Keeping up appearances.......

HappyNow

Elnora32 wrote: »

[FONT=&quot]Happy, well done with your targets. Excellent news about the baking and yes, this needs to be encouraged. Confession time, I too have a copy of the Bero cookbook which belonged to my MiL and is dated 1977.
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I've just googled it, and they're still in print! £2.99 direct from Bero, 41st edition. I just might...........

Well done on the exercise and that long walk

HappyNow

Dolphin1 wrote: »

1) Be in bed by 10.00pm and light out by 10.30pm Sunday to Thursday - I was in bed by 10.00pm but the light went off at 10.40pm. Nearly made it and it's a definite improvement on the last few nights.

2) At least 30 minutes walking during the day - I managed 45 minutes in total yesterday (1 x 20 minute walk & 1 x 25 minute walk). :T

3) Drink 3 bottles of water a day - I managed the 3 although most of it was later in the day as I rushed to catch up .

Well I'm typing this at 1 am so you're doing a lot better than me!

I've learned the hard way that catching up in the evening often means me waking up in the night needing the loo. I'm trying to pace myself during the day. I think I have a small bladder!

HappyNow

Honey_Bear wrote: »

I can't help myself, this is what I've found utterly addictive, they've posted loads and loads of videos so there's hours and hours of entertainment to be had, and then that led me to more 'Tiny House Living' types. I couldn't fit one room's stuff from this house into any of their living spaces, so it's an amazing window into another world of people I'll never meet or know anything about otherwise.

All the talk of decluttering led me to dragging all the kitchen and DIY kit down from the attic and telling OH that we weren't going through it with a view to deciding what we were getting rid of - we were getting rid of it all, unless he specifically decided he needed something. It had pretty much all been up there for 20 years unused, he kept back more than I considered ideal, but a huge pile left the house. I can now move around up there which I hadn't been able to for months. Real progress.

Oh well thanks for posting that link because I will now have to spend several hours addicting myself tomorrow!

When we did this refurb we played large-scale tetris with all our possessions as we moved from room to room. The refurb took the best part of two years and I soon realised I was moving the same items, in boxes where they'd sat for years, over and over again - and they never once left their boxes to be used. We got rid of mountains of that excess and now I can't even remember what any of it was. We've still got most of the sentimental stuff, but the practical but unwanted items have all been moved on.

Honey_Bear wrote: »

I started out on the Borders dark chocolate ginger bix, but they were :eek: eye-wateringly expensive, and the Morrie's ones were 2 for £3 on their special offer. There used to be 10 in a box, now there are only eight or nine, but they're still the best of the best of the best!
We don't have a local Morries but there's one near my mum's, so I'll check them out and give my biscuit-expert opinion.

• Lose more weight, ideally down to 65kgs by 1 September. I have good news but rather . An extremely liberal dose of figs several days running, both homegrown and dried which was very, very necessary, have resulted in 65.000000 kgs already! I'm hoping that even without the extra figs this isn't a fluke. I have four dried ones daily usually because I need to, and had stopped eating them while we were relying on our fresh ones. Big, big mistake. *ouch* Lesson learned.

Wow, congratulations. Target hit 9 days ahead of the deadline, and in such style!! I actually had no idea that we could grow figs in this country, they seem so exotic.

• 15 minutes Flying a day, Monday to Friday; Stuff is being moved about which makes the place look a better, and I'm doing waaaay more than 15 minutes daily. There's a lot going on here but it should be calmer next week. I need the house to be gleaming on Sunday; after that it can be a midden again for a week or two and I'd be fine with that!

Flying is definitely on my September list. When we first finished our refurb we were so thrilled that we cleaned and dusted and vacuumed almost every day. That wore off.

• Leg stretches, one minutes for each stretch. Mini stretches, as above are now on the agenda, so I'm going to alter this one from tomorrow. If they start to hurt again with just that, then I'll go back to doing them at bedtime as well.
• Lights out by 11.30 pm Fail, but only by about 15 minutes, although I didn't wake up until 7.30 am, so it just goes to show I really do need to stick to this.

