Tag Archives: taking care of ourselves

December 10, 2020 · 11:21 am

Oink!

Forward from Bill Lites

My husband and I have quarterly doctor appointments next week. We went first thing this morning to get our blood drawn for tests for which we want to see results at that appointment. After that, we rewarded ourselves by going to enjoy a huge breakfast at our favorite restaurant in Greenwood, The Dari, which just opened recently for indoor dining, limited seating.

I not only had a big breakfast – I had a biscuit with sausage gravy. It has been over two years since I had one of those. YUM!

I was impressed with all the changes they had made to keep employees and customers safe. It was almost like a different place, except for the wonderful food.

A total splurge – and I enjoyed EVERY BITE!

OINK!!!!!!

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October 28, 2020 · 10:25 am

Happy Campers

Last week we received the regular follow-up email REAL FOOD CO sends after we pick up our order, asking for feedback. This time I wrote a comment that I would really like to order the olive bread, rather than waiting for it to show up on the website as an offering for the week.

Stacy ANSWERED, asking me how many half loaves I wanted to order! I replied, and we can pick them up next Monday! HOORAY!!!!!

We went from having only restaurants – and most of them having to offer mainly take-out – to having TWO places who offer frozen meals that are good for you and taste good, too.

The other new place is STU’S CLEAN COOKIN’.

Between the two places, we are very happy campers. We have a frozen meal as our main meal of the day. The controlled portions and convenience makes it easy to stay on our new way of eating 5 days per week.

The other meal is tuna fish salad with a side of sweet pickles for my husband and green or black olives for me.

My husband has several snacks each day. I try to LIMIT mine, drinking lots of water instead, in an effort to lose my lard.

The other two days we eat something I cook. This week I’ll fix “Keto Chili” with a recipe by Suzanne Ryan of Simply Keto. That will last us all weekend.

I still have a long way to go to get to my goal weight, but my husband has pretty much reached his goal.

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November 15, 2018 · 4:18 pm

Progress Report – Getting the Lard Off 11-15-2018

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Before I started NutriSystem, I lost 12.4 pounds trying to follow a low carb diet plan. Since I’ve been on NutriSystem, I’ve lost another 30.6 pounds. Total = 43 pounds.

 

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I’ve lost a total of 45.45 inches so far.

There are two big differences –

THING ONE –

At my last doctor appointment, my blood test showed significant improvement in my lipid profile. I was down in ALL the sections, where I had been way higher than desirable before.  I have had to go for blood tests and monitoring quarterly for as long as I can remember. She said to return in 6 MONTHS.

THING TWO –

My exercising is finally yielding ‘feel good’ results. I’ve finally settled on yoga and exercises one day and elliptical trainer the next. I’m giving myself a gold star on my desk calendar as I finish each day’s exercise. :0)   I was doing yoga yesterday. My husband apparently came in and sat down in his chair, watching me. When I finished, he told me how impressed he was with my efforts, particularly in increased flexibility and in my exercises for the abdominal area. To say that a compliment is rare is a vast understatement. It just doesn’t occur to him to say anything. I was grinning from ear to ear!

PLUS – Since I outdid him on sit-ups, and also did a bicycle type thing and some leg lifts, I think I may have spurred HIM on in HIS efforts!!!!

 

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October 25, 2018 · 11:28 am

Getting the Lard Off Progress Report 10-25-2018

Ravelry Bob Tape Measure

I have now lost 28 inches on Nutrisystem – 44.5 inches since my lardiest.

 

 

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And 28 pounds on Nutrisystem – 40 pounds since my lardiest.

The very best news is that my husband has been losing weight, too – going from 38 x 30 to 34 x 30 in jeans, and had a blood sugar count of 88 this morning, the lowest ever!!!!!! Woo HOOOO!

Another good thing is that we’re much more CONSCIOUS of the food we’re putting into our mouths now, and trying to move more.

My husband is trying to do sit ups. (He’s frustrated because he’s a former Marine and used to do 50 sit ups just because his superior was feeling out of sorts. Now he’s having real trouble – and is shocked to learn that 55 years or so without exercise affects one’s muscles! :0)  )  I’m really happy for him for trying and I’m cheerleading, telling him he’ll get stronger if he tries every day.

