Hey all   I drove with loud music. After pharmacy I parked up at a cemetery and walked around. Sat on a bench and cried.   Then went home. Via the shop for a few bits, then dropped that at home and took Bronze out   45 mins playing in the field. Both tired as it's hot   Home. Bath. Pizza. Football. Film.   I then started to feel very poorly. Sick, headache, aching. I felt faint. So went up to bed. Fell asleep quickly.   It's 5.30am here now. I'm in bed just resting. Defo don't feel as bad as I did. The sleep prob helped.   Bronze is laying next to me so close and her body is warm and soft against my legs 💚 I love her.   Today I have work to do - learning new coding for the website stuff. Apply for that women's business thing, emails and general stuff.   Then I have the weightlifting class at 3.30.   Might get an another hour kip xx

Hey Sov!!   When is the lottery result? Eeeek.   Amazing lifts. Proud of you.   Hooe you're feeling good xx

Sending thoughts to you and your son.

Hey TG!   Sounds like you are smashing your day   What science are you doing?   Love to you!!

Hey Rookie!   How have I missed that you're away?!   Where are you!? Xx

Oh, hello there!     I skipped the last challenge as I was traveling to the US but I am back now and trying to get my life into some semblance of order.   Just before covid I went into a kind of semi retirement, which consisted in spending almost all of my time playing video games.  Honestly, it was a pretty great life.  However, I have now decided to take up a new job which means I need to get my life more organized.  This is going to be mostly about managing two things: time and food   First, the easy one: Time     Now that I have a fixed schedule for work, I can no longer schedule my time around my workouts and I need to now schedule my workouts around my work schedule like a normal person.  In trying to plan my schedule, I think I could feasibly get to the park up to 4 times per week so I am going to go with that as my goal, this will be as follows:   Monday morning, Tuesday evening, Thursday morning, Friday evening.  This is not a hard and fast schedule and I can adjust as needed, but not having any schedule at all has meant workouts have been few and far between recently.   Now for the hard one: Food     Around this time last year, I decided to relax my food control for the holiday and ended up gaining about 20 pounds.  I wasn't too worried about it as I figured I would work it all off over the summer.  Not only has that not happened, I have gained an additional 5 pounds or so, putting me at the heaviest I have ever been.  I don't like this.  I have a bunch of clothes that could wear for work, but at my current weight I can only get less than half of them on.  If things get any worse, I won't be able to wear any of them, and I am absolutely not going to go buy a bunch of new clothes just so I can stay fat.  Not an option.  So I am taking emergency measures to stop this freefall.  I am calling these measures my ripcord     I have barely cooked anything for the last several months, relying almost soley on takeout.  Easy, convenient and delicious, but not exactly healthy.  we have 2 takeout nights pretty much fixed every week (Taco tuesdays and pizza fridays) but I need to cook the other 3 evenings.  The hardest part of this is deciding what to make.  I will probably do rice one of the days and noodles another, which means I only need to think of 1 dish per week outside of that.  I can probably handle that.  Challenge goals are as follows:   1. Cook 3 meals per week, report back here what those were 2. Don't eat when I am not hungry.  3. Stop eating when I am full 4. No sugary snacks   If I can just follow these 4 simple rules I should be well on track to getting back to a healthy weight level.   For tracking  and accountability purposes, as of Monday my weight is 85kgs and body fat % is 27% .    

Trying to break the ice-cream cycle with a couple of OMAD days, so far it's working well.  I haven't been at all inclined to exercise, but I think I'm going to build myself a home gym now that the kids don't need the front room for their homeschool work anymore.  The treadmill is already in there anyway, so I'll move everything else out and build a platform for a rack.  I'm thinking about one of these  https://valorfitness.com/products/half-rack-w-plate-storage-multi-grip-pull-up-station-bd-58 with a bench, barbells, plates, and all the accoutrements.  Might as well work on my physical strength while I'm streaming sermon series in the evening.   My griefshare group has met twice.  I'm not thrilled to be there, but it does seem to be helping.  Life is mostly work, cooking, cleaning, checking in with the boys and keeping them on top of their school work, projects if I can fit them in (currently building a pair of speaker stands for my desk after upgrading my PC setup), Bible study, prayer, sleep--rinse and repeat.  Weekends are getting caught up around the house, shopping trips, and church stuff.  I'm taking care of business but I can't remember the last time I laughed or even smiled.  I've been lonely in the past--this is something else entirely.  Today is two months since my Amber died, and I miss her every minute of every hour of every day.  Beyond just being a wonderful person to know she was my one and only, and I was hers.  That's never not going to hurt, and I don't relish the thought of how many more thousands of days I might have ahead of me without her.  Best I can do is try to make each one count for something that matters--thank God I have Boomer and Butch for that right now.  Bubbles is coming home for a visit this weekend, and I'm looking forward to seeing her.  I'm taking tomorrow to drive Brick to the 6-month follow-up for his ACL reconstruction.  It's nice to be able to continue Amber's work and take good care of the family we built together.

Monday Steps: ❌ 2.2k steps Deficit: 🎉 Budget: 💰   Tuesday Steps: 🚶‍♀️7.6k steps Deficit: ❌ (but I am getting more conscious about decisions and such) Budget: 💰   Wednesday Steps: 🚶‍♀️5.9k steps  Deficit: 🎉 Budget: 💰   Yesterday I got to the airport early so I walked around while I waited. I also went on a mini evening walk checking out the hotel. Today I went to the hotel gym after a huge pasta dinner 😂 I did 2 mins and a bit on the elliptical and 10 mins walking on the treadmill then I went for a swim.    Anyways! I'm feeling a bit headachy so I'm going to bed I hope everyones week is going their way.   

Sending love and hugs dear friend. 

Whew! Macros and calories were ON POINT today. Didn’t work out, but rode my bike and did some dancing and a couple rounds of physio.   Tomorrow will be busy until 2:30, and not too sure whether I have enough fixings for my usual big salad lunch; but will pack something substantial enough to let me stay on campus and work for a couple hours after the meetings. On a little roll with doing science thanks to my good coding student and would like to progress some more! Then Friday, no meetings and I can devote the whole day to science, a little physio, and maybe even a gym workout. Wouldn’t that be great!!