One Hundred Days with No Sugar

Today, these things happened: I ate my chocolate Easter bunny.  (It was small.  Ish.) I did twenty-three minutes on the elliptical, and morning abs.  I did not have time for much weight-lifting, so I will do it tomorrow. I saw my primary care doctor, who said that losing ten to twelve pounds in a hundred days WAS good, WAS working, and to just keep limiting my carbs and eating healthy foods.  She thought this was good, not a disappointment.

I think fasting in the morning is every bit as hard as not eating sugar.  Particularly when it takes ten minutes for my computer at work to come up.  I have nothing to do. I tried to go to sleep very early last night, and, in fact, did, but was awakened a few times by the people I live with.  My daughter took an hour and a half to get home, and, knowing she was about to arrive, I couldn't doze back off. So, when I opened my eyes for the last time, it was quite light outside, and I knew that, dang it, I was late.  I hurried to the gym, and I did do twenty-two minutes on the elliptical AND weight-lift one double set of each thing AND do my morning abs.  Yesterday, with only twenty minutes total at the gym, I just stayed on the elliptical the whole time.  My weight was back down to the **1.  Hopefully, it will keep going down. I thought about waiting through the day to see if anything sugary was offered at work, but succumbed to the candy bar that I...

In a perfect world, I would have had ninety minutes at the gym this morning and weighed in nice and low.  That did not happen.  I only had twenty minutes.  I was short on time partly because I had to (surprise!) get my youngest son to a scout camp at eight o'clock, and my daughter to a driving lesson, also at eight o'clock.   My weight was **2, up four pounds from where it has been recently, and down eight from where it was one hundred days ago.  But I am sure it will go back down quickly. I stayed full until about nine-thirty, and then I counted down the minutes until noon.  It seemed it would never come, but I held firm.  I have to make an impact on my weight.  I have to keep trying.  At three minutes to twelve, I took my eggs upstairs to reheat them.  When I finished eating them, I got out my vanilla cookie-cake, and I opened it. Should i really eat it?  It was like finally getting married after a long engagement, or l...

You guys, I made it. And, I didn't. Even after yesterday's amazing workout, my weight was up a bit today.  Fluctuation happens.  It's going to be up tomorrow, too.   I went one hundred days without eating sugar. I did not lose that much weight.  Not nearly what I had hoped to lose.  My friend, Mike, predicted that.  How he knows about old ladies and weight, I am not sure, but he nailed it. Did I need to make this sacrifice?  Yes.  My weight was increasing and out of my control.  I got it down a little bit when I got married, but I got married right before the holidays, and it came right back up again.  It's been increasing for almost five years.  I do not want to be this fat. I needed to do something to get control of my weight.  I needed to do something drastic, something that would really get my attention and force me to make changes.  I already eat pretty healthy food, and I already go to a gym almost d...

I didn't mean to, but I was up for hours in the night.  By morning, I needed to sleep in.  I know, I know--is there ever a day that doesn't start out this way?  I used to honestly go to bed at seven, get up at three, do two hours at the gym, and get to work by six-thirty.  Those were the days.  (I was slim, too.)  (And young.) Nevertheless, I did the elliptical and abs and weight-lifting to a very good degree.  It was the routine with the free weights, where someone usually puts them away between sets.  No one put them away.  I had forgotten to bring my iPod, so I couldn't listen to music.  All I had was my phone, and I only have one song on it.  So, what do you think I did? I listened to true crime.  Instead of changing my routine song by song, I did three minutes on the elliptical in narrow mode, then raced the fourth minute, then switched to medium mode for three more minutes, racing the fourth minute.  Then I would...

The best thing about today was that it was my last day at work before my hundred days is up.  I left there with my little vanilla cookie intact and no birthday cake eaten.   It is interesting, though, how funny my brain is.  Even though I had felt like I had just about made it and gotten out of there free, the second I opened the front door to my home--where I feel I am usually safer, my eye fell immediately on the vanilla sandwich cookies I had bought for the parade.  This rebel in my brain called out that now that I had made it home and the hundredth day was close at hand, I could go ahead and eat a vanilla cookie. I am going to have to seriously deal with this guy.  I don't know who he is, but he is merciless. I thought I would have a better workout today, and I guess it was better in that I accomplished a longer weight-lifting routine, but I still only did twenty-eight minutes on the elliptical.  Not bad, but not my best work, either.  I...

