Down, Up, Stay the Same

Tourist Tuesday was great, and I thought I was making okay food choices.  At lunch I had the same thing I had the last time I was there, the soup and 1/2 sandwich.  The matzo ball soup is fantastic and I paired it with half a hot corned beef sandwich with a shmear of chopped liver.  It came with a lot of fries.  Then I had a big cookie for dessert.  Dinner at the Enzian theater included a cocktail, brie with toast, and a flatbread veggie pizza with apple stresusel and ice cream for dessert.  I definitely should have skipped the two desserts.  LOL!

So yesterday I was up five pounds.  That's depressing to be up five after just going down 8.5. 

Yesterday when I saw that I was up five, I thought it would be a good day, a day to drop some or all of those five.  I had yogurt for breakfast, did my 40 minute water aerobic routine, and lifted weights.  I had lunch out, a tuna salad sandwich and potato salad, which was the special at the pool bar yesterday.  Mark made spaghetti squash with real meat laced with beef bacon in a spicy sauce.  Fabulous dinner.  Then we went to a Shalom Club meeting where I ate two really BIG cookies at the social hour after the meeting.  Unfortunately, that put me in a mood to be craving things, so I had more snacks watching TV after we got home.

So this morning I am the same as yesterday, still up the five pounds.

Today I'm going out to lunch with my friend Judy P.  She's taking me to a place called Egg City.  I guess we'll have eggs.  LOL!  I have no idea what else we'll have.  Breakfast and dinner will be at home.  Who knows if I'll behave in the evening?  That's often a difficult time for me. 

Meanwhile, here's some pictures from our great Tourist Tuesday adventure with Susie and Ed.

After lunch at Brown's Kosher Deli, we went to The Art Center, but it was actually closed for renovations.

They told us we could wander around the outside gardens free of charge.

Then we went to the Winter Park boat ride because Ed and Susie had never done it before.

The lakes are natural and connected with these manmade canals.

The lakes are lined with huge homes and Rollins College.  Most of the homes were millionaire's summer residences.

We ended the day at this really cool theater.

We got some cocktails outside at the restaurant which is part of the theater.

We were allowed to take them inside to have with our meal.  The movie was The Double, a very strange film.

Here's to Tourist Tuesday!

Tourist Tuesday

Mark and I are trying to institute a new thrill in our weekly routine, Tourist Tuesday.  Not counting the Tuesday in Vero Beach, this is our first one.  It means doing something touristy in our state.

Today, after morning line dancing, we are picking up friends Susie and Ed for a trip to Maitland.  First stop is lunch at the kosher deli.  Mark and I ate there on the day we took the autotrain home from Maryland in April.  It is fabulous.

After lunch, we are going to do some museums and walking around in the area.  Then we have tickets at the Enzian Theater to see the movie The Double.  We will be having dinner while we see the movie.  It's a fun place, and it always shows movies that are very hard to find anywhere else.

Yesterday was great.  I sang with the Guys and Dolls at the Memorial Day event.  It was delightful.  It's so "home towny" feeling.  It was great to hear the speeches and see local ROTC HS students get scholarships.  Then I won four games of Mah Jongg!  We did everything we planned to do: sing, play Mahj, do water aerobics and weight lifting.  Rain was threatening, so we skipped the walk.  I got a bit out of control in the later afternoon and night time, grabbing two handfuls of peanuts and extra squares of dark chocolate, so my calories rose up to 1750 for the day.  According to my app, the exercise accounted for the extra calories, so I wasn't over my allotment.  I usually don't like to add the exercise calories back, but this time I was glad I had them.

I didn't put the scale away, so I got on this morning. I stayed the same.  I'm ok with that.

Today's calories will be ridiculous. I'm not going to try to record them in the program.  It's just too hard with unfamiliar restaurant food.  I will try to make reasonable choices and do some line dancing and a lot of walking around in Maitland.  I hope that means that I'll still be the same tomorrow. Of course, the higher sodium amounts could mean a brief gain in water weight.  I'm not worried.  I know that Wednesday will be another great day with all my meals at home, water aerobics, weight lifting, and walking.  Any extra water weight will be gone by Thursday morning.

We are also excited this morning because we booked our RT flights to South Dakota for our summer vacation visiting Deadwood, Mt. Rushmore, Custer National Park, the Badlands, and other historic places.  Mark and I have really been enjoying our driving tours of western states.  This is our fifth one.  We have completed our tours of Kansas, Nevada, California, and Arizona already.  Next summer is probably going to be Oregon.  Lots of fun!

