Week Twenty-Seven: Sneaky Tweaks

I made many minor tweaks this past week, hoping to trick myself into getting more exercise and eating better. 

Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay 

Tweak 1- Parking father away while delivering (parking lots only.) Most days, I did park at least 3-5 spaces further than I usually do, forcing myself to walk a little farther each time I stopped in a new parking lot. 

Rainy days were the only exception, but as a whole, this worked really well! I found myself getting tired earlier in the evenings, which is a good sign.

Tweak 2- Not filling the pantry right away. Chips are still eaten regularly and usually restocked before the last bag runs out. I wanted to see if running out of chips would cause a panic, so I skipped them on my previous shopping trip, opting for fruit and veggies instead. 

I found that I really enjoyed that handful of chips, and though I was never in a panic about getting them, I still missed them terribly when I had a small sandwich during my eating window. The good news is that I can do without them- I just don't want to. The bad news is fruit and sandwiches don't mix...at least for me.

Tweak 3- Baking bread for the week. My husband and I have made homemade bread and sandwich rolls for the past two weeks now, and the entire family prefers that over store-bought or even bakery bread! I'm sure we'll still go to the bakery when we want something we can't bake yet-like bagels-but for now, homemade loaves and rolls are fantastic. It even toasts well and goes great with soup!

Tweak 4- Changing the snacks. Yes, I'm keeping my chips, but we're also bringing in healthier foods as snacks, even though I hardly snack anymore. Strawberries, pears, bananas, and oranges are replacing junkier foods, and though we still have chocolate, it's the dark kind with cracked almonds made into bits of bark. 

Just a palm-sized bark piece is enough to satisfy, and you can never go wrong with fruit when you have a craving for something sweet. I still have some jellybeans, but they are top-quality ones that actually taste good and are only eaten in small quantities. Once or twice a week, if that.

Tweak 5- Changing the way we cook. We are a family of four and have been cooking in bulk for so long that it usually lasts all week when we cook on the weekends. But lately, I've seen a trend I don't like. Food is getting wasted. Soups stand uneaten in the fridge for longer than I'd like, and leftovers wind up molding before they're consumed.

I hate wasting food. We were blessed with an abundance of food storage, but you can't freeze everything! We had a family meeting, and I found out why no one was eating the leftovers, and we agreed that we needed to adjust our bulk-cooking habits and make half of what we usually do. We're trying out that this week.

Remember I told you last week about making homemade pasta? I'm still working out what kinds of dough to make, but we're implementing that in the next week or two. The pasta sheeter remains unused, but not for long! 

My son wants to try it using our homemade stromboli dough and see if he can make homemade hot pockets for the family and work. Now that's something I can support! The entire family has ideas for all kinds of filling. We can make these in bulk, freezing half and baking half for heat-em-ups during the week. 

The only concern I have is I'm not sleeping as well or as deeply as I'd like. I have trouble staying asleep and find myself crashing right before going to work at noon. Sometimes I took a cat-nap about thirty minutes before I leave. 

I've never done that before. I nodded off several times over the weekend too. I still haven't been able to figure out why. It could be the exercise, or it could be the bread. I might have to do a few self-tests to see what's going on.

My feet are starting to swell again, and it could be because I'm not mobile enough when I get home. Mornings I do well-I run errands, do chores, etc. and then walk further during work, but when I get home, I eat and crash on the couch, then stay there for the most part until bedtime. I need to be on my feet at night, too; otherwise, my joints don't work, and it's a struggle going up the stairs.

Next week is weigh-in day. I've been doing my up and down days this entire month, so hopefully, I'll see a positive change on the scale. Making my homemade Green Soup definitely helped with my down days this week- it's filling, brothy, and light- perfect with a small sandwich made out of a homemade dinner roll. 

Next week will be two weeks over the six-month mark; a real achievement for me! Even if the weight loss isn't stellar, I'll take pictures just for comparison from the beginning until now. I know the numbers will be vastly different!

Week Twenty Six: Baking and Aching

 Wow-what a week!

I've decided to make Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays my down days. One hour eating windows on my down days, four hours or less on my up days during the week, and on the weekends, I open up my windows wide for seven to eight hours. I prefer six or seven-hour windows on the weekends, but that isn't always possible- especially this past weekend.

But let's start at the beginning.

Mondays are always hard because I'm coming back from a nice open and filling weekend. I get hungry earlier, but water usually staves off pangs when they come. 

I drink a lot of water on Mondays! 

When I got home, I made a colossal chicken cobb salad. I should have stopped there, but I found myself eating food 'just to get rid of it.' I did that a lot this week too, which is very bad any day, not just down days!

