Mind the Jap

Today I woke up and had coffee and went to my Tai Chi class.
Then I stopped at the fruit stand for fruit and the mall for a yogurt drink.
Then I played on Twitter and blogs and Facebook for a few hours (ok, so that was actually working)
Then the maid came and cleaned the house.
I picked up my kids and took them out for chocolate milk.
Then my husband came home and took us out to dinner.
On the way home, we stopped and bought me two new hats.

I feel like such a JAP :)

Food
Breakfast: Coffee + yogurt drink
snack: coffee
lunch: lentil soup, peach
snack: fireball, coffee,
dinner: hummus with meat, 2 pitas, salad, apple-water drink.
after: fireball

Doggy Potassium

So Poofy's kidneys are functioning well. His potassium is high. For now, I was told to try to keep him from eating anything that's not his dog food. There's the possibility of putting him on low potassium food. We'll see.

Today was a medium day. Overall, I think it was decent. The coffee is starting to get out of control...

Breakfast: 2 cups coffee,
Snack: fireball
Lunch: coffee, 1 slim-fast shake (vanilla)
snack: coffee,
snack: celery, 1 cracker
dinner: 1 chicken neck, 3 bowls lentil soup with lentils, celery, carrots, onions, and soup nuts (about 1/4 cup total of soup nuts)
snack: 1 apple

Passed Test, Blood Test, Diet

So today's big news is that I took my written (theory) driving test and passed it. It took two tries, but I have the official pass on that, which means I just have lessons and a road test and then I can get my license. This would be a big move toward my feeling like an adult, so it's good to feel like the process is moving along.

I took Poofy to the vet today, and he got a shot of tranquilizer so he could have a blood test. I'm expecting to find out that he has chronic renal failure... which is both good news and bad news. Animals can live for years with it - that's the good news. The bad news is that his peeing on the floor is likely to get worse rather than better. I'm currently taking him out 5-6 times a day and he's still having accidents. It's not a nice situation.

On the diet front, today was a decent day. Here's the food:
breakfast - 2 coffees and a slim-fast (chocolate)
snack - coffee & peach
snack - fireball
dinner - 2 chicken breasts & 1.5 cups of rice
snack - neviot + raspberry vanilla flavored water.

Another day.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm addicted to coffee. I used to limit to one cup a day, and now it's crept up to three and sometimes four cups a day. I've also discovered that if my posts aren't posted to Facebook, nobody sees them. Since Facebook is now glitching and not allowing me to post anything, I guess I'll go back to having the notes function import my blog. It worked before.

Today's food:
Breakfast: coffee & slim-fast shake (vanilla)
snack: coffee
snack: coffee, 1.5 nectarines, 3 squares chocolate
dinner: 1 smoked beef sandwich (not quite corned beef) on light bread, w/ ketchup, many pickles,
after: fireball

One, Two, Skip a Few...

When I was a kid, there was this thing we used to say - "I can count to 100 really fast. One, two, skip a few, 99, 100." So I'm skipping a few days and talking about being back on track.

Thursday night was a really fun night out with my siblings and parents for my parents' 45th anniversary. It was also all-you-can-eat. For my mouth, it was just shy of heaven. For my diet, complete disaster. I gained a whole kilo since I last wrote. Seriously.

Today, on the other hand, was better.
pre-breakfast: coffee
breakfast: slim-fast (chocolate)
snacks: coffee, fireball, 1 bite of peach, 1/2 a passiflora, more coffee, yet more coffee
dinner: 3 veggie burgers (100 cal each), big bowl of mixed frozen veggies, microwaved, with about 1 tbs Italian dressing
snack: diet ice cream sandwich (54 calories), fireball

I know that's actually unbalanced and messed up and I'm drinking entirely too much coffee, but I'm pretty sure I kept it under 1200 calories, and I'm not starving, so it's a success.

