The Journey Continues - through another holiday

When I jumped (okay stepped cautiously) upon the scale this morning, it said that I am about 14 pounds down since I began this journey.  I managed to make it through another weekend (and holiday) sticking to the plan.  I am not sure if I can see a major difference yet, but I plan to keep going.  As long as the scale shows me going down, something must be working.  I told Mark that I crossed another decade threshold, which is also good.  This weekend we traveled out to western Kansas to see Mark's dad.  While we were out there, I did some climbing around when I was geocaching.  We climbed out onto the chalk bluffs by Castle Rock and walked into some others.  No where was really far, but I did get out of the house and walked around.  I plan to find time to do more walking.

In the past few weeks, I have tried a few different recipes.  I pureed up cauliflower a couple of times with cheese to make "mashed potatoes".  It really wasn't bad and fills my craving for the potatoes.  I made a recipe called "oopsie bread" and it worked too.  Recipe - http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=259930.  This recipe was pretty good too.   I even tried using zucchini as hashbrowns and making cheesy potatoes.  This would have been better had I let the zucchini dry out a little bit, or maybe put it in a skillet and let it brown up for a little bit first.  I bought avocados and a cucumber last night to try to make salsa from it.  It will be my next experiment.

I will admit that it isn't always easy, but then no journey always goes smoothly.  Last night I came home from the grocery store and Mark was drinking a beer on the porch.  I really wanted one but held out and didn't have one.  In the future, I could have one occasionally without doing too much harm. But for now, I plan to keep on the straight and narrow path.  Diverging from the path hasn't worked in the past. 

Which leads me to another topic.  I picked up a First magazine at the grocery store and an article talked with Dr. Oz about the Eat to Live plan of Dr. Fuhrman.  I went ahead and ordered his book to see if it might be an eating plan that would work better for me and not be so much meat and fat.  In a quick glance at the Eat 4 Your Type book, my blood type would work best on a vegetarian diet.  I am okay switching to mainly fruits and vegetables and not having the meat.  What I read in the article was a focus on healthy nutrition rich fruits, vegetables and beans.  I have already cut out the starchy and sugary foods, so that won't be a problem.  So another thought as I travel down this road to becoming slimmer and healthier.  

Slowly but surely

Well today I jumped on the scale this morning and I am officially over 10 pounds lost since I started this journey.  It doesn't sound like much in the almost 6 weeks that I have been doing this, but it is something.  It is more than I have been able to do in a while, so I need to be proud of that.  A week ago yesterday, I turned in my last qualifying exam and so that pressure is off.  If I need to rewrite parts of it, in the instance that I don't pass, then it will be easier than writing it the first time.  The information that I included is good.  With that pressure gone, and my eating doing okay, now I need to focus on adding exercise to my plan.  I am not sure if it is my imagination or not, but some of my clothes feel like they are fitting looser.  I have not taken my measurements, but I need to do that to begin tracking them.  So my next goal for this upcoming week is to find ways to add exercise to my life by doing things that I like to do such as walking to find geocaches, swimming, walking in general, riding my bike and maybe trying to do some frisbee golf.  So, next week, more movement here I come.  I hope to be seeing more results in the future.  As to eating low carb, it really hasn't been that difficult.