Tuesday was better, though I still had to remind myself I wasn't a trash can and that I didn't need to finish something off if I really wasn't craving it. I really should have consulted the Fast, Feast, Repeat book again to refresh my resolve, but instead, I bought myself a treat I'd wanted for weeks.

There's nothing wrong with getting myself something I'd been craving, by the way- I just didn't need to buy two big boxes of it!

Wednesday was a little more challenging as a down day, and though I'd eaten my one meal in one hour, I supplemented that meal more than I should have. It's so much harder when you don't have good things prepared ahead of time! Maybe this weekend I could do something about it.

Thursday went well, though I'd eaten until more than satisfied and had a half meal later on before my window closed.

Friday was better than Wednesday, yet I still couldn't help supplementing with little extras.

Saturday was awesome! I made my breakfast near noon and enjoyed my first meal immensely. We were so excited about spring coming that we bought many different herbs and greens for fresh future salads and seasonings. 

I defrosted a pork loin for meal-making that night. I'd made two different meals; I made Green Soup for my down days during the week, and since my husband and I were the only ones eating that night, I used the rest to make pork tenderloins in a creamy wine-rosemary infused sauce with buttered carrots, green beans, and buttered noodles. 

Making two meals at once isn't easy. I'd been out of practice for so long I was hurting by the end of the night. We packed up the soup when it cooled into single-serving containers, so all I had to do was put some rice in a bowl (which was already cooked and in a gallon bag in the fridge), add the soup, and I had a meal that would only be a few minutes in the microwave. 

Down days handled!

Then came Sunday. I had ideas of what I'd wanted to do, and so did my husband. But the gears were missing a few teeth. 

I had to re-pot the plants, and since it was still cold out, all of them wound up in my sunny sewing/writing room. By the time I was done, I'd needed a break. I still had so much to do!

My husband bought a pasta sheeter, and I bought a book on making pasta by hand, along with a small, ridged pasta board and the pasta flours we'd need to make dinner that night. Yes, I had soup in the fridge, but this was his famous Radiatore Soup; it's a cream-based soup with sauteed grape tomatoes, spinach, and chicken in a wine-and-herb-infused broth, with Radiatore pasta nuggets.

You need an extruder to make Radiatore pasta. 

He wanted me to use the sheeter, but I wanted to make the Radiatore by hand. I hadn't made pasta before. It looked easy enough, so I thought I'd give it a go. However, my husband also wanted fresh rolls and loaf bread, and since I'm the bread expert of the house. I'm the only one who can shape them correctly. So now I'm not only responsible for making the fresh pasta right before it goes in the pot, but I'm also supposed to shape the bread dough for both dinner and for sandwiches during the week.

Image by PublicDomainImages from Pixabay 

I shaped three loaves, a dozen large buns, and about two dozen dinner rolls. My husband also needed about a pound and a half of pasta made. The rolls and bread were done with perfection- I can shape bread dough in my sleep. 

But the pasta? A lot of trial and error. The dough was too soft, so I added flour, re-kneaded it, and let it rest. Twice. It took me about thirty minutes to get a pasta-making rhythm going, and by the time the pasta was done, more than two hours had passed, and my shoulders were aching.

Because of me, dinner was late. I ate, although my window should have shut over thirty minutes ago. 

Oops. 

It didn't help that my husband joked that my pasta looked like giant mealworms. Thanks, Hun.  The soup still turned out well, but the next time I need to prep a lot of stuff, I'm using the pasta sheeter!

Maybe I'm weird, but I still would like to make fresh pasta next week—this time with the sheeter.

This morning I still ache a bit. I didn't even know I had that many muscles in my neck and shoulders! I'm confident that this week will go well because most of the food I'll be eating has already been prepped and ready to go. There's nothing like homemade soup with a sandwich made with freshly baked bread.

I'll also take another look at the book and see where I can improve and change my eating habits. In the meantime, I'm gaining muscle from my Ache and Bake weekend!

Week Twenty-Five: Return From Never-Ever Land

So many changes...could it be that almost six months ago I was nearly crippled?

My world was limited. I began to realize there were things I might not ever do again. Like shopping in a regular store, simply because I couldn't walk or stand for long. I could never tour my daughters' college grounds or visit the horses there. And I certainly would never be able to go on long walks with my husband during vacations, whether they were on mountain trails, beaches, or boardwalks!

My world was shrinking to a Never-Ever Land. I was becoming my own, immovable island.

Photo by Tom Winckels on Unsplash

Intermittent fasting has changed not only the way I eat, but it's also changed my health, the way I live, and even changed my relationships with those around me.

All for the better!

Two major firsts since I started this journey; I no longer need to use those motorized carts at those warehouse stores, and I took my first pain-free shower this past week.