Memorial Day

This morning I am heading out early to participate in the Solivita Memorial Day pageantry.  This was one of the first things Mark and I saw when we moved here.  About 60 members of Guys and Dolls and Starliters were sitting there singing all the songs for the different branches of the military.  I turned to Mark and said, "I want to do that."

Now I've done it a few times for Memorial Day and also for Veteran's Day.  There are a lot of excellent things about Solivita, and this is one of them.

After that, because it will be short, Mark and I will go to water aerobics, followed by lunch at home, and then Mah Jongg, followed by weights at the gym and a walk if it's not raining by then.

Good Memorial Day!

As for the weight, it's great.  I am 247 this morning, a loss of 8.5 pounds. 

I hope to have another excellent week, but there will be three lunches in restaurants: Tuesday at the kosher deli with our friends Susie and Ed, lunch at Egg City with Judy, and lunch out Sunday somewhere with Mark after a movie.  There will also be dinner out Tuesday at the Enzian theater with Mark, Susie, and Ed.  Many challenges!

I know there is no way that I can lose this much again.  Now I'll be happy to lose two or three with all these challenges.  There should be no reason why I don't do water aerobics four mornings and line dancing one morning, plus three days of weights and some walks. 

Meanwhile, remember all of our loved ones who have passed on and the soldiers who gave their lives for our freedoms.

Double Feature Sunday

Mark and I are doing a double feature today at AMC Downtown Disney.  First we will see Million Dollar Arm and then the new X-Men.  In between there will be about two hours, so our plan is to take the boat over to Saratoga Springs for lunch at Artist's Palette.  We might walk back if it's not too hot or raining.

Yesterday we went to the funeral of a lovely lady that I knew from Guys and Dolls, Chimers, and the New Year's Eve cruise on the Ryndam.  She was 75.  She has already been cremated, and the actual internment will be later up in NY somewhere.  This funeral mass and reception back in the ballroom was just for her Solivita and local church friends.  There must have been over 200 people there.  I have never attended such a beautiful and elaborate celebration of someone's life before.  She was a lovely, busy, tough, remarkable woman.  All who knew her loved her, so it was a wonderful day being around all of her family and friends and hearing more about her life.  Someone had made a great video tribute of her life to show after the luncheon.  Just incredible.

I have not gotten on the scale all week until this morning. I broke down and got the scale out of the bathtub.  LOL!  Mark his it in the big bathtub where I could see it but it would be hard to get.  Well, today I got it out.  I have lost weight for the week, but I won't report how much until tomorrow when it's official.  Anything could happen today.

I have also learned a hard lesson.  Do NOT eat so many almonds all at one time.  Thursday I did report that I ate a lot of BBQ almonds.  I did not report on Friday that I both went to bed and woke up feeling terrible.  My gut was NOT happy.  Well, I stupidly did the same thing last night, and this morning I have been paying for that mistake again.  I have been in the bathroom all morning and now my hemorrhoids, which have not been a problem for about a decade, have popped out.  Ouch.

This is just STUPID.  I need to go back to the caution against popcorn, nuts, and seeds.  I NEVER eat popcorn because it scares me after sending me to the ER once.  Seeds have just never been anything I eat much unless there's a few on a bun or in a cracker.  I used to stay away from nuts entirely, but little by little I have been eating them again.  Now, with these delicious flavored almonds in the house, I've been out of control with them.  I can NOT have another day like today.  Nuts MUST GO!  LOL! 

I hope I remember this the next time the grazing urge comes over me and the nuts are looking at me in the pantry.  Mark buys these fabulous blueberry flavored one, dark chocolate ones, and the BBQ.  Whoever invented these flavored almonds should be SHOT!  LOL!

fugeddaboutit

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all perfect days.  Thursday?  Fugeddaaboutit.

Thursday started off very well.  I had a normal breakfast, and I went to water aerobics.  Then I came home for lunch, but Mark wasn't back with the groceries yet.  Because we were going out to an early dinner at 4 p.m. with the Solivita Disney Fan Club, I didn't want to wait to have lunch too late, so I didn't have tuna on salad as planned.  Instead, I had several kinds of shredded and grated cheeses on there.  It was delicious, but more calories than a little can of tuna.  Then I screwed up.  The old urges to graze came over me.  I found the bag of BBQ Almonds and started eating mindlessly out of the bag while I watched Survivor on the DVR. Afterwards,  I estimated I ate about four servings, 680 calories.  Then after all that saltiness, I craved a sweet.  I ate some dark chocolate and some Jolly Ranchers left over from the airplane trip.  All in all, lunch added up to about 1300 calories.  Unfortunately, that is my whole day's allotment.  Ridiculous.

