I don't think of them as "my" chocolates, so I didn't throw them away. I did get the last few and stick them in the chocolate container in the fridge. It's opaque and in my brain I've got it on "ignore". so it hasn't been stressing me.

Scales
Weighed in today. My weight was 91.8, down 0.7 kg which is 1.5 lb. I don’t plan to eat differently to lose weight faster at this stage - but I prefer the weeks losing 1 kg or above!! So I went and weighed myself again, on the other scales at the shopping centre, despite the fact that it was quite a hassle, just to make sure the scales are ok. Well they are. The difference between the two is a lot (1.3 kg), but no more or less than the last time I compared them. So then started wondering if I am weighing at the right time of day and so on. LOL This is how I act for only weighing once a week, with no scales in my house. You can imagine how many maybes I can invent and how I obsessed I can get when I have them in the house. Even so the main reason I don’t like weighing more than once a week is that I have made up rubbish stories about what it might mean for my eating. Like “I had half a chocolate bar and my weight didn’t go up so that’s ok unless I do it too often,” or “My weight didn’t go down yesterday so it’s good that I was too busy to have lunch” etc.

Talking of scales. I have been using what they call “Dieter’s scales” for the kitchen. They cost about $5 here – smaller and cheaper than kitchen scales. Anyway, yesterday I felt they were sus and when I checked they read a 200 gm yoghurt as about 150 gm. Hmm. I wonder when they broke. That might explain why my full serve of fish was so hard to eat! Well I need to get some more and start weighing all over again to get a better idea of how much things are. I checked 3 likely places and one unlikely place today and could not find any.

Also I got the lightheadedness/lethargy again today. I wrote my usual detailed account here but decided to just store it in Word instead because the truth is I don't especially know what's going on and think I might just see my doctor.

My daughter saw T2’s msn here and put it on her account, so I had a brief chat with him. I always figured he would keep achieving his goals now and so does he, so that’s good.

Breakfast ~9:30 2 weetbix., 1/3 C tinned peaches, 1 C soya milk1 boiled egg, 1 slice wholemeal toast with minimal margarine and strawberry jam, 1/2 glass tomato juice 1 C coffee with 50ml Hi-Lo milk.Lunch ~ 2:00 ~ Sandwich (2 slices wholemeal bread, 1 egg, 1 tomato, tinned asparagus), Snack: 4:15 handful of raw almonds, 5:20 handful of raw almonds 5: 45 ½ Salada cracker (2 squares) Dinner: 7:00 ~ 80-90 gm crimson snapper, 2 pieces wholemeal bread. 1 stalk of celery dipped in light French onion dip, 8:30 1 C salad (lettuce, tomato, snow peas cucumber). 1 handful almonds, 1/2 C tinned peaches, 1 tub low fat apricot yoghurt, Exercise: 10.30am 20 min mod paced walk. 4:30pm 20 min moderate pace bush walk. Water: 3000ml +Yesterday’s Bedtime: 11:30
On plan:36 days Achieved food target: 30 days Exercised: 28 days All goals: 5 days.

felici - you are doing so great!!! I am so happy for you! I need to come over here more often and read your diary to keep me motivated!!!

Julie

So what happened to T2? Why isn't he here anymore? I really miss him. I am so sorry you haven't been feeling well. I hope it's nothing serious!! Hope you have a great day and congrats on your loss!!

juju - I'm glad you find my diary motivational! Maybe I should read it too!

be gone soon - I have pm'ed you. Thank you for your support. I don't think there is too much wrong with me (aside from being a worry wart that is!)

Do you take any vitamins? Often, that helps me when I get that stupid/dizzy thing going on, I take them earlier in the day. I was going to recommend more protein, but you seem to have a few servings of nuts in your daily regime. Are you diabetic by any chance? (I am NOT going to read your entire 11 page diary to find out :P ) When is the last time you were checked for that sort of thing?
I hate to mention it, but that is EXACTLY what I suffered for quite awhile, and sugar seemed to make it go away (it just falsified the feeling, in truth). Please do check with your doctor and get some blood work done.

Thanks Qjay. I started taking a multivitamin tab after the first time this happened. Diabetes was one of the things I wondered about yesterday. Today I decided it was probably a bit of a bug/sinus thing. My sinuses often play up in a subtley unpleasant way. I did have gestational diabetes, and part of the many health reasons I have for wanting to lose weight is to lessen my fairly good chance of getting diabetes. I will have a glucose tolerance test soon. It's not long since I had a fasting blood sugar that was just ok. I don't usually have such a lot of nuts. I was trying to use them to fix how I felt, and I thought it might be lack of protein. It has seemed to tie in with that before.

