Okay. It's time.

[333]

Hi. I want and need to lose weight (while at least maintaining, if not improving, fitness). I was kicking ass the first few months of 2018 and then started traveling and everything fell apart for the rest of the year (although at least I largely maintained rather than gaining significantly). January 2019 was also a bit messy. I don't have any travel planned for February or March, though, so I'm ready to dig back in. I've got a lot of goals, small and large, but right now and right here, I'd like to focus on four daily S's that seem somewhat small and simple but will combine into a healthier lifestyle:

 

• Sugar. As in, minimal added sugar. I can have something small (a square or two of chocolate, for example) after dinner each day, but nothing during the day. Exceptions allowed for special occasions (dates with my partner, birthday parties, etc.), but I can't get too loosey-goosey about what constitutes a special occasion.
• Snacks. No snacks between meals. I'm often a hardcore grazer, especially when I'm working from home, and that needs to stop.
• Sleep. In bed by 11 pm each night. I have so much I want to get done at night once my daughter is in bed, but sleep is important, too. I've been running low on sleep for far too long. It'd be nice to remember what "well rested" feels like.
• Sweat. Some kind of workout at least five days a week. Right now I'm focusing on running and Street Parking SHIFT workouts. These are very flexible things that I can easily fit into my day even when I don't have a lot of time.

 

Going to try to check in here once a day.

 

Okay. That's all. Let's do this.

[Happienumber]

Sounds great! Can’t wait to see how it goes!


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

[333]

Getting sick. Felt fine in the morning but started coughing and getting the chills during the day. Bleah!

 

Weighed in this morning to get my baseline weight. It was up a fair amount from yesterday (I may have gone to a buffet and gotten dessert for lunch yesterday, one last time...). My regular goal for the next two months is 10 pounds down, and my stretch goal is 15 pounds down. I'm thinking a lot of the higher weight this morning is water weight from my lunch adventure yesterday, so hopefully getting rid of that again will put me well on my way to that stretch goal.

 

• Sugar. Check. I had two mini pieces of baklava (really mini—two small bites each) after dinner. And that's it!
• Snacks. Check. Wasn't easy, because I worked from home today and started feeling sick, but I stuck to it. If I hadn't, I could've easily wolfed down a bunch of the cookies my partner opened.
• Sleep. Check. It's 10:52 pm. As soon as I send this, I'm heading to bed.
• Sweat. Check-ish. By the time I got the kid down to sleep, it was already late and I was feeling good and sick. Did a seven-minute bedtime yoga video from Yoga with Adriene and called it a night.

[Happienumber]

Bahhh!!! Sick is no good!

Since your weight is just up from yesterday, it’s almost DEFINITELY just a bunch of water weight so don’t panic

Good job for doing a bit of excervise even though you’re feeling cruddy!


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

[333]

@Happienumber Thanks! I'll comment on your thread soon, too—just need to find the time to read through it!

 

---

 

Must've been holding on to way more water weight than I thought, because from yesterday morning to this morning, I lost six pounds. Yowza! Hopefully I can hold on to that loss and keep going steadily, although of course not at that rate—I'd be dead soon. Dead isn't the look I'm going for.

 

• Sugar. Check.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sleep. Check. Going to bed right after posting this.
• Sweat. No. Was mildly sick and also busy all day but was planning on doing either a Street Parking workout or a quick yoga video after getting my daughter to sleep. It's been taking so long to get her down lately, though. It's always really late by the time I do, and I feel pretty defeated by the process and the length of time it takes. (My partner's been sicker than me and pretty overwhelmed lately, so I'm taking over the majority of sleep duties for the time being.) So by the time I finished that today, I didn't really have the time or mental energy to do anything. I'll count it as a rest day and make more of an effort to get it done during the day tomorrow. Also going to work on tweaking this kid's schedule, because something's clearly off—sleep isn't always easy, but it's not usually this tough for her.

[Happienumber]

I knew it! Six pounds!! That’s so much water weight! Congrats on dropping it though. Even though it’s “just” water weight, that’s still six extra pounds to drag around for a few days. I bet it feals Nice to be rid of it!

Hahahahaha [emoji1787][emoji23] yes dead is not a good look. It’s not in vogue.
Slow and steady wins the race.

The sick is not fun. Sometimes what the body needs is just rest though, so that’s recovery time well spent.


