I met my first goal!  Today I’m wearing size 10 jeans for the first time in about 2 years.  It’s a great feeling!  I definitely need to go out and buy some new size 10’s since my old size 10’s are pretty faded and a little out of style.  I had been planning to buy some new jeans, but I wanted to wait until I could wear 10’s since I knew I was close.

It occurred to me today that I don’t feel burnt out at all on this new way of eating.  I feel like I could do this forever - which is good, I guess, since that’s kind of the idea.  ;~) 

Tomorrow I’ll weigh in.  Soon I’ll be crossing off another goal - saying goodbye to the 150’s.

I stepped on the scale on Thursday morning (since I’ve decided to try weekly weigh-ins for a while), and there was no change.  I told myself that was better than gaining, but I couldn’t help being a little disappointed.  That made me disappointed in myself for feeling disappointed over a number on the scale.  It’s just a number!!

Anyway, the disappointment stuck with me into Friday.  I normally swim on Friday mornings and, like I said a post or 2 ago, ice and snow don’t seem to stop me lately ’cause I’ve become this crazy swimming nut.  But Friday it just wasn’t happenning. 

I made myself a list down the left side of a page in a spiral notebook of all the things I wanted to get done on Friday, and down the right side I did a time grid for the day and planned out when I was going to work on each thing.  This is something I do alot, because if I don’t have a plan I will putz the whole day away!  But I hardly got anything done.  Some of that was because my boys were home from school because of the snow, and we spent about 2 hours playing Disney Trivia.  But mainly it was the lingering disappointment that had me in a bit of a funk. 

 But I still had a good day, food-wise.  I stayed within my points.  It was good that the game took so long (and we really had fun playing) because it kept me occupied so I didn’t snack.  In the afternoon I called a friend I haven’t talked to in months.  We were on the phone for almost an hour - she’s going through a nasty divorce and has 4 kids to take care of.  It’s a little selfish of me, but talking to her makes me realize how fortunate I am.  I’m in a funk because I didn’t lose a pound this week - what a baby I am!

Then this morning I got on the scale and I was down a pound.  So now the funk of Friday is gone, but I’m still a little mistified as to why I couldn’t just get past it a little quicker.

I can’t believe I haven’t written anything since Wednesday!  I sit down at the computer and I spend so much time reading other people’s blogs that I don’t have much time left to add to my own.  I did update my stats on Thursday to show that I lost another pound (9 gone now!), but I didn’t write a post to mention it in. 

We had a nice Valentine’s Day dinner out.  I did really well points-wise… until Sunday.  Sunday I went to visit my mom, and I didn’t even count my points.  I didn’t go too crazy at dinner, but I knew when I left there that I shouldn’t eat anything but 0 point veggies the rest of the day.  Sadly, that didn’t happen.  When I got home I ate nothing that was good for me.  I polished off my Valentines chocolate, had some Hershey nuggets, ate a few bites of the heart-shaped cheesecake I gave my hubby Valentine’s Day, and I still wanted more!  I knew I had to stop, and the only way was to GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN.   So I went upstairs to the computer to read more blogs.  Once I got going I lost all track of time - and I forgot all about that binge I was in the middle of.  If only I’d gotten out sooner.  *sigh*

Today I started with a clean slate.  My flexpoints start over on Mondays anyway, so I figured that was the sensible thing to do.  There was a time when I would have beaten myself up about a bad day and tried to deduct the points I was over from this week’s flexpoints.  But that never really worked out - I would always end up just starting fresh instead of continuing to punish myself.  So this time I’m just starting fresh and skipping the whole punishing thing.

I really couldn’t believe I was in my driveway at 8:00 a.m. scraping ice off my car to go to the gym. A year ago I would have used an icy car as an excuse to stay home. Today I couldn’t wait to get to the gym. I get this crazy feeling inside like I HAVE to get there today because I know I can’t get there tomorrow and omg if I have to go more than 2 days in a row without a swim life as I know it will cease to exist. I think I’m addicted. But I suppose if I’m going to be addicted to something, swimming is a pretty good thing to be addicted to.

Lately when I swim I feel like it’s gotten a little too easy.  I keep thinking maybe I’m not getting the same level of workout as I was when I first started, maybe I should start swimming faster.  But then I think that swimming is good exercise and just the fact that I’m doing it at all is awesome and I should just leave well enough alone.  Besides, I don’t want to stop at the end of each length to take my pulse.  It’s better to just keep moving. 

Today I decided to try swimming one length of the pool as fast as I can, then do a couple slow laps.  I kinda expected to do one fast length and feel wiped out and never want to do that again.  But once again, I surprised myself.  Swimming fast is super cool!  It felt so good - I felt really strong and going that fast is just really cool (sorry I just don’t know how else to put it). 

So I ended up swimming one length fast, then 3 slow, then one fast, etc.  When I noticed I only had 5 minutes to go I thought I should probably just keep it slow as sort of a cool down.  But I couldn’t resist!  I did one more fast and a few more slow and ended up swimming 3 minutes longer than I had set out to do.