Wednesday

Today was a somewhat better day. I'm tired, so I'm going to go straight into the food.

breakfast: coffee + slim fast shake (vanilla)
snack: slimfast bar (peanut butter crunch)
snack- banana
lunch: chocolate slimfast shake
snack: peach
snack: coffee + 5 small pieces of chocolate
dinner: 4 slices light bread, 1/3 avocado, pastrama (4.5% fat) - about 2/3 of a package, one bowl tomato soup
after: fireball

Tuesday.

So I had this brilliant plan of getting up at 5am to go walking. Of course, at 3am, Ephraim soaked through his diaper and the whole bed had to be changed. So at 5am, I couldn't move at all. But I did exercise tonight. I walked for 40 minutes and then did my tai chi stretches. I'm listening to Outliers now, which I'm finding really interesting, and way fewer people get killed or beaten up than in Under the Dome, which is what I listened to previously... btw, if anyone local has a copy of Influence, I'm supposed to read that too. Turns out, it's not available in audio. I did a little better with the night time binge, but I have to improve further.

Breakfast: coffee, slim-fast chocolate
snack: slim fast bar (mint chocolate), coffee
lunch: 2 peaches
snack: 3 zucchinis with salt
dinner: 2.5 chicken breasts, 1/2 cup of rice

Monday.

So I seem to lose my drive later in the day. I'm not quite sure why this is. Today, I did great in the morning, even turning down fresh bread and butter that looked amazing. Then, as I was making dinner, I gobbled down the meat/veggie/tomato sauce and then I ate a ton of pasta. I have to get the evenings under control again. On the exercise front, I had a breakfast with a group of Twitter friends and then I walked home, which took about 30 minutes at a reasonable pace, so I got a little bit of exercise. I'm really trying to convince myself to wake up at 5 to go walking in the mornings...
Here's the food:

Breakfast: coffee, muesli yogurt
snack: slim-fast bar, coffee
lunch: coffee, 2 peaches
snack: 3 apricots
dinner: a lot of pasta with meat & vegetable sauce (sauce had fresh tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, and lots of beef)

And as a bonus, here are my kids taking a bath in new bathing suits. (They don't usually take baths in bathing suits, but they wanted to put them on b/c they were new, so I let them wear them in the bath, and then I said... aha! finally I can take pictures of them in the bath!)

I'm ba-ack

I'd decided to stop posting all my food, but then a few things happened.

1. I didn't lose any weight. In fact, I gained back about half a kilo.

2. I started to lose motivation for the diet.

3. And this was the most surprising part, people told me they miss my daily food posts. I found this absolutely shocking. I was really grateful for all the support people gave me, and I was really happy to be inspiring people to lose weight, but finding out that people actually liked reading about what food I eat daily was.... well, unexpected. 

So I'm back. And I'm on slim-fast. And today was a not great day.

Breakfast: coffee + slimfast shake (vanilla)

Snack: slim-fast bar (mint chocolate), coffee

lunch: apple w/ 1 tablespoon peanut butter

Snack:  3 apricots and half a peach.

Dinner: 5 mini veggie hot dogs and an entire quiche....

yes, an entire quiche, which contained: 1 full container of mushrooms, 1 very small head of celery, 1 onion, 3 eggs, 1 container of 3% cottage cheese, some oil, some butter, some flour (about 4 tablespoons) and 3 slices of yellow cheese. Can we say "disaster?"

After: fireball.

I think the problems are 1. I missed my second shake. 2. Yaakov and Shlomo didn't come home, so no one else ate any of the quiche. I'm having problems with limiting servings. still. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Where I'm At Now

The past few weeks, I've been a little down, and I've been very hungry. I think the two are related... In any case, I've gotten a little off target, and I had two days where I just ate and ate. On one of those two days, I ate so much I felt sick. I thought I was past doing that, so it was really discouraging. 

I also gained back about a kilo, so now I'm only down 7 kilo. That was also disappointing. I've been doing this for so long... 

On the other hand, people say I look better, and my clothes fit much better now. I've even gotten to the point where I can't wear one of my skirts because it's too big for me. I've recently bought two new skirts and they're a much smaller size than I used to buy - like 3 sizes smaller. 

