Restarting the Trail

Bumpy Path, but a Path Nonetheless

I'm starting again after a lull in my determination to get healthy. I have stagnated for so long and want to see the other side of 200 pounds before the end of the year. Since SparkPeople closed down mid-month I have not been very religious about tracking my food. I know that I really overeat if I don't have at least a ballpark of where I need to be. Without the SP page I have defaulted to the FitBit tracker to go along with the tracker on my wrist. It is far from perfect, but it is rather helpful and only one app on my poor struggling phone.

For the past three days I have managed a walk of at least a mile, which is very good compared with the complete couch potato I have been over the past month. I am so close. I only ended up gaining four pounds instead of the projected 5. Small progress. With the tracking back in place I think I will be better off than just winging it, even if the amounts are off. I can see where and when my calories are being eaten and act accordingly. I have this tendency to forget when I have eaten and just how much that is. Time to restart weighing things again as well to just make sure that I am within my ranges and to get the feel for serving sizes. That training tends to fall apart after a few months. Time to retrain.

On the COVID-19 front, New Mexico is back to a flat indoor mask mandate, which is fine with me. It is especially important at work where we have a vulnerable population. Several of my friends and family are coming down sick with the virus, usually from a child too young to vaccinate. Hang around a petri dish of a kid and you are bound to eventually fall ill...though that's nothing new! Am I afraid of getting sick? Nope. Am I afraid for those who cannot get the vaccine or are at higher risk of infection? Hell yes! So I'll gladly wear the mask. I'm traveling soon and need to be careful not to snag any germs along my way. Air travel doesn't really bother me because of the air exchange, but the actual airports make me leery. However, I am unlikely to have issues.

I gave platelets yesterday and they were in desperate need of blood products of all types. With the hurricane shutting down collection and more injuries there needing blood, the national supply is really low. Plugplug: Go give if you can! I have a random bruise from it that just traveled from the poke to the bottom of my arm. No pain, just bright blue bruising. I'll take that to help others. Also managed to drive home to check my mail and snag coolers for my mom to thaw her freezer. But now I'm tired. It's a good thing that it is really slow at work. Which I should get back to shortly. Still have five minutes in my break.

I'm ravenously hungry. The lunch that was supposed to last me through till tomorrow will probably all be lunch today if my mouth has any say in it. But that is all part of flexing through the day. I will need to watch my snacks this afternoon to leave enough room for a heavy dinner. And now time to get back to work.

Any suggestions for staying on track when traveling?

Off the Wagon Again

The past two weeks have been a free-for-all on foods. Yes, there was a vacation in there, but that doesn't excuse the eating until overfull and then some. Mostly no exercise too. I have put on 5 pounds since SparkPeople closed. I haven't been tracking my food for the first time in over a year and it shows with how many times I have forgotten what I ate. Hard to gage how much food I need without tracking when I don't feel full until I am overfull. Not due to no options for logging food--there are plenty of trackers. Just more due to giving up for some reason. It is easier to choose inaction than to try something new. Knowing that, I am not too sure how I am going to keep up with active family next month. 

And holy hell, the vacation is only two weeks away! I will need to await new swimsuits to see what fits. I don't think the extra pounds will go well with the current top I have and the bottoms I just got will most likely still be too small. But a little more money dropped later and I will have something to wear while trying to not get sunburned. The old suit is disintegrating and just is not going to cut it. Some sewing of the old suit might help if need be. Also might want to search for some of my goggles too.

With more and more of my vaccinated friends falling to COVID I am once again having second thoughts about travel. But my likelihood of getting severely sick are slim. I just need to not be a carrier for getting other people sick. I'm wearing my mask at work when other people are in the building, unlike right now. Better to be cautious, especially just after travel! (And I think that there is a mask mandate again in the state, so I need to wear it anyway.)

As a side note, I appear to have left my little baggie of travel goops up north. Sad because those were my specialty containers for camping. Oh well, I can use the backups and try to send out feelers for where I might have left them around the room there. You always have to lose at least one thing per trip. All things considered, that was a minor loss.

I suppose that my lunch break is about to be up so I should end this thing. But there are so many new ramblings I could go about rambling on!

Wishful Thinking

Back to the Grind (For Now!)

The view from my home base

I spent the last week-and-a-bit out in Indiana with all sorts of family having a great time. I'm sad to be back at the grind of work and regular life, even though I know that my next trip is only a few weeks away! 

I got to stay at the lake and searching for bass and sun in between seeing everyone. Absolutely what I needed. I do have to say that air travel still sucks, but much less than my last few flights. Breezed through both sets of security and even had a couple flights in larger Southwest flights where there was a ton of legroom! Legroom? In a cheap plane? Hell yeah!

I did do a few things for work while I was gone, but for the most part I was just happy to exist away from normality. While I am not usually a fan of small children, the ones during the trip were pretty cute. I still stand by my no-babies-for-me stance. I did get some good photos of grand/great-grand parents with them though.

So now I have mostly caught up with work and finally taking my breaks. The rest of the job will have to wait until tomorrow when I can attack the computers/printer with a threat of baseball bat. Sometimes the threat is enough to scare them into working. 

