Okay, I laughed LOUD...awesome marketing...

baby carrots in a whole new light...3, actually<<

Also...I have enabled comments without having to sign in, just so ya know.

soup so good you could eat it with a spoon...?!

Experimenting with font today as a friend tells me the gray was too hard to read on the background.  Let me know about this one, okay?

Eating plan is still working.  Definitely still learning about this portion control thing.  At yesterday's lunch in the bistro, I substituted tomato soup in for the rice.  With it came...2 packets of crackers.  My natural tendency is to put so many crackers in my tomato soup that one could almost eat it with a fork.  Yesterday's experiment:  just 2 little saltines in the bowl (as I write this I'm asking myself...Karen, aren't saltines white flour?  hmmm...ooops....)

Anyway yesterday I learned that I CAN indeed back off even on things like that...soup was good.  

Running late for my early start.  Happy day, all!

nice day and a God project

Really great day.  Started with some "awesome God" stuff that left me crying all the tears out of my head.  Continued with my son coming to lunch - he's on the same track that I am, eating-wise, so it was easy, fun, and a pleasure to whip up something for the 2 of us.  Afternoon of catching up on laundry and other small assorted things.  Food's been easy today.  Looking in the fridge, and checking my bank balance...hmmm...there may be challenges between here and payday!


Oh well, I'll just take that one to the Lord.

better coping techniqes

I stopped for food on the way home from work tonight.  I was exhausted and could feel that it would be very easy for me to just go get a large pizza and eat the whole damned thing myself.  Instead I hit the freezer section and got some lovely stir fry...wandered through another aisle to find sugar-free lemonade (sometimes I am just TIRED of water and milk all the time...and don't really need soda...)  Last of all:  sugar free chocolate pudding mix, cuz I was feeling the longing for sweet and of course I've been out of sweets since the infamous day of falling/diving off the wagon.  

Dug a candle out of the closet (somehow I have lived here 7 months and hadn't unpacked candles yet from the last move), turned down the lights, and found the most soothing music I know.  

Being very good to my very tired self.

This feels so much better than a binge. 

notch this, baby

Today was yet another working lunch - happily there were good choices available again, and it wasn't hard to skip the bag of chips that was offered.  

My belt tells astonishing tales of late.  Awhile back when I was working out faithfully, I had gone 2 notches smaller on it.  Right before I started COWS, I had moved back out those 2 notches - a very depressing development, indeed.  

Monday it was moved back in a notch.

This morning, another!

So I guess I've regained the ground most recently lost in the battle.  

Most importantly, I'm loving the eating plan.  It works in my life.

i'll take mine black, thanks

I have substantially less sugar in my life these days than usual.  I didn't realize before limiting myself to 3 sweets a week exactly how much sugar was sprinkled all the way across most of my days.  

Tonight I was in a meeting and got a tickle in my throat...one of those that threatens to just never go away, you know?  There was hot coffee in a carafe right in front of me...decaf, even.  A hot drink ALWAYS does the trick for me with the terminal throat tickle.  I looked around...within arm's reach was the real sugar.  The substitutes, though...nothing even remotely accessible without making a big clumsy scene amidst important conversation.  I generally dump 2 or 3 packets of sweetener in a small styrofoam cup...you don't even want to know how many I put in a big coffee mug.

So I poured myself half a cup and drank it straight.  Let me tell you that awhile back I joined some of my Sunday school kids in a test of the theory that switched my mom from doctored coffee to black, back when I was a little girl...someone told her and a friend that if you drink it black for 2 weeks, you learn to love it that way.  I remember those 2 weeks (I was a nosy little kid always lurking around to overhear what the grownups discussed).  And mom always took her coffee black after that.  

So anyway, I told my class that story and the next thing you know they were trying the 2 week test...so I tried it with them.  It worked for some of them.  But it didn't work for me, despite the fact that I gave it more like a month.  I learned to be able to swallow it without shuddering, but it still tasted....so bad.  I used that to teach the kids:  don't form a 30+ year bad habit - it's harder to break than one you've had for 1 year or 2.  

Tonight, though...the black coffee...it was fine!  I mean, I wasn't like, "YUM" but...it was fine.  Enough so that I poured another half cup and drank it too.  My throat was much better, and my brain was abuzz with amazement about not hating on the unsweetened coffee.

The lesson here seems to be that stripping my sugar down to almost none...is making me more receptive to other tastes.

That's pretty nifty, eh?

battles about nothing and moving right along

Yesterday was another lunch meeting at work.  I was a bit worried about it, because I was having a very hungry day and we know how well I managed temptation the day before.  Emailed a friend to pray, and I also was praying as a steady backdrop to my morning.


Lunch was good choices and right portions.  But my dread was...dun dun duh....dessert!  Someone at the table speculated that it might be cheese cake.  Let me tell you, a battle happened within me between Karen Who Wants to Stick to the Plan and Karen Who Wants Whatever Is in Front of Her.  I prayed, prayed, prayed.  And came to a place of peace - I could turn down the cheesecake.  It wouldn't be easy, but I felt the resolve happen in me and it was good.


After all that drama...there was no dessert offered.


LOL LOL LOL


Pondering the blues of the day before yesterday - causes, effects, etc.  


No answers there.


Here's to Wednesday!