Shalom Aleichem

About 25 minutes down the road is a small, unaffiliated synagogue called Shalom Aleichem.  They have services the first and third Friday nights of each month at 8 p.m. with a woman rabbi from Daytona.  Last night, we went there for the first time with our friends Jonathan and Susan.  As Mark said, "It exceeded expectations."  Wow!  We were there nearly two and a half hours and had a blast.  The whole Friday night service was basically accomplished, plus we sang all the theme songs from the various branches of the armed services, sang several other patriotic songs, listened to some lovely poems and readings by the many Veterans who attended the service, and talked to a lot of people we know from the Solivita Shalom Club who were there.  It was a lovely, surprising evening.

Meanwhile, the dinner Mark made was AWESOME, but I over ate. I had planned how much to have of each thing, but I didn't stick to it.  Notably, I over ate the challah, ate real margarine instead of the fake stuff, and had about three times as many cookies as planned.  On the plus side, I avoided the sweets table after services entirely.  My calories yesterday went from the 1340 that I had planned to about 2200.  To my credit, I did log them all into the phone app.

Surprisingly, I am actually down one pound today to 235.4.  Crazy!  Hey, I'm not complaining.

Because we went to services last night, we are staying home all day today.  I am relaxing, catching up on TV shows I missed last week, practicing some music for auditions Monday night, and generally having a truly restful Shabbat.  Eventually, we will go up to the gym for the weights and take about a 30 minute walk. It's sort of gray and drizzly outside today.  If it starts raining too hard, we will either walk on the treadmills or use the indoor track.  Because we are eating all of our meals at home today, it will be easy to stay at 1300 calories for today and burn some extra calories with exercise.  The next three days will be just like that, so I am anticipating a nice weight loss for this week. YAY!

I still have four more little true-false-maybe articles from Diabetic Living that I'd like to share, so here is one for today.

Diets work if they are sensible.

TRUE!

"Losing weight is simple: Reduce your energy intake.  That's it.  How you do it is up to you.
So how do you find out what works?  The same way you learn most things: trial and error.  And you have tons of nutritionally sound diet choices: South Beach, Weight Watchers, DASH, TLC, Ornish, Mediterranean, Mayo Clinic, and many others.  'It's not one-size-fits-all, and it never was,' says Gale Maleskey, RD, author of Nature's Medicines (Rodale Press, 1999), who runs a nutrition practice in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 'Everyone is different in how they gain weight and in what they need to do to lose it.'  Check with your health care provider or a registered dietition to make sure any diet you're considering is a healthuful one."

I certainly have always believed this to be true, so I'm glad to see it validated in this article.  I have always believed that it is truly just calories in-calories out that causes weight loss.  Obviously, taking in a healthy balance of nutritious calories is the sensible thing to do.  Yes, I'm doing this on my own, with the help of the Lose It! app on my phone. I try to choose healthy foods, low in sodium, carbs, fat, and calories.  It worked back in 2009 and it's working now. 

Is it easy?  ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

Is it fun?  HECK NO!!!

Can I make this work and last the rest of my life?  I HOPE SO!!!