I know it sounds really, really boring to just swim back and forth for 30 minutes, but I just love it. Once I reach my weight loss goal, I really think I’ll keep it off as long as I keep swimming.

Lately I’ve felt like I haven’t been doing very well. Going out with friends, last weekend’s overnight party, the fatigue following staying up until 3 am… I was tired and not feeling so great and somehow I let myself think I may as well throw in the towel ’cause I really haven’t been sticking to this whole points thing.

But last night my friend and I took our 10 year old boys to see Rain, the Beatles Experience at the Hippodrome. I had been so tired all week that I forgot what a great show I was going to see that I should be really excited about! So I put together a playlist on my zen of all the Beatles albums I have and listened to that all day leading up to the concert. This greatly improved my mood and general outlook.

Before the concert we had dinner. While talking to my friend about her running regimen and my swimming regimen I realized I swam 4 times last week. 4 times! And it wasn’t because I forced myself (well, okay… Wednesday when I was still really tired I forced myself a little), it was just because that’s what I do now. Yep, I’m a swimmer. It’s official. Anyway, I didn’t realize how much exercise I had gotten last week - I hadn’t given myself nearly enough credit.

During the concert there were a few songs where everybody got up and danced. Our boys looked like they were embarrassed to see their moms waving their arms and screaming along with “Revolution” (they should have seen us at the Elvis Costello concert back in April). Anyway, while dancing I noticed my jeans were fabulously loose on me. Normally they’re only that loose after I’ve worn them a couple of days in a row, but they were fresh out of the dryer that afternoon. Hmmmmmm…..

So this morning I stepped on the scale (about 2 weeks since the last time I weighed myself), and I’m down 2 more pounds! I’ve now lost a total of 8 pounds in about 6 weeks. Go me!

I mentioned a few posts ago that I have been reading Pasta Queen’s blog from the very beginning to see how she kept herself going (she’s lost about 200 lbs in the past 3 years - that’s a long time to stick with it). She would weigh herself every week, and if she’d been really good and gained a pound anyway she didn’t let it get her down. She knew that sticking with it was the only way, and the results don’t always show up on the scale immediately. Likewise, if she was bad and lost weight anyway she didn’t take that as a license to continue to be bad. She knew it would catch up with her eventually, so she should keep on trying to be good.

That’s how I want to be. I just want to keep on going no matter what the scale tells me from one week to the next. I may actually start weighing myself weekly (I had been keeping the weigh-ins flexible). We’ll see how this goes.

I invented a new zero point condiment today!  Okay, maybe some of you have already tried this, but it’s new to me and I thunk it up myself so I’m claiming it as my own invention for now.  I mixed equal parts of salsa and ketchup (hence the name, salsup) and put it on some stuffed green peppers I made the other day.  My stuffed peppers were a little bland by themselves.  I was so focused on putting vegetables in them with my ground turkey that I forgot about putting any seasoning in them - not even salt!

I tried the first stuffed pepper with plain ketchup, and that was pretty good.  Then I tried one with spaghetti sauce on it, and that was good but not worth the extra 2 points.  But salsup is definitely the best!  The ketchup sweetens up the salsa - or salsa spices up the ketchup depending on how you look at it.  I highly recommend it on burgers!

This is the first day since my Saturday night that went until 3:00 Sunday morning that I feel like myself again!  I swam on Wednesday, but I felt like I had to force myself to finish the 30 minutes.  But this morning I was right back in the groove - it felt so easy and natural again.  I can’t believe it took me 5 days to recover!

I saw Oprah’s episode yesterday about the book “Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?”  I think they had some good points.  I find that when my house is messy it’s stressful for me, and I sometimes snack (usually unhealthily) to avoid cleaning up - I’ll put that away right after I eat these potato chips.  But I don’t think everybody is like that.  There are thin people with messy houses, and overweight people with neat houses.  It’s not the secret to maintaining a healthy weight, but I guess it could help some people to get more focused and motivitated to take better care of themselves.  It certainly made me feel better to put away my laundry that’s been shifted between my bed and my vanity every day for the past week!

This weekend I went to a housewarming party for a good friend of mine from college.  There were other college freinds there, and lots of food!  I’m not really sure how many points were consumed, but I didn’t feel completely disgusting the next day so I think I did okay.  I could have done better, but I did okay.

I think the worst thing was that we stayed up until 3 am talking, and the fatigue on Sunday and Monday really took its toll on me.  Moday I ate like crazy.  I was tired and in a bad mood and I just wanted food.  I kept count of the points and used 14 flexpoints - and my week just started!  And this morning I did feel completely disgusting.

But I hoisted myself back onto the wagon today and I feel so much better!  I had to remind myself many times today that I didn’t need chocolate and those potato chips taste good but they’re not good for me.   I just want to continue on my way to a healthier me.