These might not seem huge accomplishments to most, but for me, these are epic.

If you read my IF journey from week one, you know I was in constant pain. I was at the point that no matter if I was standing, walking, or sitting, I couldn't do it for long because it would start to hurt. Showering was absolute agony. My back would spasm. My calves would burn, and sharp pains would make the muscles cramp. I couldn't even reach parts of my anatomy to clean myself properly! 

By the time the shower was over, I was hobbling, in tears because it hurt so bad, making small hurried baby steps from the bathroom to my side of the bed (which was less than ten feet away since our bathroom is part of the master bedroom) just so I could sit down for relief. It took several minutes with my calves shaking uncontrollably before the cramps would stop, and only then could I straighten my legs and finish toweling off.

I avoided showers- sometimes for two weeks in a row.

Shopping wasn't much better unless I had a motorized cart. I even left the store once because no carts were available. They used to have a bench where I could wait, but there were no places to sit since the pandemic hit. When the pain got too bad, and there was no motorized cart in sight, I left.

My husband, who was already exhausted from work and ministry duties, took over what was supposed to be my job. He also took over most of the cooking because I couldn't stand at the stovetop too long.

My weight and eating increased because I was stuck on a couch, bored and hurting, and the only way I knew how to comfort myself was through food. So I got bigger and hurt more. It was a vicious cycle.

Six months. That was all it took to change my life and my relationships forever.

I'm more active than I was when I weighed 300 pounds- and I'm actually thirty pounds heavier! And guess what? I still have chips- just not every day. I don't want them as much anymore. But the energy! I've been doing so much more around the house, parking a little farther in the parking lots during my work hour deliveries, and even started repotting ginger to put in my sewing room windows.

Not to mention my marriage is so much stronger than it was- and it was pretty strong to begin with. But all of the household tasks were becoming his, and that's not fair. I haven't taken over everything I'm supposed to do yet, but I've been able to relieve the pressure from him and even do a few extra things to help him out. We are partners, and I've been sitting on the couch too long. Literally. 

We are so much happier now because he can depend on me more- and he can rest and relax like he should. I forgot how much I like cooking for my family.

Oh! I must tell you about the jellybeans!

Easter for me is Jellybean Season. I'm a jellybean fanatic! I love the colors, flavors (yes, I even came to love the black licorice ones), and when I saw a deal for three bags, I got them. I took them home, giddy that I would soon be in jellybean Nirvana.

I got home, tore open the bag, and took two of each flavor in rainbow order (because that's how I roll), and popped two in my mouth.

I was underwhelmed. They didn't taste like I remembered them. 

Disappointed, I closed the bag and took my bean stash out of my hidden spot, and put them on the shelf for the general public (aka my family) to eat.

I found another three-bag sale on another brand of jellybeans. These were lower-grade candy than the first brand, but I remember liking them. So I bought them. Got home, did the same rainbowy thing, and chewed. They were okay but not stellar. Into the general population you go.

Then we went to that warehouse store. I walked the entire thing! And guess what? They had really high-quality jellybeans. The bag had some weird flavors, but I liked most of them. It was a big bag, and almost reluctantly, I put them in my cart. Third times the charm...right?

Took them home. Didn't even bother with rainbows or flavors this time because there were thirty kinds of beans in that bag. But I did find two of the same kind and popped them in my mouth.

I chewed. They were better than the last batch, but not the mouth-and-mind-blowing experience I used to have. But these were good enough to stay in my stash- just not good enough to eat the whole bag in one sitting. These were every-so-often-when-I-want-something-sweet kinda candies.

The Jellybean Season is over. For good this time. 

Though the chocolate-coated caramel eggs are awesome. They are also an in-the-mood treat.

I returned from Never-Ever Land into a broadening Land of Opportunities. The more I do, the more I want to do, and the more confidence I'm gaining in getting things done!

Week Twenty-Four: Maintaining Muscle Weigh-In

Wow...has it really been six months already?

Well, almost six months, according to the calendar. More like five-and-a-half months, but I'm doing this in four-week stretches, so that counts...right?

My measurements were surprising; I went down in everything except my belly- and that could be because I had some really awesome beef jerky this week. A friend makes it, and it was delicious. The belly bloat is probably due to salt content. I felt pretty good about my measurements, but I was flabbergasted when I stepped on the scale.

It registered a thirty-pound loss! Wait...that couldn't be right. This was a freight scale. It's always calibrated correctly for weight accuracy. But there was no way I'd lost thirty pounds in a month! I asked the shipping manager (after I got off the scale) to double-check. He grinned and moved a counterweight over, resetting the weight back to zero.

Not gonna lie- I was thoroughly disappointed when he moved that counterweight! But I stepped on the scale, knowing the numbers had to be pretty good.