I know I say this a lot, but, because my night's sleep was compromised, I was not able to get the whole workout I wanted and needed; however, I did go, and I did put in the whole abs routine, the whole lightest weight-lifting routine, and twenty-eight minutes on the elliptical.  I felt much, much better afterward. As soon as I got to work, though, a very nice coworker brought into my cubicle a huge piece of yellow cake, smothered in Cool Whip with a strawberry sauce on top.  We have finally gotten through all the birthdays on the team for a while, and this cake was completely unnecessary.  How am I going to keep my weight down if there is cake EVERY DANG DAY?!  I thanked her and reminded her I could not have any, but she put it down on my desk and insisted I could just eat the strawberry part.  It's not like there was a whole strawberry sitting there.  There was a strawberry sauce, which I would bet my life was cooked with sugar.  She took it away. ...

I didn't do so well today, and now I am up in the middle of the night, feeling bad about it. Here are the things that went badly: 1. I never made it to the gym, even though I very much wanted and intended to go. 2. I had three of the delicious rolls my daughter made to go with our lentil soup dinner.  She doesn't particularly care for lentil soup, so she made my mother's recipe for rolls, to vastly improve the menu.  (She later conceded that the lentil soup I had made, which was rich in vegetables, was perfectly tolerable.)  I let myself have a second roll at dinner, which, I know, is questionable behavior.  But then, to make things worse, I later let myself have even one more.  If I'm honest, I could go and down even more now in the middle of the night, but I am not going to do that. 3. I guess there really isn't a number three.  Maybe I'll be able to forgive myself for numbers one and two. The day started very early, because we had to help our t...

I went to bed early like a good girl last night, but I had nearly two nights' worth of sleep to get, and I was still listening to true crime episodes, so I did not get up early enough to go to the gym before going to work early to prepare for the presentation I had to give in staff meeting.  (I was mostly prepared, but, you know, to be there and make sure everything was printed, et cetera.)   So I did what I did last week one of the days when I did not have time to go to the gym--I ran in place for six minutes.  I did it for five minutes last week.  I just stood there in front of the clock and watched them tick by.  I might have actually done seven minutes today, because I was still distracted by the podcast I was still listening to, so I made sure it was at least six. Because we ate out last night, I couldn't eat today until eleven-thirty.  Someone had brought a lot of food for staff meeting treats, and I could not have any of it until after the m...

Today did not go completely as planned.  I didn't get any sleep, to speak of, until after three o'clock.  But, and you can be proud of me for this--I still made it to the gym.  I probably had about forty minutes to work out.  Twenty-two on the elliptical, plus full abs and weight-lifting.  I knew I would not get to come back and do even a second set of the weight-lifting in the time I had, so I did twenty reps of each thing instead of then. That counts. We had ANOTHER birthday cake at work today.  In fact, for some reason, the person brought two.  One had strawberries and whipped cream on it, but the other looked pretty tasty, too.  No one pressed me to have some.  It feels a little silly to hold out, at this point, but it also seems like it would be silly to give in at this point. I've got to figure out what my rules for life are going to be.  I know I'm only being strong because I know one hundred is a finite number.  But I ...

My weight was low enough this morning, that, tomorrow, it should show another drop.  I hope to get more pounds off during this last week. I am starting to get used to eating later in the day.  But, after I had my eggs and some leftover roasted potatoes, I still felt weak at church.  We cut up a cantaloupe and ate it after church, and Mark and I ended up eating the whole thing.   I found myself wanting to snack in the afternoon.  I had a handful of tortilla chips and a handful of almonds, and then I realized I was going to keep snacking if I didn't make dinner, so I made dinner.  It was spaghetti carbonara with two kinds of meat--bacon and chicken; cream and parmesan cheese; and four vegetables--onion, garlic, pepper, and broccoli.  It's one of my favorite meals.  I always serve myself a decent portion for dinner--enough to fill but not overfill me.  And I try not to have seconds. I put the rest away and had my cocoa right away, ear...

