Day 2

Yesterday went much better than the last two weeks. I really focused on who the “new me” was and reached out to recover her. I can’t thank you readers enough for all the encouragement and sound advice you gave me regarding my last post. It was quite a reality check too. I get thinking negative things and over time they just snowball to where I can’t see reality beyond the lies my mind is telling me. Thank you!

I took my walk in the hot sunshine. It was a very slow walk. Most of that was not due to my lack of energy though. Mid afternoon is busy in my neighborhood. We have narrow streets, no sidewalks. When cars go by, I have to pull the dog in close and either hug the very edge of the road or go into the brush on the side of the road. Yesterday I had lots of cars, a school bus and a home improvement truck that drove past me four times. On the fourth time I was going to snap a pic of his license plate, but I didn’t get my camera out soon enough. I thought it was unlikely he was up to no good since he was advertising his business on the side of the truck, but you never know.

But the real slowness, I think, was the horrible shoes I choose to wear. They were so hard to walk in! (I’ll put up a separate post about the shoes.)

My dog was not too happy about the heat. He really is showing his age (almost 11). We went two miles and in spite of walking so slow, I did ask him to run up a couple of the hills (just inclines, not big hills or anything) at fast speed. He loves to run and is very fast. It’s more that his endurance has gone way down. He hasn’t started having old-age problems yet. We went through a couple years with our other golden retriever suffering from arthritis, seizures and messing in the house. I’m not looking forward to those times again.

I went past some lilacs in bloom that smelled so nice. I was thinking it was so nice to have some signs of the end to our cold weather.

I ate well yesterday. Here’s my daily intake captured in pictures. It was about 1300 calories. That’s much better than it has been lately. I went to bed hungry too, but that’s ok. It won’t last. If I eat the right things, the hunger pains and cravings will lessen.

In putting these pictures together I noticed how much of my pantry has become filled with organic foods. The only things I ate yesterday that were not organic were for lunch: the corn tortillas, salsa and cheese. I live in a small town and finding organic foods is a challenge. I try to shop if I’m in the city.

Yesterday was my volunteer morning, so I just grabbed the nut and fruit bar to take along. The hardest part of eating yesterday was the afternoon snack. I wanted an ice cream pop. They’re so yummy and only 200 calories. So easy too, just unwrap and eat. No washing, cutting, cooking, etc. But there’s also nothing healthy in the ice cream pop and plenty of not so healthy things. So I had an apple and drank lots of coconut flavored carbonated water (no calories, no artificial sweetener) to get through till dinner.

The whole day of eating could have been improved with more vegetables and less grains that is more typical of how I eat. For one thing, I usually don’t eat grains at dinner and often prepare two vegetables instead. I really do love vegetables and it feels like a complete meal if there’s three items on the plate.

Now to regain the exercise side of “new me”.