack 10:30 : Cappuccino.

Lunch: 12:30 3 Chicken and prawn spring rolls (made with fresh rice
paper, not fried). These were delicious, though not as filling as I'd hoped – or was that because I scoffed them while walking back to my car?
1:15 Thick cut slice of toasted raisin bread. Coffee with milk.
I sat down for this. Was that a good idea? Well in terms of being a more satisfying way to eat, yes.

5:30 Can of Johnnie Walker and Dry. I guess I didn't need this, but stressed as I already was, with the thought of a mini-speech to follow, it probably was a good idea.
3 chips (fries) – from my daughter's bucket.
20 almonds from the emergency stash I found in my handbag. I was pretty hungry and locked into a function with no good food options, so that stash turned out to be pretty handy today. I'd forgotten I even had it.

Dinner: 7:30 Veal with marsala and mushrooms. Roast potato, carrots and broccoli.
Coffee with milk.
It would have been pretty easy to eat badly tonight. Waiting will probably be a more effective way to make myself feel better though.

Exercise: No.

I truly could not fit it in. I can usually see how I could have done things differently and made it work, but not this time. If anything, I needed to put more time in to being ready for the damn netball wind up which turned out badly for my daughter, and perhaps would have been better if I'd rushed a little more earlier on. Or been more organized some other day. Oh well. At least it's done with for the year. I hope she's not turned off forever and ever. I usually think the mad rush of Saturday is kind of funny when it's all over but tonight I just feel wrecked. I did spend the evening watching a video, The Holiday with my daughter, which I wouldn't have normally done. It is a kind of romance and was a good end to things for us both – tear jerking and upbeat.

I was wondering what I could do tomorrow that would re-energize me and I'm thinking the walk I was reminded of, when replying to Kim, will probably do it. Also I am looking forward to having enough time to shop for fruit and veges at a market instead of a shopping centre. And maybe we can organize a friend for the girl and go somewhere that would appeal to them - supposed to be wild weather though... Maybe some pampering at home with facials and hairdos.

Personally I could do with the takes-off-the-15-year's-worth-of-lines-and-dry-skin-I-got-in-the-last-8-months-facial.



If I could find where I put it.

Sunday

Breakfast 10:00 2 weetbix, 1/3 C diced peaches , 1C low fat soy milk. 1 slice wholemeal toast with plum and cinnamon jam. Boiled egg . 2 x coffee with 40 ml Hilo milk.

Lunch: 2:00 Toasted sandwich with low fat cheese, 2 slices double smoked ham, tomato, mushroom, olives. Small chopped pear and half a tub of yoghurt. Coffee with milk.

5:00 9 dates. ¼ McDonald's cappuccino.

Dinner: 7:30 2 Grilled pork kebabs. ~ 100 gm lean pork, capsicum, onion, mushroom and tomato. (Thanks for the inspiration Miss Lady Bug). 1 microwaved potato. (~ 100 gm)

Baked apple (stuffed with currants, raisins, and 2 chopped almonds) (yummy - thanks for the inspiration Randy), and custard. Both were made with Splenda (a low cal sugar substitute), however I ate too much of them.

Coffee with milk.

Exercise: 12:30 35 minutes, bushwalk, Warwick east, near Beach Rd.

The flowers are becoming pretty special. I found the bee orchids easily because there were a few. There were donkeys in clumps, and one of the most spectacular groupings I've ever seen of 5 spiders. And I have no camera and am not expecting to get it in time for this season. So I just walked around making little rectangles with my hands and wondering to what extent the camera I'm thinking of will handle my desires next year.

My desires...