New Mexico is back under a mask mandate, which doesn't bother me one bit. I even managed to alter my masks to make them fit better without having to readjust every three seconds. Go go gadget stapler! I was planning on wearing mine at work for a while just because of the travel bugs, but now I think I will be keeping up with it. No sense in endangering those around me who are not able to be vaccinated/aren't yet. 

And now one more photo for good measure:

The Velcro Dog Once I Got Home

Leavin' On a ...

 Jet Plane.

I'm sitting in the airport terminal wasting some time before getting on leg one of the three-leg trip. Luckily (?) I don't have to change planes in Florida from the Denver flight to Indianapolis. Means I won't be really stretching my legs either. That will have to happen in Denver or here, and I already traipsed around the terminals to get me good and going this morning. Not nearly enough, but it should be better than a day at my house on the couch!

I checked one bag, which was a good idea since my backpack is rather heavy with all the electronics and food in it and chances are that I would get off the plane without the second one out of sheer exhaustion. I know me too well.

I remember one time here where I used the wi-fi to play WoW. Must have been a trip out to San Francisco for Jason. Good times. Sad times. All of the above.

Had mom drive Loki here so she was ready to go to pick me up in a week and change. Basic care and feeding of the car as an overview and introduction all in ten minutes. No cruise control included. But she got the hang of Loki's basics and how to turn off the autostop button. Feels too much like an engine shuddering and stalling for her likes. I tend to agree with her in a lot of +90 degree cases. Got me dropped off at just before 8:30 and I dropped off the bag. Breezed through a streamlined version of security in a record 10 minutes start to finish. No need to remove items from the bag and I even was able to wear my FitBit through the scanner! Long way we've come since being able to meet your family at the gate! Thank you very much 9/11. I was a Junior in high school. So much has changed for the illusion of safety.

There are not a lot of seats available in the terminal now that people are supposed to socially distance. Being here early has its advantages. Probably not going to be so luck in Denver, but one can hope. I have about an hour here before I board and all of the ideal seats are taken. No singles available for people like me traveling without accompaniment. So there's room for my purse and bottles.

Now is a good time to charge my headphones that very well could save my rear in the airplane if there are any obnoxious kids or snorting adults. Only about half full right now, so that will get me through one flight, but not three, with one of them a 3 hour leg. I can sleep maybe? Getting in at 9:30 means that I am really getting in at 8:30, but I will still be dead tired I am guessing.

And I'm rambling. Here. Have a photo of my desk buddy. Alas, the little succulent has since died from too much water.

 

 

Gettin' Ready for a Trip!

I'm headed out for a vacation on Friday, with Dad holding down the fort with the dog. I spent a few minutes of lunch planning out my food for the day since I will be at airports from 8am till 9pm (Indiana time) and don't really want to pay for airport food. I will have to see how much I can beg hot water/cold water from the coffee shops, but I most certainly will be trying since I am guessing that the water fountains will be turned off. Planning for the worst and expecting somewhere between there and best. With COVID-19 I am mostly out of luck for drinks and snacks on the plane, so I need to plan accordingly.

I am upset that SparkPeople is going away on the 14th. It has been there for me for over a decade and I am going to miss the interaction with people on the forums. May have to see if we can get the group on FB more user-friendly instead of evil recipes something more waistline friendly. I may see about talking to the leader about steering it toward that end. I'm not seeing what I need on the new Spark360, so I will just have to use one of the other trackers since it keeps me honest during the day and sometimes even plan out what I will be eating.

All I've wanted to do today is eat. But in a good thing I have managed to rein in my munchies with the power of a super protein lunch and a smidge of milk. I even started eating some graham bunnies and stopped mid-baggie! Tea is wonders. Three cups today plus the big nalgene, so I have had plenty of water for the day--only two tea mugs! I'm not really sure how the trips are going to go, but I will probably estimate mentally how much I have eaten and hope for the best depending on what it is. I do have the other two apps on my phone, so I can chart it on there if I so choose. I just have to get the hang of it before this all disappears. May I should enter in my Friday for reference. Yeah. I can do that next break.

Till then, computer damage control.

Killin' It!

Killin' my teakettle that is. It's dead. I am making a required stop at Target to make sure not a day goes by that I am without fresh tea at work. And to pick up a few things while I am there.

Killin' puncturevine. Last weekend I weeded. And weeded. And I still see lots of goatheads every time I look! I will not give up though. I will get most of them before they go to seed so I at least will have less of them two years from now, if not next year since they are a two year cycle. Damn weeds.

Killin' a pair of good leather gloves thanks to the weeding. 

Killin' my set of pissed off joints. When I weed I sort of squat and lean an arm on one leg while the other one pulls out the suckers. Which means that I get quite the workout for my legs and hands. It feels like a flare, but I am hoping that it is just a transient case of overdoing myself. My fingers are mostly cooperating now, so my guess is that my legs, especially knees, are just being vocal from overuse.

Killin' the weight loss--the wrong way. I managed to gain weight over the past week and such just from not caring at all and being sick weekend before last. Or so I can blame it on. Not too much, like I had figured earlier, but I still gained two pounds in a week. I want to do that in the opposite direction! I'm not going to make my 200 by next week, but so it goes. It's just a number. But it still scares me that soon I can start writing my weight with a 1. No idea why the trepidation, but it's there. I'll get over it eventually.