Hey Felici! Thanks for your support in my diary! You're doing a wonderful job btw! I'm still weighing everyday... it helps me stay focused.... I would obsess and weigh 3-4 times a day... now I'm weighing once in the morning, once in the evening (I like to see how my body has changed up or down during the day!) Hope you're having a WONDERFUL day today!

Interesting to see a news snippet last night about a study that showed people put more on their plate, if they were given a slightly bigger plate to put it on (same people, same food, same occasion). This guy was saying, “We make food decisions with our eyes.” “We eat with our eyes” – “people think they are can control what they eat entirely by their thought processes but it’s more complicated than that.” I tried to find a net article on it today, but it seems to be old news. I know the smaller plate thing has been advocated for ever – interesting to see some science backing it up. As I said a few days ago I’m really just learning a lot of this sort of stuff on a personal level. (I know a lot of people already knew!!) I had the yummiest looking lunch today. 8 little squares of crackers – with cheese, then mushroom, then tomato, then asparagus on top. It doesn’t take any more time to make than a sandwich and looks a lot more special. I had an orange afterwards and cut it into about 16 little pieces. I am a big fan of sliced up fruit. I think it might be partly because I find it stings my teeth a bit to bite into otherwise. Also more little pieces does seem like more food to me.

Feeling a bit better today – I’m thinking now that I just have a bit of a bug – my daughter had one earlier in the week. Strangely, thinking it’s just a germ to put up with bothers me less than wondering if I’m not eating properly! I decided to just take a couple of pills and get more active around the house. I had a good walk before dinner and felt even better. I’m going to look back and see if my other blurry afternoons included a walk or not.

Tonight I made eggplant lasagne for my husband and red pork for my son – I had a bit of both and some rice and some salad. The pork tasted nice but that BBQ sauce has sugar as the main ingredient, not that you would get much as it’s used as a marinade. I used Trucker’s eggplant recipe. I don’t know if I did it right but it wasn’t hard to prepare and tasted wonderful. All my other eggplant recipes have ended up being heavy on the oil – but this has almost none and yet tastes better. My husband had gone off eggplant and didn’t really want it, but I had already bought it by the time I found that out. Once he ate it though he was going “Oooh you can make that again!”

Walking. Well I tried being more focussed on speed and did my 47 min walk in 45 min. I was moving quite a lot more quickly - that time includes stopping for at least 5 minutes to chat and sign someone’s petition. I felt hot and nicely puffed afterwards. I don’t know how wise it is trying to go faster though because when I first started, and also after I finished, my arches were aching. (I was still wearing arch supports as usual). Still, it’s not like they hurt the whole time. Also, on the last bit I noticed my heel spur aching. Yes. I do have many issues that would be improved by losing weight don’t I!! So we’ll see. I thought of some ways to amend the walk to include less paths, and more grass, so I’ll try that and try to restrict my speedy bits to the grass perhaps – so it’s less jarring. That’s also better in that around here we are allowed to have dogs unleashed in the parks, and then I can move my arms more and make the whole thing more aerobic.


Breakfast ~9:00 2 weetbix., 1/3 C tinned peaches, 1 C soya milk1 boiled egg, 1 slice wholemeal toast with minimal margarine and strawberry jam, 1/2 glass tomato juice 1 C coffee with 50ml Hi-Lo milk.Lunch ~ 1:30 ~ 2 serves crackers, hard cheese, mushroom, tomato, asparagus. 1 carrot. 1 small orange. Snack: 4:15 ½ Salada cracker (2 squares) 1 C SoGoodDinner: 7:00 ~ 100 gm lean BBQ pork 8:00 Eggplant lasagne: 1/3 eggplant, ¼ can tomatoes with onion, garlic and basil, probably ~ 50 gm lite hard cheese, 2 mushrooms, 1 C basmati rice, 2 C salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, celery, capsicum, black olives). 1 tub low fat apricot yoghurt, Exercise: 5:07 45 min brisk walk. Water: 2500ml +Yesterday’s Bedtime: 11:15
On plan:37 days Achieved food target: 31 days Exercised: 29 days All goals: 5 days.