Poor effort there Honey, 15 minutes is 15 minutes. ****cringes looking at the clock and hoping no-one notices****

10 characters

HappyNow

Tuesday (got a day behind somehow)


Zero alcohol - Easy-peasy (until Friday comes....)
Maximum of 1400 calories per day, to include 5 x fruit and veg and just one sweet treat. 1379 so just scraped in. Loads of F & V to make up for Monday's poor effort. Sweet treat was two McVities chocolate digestive biscuits. And yes OF COURSE two biscuits is only one treat.

I had you down for a strict vegetarian because of the way you reacted to the mention of my loving crab claws with lemon mayonaise once; I'm quite relieved you eat fish! Your version of fish and chips is pretty much the same as ours - let's hear it for freezers!
Honey - I do eat fish, but only fish that doesn't look like a fish. I couldn't bring myself to go into a fishmongers, but if it comes in a cardboard box covered in breadcrumbs I'm OK with it!
Definitely let's hear it for freezers. And microwaves (though not for the fish obv)

Six glasses of water per day Yep.
Daily dog walk at a fast pace Yet another day of extreme gardening - with doggy assistance
No looking at my phone in bed or after 11 pm. I can't even remember Tuesday night now. Let's give me the benefit of the doubt. I can't imagine I'd push those boundaries two nights running.
No money wasting. Balance YNAB daily. Zero spent, YNAB fine.

Dolphin1

Honey Bear - I am definitely going to be checking out some of those YouTube videos. I am a bit of a minimalist so as soon as the house starts to feel cluttered, we have a sort out. It's at least once a year but sometimes more often. I am pretty ruthless when sorting through stuff but always looking for space saving ideas for the stuff we really must keep.

As far as YouTube is concerned, it's the cooking videos I get hooked on despite the fact that I get no pleasure from cooking, just eating.

Well done for getting down to 65kgs despite the method. _pale_

Elnora - Well done for sticking with the exercises and the extra long walk. :T

HappyNow wrote: »

I've learned the hard way that catching up in the evening often means me waking up in the night needing the loo. I'm trying to pace myself during the day. I think I have a small bladder!

That is exactly what happened so yesterday I made more of an effort earlier in the day.

HappyNow wrote: »

Poor effort there Honey, 15 minutes is 15 minutes. ****cringes looking at the clock and hoping no-one notices****

Oh, we noticed!

Dolphin1

Yesterday...

1) Be in bed by 10.00pm and light out by 10.30pm Sunday to Thursday - Pass. I was in bed by 10.00pm and the light went off at 10.30pm on the dot.

2) At least 30 minutes walking during the day - Fail. Zero, zilch, nada. I went to the supermarket (in the car) but I don't think walking round the supermarket for 10 minutes counts. I'll try and make up for it today.

3) Drink 3 bottles of water a day - Pass. I managed 3 bottles and not all in the evening so no more trips to the loo during the night than usual.

Honey_Bear

HappyNow wrote: »

Zero alcohol - Easy-peasy (until Friday comes....)
Maximum of 1400 calories per day, to include 5 x fruit and veg and just one sweet treat. 1379 so just scraped in. Loads of F & V to make up for Monday's poor effort. Sweet treat was two McVities chocolate digestive biscuits. And yes OF COURSE two biscuits is only one treat. Really? Are are you absolutely sure about that? (I'm the person who thinks it's one packet, so what do I know?)
Honey - I do eat fish, but only fish that doesn't look like a fish. I couldn't bring myself to go into a fishmongers, but if it comes in a cardboard box covered in breadcrumbs I'm OK with it! Definitely let's hear it for freezers. And microwaves (though not for the fish obv) Ah, but microwaves do salmon steaks so well, and they don't look like fish at all!
Six glasses of water per day Yep. Yeah, I had to give up cramming my two glasses of water a day into the last five minutes I was vertical for the same reason - a long time ago now but I recall you commenting on my habit at the time.
Daily dog walk at a fast pace Yet another day of extreme gardening - with doggy assistance
No looking at my phone in bed or after 11 pm. I can't even remember Tuesday night now. Let's give me the benefit of the doubt. I can't imagine I'd push those boundaries two nights running.
No money wasting. Balance YNAB daily. Zero spent, YNAB fine.