I’m switching off each day  between my elliptical trainer and yoga stretches and exercises, in addition to working in the yard and doing another decluttering of the house, room by room, consciously trying to keep moving.

We’re making progress. I’m about halfway to my weight goal now (I think – subject to re-evaluation if I meet it). It feels good to be doing what we CAN control to take care of ourselves better and improve our quality of life.

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June 14, 2018 · 1:06 pm

Week 7 – Getting the Lard Off Progress Report

Objective Changes:

WEIGHT:  12.2 pounds down. I have to admit I’m a bit teed off because my husband doesn’t take any responsibility for even thinking about what he’s eating or when, just says, “Thanks” when I bring him the next snack or meal; doesn’t drink the water, doesn’t exercise, and he’s lost more than I have…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MEASUREMENTS:   Down 16.3 inches. My husband has no interest in measuring, but he just ordered shorts that are 2 inches smaller in the waist. He put them on this morning and looks GOOD.

 

 

 

 

 

I had high blood pressure even with my medication. I’m now showing normal with my meds. “Normal” is such a beautiful word!

 

My husband is a Type II diabetic. When we started monitoring his blood sugar, it was at around 353 or higher. (Normal is under 100.) This week it was 113!

 

 

Subjective Measurements:

Each week we’re supposed to have one FLEX meal for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack, preferably on different days. Our flex SNACK is ice cream after bowling with friends on Monday evenings. Our flex LUNCH is Lunch Bunch with long-time friends on Fridays. We usually don’t do the flex BREAKFAST, since my husband likes Nutrisystem’s oatmeal and prefers to just stick with that. Flex DINNER –  I’ve broiled a thin steak cut into 2 pieces and we’ve had little bitty baked potatoes. We’ve also shared a small container of chicken fried rice from our local Chinese restaurant.

Yesterday I tried cooking our first flex dinner from the Nutrisystem website. It is called “Meat and Potato Casserole.” It makes 6 servings. We ate two and I froze the other 4 servings in labeled individual dishwasher-and-microwave-safe containers. We found the casserole a little dry, but the flavor was good. We had a salad with it. Today I stopped and got some packets of low sodium brown gravy. The package makes 1 cup – way more than enough for the one tablespoon of gravy I plan to pour over each of the remaining servings when we eat them.

I’m not a wonderful cook. The amount of preparation for this meal seemed like a lot to this lazy woman who would rather do almost anything than spend a bunch of time in the kitchen. I used a food processor as they suggested to prepare the carrots and potatoes, but I think the next time I’ll just use my hand-held shredder because clean up will be a lot easier. It seemed that I had half the kitchen messed up by the time the casserole dish was finally in the oven.

That said, I’m delighted to be able to have recipes at my fingertips to help us stay on the good start we’ve made on losing the lard. To complain when I cooked once and had servings for the two of us for THREE meals is a LOT more “poor me” than any of us need or appreciate…. :0)

All in all a good week’s progress. I’m hoping to get off the plateau I seem to be on, but I’m doing healthy things for us.

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May 4, 2018 · 6:24 pm

Confusion Re NutriSystem Solved

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Yesterday I happily started Week 2 of our Nutrisystem plans, carefully having made note of Powerfuels (and lists of) and SmartCarbs (and lists of), as well as what each of us was to eat at the various times of the day.

I got to the point of adding dinner into my NuMi tracker records and discovered that I was going over the calorie limit at the top! I had thought that one of the perks of the Nutrisystem plan was that you didn’t have to count calories, but it was clear that I had messed up in some way. I deleted the veggies I had planned to eat and the snack I had been looking forward to eating after dinner, staying under the calorie limit.

I contacted one of the nice people connected to Nutrisystem via the live CHAT today – one of the great parts of the program, in my estimation. She said that I needed to switch to “nutrisystem’ instead of ‘turbo 13’ as the current stage of my program. (I had thought that when the NuMi page congratulated me on finishing the Turbo week, they would make any changes needed.) The kind lady switched my program stage for me and I was off to the races again.

We ate our first FLEX meal (meals eaten off the plan to teach you how to cope with the real world and not break your new eating plan). We’re supposed to eat one breakfast, one lunch, one dinner, and one snack as Flex meals each week, preferably not on the same day. We ate our regular Lunch Bunch with our good friends, not wanting to change our cherished time together. My husband had his loved chicken fingers and I had a big salad and a hard boiled egg, figuring I was eating two servings of veggies and one powerfuel.