I did not go to the pool in the night.  I bought some nail polish remover and got the super glue off my fingers. I did, however, go to the gym this morning and got a decent workout.  I did abs and weight-lifted at least three sets of each of the eight things in this routine.  I also logged fifty-five minutes on the elliptical.  I have noticed that the more weight-lifting is making me tighter in different places around my torso.  And I am doing more weight-lifting than I probably otherwise would.  I've almost always weight-lifted in the past twenty-five years, but I am admitting to myself that I have been a little lazy lately.  I've done just one or two sets of each thing instead of three.  I think what happened is that I started doing four sets of everything, and I didn't like that--it was too much.  More than I wanted to do all the time.  And I got hurt.  And I have all these weird tendon and ligament problems everywhere.  I...

I was up too late, listening to true crime podcasts and waiting for my husband to get home from work.  How has this become my life? So, I just wasn't feeling it today.  What I was feeling was tired, weak, slow, heavy.  I went to the gym, where I worked out for a little over an hour.  I logged forty-five minutes total on the elliptical, and weight-lifted and did abs.  I found that I could not keep up my usual speed.  Every minute, I wanted to quit. We had another birthday cake at work today.  You guys, this was that big Costco chocolate cake that has dark-chocolate slab siding.  Before the birthday girl even came into the room, some of my teammates were stealing chunks of chocolate off the sides.  "Can't you people wait until August to have birthdays?" I whined, but they were merciless.  One woman said to me--I swear I am not making this up--"I just do enough things that I burn it off."  Tell me the truth--do you guy...

We don't know why, but my husband's phone alarm went off at six a.m. today.  Well, I know why--because it was time for me to go to the gym.  I really should have.  But my body was saying no way.  I lay down again, and I didn't think I slept, because I was frequently aware of lying there, but when I did get up a few minutes later, it was seven-twenty, so I probably did doze off here and there. It was too late, really, to go to the gym by then.  I mean, I could have rushed and done some, but it was pool day and I didn't.  I thought about climbing stairs, or dancing, but the truth was that I needed to take care of my daughter's fish, and I was behind on the blog, and I was very into some true crime podcasts I have been listening to for like a week.  Yesterday, I had listened to a very interesting and disheartening one, and I had gotten curious and looked for an update and found that the crime had actually been solved since that episode aired, so I was...

I went to the gym and worked out for over an hour--fifty-two minutes total on the elliptical and the rest on abs and weight-lifting.   I am going through the motions, but my heart doesn't really feel in it.  Maybe because the summer top I wore today--which I could and did wear--felt a little tight.  It used to be quite roomy for me.  So I know I still have quite a way to go, but the days are running out.  I mean, do I want to go on another hundred days without sugar?  Give it up forever?  Even though I am still not really losing much weight?  What if starting to have a little sugar--one small thing a day or just on special occasions--puts more weight back on me?  It wouldn't seem worth it.  And yet, I really did think this would help me. We had another birthday cake at work today.  i swear half my team was born in June and July.  This cake looked really, really good.  It was hard to pass up.  And, again, if I...

Literally, the first minute that I was at work--I was turning on my computer and had not even sat down yet--a team member came into my cubicle to tell me that there was leftover birthday cake from the day before.  Gah!  "I just want you to know, because it was really wonderful."  They had saved me a piece, and it was in the fridge.  Okay, people--whether or not I can eat cake is not going to depend on how wonderful it was.  If it has sugar in it, I would rather not know. I went through the motions today.  I did not eat any of the cake, nor any of the cookies that were still hanging around across the aisle from me.  I had the food i had brought.  I didn't even really have much of a dinner, because I gave the leftover carrot soup that my husband had still not eaten to him to take to work.  I did all of the eating right, but I did feel bad because I did not get to the gym. I saw the cake in the fridge, but did not look closely.  Someone...

