Once again I am seeking the thin me, the one I used to be, the me that is inside screaming to be released. I can do this and I will. The icing on the cake happened yesterday. I work in a doctors office, a specialist. Our patients suffer from one form of kidney disease or another. One of our patients first came to us last year after having lost 110 pounds. He still had a fair amount to go, and was loosing sucessfully with the Atkins plan. His kidneys were slightly damaged, and my physician told him that the weight loss would be more beneficial to him than anything else he could do, it would control his Blood Pressure and his diabetes both of which would help to preserve the function in his kidneys. Now the depressing part. His primary care physician was concerned that his diet choice would harm his kidneys, and convinced him to get off the diet. He has regained only 30 pounds in six months, but his blood pressure is elevated, he has been hospitalized for chest pain, and his blood sugars are completely our of control. How sad I've felt since seeing him yesterday.
So far I have not been afflicted with high blood pressure or diabetes, although they are in my family as well as heart disease. At the age of 53 I do not want to end up down that road to illness and even worse. So it's time to change my lifestyle. I will do this, I must do this.
I have already begun, although I do not know if just eating a better dinner than usual counts in a day otherwise unhealthy. But that was when I made my decision, and so that is where I began. For dinner I had a slice of meat loaf, a side of steamed mixed vegetables and no rice or bread.
I have planned my breakfast and lunch- I will boil a few eggs to take to work along with celery sticks and frozen blueberries and strawberries sprinkled with Splenda. Dinner is still undecided as my Military son is in town for training and coming over. We may go out for dinner or I may cook, but it will be low fat, low carb either way.
Good night, see you lighter

I am at the office, although how I managed toget up, shower, dress and remember to boil my eggs is beyond me. I have got to start sleeping at adecent time! My S.O. has taken to staying up until I go to sleep and then sleeping on the couch. We have always been affectionate, and he is having a horribly bad time with his business, and I have been attributing his absence to the stress he's under. Unfortunately, I now believe that he is not interested in our being physical with me being the size I am stuck at.
When we met we were the same weight, he is now 50 pounds lighter than I am, between my gain over the years and his loosing the weight.
Anyway, that aside, I will be eating my eggs today instead of the leftover pizza from our office party yesterday.

By for now :hippy:

First, a report to finalize day 1. I was sucessful with eating throughout the day, drank 3 12oz. glasses of water in addition to my 2 diet pops and 2 cups coffee. My son met me at the house around 6 pm I took him on the grand tour of my garden, and having been raised by a garden nut he dutifully oood and ahhd at my cabbages, strawberries, etc. He looks terrific! The married life seems to agree with him. I got the neatest gift from he and my newest daughter in law. The wedding pictures were put on a CD in a flip book, it looks like a book on screen and the pages turn automatically fromo one page to the next. Wedding was at Lake Tahoo, and the pictures were beautiful!
My son was in the mood for Chinese food, also a favorite in our house when he was growing up. I did fairly well with dinner. Started with soup, house wonton which meant broth with slices of veggies and meat, I did not eat a wonton (called Kreplach around my house in my youth), One BBQ rib, I had chinese mixed vegetables as a side dish and 1/2 my lemon chicken without the lemon sauce as the main course. No rice. I did splurge however and eat one egg roll 8-} Oh, and a mug of chai spice tea.
All things considered, successful day. If this had been two days ago I would have eaten half of my S.O.'s poo puu platter as well as a container of rice, and half of my sons main meal,chicken and broccoli, as well as my own main dish. I did fine, portion controlled and not eating to excess.

Now for day 2. I will have my hard boiled eggs for breakfast, with either a macd's salad or an angus burger, low carb for lunch. Dinner will be the leftover soup, veggies, and lemon chicken no sauce. Snack- apple, strawberrie, blueberry cup from my fridge with splenda.

PS, I slept last night! And not alone, I wonder if just changing my attitude changes the way Rick perceives me?

See you lighter.

Congratulations on getting thru your first couple of days. Have you ever looked into the South Beach Diet? What you are eating now sounds much like phase 1 of the South Beach Plan, but then it continues on developing into a "way of life" eating . It also talks alot about staving off diabetes and high blood pressure.

By the way, the video gift from you son sounds beautiful.

Thanks nikic. Yes, I have the South Beach Book, and I'm trying to get started. Today is payday, so I'll be able to shop and get stocked up with the necessaries. At least I've used the guidelines and thanks for seeing the resemblance, I can't be too far off then!