This walk felt surreal. I walked further than normal and back through paths that felt unfamiliar. The bush was more beautiful than I remember. There were more trees. It was sunny most of the way, between storms, but windy. This was yet another of those walks that I started while feeling low and during which my feelings deteriorated at first. I guess sometimes I remember how wonderful some images have made me feel, and expect that wonderful images will automatically do that. Then when one part of me perceives that what I'm seeing is wonderful and yet I still basically feel like some sort of underground dweller the disparity makes me feel like I'm crawling lower. No doubt there is a snappy way to say that. And a cliché that I can't remember which none the less describes the thought quite accurately. Well the sun was shining on grey shrubs, and blackened sticks, and brilliant blossoms alike. And on me , with my mood dark and my thoughts of strange and ugly dreams and guilt. I had an image of watching torture while my arms are wrapped around and around with spider silk. Anyway, the walk was memorable, worthwhile, and not immediately spirit lifting.

While focusing so much on self control, I guess this is a time in my life when I need also to remember that not everything is within my control, or any other single individual's. Well I know the cliché for that one.

I think the comment that patience is the most essential virtue for dieters has already been made on this forum, many times. I am so noticing that at present. In fact today I was thinking that perhaps learning patience was the critical feature we all need, and which would perhaps have kept our weights normal if we'd started with enough. Normally I think about the need to be patient week to week while our weight diminishes more slowly than we'd like, but today I was thinking about the need to wait out our bad moods and awkward circumstances and perhaps even hunger, without deciding that it's all too hard and that it's time to lapse into some short lived obliteration - with food - or maybe something else unhealthy, that takes us away from waiting for what we really want.

Please notice that I am not saying that I have patience. Just that I have been feeling the need to have it. Sometimes perhaps endurance would be more like it.

It also occurred to me that perhaps I have been spreading myself a little too thin. Because nearly doing everything without quite managing to do anything as it should be done, can be exhausting and too guilt provoking. I had an image of a gossamer thin person laying over spiky shrubs of guilt here.

And despite all that black mood, my daughter had been phoned just before I left and gone to spend time with a couple of the friends she couldn't bowl with at the netball break up yesterday, and when I came home I phoned her mobile, and gave her a fright, because she was in our backyard with them, hammering nails into a plank. At a rate of about 1 micron per minute. They were “building a cubby”. The plank was not attached to anything. It was lying on the grass. I asked what they intended to attach it too. Aaah. Building a tree house. At a rate which would perhaps have seen it finished as they approached their seventies. If they kept at it continuously without sleeping. And it was about to pour down rain. They said they had that under control - they were shouting something from a movie up at the sky. I can't hammer nails either, but I impressed the girls because I made one stay in the plank. Anyway, in the end they made me laugh. And then it rained and I ended up making lunch for my family and three spares, which takes too long!! But was a very good thing anyway.

And it occurred to me that perhaps I have been taking things a little too seriously.

Walk 2. 3:00 pm
I went back and did a similar walk with my husband so that we could show each other the things we'd missed on our single walks. We got rained on, but it was a good walk.

Bark face

I am not done whinging yet. Sorry. Unless I remember to put so much gunk on it that I feel like my face is dissolving, and then remember to repeat this every few hours, my face feels like it is crisping into bark. It doesn't feel good. Also it is aging visibly each week, which doesn't look good. Currently I have a vision of myself whizzing through the years so fast that by next month my face will shatter into dust. My plan to stop this is to keep putting the gunk on. However, I doubt this is a good enough plan.

You live in such a beautiful area LUCKY!!!!!! I love when I walk outside, and actually stop to appreciate all that is around me. And realize how amazing the world is.

I walked further than normal and back through paths that felt unfamiliar. The bush was more beautiful than I remember. There were more trees. It was sunny most of the way, between storms, but windy. This was yet another of those walks that I started while feeling low and during which my feelings deteriorated at first. I guess sometimes I remember how wonderful some images have made me feel, and expect that wonderful images will automatically do that. Then when one part of me perceives that what I'm seeing is wonderful and yet I still basically feel like some sort of underground dweller the disparity makes me feel like I'm crawling lower. No doubt there is a snappy way to say that. And a cliché that I can't remember which none the less describes the thought quite accurately. Well the sun was shining on grey shrubs, and blackened sticks, and brilliant blossoms alike. And on me , with my mood dark and my thoughts of strange and ugly dreams and guilt. I had an image of watching torture while my arms are wrapped around and around with spider silk.