All in all, though, I've lost motivation. I've decided to try Slim-Fast to see if that gets me back on track. It's not easy to get it in Israel, but I ordered two containers from a seller on ebay. (Not everything on ebay is used.) I also ordered some of their snack bars so I'll be able to have something yummy and chocolatey. I hope this will help me. 

I think the main thing here is my motivation, which has dropped. I'm not walking at all, and only doing tai chi once a week. I need to get those numbers up too. 

My friend has basically said that losing weight has to be an obsession, and I think that I'm less obsessed with it now that I have a job which I'm obsessed with... It's hard to make room in my head for everything.

I think I've rambled enough... Shabbat Shalom all

All of It

I'm at the point that I can eat responsibly even without posting every morsel that enters my mouth, so I've been blogging less. Someone complained that he missed it. Thanks! 

In Stephen King's On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft, he talks about his drinking. He says that a man goes to a doctor and says "I have a drinking problem," and the doctor asks "How much do you drink?" The man replies "All of it." When I read that, I didn't quite get it, but now I do.

Today, I went out with a friend, and we got yogurts with muesli and coffee. While we were sitting there, a woman came in and got some sort of roll with jelly. The roll was fairly small, but she still left a piece of it when she left. I turned to my friend and asked "How does she do that? How can you leave a piece of food?" 

I think that's one of my major issues - I eat all of it. It doesn't matter what it is. I finish it. A serving isn't the recommended serving size. A serving is whatever is available. When I first got married, I would make a pound of pasta, and Yaakov would eat half and I'd eat the other half. These days, I cook half of the pound. If I cook more, it won't leave leftovers; we'll simply eat more. 

Portion control is a huge issue for me. I'm learning to work around it. Mainly, I'm making sure that "all of it" is a reasonable amount for me to eat.

Grumble!

Today, Yaakov called me to tell me that he has to go to the USA on Sunday. For three weeks. I don't really take to solo parenting well. I'm in the process of starting a new job with many hours, so I don't know exactly how I'm going to do things like grocery shopping and laundry while he's away. So... grumble! 

Food:

Breakfast: coffee

lunch: yogurt drink (peanut butter... YUM!)

dinner: 1.5 chicken breasts, 1 thigh, 1 wing, lots of string beans

after: 1 jawbreaker candy. not as good as a fireball, but got me through the sugar craving.

Two Days in One

I missed posting yesterday, and today, I had a big mess up with lunch. I went to try out a newly mehadrin place and got hummus and meat and pitas... was incredibly yummy, but I figure it was close to 1000 calories. I decided to eat just veggies for dinner so I'm still on track, I think.

Tuesday:

Breakfast: coffee

Lunch: cottage cheese and strawberries

snack: coffee, apple

dinner: felafel (1.5 sandwiches)

Wednesday: 

Breakfast: yogurt, coffee, 3 marshmallows

snack: yogurt drink (350 calories)

lunch: hummus w/ meat & 2 pitas, very small green salad

dinner: 2 zucchinis

extra: 3 small candies

7 Down, 33 to Go

So it's official, kilo number seven dropped away, despite all of my bad eating over Pesach and the bar mitzva. I'm inspired now to go back to being really careful, so today was a no-mistakes day.

Breakfast: coffee

snack: 1/4 cup of orange juice-pineapple-mint-wheat grass juice (It was AWFUL)

lunch: yogurt (chocolate orange froop...really yummy)

snack: low cal ice cream bar (50 calories)

dinner: 1 can of tuna with 5% olive oil mayo-like stuff, 1.5 cups whole wheat pasta with mushrooms and tomato sauce, 1 big sweet red pepper

Sunday. Better

In response to all job-related questions, the position is a marketing writer position. It's an internship, and I'm not 100% where I'll be working yet. Some of the work will probably be from home. I haven't started yet. I have a phone meeting tomorrow, and after that, I assume things will be clearer.

