better than I thought I would

Yesterday was a good day. The weather was much nicer than it had been all day and I actually felt like I was productive at work. On Tuesday and Wednesday, when it was so hot, I had a difficult time concentrating, particularly in the afternoon when the air conditioning ceased to be effective.

At lunch yesterday (when I would normally post here), I sat outside with a friend, on a bench under a tree and enjoyed the breeze. All invigorated from a productive day and a pleasant lunch hour, on the ride home from work, I sort of decided that I would tackle some long overdue yard work before dinner. This morning, looking back on it, I'm very glad that I did because now, this morning, I don't have to worry about. I'm not sure what I was thinking though.

I started out on the shady side of the house, pulling weeds from the crack between where the driveway meets the house. That didn't go too badly so I moved around to the front of the house. I was getting pretty hot and feeling a little light headed around the time I was 1/2 done the front of the house. I took a little break, sat down in the shade in the backyard and decided to just suck it up and finish what I'd started. Somewhere between the lawn chair and the front of the house, I decided that I should prune this overgrown tree too. By the time I got that done and bagged everything up for the composting centre, I was literally loopy from the heat. My hands were shaking and I was really dizzy. Luckily, there was a gatorade in the back of the fridge so I sat down in the living room and slowly sipped on that.

I realize now that I was only working for about 45 minutes. My ass was kicked in an unbelievably harsh way. After a little while, I felt a bit better so I decided to go in the pool to cool down. What a difference that made, I felt a million times better. I got my appetite back, we had a late dinner and I felt pretty good. The heat must have caught up with me though because about 45 minutes after dinner, I was sick as a dog. Again I felt really weak and dizzy and ended up going to bed sort of early-ish.

For the first time in several days, I slept like the dead last night. When I woke up this morning, I felt so much better. I actually feel pretty normal and the front and side yards look terrific. There is still some weeding to do in the back but it's mostly shaded out there and if it doesn't get done, no one but us will know. Because of the weather lately, the weeds in the front of the house were growing like crazy and the place was looking pretty trashy. At least now, while not perfectly groomed and landscaped, it no longer looks like we're totally white trash anymore.

As far as the fitness stuff goes this weekend, I'm not too worried. We have several of our meals already planned out and have scheduled another trip to the produce market. We also have several activities planned which don't involve food so I'm not too worried about mindless snacking. I feel like we're back into a routine now with our healthy eating, in another couple of weeks it'll be like we've always been doing this. I'm feeling really positive about it all right now so that's something very good.

present!

I'm alive but really badly beaten from a stupid thing I did in the heat after work tonight...will write about it more tomorrow.

happy loooong weekend kids!!

mmmmmmm

You can almost breathe outside right now. It's been overcast all day today and the humidex is only 28 (down from 43 yesterday!). I just walked back to the office from a training session and by the time I got back to my desk I was all sweaty. It's a gross feeling, the heavy air and moisture. At least I didn't feel like passing out. The hot hot heat we'd been experiencing made me dizzy sometimes.

Dinner last night ended up being Chinese takeaway. We didn't get anything that was deep fried but it was still a little heavy. It was delicious, but I ate a little more than I should have. My appetite was crazy because we ended up eating so late. Here's what we had:



I'm glad that we took this route though. My hunny really wanted to go to a local buffet but I knew that given the day I'd had, and how late it was getting, it would be bad. I'd be tempted into "just one piece" of general tao's delicious chicken and then it'd be over. Oh and they have brownies there too. No, it was much safer to stay home and eat curried veggies and chicken lo mein. I think that it was a good compromise. If it hadn't have been so damned hot last night, I probably would have gone for a bowl of soup at my favourite noodle soup joint but I really didn't want to venture back outside once I got home.

Now today, back on track, 100%. Hopefully the weather is going to get better and it'll not be too hot to be outside. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more moderate weather and eagerly counting the hours until the weekend starts.

wednesday wrap-up - week 2

Wherever you are, I hope that you're not caught up in the heat wave that we are experiencing here. It's just gross outside. To make matters worse, my office is like a sauna. We have a couple of portable a/c units but they really just take part of the humidity out of the air. On a normal summer day, our office is quite cool but today, and yesterday, they just cannot keep up. At one point, I had to go visit some colleagues down the hall to catch my breath (they have a similar unit but they are in a much smaller office so it's more comfortable).

Tonight, my hunny was running late so he picked me up an hour later than normal from work. We still haven't had dinner (just got home about 20 minutes ago) and we're having that discussion. Have you had this one? The "hey it's too hot to cook and we've had salad for 6 nights in a row so let's go out..." discussion. At the moment, shock horror, I don't even feel like eating. In a half-hour or so, I will but right now, I don't want to think about it. We're also at the mercy of a friend right now who is dropping something off here.

