So I am trying desperately to finish up my book.  I finally became a jew, I have went on three vacations, and did tons of socializing.  Today, I will go to my volunteer for hospice, hopefully work out, have lunch with a new friend, go work on fundraising efforts for the temple, and goodness knows what else.  Yesterday I went to the gym, cleaned house, made 4 dishes for the website, shot photos, editied photos, did some consulting on a new website that I will be assisting with, oh and went to a lovely ‘Night of Why’, presented by my temple.  Meanwhile, I just want to catch my breath. 

It isn’t a complaint about being too busy, as much as right now the pace is so desperately fast.  I just want to catch my breath.  I most likely wouldn’t change it for the world either.

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Upon coming back I am still doing diet gourmet meals, and I joined another gym.  Managed to make it to work out today.  So hopefully I will be moving forward on this again. 

My life has been uber crazy for the past month.  During all of these vacations, I have turned in about 80% of my book to the editor, and this weekend I hope to finish the rest.  I have class one night a week, and still do volunteer stuff on the weekends.  I honestly don’t know if I am coming or going.  I hope things slow down soon!

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Normally I have logged everything that I have ate, but not for the past few days.  Thankfully the scale hasn’t moved in the upward direction.  I have tried cutting way back on portions, and then also keeping in mind to take each day at a time.  I am hoping to lose a few more pounds in December, and start the year off running!

Now, down 7.8 pounds since November 19th.

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On another note, I was looking around the web and there are lots of great spreadsheets that have information on how your weight changes, and how you can rule out the day to day fluctuations.  So if you are good with Excel I would recommend modifying this spreadsheet. It will rule out any daily sudden increases with the five day moving average.  I know it has me feeling better.

I don’t relish the thought of taking on a weight loss plan in the middle of the holidays.  It makes social events awkward for me.  I have generally been the one to keep a pretty full wine glass, and would nosh on everything.  My last social event was highly restrained, me drinking water the whole evening, and not inhaling all of the wonderful cookies that were floating around.  At times I would sell my soul for a fresh out of the oven cookie. 

I seriously love DietGourmet, and will be using them a couple of times a week to make dining easier.

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So for the past two weeks I have been following something between Nutrisystem, and Weight Watchers.  I actually ordered the Nutrisystem monthly supply, but it took two weeks to arrive, so I joined the Weight Watcher program online.  I can definately tell you there are large differences between the two programs.  Large.  The Nutrisystem food while isn’t horrible, at times, isn’t tasty either.   I find the Nutrisystem concepts of breakfast not to be that satisfying, but their lunches, dinners, and snacks range from ok to decent. 

Weight Watchers gives you the opportunity to eat regular food, or if you want to use one of their frozen dinners, or anyone else’s for that matter that tends to work out fairly well.  My thoughts on this are to eat up my month’s supply of nutrisystem and not re-order at this point.  For me, frozen dinners seem to be more healthy and cause me less gastric distress than shelf stable food. 

My results so far, in about two weeks I have lost 6.3 pounds, which isn’t too bad.  One thing is for certain, I am eating a lot more vegetables, and lettuce than I have in a long time.  I also thankfully am not suffering from what I thought were pretty large pangs of hunger that I did for the first week or so.  See me around lunch time, and unfortunately, I can’t balance out breakfast, and a morning snack enough to keep me from needing to eat lunch because I get a little light headed and feel like I am starving.  One thing though, taking my lunch to work, is less expensive even if I am buying special meals.  I work in an expensive side of town, so inexpensive lunch options are not to be had.

Additionally I have been taking the dog for walks in the evening, so there is more exercise going on there.  My life is unforunately fairly sedentary, and it is hard for me to break out of this.  I work during the day at my regular job, and my nights are spent working on the website, and getting my book together.  So I do a lot of sitting.

We are so educated today that you think we would know how to diet properly, and we would know how not to over indulge, but it seems so difficult to do.  It is difficult for me to do.  Reading about food, writing about food, and not having run from too many meals means that I have struggled with my weight for quite some time now.   So hopefully I can hang on a little while, and drop some of the excess weight, and enjoy cycling again!

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I live and work in affluent parts of town.  When I saw affluent, I mean I work in a very affluient part of town, and I live in a nicer neighborhood.  What this really translate into that gas is more expensive in my neighborhood and where I work than the places inbetween.  Dramatically so.  Prices were I work are 20% higher than the going rate, and where I live this translate into 10% overage in pricing.  I find this frustrating because I feel as if I am getting gouged for living out in the burbs.

Living in Houston means living in an area where there are rings of the city.  This means driving from one “nicer” area of town to the other, and not stopping inbetween, especially after dark.  I had unfortunately miscalculated my time one particular evening and failed to buy gas where I should have.  So I was going to run out of gas, and still had to get home.  This left me stopping in the area of town where I really hate stopping after dark.  I have personally known people who have had their vehicles broken into in these parts.  But being faced with running out of gas or not, well I opted to go ahead and stop.

I hated that I felt like I was in emminate danger in my own city from stopping for gas.  I bypassed one gas station due to low lighting, and folks just hanging out there without vehicles for another gas station.  It was better lit, and no one was just hanging out.  While I filled up with gas, I actually got into my car, and locked the door.  Which conjured up a variety of thoughts, why would I intentionally put myself in harms way over a buck fifty at most? Why can’t I feel safe in my own town? Why must I feel like I am doing wrong when I am getting gas after dark?

Why are there areas so close to each other where we have a sense of security and why are there other places you don’t want to be caught in period.  Why are there areas of just prosperity, and then disparity right next door to each other?  I find this so frustrating on so many levels.  What can I do as an individual to work on this?  I honestly don’t have a ton of answers right now.    It is amazing what the simple act of buying gas can do.

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With that being said, let’s look at this book. Christie Matheson puts together a collection of recipes that are well written, along with beautiful photography. Want a book that has a picture of every recipe? You want this book.

I like her primer on salt, for after all there is more than table salt that we all see in salt shakers everywhere. These different salts really do taste differently, and have different applications. For example, Fleur de Sel is hand harvested salt from France that goes well with fish. The recipes include many wonderful basic recipes where the use of salt is fantastic. Salted caramels, are heavenly, in fact, I can hardly think of them without salt any longer. Chocolate chip cookies with a light dusting of sea salt along with semi sweet chocolate chips should have been done years ago. The Decadent Hot Chocolate, was decadent. A criticism of this book may be that none of these recipes are completely new, but rather this is a collection of good recipes with salt sprinkled in, but it is sprinkled in brilliantly. If you are looking for a new way to do desserts I would definitely consider picking up this book and trying this one out.

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Whew!

I have also started religious studies classes in the evenings, so one night a week is definately a long one.  It has felt like I have had very little extra time here lately.    I will write more soon

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It is amazing to me that in today’s society material objects cost so little that it makes it easy to collect things.  I have been personally guilty of collecting toys from McDonald’s, wine, and a variety of other things.  I have spent the past couple of years of my life trying to get rid of excess stuff.  Having tons of things means that you are obligated to take care of what you have.  So I been trying to scale back to a level where I feel comfortable. 

After watching this show I typically get up and toss out an extra tupperware container that is missing its lid.  I put aside things to give away.  This last weekend, I had a party and old people to go through my extra books and take what they wanted.  I also donate what I can to charity.  I am do dumb founded that we let ourselves get into collecting things that we don’t need only to add more stuff.

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