Septermber 16, 234

I'm still 234, but it's a better 234. It's like 233 wavering up to 234 instead of 234 trying not to waver up into 235. 235 didn't stand a chance on the scale this morning.

Following up on my eating yesterday - I ate breakfast from the meal plan - oatmeal with nuts and apples and ham. I also made a snack to take in to work, and hoped that I'd be cut after lunch so I'd have time to go the store and could cook lunch at home and so on.

Well, as it happened, I wound up staying at work until 6:00, after which I had to go to rehearsal right away.

When lunch break came, one of my co-workers who was leaving for the day offered me her lunch - some spaghetti that she claimed (a) was good and (b) was thawed. Neither statement was particularly true, but it was free, so I accepted it and ate some of it, enjoying the meatballs, until eventually I'd had enough of stabbing at the frozen mass of noodles (too thin to be spaghetti) and that it wasn't as good as my Mom's or even my own spaghetti, and put the rest back in the freezer and ate the frozen grapes that she had also given me.

So, not sure how many calories that was but I don't think it could have been too many.

And I spent the rest of my lunch break at the library online planning next week's meals. A lot of repetition. A lot more convenience.

When I got cut from work at dinner time, I went to Subway, got a 6" turkey sub with mayo but no cheese (but I know even the light mayo is tons of calories and couldn't help wincing at the glob that came out - but I have to admit it tasted so good when I ate it!) and lots of veggies, and 1 peanut butter cookie and one chocolate chip cookie. Rah rah rah, I know, I know. I justified it by considering that my lunch had been skimpy and I skipped both snacks yesterday. In fact, I probably came in under the mark yesterday. Because I came home after rehearsal and fell asleep, having nothing else to eat.

~~~

Efforts continue, though. This morning I awoke at around 3:00 a.m. - not cool. But there you have it. After about an hour of checking Facebook and realizing I wasn't going back to sleep, I got up, showered, paid some bills, glared at my accounts to try to make them increase in value, and printed out my grocery list and my meal plan!!

Naturally, not having eaten for many hours, by the time I got to the grocery store I was a bit hungry this morning, but I resisted temptations. I saw many foodstuffs that I wanted to try - soups and cookies and so on. On the one hand, it made me want to start going solo, without ediets' help anymore. But I can tell that I would find it hard, on my own, at this point, to limit my possibilities. I like many different kinds of foods and if I started trying to decide what I wanted to eat, I would want to eat them all, and have seconds, every day that I could.

I've sensed a lack of confidence that the scale will ever go down again, but this morning at the grocery store, and yesterday in the kitchen, reminded me how to regain the feeling that I am still losing weight.

I do still want to get to 220 pounds and fit into the size 18 jeans I bought. I do still want to see my belly get as flat as my butt has. When I hit 220, I will start planning my own meals with the foods that inspire me at the grocery store. For weeks now, I've really felt the need to wrestle with that demon in order to learn to maintain and manage my own weight.

As for this week on the the low-glycemic convenience plan

Lunches are all frozen dinners with a salad or yogurt on the side. Snack 1 is cottage cheese and fruit, snack 2 is egg-and-tomato-salad. Breakfast this morning is cheese on rye with fruit, milk, and nuts (though I was really hoping for cheese, tomato and avocado on toast instead, and think I might just switch them). Dinners are a little more robust - cheeseburger with salad, fish with couscous, veggie burger with zucchini, tuna-stuffed tomato. The grocery bill looked intimidating as she scanned the frozen dinners which were about $4 each! But all-in-all I wound up at $120 which is less than average, though still more than I want to pay. But, all the same, I chose more expensive items like organics.

And I still have all this work to do today. The good news is that - I don't really have to. Everyone else seems pretty satisfied with this lighting design. But to me, it looks too flat and uninteresting. Everything's illuminated, but it's lit like a game show, not like a high-end business office. I'm having so much "lighter's block" with this play. So I'm sort of procrasting on getting started.