We are delighted to be eating FRUIT again!  We haven’t eaten fruit in maybe over a year, due to my husband being a type II diabetic and our trying to eat low carb. It’s such a treat! My husband’s blood sugar number yesterday was the lowest it’s been since we have been monitoring it!

We are making changes to our next order on almost a daily basis, finding things we don’t particularly care for, and other things we really like and want more of. The website makes it easy to do that.

So, my confusion and upset from yesterday was solved today. I’ll happily dive into the freezer this evening for a nice entree for each of us and probably an ice cream sandwich!!!

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April 27, 2018 · 9:46 am

Whisper

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We made it through Day 1 of Nutrisystem. We have to say that they have improved a lot since we tried it years ago. I am eating and drinking out of the ‘magic red box’ (Turbo 13) in the Uniquely Yours for Fat Ladies program, and my husband is in the Diabetic Uniquely Yours program. His reaction yesterday was, “This isn’t half bad!”

Honestly, we were so busy eating or drinking at the proper times we hardly had time for much else. :0)  We weren’t hungry. We did have a pang after dinner when we would usually have an ice cream sandwich or an orange dream bar, but we can have an after dinner snack NEXT week.

I drank the 64 oz of water, plus a couple of cups of coffee, so I got my exercise running to the bathroom during the day and four times last night…

We have Lunch Bunch today. We’ve done this for a hundred years or so, seeing good friends and catching up, and we’ll continue doing it regardless of what eating program we’re on. Starting next week, we can have Lunch Bunch be our flex lunch, as we’ll have our ice cream after bowling be our flex snack. Today I’m going to have a salad and write it up as the one I would have had with my lunch later, as one of my 4 servings of veggies per day. I’ll try to keep my husband on track for the rest of the day, but he’ll make the decision whether to cooperate or not.

I’ve started losing the expected water weight, so my body is recognizing that things have changed. Good start!

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April 21, 2018 · 10:29 am

Getting the Food for NutriSystem

 

Our NON-frozen food boxes for the first month were delivered this morning. My husband and I have agreed that we don’t want to start the program until we get all the stuff for the first month. I haven’t received emails that they’ve shipped the frozen portion of our order yet.

I have their pictured diagram of what we are supposed to do the first week on the fridge. I have the Turbo13 red box that starts the program for fat ladies, and my husband has a small box of shake powder packets and the rest of his non-frozen choices.

I eat ONLY from the magic red box the first week and he drinks a shake each day, plus has a hunger-curbing bar the first week, plus his regular choices for the diabetic program. He’ll want to try the frozen stuff first, so that’s the main reason we’ll wait to start until that arrives. I want us to be in sync and as happy as possible that we’re starting to get the lard off together.

Example: he looked at the schedule of his eating for a typical day and said, “Okay. 7am That’s it. I’m not getting up any earlier to eat.” THEN, I’m not going to eat 6 times a day.”  I told him – gritting my teeth – that all this signified was that he was supposed to eat every 2-3 hours during the day, breakfast – a shake mid-morning – lunch – a snack mid-afternoon – dinner – a snack before bed, starting  at 8am and stopping after the after dinner snack. He grumbled, and then said that sounded okay, but that he wasn’t sure he’d eat all the snacks. I told him that if he didn’t, it would actually hinder his weight loss and he wouldn’t get the nutrition he’s supposed to get.  I also reminded him that we discussed all this and we agreed to it before I placed the order. Grumbling again…..  (I think this is all for show. He wants to lose weight. He just likes to drag his feet.)

I cleared some plastic bins to hold our non-frozen choices. I’ll put our stuff away this morning, labeling his food AND the bins so we don’t get mixed up.

I’m starting to read through the material that came with our food, trying to find out if we need to get something special at the store. So far, I’ve found that we need to buy two shaker bottles for the shakes.

I will measure all my parts so that I can hopefully prepare to be very pleased – if I’m a good girl – with the results.

I’m still feeling pretty overwhelmed, but I’m improving.  I’ll wait to start NUMI – their food and exercise tracker – until the first day we actually start the program. Hopefully, we’ll get the emails re the frozen choices very soon.

I’m getting antsy to start!

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