Okay, I did make myself do abs last night, and it did help me to feel better.  I'm sure it helped me to sleep better, too. I got up this morning and did a seventy-eight minute workout, including fifty-two minutes on the elliptical, abs, and weight-lifting.  I was able to go down the line of weight-lifting machines I use for this routine twice, and, the first time, I did twenty reps on everything because I was afraid I might not get a second go.  So I did at least thirty reps of each thing, and there were eight different things that I did. When I do morning abs, I do six different types of crunches in six different positions, and, altogether, it comes to 540 crunches in all--unless I don't go through everything three times.  I almost always go through everything three times, but, sometimes, if I'm pressed for time, I might go through once (180 total crunches) or twice (360 total crunches).  Just so you know. On the elliptical, I was feeling stronger, and li...

I mean, I'm still off sugar, but I am not feeling excited about anything.  I was up for three hours in the night, then slept in.  By the time I woke up, it was time to eat, so I made some eggs for me, and some for Mark.  We had leftovers from last night's dinner for lunch.  I made carrot soup for dinner.  I made more lemon bars. Mark says the lemon bars are a little too sour for him.  My oldest son at home says they are "too rich," a phrase I honestly do not understand.  What the heck is too rich?  Is it like having too much money?  I've never tasted anything "too rich" in my life. Anything rich makes me want to eat more. Anyway, I think the keto lemon bars taste just as good as any lemon bars.  Honestly, I do.  But I don't want to end up eating the whole pan by myself, either, because I did use real flour.  I don't dare even bring almond flour into this house until my nut-allergy kid has left home. I think maybe I'm feel...

Because I was so tired and just went to bed last night, I had not yet started the laundry, as I usually do on Friday nights, and I was running a little low on clean gym clothes that fit.  I could have worn the new long black leggings Mark gave me for Christmas, but they don't have pockets, and would be hot, so I decided to wear my navy gym shorts.  I have avoided wearing them for months, because I have looked so fat in them and they have barely fit.  Same with the turquoise gym shirt I often wear with them.  Well, I still look fat in them, but less so.  It was a bit of a victory to put them on.   I did the long workout I have been wanting to do.  I decided to exercise a full ninety minutes, but it ended up being ninety-one.  Sixty of those minutes were on the elliptical, and the rest were abs and weights.  I did my weight-lifting routine with the free weights, so I had some interference.  Three times, I had to get them out again b...

A book I had ordered came in the mail, and I started reading it as I went to bed.  It was a page-turner, and I couldn't put it down.  Although I normally fall asleep reading, I couldn't fall asleep until dawn.  So I slept through my exercise time. When I woke, I would have called in sick, but I remembered having asked a few people to come into the office to see me.  I wasn't sure if I had actually put them on my calendar for a team member to see or not.  I tried to reach people on my team, but couldn't get through to anyone.  I knew my supervisor was out. So, I ended up going in to work at the normal time, just to get my caseload under control, see the people I was supposed to see--whatever needed to be done.  To my surprise, I was scheduled to substitute up front for people in a staff meeting, and, by then, I just stayed.  I had brought the book with me, which I had more than half finished, and I read it on my breaks and lunch, and finished i...

I admit I am not in a very good mood today.  I talked with my husband about it after work, and that helped. Mark agreed to go with me to the pool this morning, which I have been looking forward to, but the pool was full when we got there.  There was a male swimmer in the close lane, and The Cougher and her boyfriend taking up the other two-thirds of the pool.  At first, they were just standing at the ends of their lanes, playing on their iPads, but still taking up most of the pool.   I asked the man in the close lane if I could walk in his lane, and he was nice about it and did not even splash me.  Mark started walking in The Cougher's lane, but she continued to swim like a street cleaner, splashing on him and even hitting him one time with her arm.  She and her boyfriend don't say people cannot share the pool with them, but they continue to act like they are alone.  It seemed to me that, with the pool that full, they should agree to share a l...