Food: 

Breakfast: Coffee

Lunch: strawberries and cottage cheese

snack: coffee

dinner: 2 zucchinis, 2 bowls of chicken soup, ~1 cup of rice

Another Saturday Night

The big news for the week is that I appear to have gotten a job. It's not clear when I start or whether I'll be working at an office or at home, but I was told that I'm hired. I'm very excited and more than a little bit nervous. I hope things will go well. 

Yesterday and today were better on the food front, but I'm still not back to non-eating.

Friday: 

breakfast: coffee and a granola bar

lunch: yogurt drink (300 cal)

snack: coffee and a granola bar

Dinner: chicken soup, 1 slice of challah, salad, 1/2 chicken breast, 1 chicken thigh, 1 chicken leg, 1/2 cup rice

Saturday:

breakfast: coffee

lunch: 1 bowl chicken soup, 

snack: fruit salad, 1 slice of cake, celery

dinner: 2 chicken breasts

Another Wednesday

Food-wise, today was good, not great. We have no veggies in the house at all. I have to buy some tomorrow morning. 

Breakfast: yogurt drink, coffee

lunch: omelet sandwich on light bread, salad, coffee

snack: red pepper slice, coffee

snack: granola bar

Dinner: rice with salami (too much salami)

I need fireballs. I'll have to figure out how to get more, since they don't sell them in Israel. :(

Getting Back on Track

I'm not 100% on track yet, but today was much better. I'm still down 6 kilos, so no damage over the holiday. Hopefully, when I re-stock the house, things will improve.

Breakfast: coffee

lunch: coffee

snack: 1 square chocolate, 1 handful potato soup nuts, 2 cherry tomatoes

dinner: 2 pitas with 1% fat pastrama

Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom

Today was kind of a tough day. Ephraim was home, it was raining, and Yaakov and Kinneret are away at the juggling convention. My fantastic neighbor let us come over and hang out for a while, which made the day move and stopped the constant flow of Diego videos. I'm told that Diego is the Spanish of Yaakov, so it makes sense that Ephraim would want to watch it constantly... 

I miss Yaakov and Kinneret, though I'm enjoying the lack of whining. Kinneret has a tendency to whine about things even when we haven't said no... as in "mommy I wannnt waaaater," and I'm like, "could you please ask in English instead of whine-language?" 

I've been reading "How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk" and so far, it's a good read. I'm hoping that learning the techniques in the book will help me yell less and feel more like the situation is under control even if the kids aren't exactly. I feel like I get angry too often and yell too often with Kinneret. With Ephraim, I feel like I have more patience. I'm not quite sure whether it's his behavior or my attitude. It might be a combination of the two. I perceive him as very vulnerable, while I perceive Kinneret as very tough. The truth is almost the opposite. Kinneret is very sensitive and gives up easily. Ephraim is persistent and self-assured. I'm not sure where I go from there... hmmmn. 

On a totally different subject, I think that matza makes you hungry. There's no other explanation. I never eat very much of the carbs anyway, but somehow, this week, I'm ten times hungrier. I feel like I'm in good company, though. Two of my Facebook friends said they got somewhat off track during the holiday too. Today, I had the obligatory matza brei for the chag... I discovered that I don't like it with wet matza. I like the matza crispy... oh well. 

Anyway, here's today's food:

Snack: banana, coffee

breakfast: matza brei - 2 matzahs, 2 eggs, 1 onion, olive oil, a tiny bit of butter

snack: coffee

lunch: cottage cheese & strawberries

snack: coffee, 4 marshmallows

Dinner will be whatever my mom serves, as she's graciously invited Ephraim and me for supper. I assume there will be apple kugel... yum. 

In which I Try to Get Back on the Wagon

I'm still not quite on the program, but today was a better day.

Breakfast: cottage cheese and strawberries, coffee

snack: 2 small pieces of pesach cake

lunch: 5 marshmallows

Dinner: 3 bowls of chicken soup, 1/2 matza, chicken breast, piece of corned beef, 2 marshmallows, 

After: 1 pear, some strawberries