packing

I am gone for a week, and I am trying to learn to pack like a normal human being, but truth be told B and I pack very much alike. Well sort of.  I manage to get everything in one case, one back pack and one purse.  B has three suitcases for 2 days.  But that doesn't mean I couldn't.  I have to rein myself in.

So I packed for my week trip and I stuffed my 30" beautiful new suitcase to the brim.  5 pair of pants, 30 pair of underwear 7 bras, 7 tops, 7 socks, pair of shorts, three towels, pickleball racket, two sets of fins, three sets of swim paddles, flip flops, extra pair of shoes, two jackets, toothbrush, three bottles of shampoo, two bottles of conditioner two bottles of body wash, swimsuit, three swimming caps, four pairs of goggles a scale and a partridge in a pear tree.

I couldn't lift it.  It was heavier then my suitcase I took to Europe.  So I opened it up got a smaller suitcase and started getting rid of things.  I didn't get rid of everything, but I fit it into a smaller suitcase and I got rid of the scale.

I weighed the exact same as I did last week.  I guess I am on unofficial maintenance.

Cheers

Traveling

Traveling is hard for me whether or not I am dieting.  I stress over security I stress about boarding I stress about getting my luggage, but a huge stress of the seats is gone, which makes traveling oh so much easier even with all the other stresses.

When dieting food isn't an issue in fact travel and food I do fine.  I don't have time to think about food and you let your body rhythm take over feeding time.  You are out having fun and then you think hmm I am hungry and off you go eat and carry on.  Only time I really had a hard time with eating is when I say I don't care.  But I am not saying that this trip.  I suspect I will come back lighter.

Looking forward to the lectures this week.  It should be interesting.

Tortillas

I love tortillas, not chips, the flat flour tortillas.  I love them so much that they have been placed on my banned list.  Banning food in the house is leaving very little for my wonderful husband to have anything to snack on.  I have banned nuts, chips, crackers, popcorn and now tortillas.

But I haven't banned candy.  We have candy in bowls, in drawers, freezers, and I am okay with that.  I can walk by the candy dish and not even feel a twinge.  But that does not mean that I don't like sweets.  I do.  I just don't think about them like I would chips.  As I write this, I am salivating just thinking about my favorite chips.  But I can't just eat one or one bag.  Very distressing.

All of this in a way to confess I went over calories, but only because I ate those d*** tortillas.  Weight will probably be up this time.  Hopefully my trip to Chautauqua I can take off a few pounds.  I didn't think that I was an emotional eater, but I do seem to eat when I am bored.

Taking my trusty dusty scale.  

Thick

I was looking in the mirror in my swim suit and I thought to myself you look thick.  Not the look I have been going for.  Thick.

Before I headed to Europe I was thinking I was looking pretty trim.  Not thick at all.  I was kind of proud of my trimness, and thinking I would be comfortable at this weight.  But on the trip I saw a couple of photos of myself and realized I was't looking that trim.  Hmm.

I am definitely not as thick as I was six months ago, but I am not as trim as I was four years ago.  And even four years ago, I don't know how trim I really was.  I guess it is easy to deceive one self.  It goes hand and hand with weight gain.

But the better I feel and the easier I move the less inclined I am to lose weight.  And I have been feeling good and moving fine, so that -  I don't know the word, feeling/need to lose weight is not there, which makes weight loss that much harder.  But still I losing more weight will still be very helpful in the things I want to do.

Big sigh.  Got to go sign up for pickleball camp.  Happy dance.

Pickleball!!

I played pickleball today and I got hot and tired, but had so much fun.  Who would of thought getting you butt kicked all the time could be fun.  T2 had to school a rather uppity person who was not as good as she thought she was, but in the process T2 just played the whole game herself.  Bang bang.

I started out with my personal trainer, and did an abbreviated workout.  Yesterday putting Thunder's collar on I ended up twisting my back or something and wasn't sure that I would be able to work out today, but he was careful and I had no pain whatsoever.

Tomorrow we are going for a walk, but I don't know if I can handle the walking.  We will see.

I was the same weight today as I was yesterday.  So that is good.

Interesting thoughts

First I was only up one pound from my lowest.  Yay!!!

Group was very very interesting.  The facilitator was talking about dieting vs maintenance, and how hard maintenance is in someways compared to dieting.  I already knew that, I think all dieters know that. But some of the things that she said that I found more interesting was that she said that studies show that you should only reduce your calories six to eight months or so at a time.  I don't know where she found this study, I searched for it on the internet and couldn't find it, but it seemed to make sense.

You reduce your calories, lose the weight then you maintain for a few months, and then reduce your calories again.  It sounds logical, kind of training for maintaining.

I have about 40 pounds to lose to be at my goal.  I am seeing my times coming down, my swimming seems smoother and I am enjoying a fairly pain free life.  All of this and steal 40 pounds to go, I can only imagine what it will be like at goal.  But I am tired of dieting.  I am tired of trying to get it at 1200 calories just to come up high over and over again.

We were told to decide if we wanted to continue with weight loss or go into maintenance.  I thought about it alot and I have decided that I will lose 10 more pounds and do maintenance to the start of the year and hopefully finish it off mid-year 2018.  I might change my mind, but that is my plan right now.

Back

It has been a while since I last posted, but as with every change you want to go back to old habits and I really can't afford to go back to old habits.

I dropped 7.7 pounds on the trip, got home and lost another 1 pound and now I am up 5 pounds.  There I said it.  Now I have to fix it.  These are some of my thoughts.

I have come back and I want to eat food that tastes good.  While on Optifast I did not eat foods that tasted good, I ate because I had to.  Now I need to rethink eating.  Some foods I still can't control, but I thought that I could (nuts, popcorn) and others that I haven't eaten, but I don't crave (chips, candy, ice cream).  I have gotten rid of those foods I can't control (I had to have THT hide the nuts on me and I bought some popcorn and ending up throwing away a little of if, because I had eaten the rest).

I eat too much fruit, not enough veggies and I think that the fruit might be a large part of the weight gain.  But most diets allow you to eat as much fruit and veggies as you want.  I guess they didn't have me in mind when they made that proclamation.

So back to what am I going to do.  I am going to post daily for the next week my weight loss or gain. Weighing myself every morning and see if that changes the  trajectory.  I can't exercise any more than I have, as the facilitator told us to be careful of becoming an exercise junky in order to keep the weight off or to lose weight.  It doesn't work.

So off to the ball game I go.  Hotdog?  I think I can be strong.  We will see.