weight loss 4 Comments

Starting Week Seven

So, here I am, at the beginning of Week #7 of Weight Watchers. I’ve acclimated myself to how the program works. I know the Points® values for the foods I eat most often. I’ve adjusted my way of eating, slowly but surely, toward more veggies and less meat.

Now it’s time to really make the commitment.

Because I’ve lost less than three pounds in the past six weeks. And I want to see more results.

Meetings are helpful, and weigh-ins impose a sense of accountability that might not otherwise be in effect (despite my incessant blogging about my weight). Still, when I’ve gained nearly a pound in a week without meaning to, it’s hard to hear about the woman who’s lost 57 pounds — and not just hear about her, but hear HER, herself, explaining what’s different now, saying how she’s still got a long way to go, and referring to Flex Points as “devil points.”

It makes me want to cry sometimes. What are these people doing differently from me, that they lose five pounds in a single week, and I can’t even do that in a month and a half? What’s wrong with me?

I ask myself that a lot, it seems.

Of course, when I get like this, it makes me want to crawl into a little hole and eat one-point fudge bars all evening, and not do the things I should be doing (mainly exercising), and that doesn’t help matters. Me skipping out on Aikido tomorrow would be a Very Bad Idea™, since I need to get back into the swing of things.

But, damn, I’m just so depressed. I’d rather curl up on the couch and take a nap.

Aaron tried to cheer me up, and he did a pretty good job of it, too. “You’re all depressed over 0.8 pounds?” he asked, and reminded me that I’m still headed in the general direction of where I need to go. That was helpful, and made me feel better, to an extent.

I need a little Aaron on my shoulder all the time, to drown out the little Diana on the other shoulder that berates me for sleeping in too late and not exercising enough and generally being a schmuck in so many ways.

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hippie crap 4 Comments

Go Green: Buy Local

When I was a younger lass — say, in high school and college — I was a bit more environmentally conscious than I am now. I was really into recycling and buying recycled products, and my mother placated me by buying Green Forest recycled bathroom tissue and paper towels.

I also walked a lot in high school and college, but that was mainly from necessity, not so much from a sense of reducing my carbon footprint. Not that anyone knew what a “carbon footprint” was back in the ’90s.

These days, I find I’m much less environmentally conscious than I once was. Recycling is more of a hassle than a given (except for donating to Goodwill, which is ongoing, mainly because I’m a packrat). Walking everywhere (especially to work) is just not feasible. I use more disposable products than I need to. Now, getting myself back to the environmentally-conscious side of things is more of a “what am I willing to do” gambit, kind of like dieting. What am I willing to give up? To change? Am I willing to adopt a slightly different routine?

This weekend, Aaron and I took a trip to a couple of local produce establishments to try the whole Buy Local concept. Thompson Farms, just a few miles from our house, was selling fresh strawberries — you can’t get much more local than that! Granted, the hand-sorted high-quality quarts were $5 each, which is a little pricey, but they looked great. (They also had jam-and-jelly grade quarts for nearly half that price.)

We then visited Monnette’s Market on Reynolds, also just down the road apiece. There we found produce that wasn’t *quite* as local, but still more local than the friendly neighborhood megamart has, I’d bet. There were Canadian tomatoes, complete with a sign deeming them safe per the FDA. There were homegrown strawberries (not as ripe as the farm berries, but cheaper), and I can only assume that most of the produce was locally grown. We got some bell peppers, tomatoes, green onions, pineapple (yes, I know it wasn’t locally grown), vidalia onion (also not quite local), and an impulse buy of some fat-free chocolate muffins.

So, our first foray into buying locally grown produce was relatively successful. We’ll see if this is something we continue, or if it was merely an interesting excursion. Monnette’s actually has some competitively priced deli items, too, so we might end up going back next week for more of our normal shopping.

Not sure what the next step in “reducing our carbon footprint” will be. I’d like to keep taking baby steps toward joining the revolution.

house 2 Comments

Oven Update

You may recall that my oven had a breakdown last week. Well, the part arrived in no time, and Aaron and I installed it yesterday.

Although most of the breakers in our box of electrical magic and wonder are not labeled, it just so happens that the one for the range happens to be one of two that are. So, Aaron took charge, flipped said breaker, grabbed a couple of Phillips-head screwdrivers, and went to town on the oven. It took maybe five minutes, if that, to unscrew the mounting plate, pull out and unclip the old, broken element, clip in the new one, and screw it back in.

Nothing burned down, although the factory dust did burn off of the element for a minute or so, and I baked some VERY tasty No-Pudge Fudge Brownies later that day.

No worries. Our oven should be good to go for many more years to come.