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

[333]

• Sugar. Special occasion day. My partner's mom invited us over for lunch to belatedly celebrate my birthday a little, and there was cake and chocolate-covered cookies. I went a little bit overboard, but not ridiculously so. And no dessert after dinner today.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sleep. Check. And my daughter is staying at her grandma's overnight tonight, so hopefully I'll get some good uninterrupted sleep! (Although nights like this are usually when the cat decides to wake us up at 6 in the morning...)
• Sweat. Check. Did a quick Street Parking workout.

[333]

• Sugar. Half-check? Nothing during the day (although the juice I got at lunch might've had some sugar in it, but that's not really what I'm concerned about, especially since it wasn't intentional on my part). My after-dinner treat was a little bigger than it should've been, though, because I decided to just finish the mini pastries I'd recently brought back from a trip before they went bad, and my partner wasn't interested in helping. How rude! Making me eat tasty things all by myself.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sleep. Check. It's technically a few minutes past 11 right now, but as soon as I post this, I'm brushing my teeth and then running to bed.
• Sweat. Rest day. Still mildly sick, and I didn't quite get all of my work done during the day so I had to use my post-kid-bedtime time to finish that up—no time for a workout. Let's hope tomorrow is better in terms of both health and getting my work done earlier!

[333]

• Sugar. Check. Nothing during the day; two truffles after dinner.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sweat. Check. Street Parking. Reverse lunges are going to have my quads feeling it tomorrow, I'm pretty sure.
• Sleep. Check. Posting this and heading to bed. (I'm switching the order of these last two items, because, well, sleep is the last thing of the day!)

[Happienumber]

reverse lunges are a BEAST

[333]

23 hours ago, Happienumber said:

reverse lunges are a BEAST

 

Truth! I don't like lunges much because they get boring, but...they're good for those muscles!

 

---

• Sugar. Check. Two truffles after dinner.
• Snacks. Half-check? I had a post-run orange, but that's definitely not the kind of snack I'm worried about here. Also had one single date mid-afternoon because I'd brought them back from a recent trip but hadn't actually eaten one and my partner happened to mention how good they were. Again, though, not the kind of mindless wolf-down-a-bunch-of-crackers that I'm trying to get a handle on...so I'm going to let it mostly slide this time.
• Sweat. Check. Worked from home today but still had to drop the kid off at daycare in the morning, so I took the opportunity to run back home. I probably wasn't quite healthy enough for that, but I took it easy and it was okay. And mentally, at least, it felt good to finally start running again!
• Sleep. Check. Here I go!

[Happienumber]

Hahahahaha one single date [emoji38]
Something about the way you worded that is very funny to me.
But yes, it seems like as far as snacks go, those are pretty innocuous (is this the word I’m looking for? Un...harmful?)


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

[333]

• Sugar. Check. Two truffles after dinner. A side benefit of this one is that I'm eating more fruit. Instead of getting a slice of cake with lunch, I head back to the coworking space and have an apple or an orange. It's saving me a little money, too!
• Snacks. Check.
• Sweat. Check. Street Parking.
• Sleep. Check.

[333]

• Sugar. Check. Two truffles after dinner.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sweat. Rest day. Would've liked to do an SP workout at night, but we decided it was time to sleep train the kid again, and by the time she finally passed out, I wasn't in the mood. That was my second rest day of the week, so I'll try to do something both days this weekend!
• Sleep. Check.

[333]

• Sugar. Semi-special occasion. Pancake Saturday! Okay, it's not a true special occasion, but we haven't been taking much time lately to sit down calmly to nice family meals, so I decided it was about time we did something fun like pancake Saturday. The pancakes had a bit of sugar in them, I put real maple syrup (that I brought back from Montreal last fall) on mine, and it turns out that the orange juice my partner and I used to make mimosas had some added sugar. Except for a little more orange juice with dinner, I didn't have any other added sugar the rest of the day.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sweat. Check. Super slow run in the morning. I wasn't expecting it, but somehow I just had...no energy. But I still managed to get 2.5 miles in, at least!
• Sleep. Check.

[333]

• Sugar. Check. A few simple (graham cracker-like) cookies after dinner.
• Snacks. Not today. My willpower and determination were no match for this many days at home. The kitchen is just so close! Back at the "no snacks" tomorrow.
• Sweat. Check. SP.
• Sleep. Check. Really, I won't make it right on time, but this episode should only end a few minutes later, and then I'll run to bed!