Rough night last night. Out in the boonies we don't have city sewage. Guess what? I got home and found it was time to call the handy dandy littlepump out your septic tank man. whew, talk about an odor X-( . Anyway, Rick wanted to wait a day to call so that he could relax after work. Now, sorry, but if I can't use the commode I am not about to go to the woods as he can to do my business, I'm big, but I'm not a bear. So, I called and the nice old man (father of the guy that owns the business) came. Rick and I dug out the tank, at least I helped him dig it out, and off went Rick while the guy came to pump. After he finished the nice old guy put the dirt back and charged me $200.00 for paying with a check instead of cash for $175.00. My S.O. was upset that the guy shovelled the dirt back, since he wanted to do it himself to make it look like it hadn't been disturbed :tongue: Needless to say, it was a cold night around my place. Plus the additional shortage in my bill money for the extra layout. Oh well, life in the fast lane.
Today I am trying to survive on the remaining chinese leftovers. I did have two eggs for breakfast, then the broth, then the leftover chicken and broccoli. Now I am eating the steamed veggies with tofu. Obviously something I ate triggerred my hunger button, I feel soooo hungry. I will snack when I get home, but will do something like...stuffed celery sticks! That will give me taste and crunch. tomorrow is gardenin day, visit with my mom day, grandkids visiting day, and two essays due for school day, I'd better hang in there, it's gonna be too busy to sweat the small stuff.

I just weighed in, don't remember if it's the reight day or not BUTTTTT, I'm down 4 1/2 pounds! :balloons: :cheer: :cheer:

The perfect culmination of a wild and wooly weekend. The three grandkids that live closest came with their dad for the weekend, then we all went to my Mom's. Mom and I took my son and the children to the children's museum in Portsmouth, what a fun place! The kids got to run around and do all sorts of hands on stuff while I spent the afternoon running av\fter the two year old who couldn't be in enough places at once! whew! Took Mom out to dinner, she wanted fried chicken ( she's half my size) So, we both had some. I did not have any other starch the whole day, and didn't fret over the choice.
Yesterday I spent in the garden, steadily using the pitchfork to turn over a section of ground 6 foot by 25 foot inshape. It was hot, and I decided to make it an exercise game. So many strokes to the right, so many strokes to the left. I followed it with grilled skinless chicken breast marinated in soy sauce and broccoli with a spoon full of oven roasted taters.

Breakfast today: a bagel with light cream cheese ( this will be my only starchy food today) I had a leftover grilled checken breast and a half a large apple for lunch. Dinner will be a salad, turkey sausage,peppers,& onions.
Oh, we picked a gallon container of strawberries this morning, so I'll have strawberries and sugar free whipped topping for desert.

Wow, what a day this has become! First to backtrack, I did have a roll with my sausage last night, but that's okay, I'm back on the stick this morning. Breakfast-2 eggs hard boiled, 1/2 bagel with lite cream cheese. Lunch, one boneless skinless chicken breast on a bed of lettuce with one medium apple. Dinner will be ,yuckie fish. I am not from the fisheaters, but I will broil or grill a filet of flounder with a side of brussel sprouts (now-those I love). Desert will be, Strawberries! My son is living at home while he tries to get his life back together after a marital breakup, and he is looking forward to an individual strawberry shortcake. I will make one for him and one for Rick, but I will avoid the pound cake part and just have the berries.
Now, the day's excitement! First, I got a call on one of my emailed resumes.It is with a PR company, and it sounds wonderful! I am interviewing on Thursday, that should give me a chance to pluck my eyebrows, color my hair, and look business minded.
Second, the drug rep from J&J who offered to help me get into the company called and set up a meeting for Friday. These are terrific things! I'm so excited, I think I'll eat the whole apple! :jn

I decided to talk about some of my concerns, you know the kind that would have ordinarily sent me to find anything not nailed down to eat.Worried about my youngest son again. He is married and separated after an unexpected pregnancy from someone else occurred. They have three children, the oldest is not his natural son, but he loves him immensely. The younger two are his, and now a new baby whose biological father is very involved with her care.
My son has suffered bouts of clinical depression over the years, and is once again on meds. Yesterday would have been their anniversary, and he is really down in the dumps. He doesn't think the medication is helping, and so he wants to stop it. Last time I came home and found him in a fetal position, then carried him to the VA hospital. I hate to see him go through this again.
So, life is as always a bit of gladness mixed with a bit of sadness. I will keep on marching forward through it, and hope that all comes out well.

Thoughts and prayers for you and your family :rose:

GREAT that you posted instead of eating - very proud of you :)

Beth :not:

Thank you Beth, I appreciate the thought.

I've been offline due to having caught computer virus' plural. I finally went to some free sites to have my computer analyzed, since this is the office and we do not have antivirus stuff on it. I had contracted 344 adware/spyware programs and 8 virus, a couple of them trojans and one of tehm to glean personal data for identit theft purposes. Whew, glad they are gone. I will visit these sites regularly, one, pandsaoftware, not only located the virus's but disinfected me!

okay, I am being strawberried to death. My strawberry patch is prolific this year, so I baked a pie with splenda and it was great! I ate one slice with coolwhip last night, yummy! I'll buy freezer bags today and freeze a bunch. Can't wait until I get some cantelope!

Those strawberries sound great, congrats on your weight-loss! I hope that your son is doing better, my younger brother also deals with depression, it's hard to see someone you love going thru such a tough time.