A kick start

Need to get serious. I have been stalled for almost 6 weeks now. My weight has fluctuated between 173 and 175. Today I'm back at 173, which is the same weight that I was at last Monday.

Need to get things moving again. I've let more wine creep back into my life as well as the occasional bite/lick of carbs (buns, scones etc). Have to stop it completely.

So this week, I'm going to be cognoscente of exactly what I eat. I'm going to continue to skip breakfast, other than my BPC coffee, but lunch and dinner must have more veggies and other non carb fillers in them.

I know I've been slipping. The wine has been entering on thursday night and sunday as well now, rather than just a glass or two on friday and saturday. Must stop that. At least for the next few weeks. Once Christmas comes it all kinda goes out the window anyway but I can try and reel things in until then.

On the weekend I will put up the tree and decorations. I think N is home for the weekend so maybe he will help too.. :) Doubt it.

R is off this weekend on a road trip with his team and Shawn is working. So I will have the house to myself, which I love but which can also be tough as I tend to snack more when I'm alone.

So back at it..... starting today !

Healthy competition

I have a friend. No, let me correct that. I have a life partner (not in that way though), my best friend in the world I have known since I was 6. We have been friends for what seems like forever and she is my go to. We have different personalities but we get along great. Our husbands are friends and our boys are best friends and currently live together in college. Funny enough, we also both struggle with our weight. We have yo-yo dieted throughout our lives together.

Typically she starts the diet, tells me about it and then I join in. We are competitive. Not in the sense of I lost more than you did, but it's a healthy competition that keeps us accountable. If she loses 2 I want to lose 2 etc. It's always worked for us, until it hasn't. And funny enough, we typically stop our diets at around the same time. Not sure if its because one stops and the other gets bored of not having the competition and accountability or what?

This time it was different. Is started this diet on my own and didn't tell anyone. It wasn't until about 2 months in that I told her. She wanted to start as well but had 2 large vacations on the horizon and didn't want to start something so close to her trip. So she picked October 1st as her start date. And she did....

Here is the pickle.. she's struggling a bit with this diet and I'm struggling a lot right now. I haven't changed my eating much, but as I have written the last few times, I'm letting snacks and badness creep back into my diet. And it's showing on the scale. I recognize that these are not cravings but rather eating out of convenience or out of boredom. I grab a pack of halloween candy cause it's there, not cause I want it. I add peanut butter to my cauliflower crackers cause it was left open on the counter, not cause I wanted it. An extra 50 calories here and extra 50 calories there, really add up.

So why? Why was I doing so well until she started? It's like we want to succeed or fail together. I need to get back at it. I need to forget about competitions and other such nonsense and get my shit together!!

I was up again last week... 175. Not happy about that. My period arrived however and now I seem to be back and holding steady at 173.5.

GAH!!! I don't want to have to start tracking again, but it might come to that.

Happy to say I'm keeping up with my zumba and it does help clear my mind and also get my heart pumping! Need to add a bit more to get this heart happy!

22 years

It's been 22 years since the most important person in my life left this earth. I was a kid at the time, only 24 years old and I don't think I fully appreciated her or appreciated the little time I had left with her. I was selfish and preferred to spend time with my new husband than I did with my dying mom.

I think I truly believed that she would be around forever. I somehow thought that if I stayed away from her withering self I could delay the inevitable. Mom died on the morning of the 7th, 1996 following an evening where her 3 children and husband happened to be together under the same roof. It was a rarity for us all to be together at one time as we typically took turns staying with mom to help give Dad a bit of a break. That night we were all there as we wanted to sit down and discuss whether to continue the radical treatment or not. In the end Mom, decided for us and left us that evening.

I ache that she never got to meet any of her grandchildren. She would honestly have been the most amazing grandmother. I see so much of my mom in both my boys. N has her absolute caring nature and R has her wild quirky side.

I've gone on in life and think about you often but it's this day that I think about how much you truly meant to me and how I wished I had done things differently. If I could only spend one day, one hour, one more minute with you... 

I miss you Mom....

Set Backs

It's been awhile since I posted and as stated before, if I don't post I tend to lose my own personal accountability. I saw my weight creep back up to 176 this week... I think I'm back down to 173 now but it also means I haven't lost anything in over 3 weeks.  I know why. It's cause I've slacked, I've had set backs and in all honesty, I've let junk come back into my life.

Candy... I love candy. I bought candy for halloween - mostly for R because we stopped giving out candy a few years ago because it stresses the dog out so much every time the door bell would ring. Plus, he has a scary bark which is not good for the littles.  In addition,  that trick or treater numbers in our neighbourhood have dimished over the years. When we first moved here 16 years ago, we would get hundreds of kids.. now maybe, 20. Maybe. It's not worth it.

So I've had a bit of candy. But the real issue is I haven't been eating healthy. I've had very little veggies, other than cucumber and most of my snacking has been cashews!!! or cheese.  So not a whole lot of nutrition going into my body. And it's laziness. I don't want to take the time to make up a healthy snack so I just grab what's there. I have to get back to planning meals or at least planning to have good food in my house so when I'm hungry and need to snack, there are healthy options.

Eating low carb can be tricky sometimes to find good healthy food and often that means I'll just skip the snack all together or eat a handful of nuts. Cheese is good once and awhile, but sometimes I feel like a cheese wheel at the end of the day!!

This week has been a week of money flying out the window. R returning to play hockey here has ended up costing us 12K and our furnace blew which was another 5K... it's been a crappy week.

Going to go down to the freezer right now and take out something for dinner tonight and fill up my empty water glass :) . We normally go to the pub for dinner on fridays but will skip tonight. Plans for steak dinner tomorrow with friends so tonight it's a home cooked meal!  Gotta start somewhere!!

I know stress has been a contributing factor to my laziness for health and planning but I need to get back on track. Christmas is just around the corner and the stress is going to pile on so might as well get it under control now....