I was 330 lbs. My weight stayed the same. Huh?!?

But my measurements were good. They were better than good in some places! How could this be? Okay, so this past month was a period of tweaks, and this past week was a real struggle to do my up and down days (my down days were more uppish than downish), but to stay the same? Weird.

Then I remembered something. I'd made a point to become more active at home since it was too cold outside to do walks. So I'd been standing, lifting, and being a lot more mobile than I'd been in previous months. So what do smaller measurements and no weight loss mean?

I gained muscle.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay 

Let's take a look at the differences:

Original numbers:          4 weeks ago:              Now:                Difference:

Weight 363 lbs.                  330                        330                     none

Biceps- 23"                         20"                     19-3/4"                 -1/4"

Chest- 61-1/2"                 59-1/2"                  58-3/4"                 -3/4"

Waist- 58"                       56-1/4"                   57-1/4"                 +1"

Hips- 69-1/2"                  64-1/2"                     62"                  -2-1/2"

Thigh- 32"                       31-1/2"                  31-1/4"                 -1/4"

Neck- 18"                        17-3/4"                  17-1/2"                 -1/4"

I lost a lot in my hips- no wonder my pants fit better! 

Yes, the weight loss numbers are disappointing, but when the measurements show a loss, that tells me I'm still doing something right. That gives me hope and the motivation to keep moving forward.

I must remember this is just not a journey just in weight-loss- this is a journey to a better, healthier lifestyle. The fact that I've stuck to IFing for this long is saying something! 

As for food choices, I'm still having issues with quantity- quality is always good (about 90% of what we eat is homemade), but those down days are really tough when you know those fantastic tasting leftovers are in the fridge. 

And I need to ease up on my jerky consumption. I don't have salt issues, but I do bloat, and that's not good for me. 

I'm trying to talk the jerky guy into making me some chicken jerky as well as beef. I cut it into small pieces when I get the munchies. It really helps to keep my mouth busy on my down days- like little pieces of chewy joy. Yum! 

Ahem...but I still need to cut down on eating jerky...

Come spring, my plans are to take my exercise to the next level- yard work and maintaining the outside of the house. I don't want to go to a gym for my workouts. I'd rather put that energy into something that will benefit the family and home life. I really want to tackle the ivy beds in our front yard!

As for now, I'll be stepping up on inside decluttering, reorganizing, and cleaning. Spring cleaning isn't just for spring, and now that I have some extra energy, I might as well put that energy to work!

Week Twenty Three: Home Stretch Pants

I did something this week I hadn't done in almost a decade. I bought some new pants! WOOHOO!

Image by heng jiguai from Pixabay 

I wish this photo was me. It's not. But this is how I'm feeling in my now exceedingly baggy sweat pants. 

Why is she so excited? You may ask. Because I'm not one to buy retail. Ever. But my pants were literally starting to fall off of my hips, and no amount of string tying was going to make them not look like I was doing a 'Hammer Time' video.

Besides, the inner thighs were nearly threadbare and showed so many scars from my previous hole-fixing stitches that even Frankensteins' monster would've been envious. It was time to get new ones.

But wait. My capris were also getting baggy and Frankenstein-y. Most of the shorts I have were already on the baggy side as well. Come spring, I'd be breaking some serious 'exposure' laws.

I'm not gonna lie- this is an awesome problem to have!

So I went online, perused my favorite shop, and got a few pairs of shorts, a few capris, a couple of sweat pants, and something I've never worn before- yoga pants.

Tim Hawkins was right in that song he wrote. They feel awesome against ones' cheek! Which cheek? I'll leave that up to your imagination. But they were so soft.

The best part? I purposely ordered some of them because they ran small. Forgive the pun, but do you realize just how huge that is?

I usually buy things that are roomy, stretchy, or larger than my so-called size. Yet I was confident that if they didn't fit now, they would soon enough. How fantastic is that?

The first lot of them showed up last night. It was the capris and two pairs of yoga pants. I tried them on this morning. 

All five of them fit.

One pair was tight, but I got them on. The other pair fit rather snug around my rear, but totally wearable. The rest were also a little snug around my calves but fit well. They could handle a bit more weight loss before I'd get arrested.

By springtime, I'm going to look fantastic!

The sweats should be in this week. I'm looking forward to trying on new clothes. 

Oh yes- I almost forgot. This blog is supposed to be about my eating, not my fabulous new pants. I did the up and down days three times this week, the down days being more 'up' than I wanted them to be. I think I did okay- not stupendous, but okay. The pants were a great confidence booster and came just in time.

Why? Because I weigh myself next week! Maybe it'll be warm enough so I can wear my new yoga pants!