I've been fairly careless this past week. Although I've been keeping a close watch on when I eat those carbs (and which ones), I'm finding it very challenging to forego rice or potatoes with dinner -- I also didn't see a salad all week (Traci hangs her head in shame...). Those fantastic potato salad leftovers don't count as a proper salad, no matter how tasty -- I essentially ignored all "green food" all week...
Here's what I learned this week:
- Beef 4 evenings in a row is not a good thing -- in the TMI category of "not good"...
- When desperate, I will eat the yucky flavoured Ruffles...
- I have some incredibly supportive friends who I will be forever grateful to have in my life -- and some very self-absorbed, non-supportive "friends" whom I thought would understand why I needed to work on me -- and have proven otherwise (more on this later)...
Results of my bad behaviour:
- Little/no energy or motivation -- it has taken a very concentrated effort to get anything accomplished all week, and on a few of those days it was all I could do to get out of bed...
- I have been very, very tired all week, even though I am sleeping fairly well -- the super-hot weather hasn't helped, but once I'm asleep, I stay that way but it hasn't been particularly restful sleep...
- Most mornings upon waking I have felt ill, and then most afternoons come down with a headache around 2:30 -- not good when you are teaching small children how to read...
- Mental fog (is that like a "brain cloud"??) has returned with a vengeance -- also not good when you are teaching small children how to read...
Confession time:
- OK -- already admitted to not a single salad all week. I did eat my usual veggies (cucumber, grape tomatoes) with my lunches, which were mostly sandwiches (with lettuce -- love, love, love lettuce on my sandwiches)...
- I drank LOTS of coffee every day -- yup, completely overdid the negative water and didn't drink any extra water to compensate for it. To be honest, I didn't make my minimum water requirements on any one day last week -- which probably accounts for the hangover-like feeling every morning -- dehydration is a nasty thing...
- Pizza, burritos, TimBits, Ruffles, chai tea latte -- not every day, mind you, but often enough...
My plan going forward:
- Two salads a day -- not necessarily as the main meal, but definitely a proper side salad will be a part of lunch and dinner...
- Make a batch of turkey chili to have on the nights when beef or pork is on the menu, especially if we've had it in the past couple of days...
- Have some of Dr. Mike's freaking amazing Taco Salad fixings on hand in case I want to do a meal-sized salad (I probably should...)
- No more than two cups (and I mean "cups" -- not those monster latte mugs) of coffee each day, instead of the four or five that I did this week -- and yes, the extra-large Timmy's counts as two cups -- dummy...
- Get all that water in -- I learned that lesson back in cycle one -- and then again in cycle 2 -- and then again in cycle 3 -- slow learner...
One thing I learned years ago was to have meats on a rotation basis -- if you have beef on Monday, you shouldn't see it again until Thursday at the earliest. A nutritionist cautioned me to put at least 3 days between eating "problem" foods if you are dealing with a food sensitivity. I know that beef affects me that way, and it's looking like pork is going to be a problem, too. Great...
17 Day Diet news:
- I am super-happy to report that one of my dear friends is enjoying fantastic success in her personal project -- she has lost some weight (more than she anticipated, I think!) in her first 10 days and is sleeping much better than before -- this was her reason for starting and I am so proud of her and excited for her!
- My boss fell "off the wagon" so to speak...lol! She was away on business for a week, and she's not followed the program since she's been back. We had a nice chat about it the other day -- she has noticed that she feels awful too and is getting back on the horse on Monday. While she was away, she "recruited" two more people into the lifestyle -- and they are loving it!
- The cookbook is coming! It will be a little on the late side for those of us who have already started, but I will be getting a copy anyway: The 17 Day Diet Cookbook
There has always been more to "Project Traci" than this weight loss -- as I've said before, it was never about the number on the scale (that's just how I chose to measure my progress) or the size of my clothes. It was about starting to feel better about myself -- who I am, what I believe in, the priorities I set -- and it was very hard to evaluate any of that when I felt like crap all the time and couldn't maintain concentration for more than 10 minutes. I didn't like what I saw when I looked in the mirror and doubted my sanity some days -- my self-esteem was almost non-existent. So a large part of my journey has been to sort all of that out; I'm still working on it and will be for a while -- some people are not going to be happy with the choices I make but to them I say, "People in glass houses...". One thing that I realized this week was that some of those old doubts and feelings were coming back -- partly because I have some people in my life who have not been supportive at all of this process -- and partly because I wasn't following my new lifestyle properly. Why the backslide??? It's a vicious circle -- people who should believe in me and support me weren't, so I started to question my motives because I was allowing these people to have power over me. So, I made some very difficult decisions in the past couple of days -- I am taking my power back and forging ahead without them.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has believed in my journey and understood the "why" behind it -- I know who I can count on!
(((HUGS))) to you all!!!