Then we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios and met up with the club for dinner at Mama Melrose.  LOL!  I wasn't even hungry, but it was a Fantasmic Dinner Package, so it was a prix fixe type of thing: appetizer, entree, shared dessert, non-alcoholic drink.  I ordered the vegetarian minestrone soup, which was delicious but way too salty, as the appetizer.  For the entree I ordered the margherita flatbread pizza.  It was just okay, but bigger than I expected.  I took one small dessert and gave Mark a bite.  If you know me at all, you KNOW I didn't leave anything left over.  I started out not hungry since it was only 3 hours after I ate 1300 calories for lunch, but I ate it all anyway.  I was so full that I could barely walk away from the table. 

Geez...another failed day.

The rest of the time we had a blast!  We went to Muppet Vision 3D, the new 15 minute special 3D preview of Maleficent, Star Tours, Great Movie Ride, Captain Jack Sparrow, and Fantasmic in amazing seats with the dinner package tickets.  Our group was about 25 people.  After dinner, we stayed together with a few of them, including a new person who had never been to the Studios.  It was fun to do these old favorites with someone seeing them for the first time, especially Fantasmic.

You know you can tell you ate too much when you can eat at 1 p.m. then at 4 p.m. and nothing else the rest of the night, go to bed feeling full, and wake up not hungry.  At least for me. I almost never feel like that! 

Today I will be doing water aerobics again.  Then tonight we are going to see a production of High School Musical here in Solivita by a local high school.  Should be fun.

I have programmed today's calories, and if I stick to the plan, it will be 1100 calories, including a delicious Super Food Chicken Salad and skinny Whiskey Sour Mark is making for me for dinner.  Not too shabby!  I haven't looked at a scale, so even though I had a bad day yesterday, I'm hoping that the next three days will make up for it.  I hope to show a nice loss on Monday.  We'll see!

Wanting to know...

I'm trying to do it all right this time, so Mark hid the scale for the week.  I'm dying to know how much weight I might have lost in the last two days, but I will have to wait.

I've had two good days.  Yesterday I ate about 1400 calories, a bit on the higher side of the allowable amount, but I did an hour of line dancing and a few laps in the pool.  Hopefully, it was okay.

Today I am going to water aerobics at 10:30 and also to the gym for weights and a little walk past the ponds to look for alligators.  If I stick to my plan, the calories should be in the 1300 range.

As I said yesterday, the first day is the hardest.  I did not notice as much hunger yesterday as on Monday.  Today should be even better.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday had all my meals eaten at home and plenty of activity.  Starting tomorrow there are more challenges.  Dinner will be out at Mama Melrose's Italian restaurant at Disney's Hollywood Studios with the Solivita Disney Fan Club.  At least there will be lots of walking with that.  Sunday will probably include lunch out.  Restaurants and parties or meals at other people's homes are still my downfall.  I will do my best in these two restaurants.  I really want some weight gone before the wedding!  Of course, I've been saying that for more than a year.  That's sad.

Doing the right thing

I did the right things yesterday for sure!  I ate 1330 calories.  I logged it all into the Lose It! program.  I walked 25 minutes (15 after breakfast and 10 in late afternoon).  I did 12 minutes of weight machines.  I did 40 minutes of water aerobics and swam three laps right afterwards.  There's really nothing else I could have done.  Great day!

I have to admit that I was hungry and a little cranky and tired all day, though.  When the body is used to eating whatever and whenever it wants, it rebels a little when two hours go by and it doesn't get fed.  By 5 p.m. I had eaten only 500 calories, so I was definitely hungry.  800 calories came from 6:30 at dinner and then late night snacks.  That's something I need to work on.  I should probably have more breakfast and lunch.  I know I'd feel better all day, but I always crave snacks at night watching TV.  If I eat the calories early in the day, I'll be cranky and miserable between 8 and 11, or worse, I'll be eating more calories than I should when I start eating snacks past my allowable calories.

Today we are heading out to do an hour of line dancing and then a little swimming to cool off.  I hope to take a walk or two in the late afternoon or early evening, also.  I am planning my calories, and I hope that I stick to it.  One thing I do remember from all my years of dieting is that the first few days are the worst while the body tries to adjust to less food.  After a few days, I won't feel as hungry all day.

Time to head out to line dance1  Enjoy your day wherever you are.