August 25

Life has been getting in the way of blogging. Too much summer fun!! Or at least that's a convenient excuse....

School has started this past week, though, and after surviving a week of exhaustion and excitement and frustrations with schedules, I can feel myself settling into the "less is more" mentality about free time that only exists when I am extremely busy. 

Hence-- a post!

How's it going, you wonder?

In the face of all that summer fun and return-to-work stress, I must say I think my 30 days challenge is going remarkably well.  In fact, its almost been nice to have my rules to cling to through it all.  A bit of consistency and focus in an overwhelming month...

I've lost 7 pounds since the beginning of the month.  For a week or so I was dismayed to find that all this self-discipline was bringing no change at all, and then only enough to get me back to where I was at the beginning of summer (July?  Not so self-disciplined, it turns out).  But now, with a week still to go, I am happy to note that I have passed the 150 mark on my slow plod towards a goal weight at or below what I weighed in college. (Side note- on my 35th birthday I made the decision that there's really no reason I can't be in the best shape of my life at 40.  OK, there's lots of reasons, but that's now a goal in the back of my mind...)

It's not been all wine and roses this month.  Forgoing sweets at birthday parties makes one feel like a real scrooge, for example.  Its been ridiculously hard to find bread, breakfast cereals and crackers that are sugar free.   This has surprised me as I've never thought of them as particulary "sweet." And, I've had to break my rules a few times for salad dressings, of all things! And for pizza.  Because I have neither the foresight to bring my own food to pizza-serving events nor the strength of will to go hungry til I get home.

I've been rather hungry all month.  I think that's due to the unavailability of carbs in my life.  We don't tend to cook rice or potatoes or even pasta all that often.  Often it's a piece of toast or crackers that round out a meal. So my meal stays a little flat.  I've been snacking on nuts and fruit and homemade smoothie popsicles and while these satisfy in the short term they don't really fill one up.

But with more than half the month behind me, I find I'm getting used to it, and that feeling is, in fact, OK.  Maybe even better than the feeling I had after dinner at the Greek Festival last night  (we're just going to assume that those Loukomathes were sugar-free, OK?  The Greeks just use honey, right??).

And with more than half the month behind me I am really proud to say that I've not had candy ONCE.  And that I've gone a few days at a time without any "you know what I want right now..." thoughts. 

Thank you, rules.

Nat has been asking me what I am going to do next month (no clue yet) and that's gotten me thinking about what the end of the challenge will bring for my diet. 

I've been compiling a mental list of the things I really, truly miss:  jam, good bread and crackers, choices of breakfast cereals that don't taste like low quality cardboard, cookies, ice cream...

And then I've been thinking to myself-- how many of those things do I miss so much that I NEED to reintroduce them on September 1st?  Am I planning on having some sort of sugar orgy at midnight that day?  Going back to eating what I want, when I want... and feeling kind of bloated and grumpy a lot of the time?

And this morning, with the sun shining in the backyard and the memory of the "149" fresh in my brain, I am thinking-- none of them, really.

I may just have to keep this going.

Not as an official challenge-- that would be dull-- but as a way of life.

Revised rules may be in order.  For instance, leniency with salad dressings. And, foods with sugar listed in the "less than 2%" category.  And maybe, one dessert a week. But the rest of it?  I think I may be able to live with it.  Ideally, for a long, healthy time...