Some things are falling by the wayside

As Election Day approaches – 86 days and counting! – my extracurricular activities are increasing. I feel like I've just started a job, and some of the things I used to do regularly, religiously even, are on the back burner.

I've abandoned photo-a-day. I still take photos most days, but I'm not following a list of daily prompts. Do you know how much time and brain energy this saves? It's not just going through my day thinking of a good subject, it's trying to think of a subject no one else will have thought of, because I'm competitive and want to stand out from the #fmsphotoaday crowd.

Then it's composing and taking the shots, because one is never enough, followed by editing (if necessary), captioning, hashtagging and, finally, posting.

It's exhausting.

I kid. It's not that hard, really, but all those steps in the process do take time. And lately my time has been spent elsewhere.

What's kinda cool is that I don't really miss it because I've been being creative doing the other things.

The daily walks have been every-other-daily recently, because of injury or travel or weather or what-have-you. We're in for a stretch of cool, cloudy days, and I shouldn't have much trouble getting back on track there. I do miss the daily walks. And the pain I experienced last Monday is completely gone.

Rest is good, people, rest is good.

Obviously the daily blog post has been pushed down on the priority list. I'm not one of those bloggers who plans ahead, writing and scheduling posts in advance. I think I may have done that a time or two, but mostly I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda blogger, writing when I have time and something to say.

My theory about why I have less to say lately is that I've been saying it out loud, in public, in front of or with other people. Real live people! (Not that y'all aren't real and alive, but there's not much of a dialogue between you and me through a screen.) Also, sometimes I feel as though I'm repeating myself when I sit down to write. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, you already know what I've been up to.

For the most part, anyway.

The food has really fallen by the wayside, and I've really disappointed myself in that area. I'm doing more mindless eating, eating when I'm not hungry, eating because it's "time" to eat, eating what's handy, eating, eating, eating. It occurs to me, right this minute, that not blogging and eating more and eating inappropriately for my goals might be related. I can't promise to write more frequently here, publicly, but I think I'll begin food journaling again. It's proven to be helpful and will assist me in pinpointing the more-frequent allergic episodes I've had lately.

And I might just lose some weight in the process.

Hey! It could happen!

The value of journaling

You know how, just a few days ago, I wrote about my Thursday morning weigh-ins being the lowest of the week, but not lasting until the official one on Monday morning?

At least for this week, I was WRONG! Not only was Thursday's number good, today's was one pound lower. I'm down TWO pounds this week. Two pounds in one week hasn't happened in a long, long time. That's three for the month, with two weeks to go.

I've fallen off the food journaling wagon and have no idea if what I've been eating is a factor in these results. LoseIt keeps lowering my daily calorie intake; it's now down to 1048 calories. I'm quite sure I'm eating more than that. I eat from a list of foods which have turned out to be pretty darned perfect for me, and simply haven't felt the need (or just couldn't be bothered) to record it all.

These foods help me feel better physically (no joint pain, relief from an allergy) AND, as a bonus, have resulted in – as of this morning – a total loss of 56 pounds. That's a new low (in the last 16 years).

Nine pounds to go.

I'm still journaling my walks, but haven't been able to get one in for three days. I'm still doing a very simple bodyweight routine – squats, wall push-ups, two or three dumbbell moves – most days, but not journaling them.

The value of journaling would be that I could look back at the last couple weeks' worth of data and see what's worked to produce this morning's result. But really? It's probably more complicated than that.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's a lot simpler. When I put protein, fat, vegetables and fruit in my body, AND when I move my body on a regular basis, AND when I keep grains, sugar, legumes and dairy off my plate I get the results I want.

Maybe not exactly when I want or expect, but today's number was very good for reinforcing the notion that I'm doing what I need to do for me.

Back in the spring, LoseIt predicted I'd be at my goal this month. Now it says the end of January. I don't know about that – I'd need to continue losing a couple pounds a week. Not a realistic expectation, given the past couple months of results.

But this year has been a good one, as this chart shows:

Exercise hasn't changed much all year. Food has.
January through April: Counting calories, eating Standard American Diet.
April through present: Paleo.

And as this morning's result shows, I'm still moving in the right direction. Onward!

Finis!

Remember those clogs I was working on throughout the college football bowl season? The first half of the first and littlest pair was done less than a month ago. And while my original goal was to make four pairs and then felt them all at once, I stopped after three:

The blue ones are for my daughter-in-law and granddaughter, leaving the
brown/green ones for my husband.

I'm still going to make the fourth pair (they're for me) and, in fact, have already started the project. But my husband kept asking when his would be finished and I wanted to send the mother-daughter set off before summer.

My husband has never worn slippers, because he used to go outside every hour on the hour (I might be exaggerating a bit) to smoke. Now that he's a former smoker for almost a year(!), he can slip his cold feet into toasty warm wool clogs and relax every evening. Just like an old man.

He kind of makes fun of the old-man-ness of them, but he truly appreciates the warmth of wool. He only has two pairs of handknit wool socks (I should probably work on his sock drawer) and he loves wearing those during cold weather. Which we haven't had much of this winter, but he's managed to pull them out of that drawer a few times.

Okay! That's the knitting part of the post. Thanks for paying attention and letting me brag about a Finished Object or six.

Moving on to the weight-losing part, it appears my attention span for journaling lasted exactly three weeks this time. I thought 21 days was what it took to form a new habit! For me, 21 days was the signal to quit.

And I'll be honest with you: While I'm not chowing down on forbidden fruits, I'm certainly eating more than I did when I was writing everything down. Go figure.

The first day of non-journaling coincided with the decision to join the gym. Am I so busy that I can't journal and go to a gym three times a week? Does my brain only have the capacity to handle a minimum number of successful weight-loss strategies at a time? And if that's true, why would I toss out the number-one predictor of weight loss?

I have no answers, only questions. And a firm resolve to begin journaling again. It's not hard. I love this web-based application that also has a syncable BlackBerry app, but if you read the article I linked to in the previous paragraph, there are many others that do the same thing.

To sum up: In addition to working out regularly and following South Beach Phase 1, I will attempt to create a journaling habit again. Starting today. (Adding one carby food per day the last two days – a serving of Shredded Wheat Wednesday and a low-carb whole-wheat tortilla yesterday – has completely wiped out the stellar two-pound loss from Tuesday's weigh-in)

I'm heading out of town for the weekend. My little Hershey girl, whom you met here yesterday, will be in the hands of my very capable neighbor/housesitter while my husband and I meet some friends to explore Asheville, NC. We won't be meeting them until Friday night, so my husband and I are planning to have a mid-day meal at 12 Bones, a lunch-only rib place that appears to be SB-friendly. (And, really, what restaurant isn't? The grilled-chicken salad is ubiquitous, isn't it? Chez KnitRunRepeat served it last night, as a matter of fact.)

Also, if 12 Bones is good enough for my President, it's good enough for me. I'll do my best to throw up a daily post while I'm gone, since I've committed to doing January NaBloPoMo. Might just be photos; I imagine after this wordy post some of you would enjoy that!