Sunday Ruminations

I know I'm supposed to weigh in today, but Matt wanted Vietnamese food yesterday and that means Pho.  I have learned not to weight myself for two days after I eat Pho because I am always up a pound and a half or so because of the high sodium content.  So I will do my official weigh in on Tuesday instead, and I will give you my Friday weight: 147

Yesterday went really well, I used exactly the number of points I was supposed to and I used all of my activity points, but then again, the first day always goes really well.  We have the missionaries coming over for dinner tonight and that means hamburgers!  We always feed the missionaries hamburgers.  They say they don't get those very often, and they are fed a lot of Mexican food and casseroles.  I bought the smaller hamburger buns that have 140 calories per bun which I figured was better than the 210 calorie buns.  There will be chips and guacamole, home made french fries and I'm making up the asparagus I found in the fridge this morning.  I had completely forgotten about the asparagus and they need to be cooked pronto!  I will probably end up going into my weekly points today but I am planning on eating as much zero point food before dinner as possible to save as many points as I can for dinner.  I'm not exercising today so I don't have that to give me more points.  Ah, yes back to tracking, no wonder why I stopped doing it.  It can get stressful.  But it keep you aware of how much you are eating and prevents me from overeating.

This morning I unintentionally reorganized the pantry.  I was looking for potatoes for tonight and after pulling everything out of the bottom of the pantry I ended up doing a complete makeover:

I didn't take a before photo because I wasn't originally planning on reorganizing the pantry

A little higher up are the nuts and all the baking and sweets are up at the very top in a box.  I tried to put the healthier stuff at eye level, but we don't have a lot of packaged snacks, so I've got the quinoa and chia seeds there and the croutons are to remind me to eat more salads.  I always forget about the raisins, and the kids love raisins.  I took out all the kitchen towels and moved them to a different location along with my mess of cookbooks.  I think I am going to get a box to put the cookbooks in and put them next to the baking box, then when it's time to menu plan and I want a cookbook I can take the box down.  That could backfire though if the box is too heavy. 

Lastly I want to try to explain a little better why I decided to go back to tracking for a while and get out of the 140s.  I still believe in everything I've been doing up to this point, the mental progress I've made, the positive thoughts about myself and my body, learning body acceptance.  My father in law was down for Halloween and said "ok, so before Thanksgiving dinner we will swim a mile together and then go eat, nap and then eat dessert!"  He has really been cheering me on with training for the Triathlon and he has really helped motivate me to continue and to do better.  I am no where near close to being able to swim a mile and I know that I need to get a little more serious about eating right and training if this is something I am actually going to do.  So I have about four weeks to get up to being able to swim a mile, meaning I will be increasing my physical activity and I know that my current weight is hindering my athletic progress.  And my mindless eating is hindering my weight loss, therefore I need to implement tracking again to make sure I am eating food that will fuel my body for training and optimize my athletic progress, and allow me to shed some more fat so I can have more energy to swim longer, bike further, and run faster.  I'm going to shoot for 135 and see where that puts me in how I feel, and how my athletic ability has improved.  If I'm happy with that, I will switch to maintenance then (note: a whole 14 pounds above my original goal weight of 121).  I just want to be healthy, and happy and right now, the tool I need to get me there is tracking.