"Let's give me the benefit of the doubt." :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:Of course we should after all, it's not like any of us to push boundaries, is it?!

Honey_Bear

Dolphin1 wrote: »

Yesterday...

1) Be in bed by 10.00pm and light out by 10.30pm Sunday to Thursday - Pass. I was in bed by 10.00pm and the light went off at 10.30pm on the dot. Well done. You're obviously more self-disciplined than I am!

2) At least 30 minutes walking during the day - Fail. Zero, zilch, nada. I went to the supermarket (in the car) but I don't think walking round the supermarket for 10 minutes counts. I'll try and make up for it today. It counts for 10 minutes though. Are you going to save up and splurge your unused minutes if there's a deficit towards the end of the month?

3) Drink 3 bottles of water a day - Pass. I managed 3 bottles and not all in the evening so no more trips to the loo during the night than usual.

Well done on the water front. It never did become a habit with me, but recently I added up all the fruit tea, decaff coffee and AF beer I drink and realised I was comfortably drinking three litres of liquid a day. I love my coffee, so that's where I ensure I get most of my liquid intake from because apparently all that stuff about it not counting is absolutely scare-mongering nonsense, I was pleased to hear.

Honey_Bear

Elnora32 wrote: »

Another tick in the box for me with the exercises and I have also completed a 5.5 mile walk that had a big hill to climb.

Now that's just showing off!

Honey_Bear

• Lose more weight, ideally down to 65kgs by 1 September. Just to check I weighed myself this morning - 64.9 kgs, the lightest I've been for 18 months or so. (The figs weren't eaten in an effort to lose weight; they were a necessity hence the significant reduction.) Yes, Happy, figs do grow and fruit in the UK really, really easily. All you need is about 2' of a fig tree branch, just stuck in soil. They like having their roots constricted so a pot would be ideal, but they need watering and I forget. However, these two fig trees were planted my first year in this house by another new house owner at the same time. They've been fruiting fairly copiously for about 10 years and we don't do anything at all to them other than hack off some over-exhuberant limbs occasionally - if anyone wants one to stick in their garden just let me know. Mind you, they're behind a high wall so very sheltered from the wind, in a warm high rainfall area of the UK. (My mother had a fig tree in a 1' terracotta pot tucked away in a sheltered corner of their cold Kent garden and it burst out of the pot eventually - she'd forgotten it wasn't in the soil! It fruited like crazy.)
• 15 minutes Flying a day, Monday to Friday; I'm not entirely sure I did enough yesterday, so today I will dust and vacuum as long as the Dyson's got a charge, and strip and wash bedding from the vacated room.
  
• Leg stretches immediately after all dog walks. Done. So much simpler and far more likely to be done, tbh.
  
• Lights out by 11.30 pm Success, but I'm clearly still not getting enough sleep because the alarm woke me up at 7.40 this morning, which is quite late for me - not that I get up at that unearthly hour, other than on Thursdays.

About the slightly bizarre You Tube link, I was thinking about it and wondering if I was watching poverty !!!!!! which would be reprehensible but realised that I'm not, although it can seem like it to begin with. I admire the couple - they've clearly been to financial hell and back really through no fault of their own other than believing in the Amercian Dream, but watching the Shed series (all seven videos) made me realise that he's an incredibly hard worker, a fantastic builder and neither of them has an ounce of bitterness in them. His attention to detail and wish to educate and teach shines through. I think I originally found him because someone elsewhere mentioned Rocket Stoves and I wanted to know what one was. I was hooked from that video onwards.