Geez, you need to write a book. You are an excellent writer!

bm - Yes. It is worth appreciating.

Cannon - Thank you.


Monday

Breakfast 10:00 2 weetbix, 1/3 C diced peaches , 1C low fat soy milk. 1 slice wholemeal toast with plum and cinnamon jam. Boiled egg . Coffee with 40 ml Hilo milk.

Snack: 10:15 Pear. Coffee with milk.

Lunch: 2:00 Toasted sandwich with low fat cheese, 1 slice double smoked ham, mushroom, olives. Snow peas, 2 baby carrots. Orange. Coffee with milk.

3:40 Slice toasted wholemeal bread with plum and cinnamon jam. Jols sugarfree jubes.
5:15 8 almonds, ½ a pack of beef jerky.
6:30 ½ C coffee.

Dinner 7:15 265gm tinned White Bean and Autumn Vegetable soup (130 cal). Creamy chickpea curry: 100gm tinned chick peas, onion, garlic, capsicum, celery, tinned tomatoes, spices, 60 ml light evaporated milk, coconut essence. 1 tub diet passionfruit yoghurt. ~ 70 gm lean grilled lamb.

I was excited about the curry! I found out months ago that people use this light evaporated milk and coconut essence instead of coconut milk to reduce fat in their recipes. I suggested then to my husband that we try it, “in a recipe you don't care about too much”, but he looked extremely alarmed and said that he cared a lot about all the recipes with coconut milk in them. So I haven't tried it. But tonight I kind of invented the recipe because I felt like having chick peas, so I felt entitled to add my own ingredient. And he loved it! And then suddenly I thought that if it was so much better than the real stuff I could add it at the beginning of the recipe and actually eat the sauce, which I did, and I loved it too!

However, now I come to check out the screed on the side of the tin more carefully, and compare it to “lite” coconut milk. Well for my serving size the light evaporated milk added 67 calories and the coconut milk would have been 82. Not a big difference. The evaporated milk does have a lot less fat - in 100 ml its 1.6 gm compared to 7.1 gm but the sugar in the evaporated milk is 11.6 compared with .9 gm, and the sodium is 95 mg compared with 6 mg.
Hmm. So looking back at the old plan, the change allows me to keep within the fat budget but blows me over the 10% sugar so still doesn't quite do it for a diabetic plan, plus still adds 67 calories.

10:30 Coffee with milk.

Exercise: 5:45 pm. 25 minute walk in the bush – Warwick, west, Beach Rd side.
I had an appointment for my son after school and even this walk was a squash to fit in, but as ever, worthwhile. My ankle has improved a lot, which is cheering.

And my daughter and her friend conned my husband into helping, and now have 2 planks up in our cape lilac.

WOW Feli, a lot going on in your neck of the woods. You said everyday your feeling like your face is getting older, and your putting much needed gunk on it, are you referring to make up? Or cream? By your avatar, I don't see how looking old is going to be an issue, you have such a youthful face. Really!!! But, I know what you mean, I must have some sort of morph disorder thing, because I can't look in the mirror without seeing myself "heavy" or old. It's really weird! For example over the weekend, my hubby wanted to take my picture to add to his cell phone, well after many long minutes of fighting him not to take it, I just let him, and when I looked at it back, I thought for gosh sakes what the hell is this young handsome man doing with this chunky,old looking lady like me. We were at my BF's house and she said oh it's so pretty, but then you think she's just saying that because she's your BF right. I don't know Feli, I think it might just be a getting older thing, and for some of us, it's really hard to grasp. Your not alone is what I'm trying to say, and trust me when I say, I love your avatar, it's sooo pretty, you do have a young face. I hope your day is a good one!! Keep on smiling my friend!
Kim