[333]

• Sugar. Check. Some cookies after dinner—maybe a couple too many, but not too overboard.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sweat. Rest day, I guess. I've been in a funk this evening and just not feeling like doing much of anything. Bleah. Hopefully the kid sleeps better tonight than she did last night so I get some quality sleep and feel better tomorrow.
• Sleep. Check.

[333]

Making some temporary changes this week, at least. I have a side project that's dragged on for far too long, and I want to make some major progress and get as close as possible to finishing it, partly because a friend is waiting and partly because having it hang over my head is a big mental burden right now. While I focus on that, I'm going to not pursue the goal of 5+ days of working out per week, and I'm going to push back bedtime by one hour to midnight.

• Sugar. Check. Two squares of dark chocolate and maybe a few too many handfuls of nuts and dried cranberries.
• Snacks. Check, except for the one piece of sample sushi at the grocery store.
• Sweat. Suspended.
• Sleep. Check (midnight).

[333]

Just checking in to say that I'm taking the rest of this week off completely (although trying not to careen too wildly off the rails!). Too much on my mind and not enough mental space to spend on this. Working hard to get close to finishing that side project and planning to restart with this on Monday.

 

Also rethinking nutrition. My body responded fairly well to the time I did slow carb a few years ago, so I'm thinking about committing to that. (Really, my problem is _committing_ to something, anything—but I also largely enjoy eating the slow carb way, so that could help!)

[333]

Okay, I went off the rails a little bit, especially yesterday. And I didn't make as much progress on the project as I'd hoped to, but I still did a fair amount. I'm ready to get back on the nutrition and sleep trains, but I'm still going to suspend the sweat point for hopefully just another week. We got a jogging stroller over the weekend, though, so I'm really excited to start trying that out!

 

After thinking more about slow carb, I've decided it would be too restrictive right now. It'd be hard to eat with the rest of the family. I'm still going to incorporate some of it, though, like eating beans in place of pasta/rice as much as possible, even if everyone else is perfectly happy with their pasta/rice.

 

I'm also going to transition from a loose 14:10 intermittent fasting to more of a 5:2 style, which feels more flexible right now. It's easier to skip breakfast and lunch on a couple of work days than it is to skip breakfast on the weekends, when we're more likely to sit down and eat that meal as a family. My personal exception on those two days is that a piece or two of fruit during the day is okay.

 

Finally, on those two days, I'm also going to strive to not eat any added sugar, so not even having a small thing after dinner.

• Sugar. Check. Nothing.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sweat. Suspended.
• Sleep. Mostly check. It's about 11:15 as I write this, but I'm going to post it and then run to bed!

[333]

Lunch today was spinach, beans, and tuna (with olive oil, balsamic, and salt and pepper) with an apple for dessert. Tasty, simple, and delicious!

• Sugar. Check. One cookie after dinner.
• Snacks. Check.
• Sweat. Suspended.
• Sleep. Nope. It's 11:45. But here I go!

[333]

• Sugar. No. I've been on a quest to use up all the old, unused ingredients languishing in the back of the pantry. I worked from home today, so I took the opportunity to bake three different kinds of cookies to use up a bunch of molasses, flaxseed (including as an egg substitute), cornstarch, and baby rice cereal. The baby rice cereal ones were probably the best! The molasses/flaxseed ones are...not great, but edible, at least. Anyway, I licked lots of spoons and mixers and ate far too many cookies throughout the afternoon and evening. At least two of the three kinds are moderately healthy and low sugar, as cookies go.
• Snacks. No. See above.
• Sweat. Suspended.
• Sleep. Check. It's currently 10:40, and I'm going to go crash.

[333]

• Sugar. Not really. Didn't have anything during the day but had far too many cookies in the evening. I really have a hard time controlling myself around piles of homemade cookies sitting around at home. I'm going to work from home tomorrow (waiting for an Instant Pot to get delivered, wheeee!), so I'm going to do my best to not have any during the day.
• Snacks. Mostly. The cookies were more like, uh, an appetizer before dinner and dessert after dinner. Definitely no snacks during the day, though.
• Sweat. Suspended.
• Sleep. No. It's midnight. On my way now, though!

Today wasn't my best day...

[333]

• Sugar. No. Cookies.
• Snacks. No. Cookies.
• Sweat. Suspended.
• Sleep. Not really. But I'm going now so I can be in bed, falling asleep, not too long after 11:30.