To sum up, I'm tired. I did not sleep well last night and the heat today has just wrung me out. I also think that my period is just about ready to start. I'm glad about that but I'm also feeling a little fragile just at the moment. Oh well, "suck it up buttercup," right?

Anyway, what you've all been waiting for, here's my weekly wrap-up:

summary - week ending August 1

• again with the fucking hot stuff, the only intentional exercise I have done (7 out of 7 days!) is in our new pool. While in the pool, I've done some resistance work. Last week, I'd hoped that this week would be better, that the humidity would break...uh yeah, that didn't happen! This weekend though, no matter what, I have major weeding and yard work to do and I'm going to do it, even if I have to be outside at 5:30 a.m. weeding with a flashlight.
  
• I took my vitamins 7 out of 7 days this week - I even remembered on the weekend!
  
• met daily water intake goal all week! The heat sure helps to motivate me to keep my liquids up.
  
• Except for one diet orange soda on Sunday, I avoided carbonated beverages all week!!
  
• When I splurged on a "treat" on Friday night, I indulged in whole grain granola bars and not chips or chocolate.
  
• continued to post here every work-day since my re-start
  
• tracked every morsel of food I've eaten, at fitday - good and bad.
  
• I am officially down 3 pounds from my last weigh-in. That's 7 pounds in two weeks for those of you keeping track
  

steamy stuff

This morning I had a meeting in the building next door. I took my guest over there because they have a public area (I couldn't find a meeting room in our building) and it's air conditioned. When I walked out of the building after the meeting, my glasses fogged up. It's insanely hot here right now, and I think my period is actually starting (last week was just sort of a false-alarm). I would really like it to start and be done with it before the long weekend starts.

Things continue to go well on the food front. I'm really pleased with myself actually, and with my hunny too. We have not been inside a restaurant since July 21. That's a massive feat for us as we usually eat out at least twice a week. I'm really proud of how he's adapted to his changed menu. I bought him a little notebook and he's recording everything he eats. I figure that this will be useful for his meeting with the nutritionist. He's lost 8 pounds already too so I'm sure that his sugar numbers will be improved when he goes back to see his GP later this month.

Anyway, this is just a quickie because I really should get back to work. Hope you're all keeping cool wherever you are!

foggy headed

I really didn't want it to be Monday this morning. The weekend was so much fun that I didn't want it to end. The humidity broke yesterday, briefly, and we had a gorgeous day. I can't remember the last time I spent so much time outside. Over the weekend I actually got a pretty yucky sunburn but it wasn't as horrible as some I'd had in the past. I just keep slathering on the moisturizer and hoping for the best. At the moment, my body is at work but my mind keep drifting. I'm getting stuff done but it's requiring that I concentrate a lot more than normal. The sunshine is hugely distracting. All I want is to be at home right now.

Foodwise, except for the extra granola bars on Friday night, I kept on plan all weekend. It wasn't easy and several times I found myself entertaining thoughts of bad things. Fortunately, I was able to push them out of my head. Recently, I watched a weight-loss program on Discovery Health and a nutritionist told her client to think before she ate. She said that if you ask yourself, "Am I hungry or am I just bored and want to eat?" you might stop yourself from eating unnecessarily. She was right, if I'm hungry, really hungry, I go get a piece of fruit but many times, I would ask myself and realize that I was just bored. Neat trick huh?

So, the weekend was full of outdoor activity and healthy food. Cool huh?? Here's a photo of my lunch from Saturday:

weakness

Last night, for the 3rd night this week I think (maybe 4th), we had salad for dinner. It was super delicious, and it had a gorgeous grilled salmon fillet on top. Yum.

About 45 minute after dinner though, we were both looking at each other and we knew we wanted something but didn't know what it was. My theory was that we were probably both craving something starchy because we haven't had any rice or pasta all week.

We both decided that a nice, whole grain granola bar would probably do the trick. I hadn't had one all week so the idea really appealed to me. When I opened the package, I thought, "hey too bad I don't have any chocolate to dip this in." Of course I was joking, partly, the other part of me is heading into serious PMS (I really didn't get my period the other day). The granola bar was good but not terrific. In the end, I had three (the first one and then two of a chewy variety that we had in the cupboard that I hadn't tried). It definitely put me over in the calorie department, having those other two bars, but not by too much. It also wasn't a bag of family-sized chips or a pound of chocolate. When I sat down to calculate it all out on Fitday, I realized that I'd been under by calorie goal by about 150 calories all week so an overage of 200 wasn't too bad.

What this does mean though, is that I'll have to keep myself busy today, and perhaps try to work more grains into my diet so that I don't get that "hey I need something" feeling in the evening.