Good to see you sticking with everything! I ope it's just the need for a little bit more fat/protein in your diet. I was thinking back, and I used to get horrible headaches and heartburn when I would go on my no-fatty-foods kicks, and it really removed most of the protein from my diet, as well.
I'll be watching to see what you come up with!

if you're having dizzy spells you might want to check you are having enough iron. I take a multi because i get this problem often (even though i eat plenty of red meat)

Looking good, Felici! Keep up the great work! Hope you feel better soon.

Well Qjay and wishes you have certainly got me thinking about this. It's quite possible I have been a bit under with both protein and iron. I do get confused about this because I am working to eat an in between amount between one plan, which was for pregnancy (probably too much), and another that was 1100 cals (which I'm sure is too low!!) One had 3 serves of protein a day and the other had less than 2. I'm trying to find an amount that works for me and I'm pretty sure I don't have it worked out properly yet. I just checked back to Christmas Day and I see many lunches and some dinners with less than the amount of protein I was aiming at, and only 3 real red meat meals - though also one of pork and tonight veal. I don't really know if they are counted as red. I do take a multi vitamin with 5 mg of iron but I don't know if that's the right amount. I will check with the doctor tomorrow.

Anyway thanks to you both for your thoughts on this.

Thanks to you to txturtle girl. I do appreciate your support.

I was so wrapt when I logged on this morning, and the first thing I saw was T2’s diary!! A fine start to the day!! Plus we have 3 new mods. Sharing the load - another good move.

Tried my 47 min walk going as fast as I could on the grass, ambling on the driveways. It felt ok until half way. My feet were protesting a bit then so I pulled back to my old “brisk”. Funnily enough I find a mental image of our Prime Minister, John Howard is useful for this even though I have always voted against his party. It’s his early morning, green and gold tracksuit, walk - definitely looks like exercise, but not so fast that he can’t answer questions from journos. It took 46 minutes, not as good a time as I hoped due to 3 interruptions, but it felt a bit more like a workout than my earlier walks.

I had a good day - busy, pleasant - had coffee in a coffee shop with my daughter (a treat for us both). I feel I’m getting somewhere with being more organized around the house. I still haven’t cracked it with the bed time. I always have great reasons why it still only almost happened. I do think I’ve made progress with it. It probably isn’t crucial till school goes back at the end of January, but I want to find out how to make it all happen while I’m not under too much pressure.

I wasn’t tired today. I actually felt quite energetic. I love that feeling. Walking faster on my walks is making me walk faster inside I think. This is great. It is so long since I did this much exercise. I didn’t join this forum to exercise! I have just been infected with it! I saw something about scans showing that it is only exercise that will get rid of fat around the internal organs. That was motivating too. This is such a bonus to have a younger feeling body so soon though!! Well I don’t have every day but even sometimes is good!!

I did feel a bit woozy in the afternoon but as I felt relaxed and not tired, today it was easy to handle. I definitely have some sinus symptoms. I also definitely felt hungry. My stomach even growled. A rare event for me. I should have had crackers, but it kept being inconvenient and then I forgot, and then I went for a walk, and then I was cooking for a lo-o-ot longer than I expected…but basically I felt pretty good anyway. Once again, I felt even better after the walk. For safety’s sake, I have booked a doctor’s appointment and will have a GTT Monday.

Breakfast ~9:00 2 weetbix., 1/3 C tinned peaches, 1 C soya milk, 1 boiled egg, 1 slice wholemeal toast with minimal margarine and strawberry jam, 1/2 glass tomato juice, a little white coffee.Lunch ~ 1:00 ~ 2 serves crackers, hard cheese, , tomato, cucumber, capsicum, olives. ½ C grapes. Snack 3:30 Skinny cappuccino Dinner: 9:00 ~ 150 gm lean veal. Prob. 6 tspns olive oil. 10-20 gm hard lite cheese, ratatouille: onion, tomato, capsicum. 1 med. baked potato. 1 ½ C salad (lettuce, capsicum, sugar snap peas). Delayed dessert/Snack1 C rockmelon, 1 C lite soy milk. Exercise: 5:02 46 min brisk+ walk. Water: 2000ml Yesterday’s Bedtime: 12:30
On plan:38 days Achieved food target: 32 days Exercised: 30 days All goals: 5 days.

Hi Felici,
It sounds like you are doing a GREAT job And congrats on losign almost 10 pounds already!!