Prosperous soul in the making

savingholmes

DIA - I too am feeling really motivated. I also measured waist, thigh, calf, knee, ankle, foot, wrist, elbow, bicep, neck, chest but won't be sharing those here

MFD - thanks for the suggestion - I will continue with garden pottering for now as then I have a chair / bench nearby I can rest on - and I can see a visible difference in the garden. On days when I don't do the garden I am hoping to dog walk.

Well today I started doing 5:2 - aiming for 800 calories each Monday and Thursday. So far I've had porridge - 50g oats, 220ml
semi-skimmed milk for 293 calories. For lunch I am planning  2 egg omelette, 1 oz mozzarella, Mr A's carver ham for 240cals. For tea I may repeat a meal. I find porridge the most filling so may go for that.

This morning I've taken all my measurements. I put the BP cuff on myself today - a little lower down and wasn't in pain - as a result my BP was 135/77 with a 76 pulse. While not brilliant was much better than recent readings. I got DH to measure my sugar levels before eating and I was 7.4 - this suggests I am pre-diabetic as I should be 6 or below. I am currently 49.7% fat according to our scales. Need to make this work. 

jwil

Good luck with the plan, you are very organised.  All the gardening will be helping too.

The paintings were lovely.

Glad you've got an answer from the consultant, hopefully you'll hear soon about a treatment plan.

Honeysucklelou2

How does it work SH? Normal eating on the other days?  I  have been eating a bowl of porridge mid morning, then just a piece of fruit about 1.30 ish, then eating tea with everyone else at the usual time. No scales so don’t know if it’s having any impact!

MovingForwards

You can do this SH, take it one day at a time, keep up with meal planning, have some healthy nibbles (fruit / carrot sticks etc), if you can do one of your normal eating days as a healthy / no junk snacks day, that will help too.

Pottering around outside is also good, as is being able to move your chair around to do different sections.

Are you monitoring your exercise on MFP too? 

I'm pleased you have an answer about your leg, now you can work towards recovering and what needs to be done to help; I did have a quick G@@gle. 

Keep up with your art as it's keeping you focused and giving you the 'you time' needed.

Hope you've been enjoying your holiday and are ready for Easter 🐰

savingholmes

Thank JWIL, HSL and MF
The diet you eat  800 calories x 2 days a week and the other days eat reasonably normally - trying to move all your days towards healthy eating over time... I used to do SW so know that half of a certain mug is 50 g and of another is 40g of oats and what the milk is so that helps. I signed back up to MFP so I can track changes over time. As well as weighing scales for me (and food) I had a tape measure so measured all the key areas listed above - the idea is that you then remeasure regularly and see that even when the scales don't always move you can be losing inches. Ironically I have lots of family chocolatey treats for Sunday - but we're back on 5:2 Monday so that sould sort it out.

Stayed on plan today. Had a slightly smaller porridge for tea. Did about an hour in the garden but other than that have just chilled today. The only thing I've cheated on is milk in coffee. I also added celery and salsa to my omlette but added calories to account for that. DH is sleeping a lot currently - not sure what the cause is.

I checked and my local garden centre is shut but doing deliveries so I've ordered multiple bags of soil, some new plants, bulbs and seeds. Not sure when it will arrive but wanted to do something in my garden - and give the business a fighting chance of surviving this! I bought cucumber, tomato and strawberry plants as well as bean and pea seeds. I bought a clematis, some lupin plants and various flower seeds. I already have radish to sow and wildflower seeds. Really looking forward to when that arrives. I do have one compost bag to be getting on with. I didn't order any bamboo canes - but we have plenty of annoying ones growing in our garden (spilling over from behind us) so can use them if we need too. The bigger issue is how to protect the growing area from the dog! Ideally I would also make some of it a 'raised bed' in some form - so need to think how best to achieve that. Will do further research and see what we can still get hold of during lockdown.

MovingForwards

Are DH sugars ok and is he taking his meds regularly now? You have said he's doing a lot for work, perhaps it's just catching up on him and things will settle soon when he finds the right balance.

Measuring is a good way, as you say the scales don't always show what's going on with your body. The good thing with the diet is you can switch your low cal days if you are having a special day.

If you can get pallets, your OH could make raised beds, not sure if you live near industrial estates as quite frequently they are dumped. Also, have a look on fr33cycle glumtr33 f@ceb@@k etc as loads of people are doing distance collection from gardens etc, only works if you have a big car so you can get them in (don't have the blue pallets as they are not good for plants).

Having a little food growing section in the garden is nice, you will notice the difference in flavour too.

savingholmes

Well I wasn't hungry yesterday - I craved treats at 10pm and despite going to bed early - also at 1am. I lost 3.4lb overnight - which I know is unlikely to stay off when I go back to eating more normally but is a really promising sign that this is working. My heart rate was 66 today with my BP 130/67. Our target is to get to 120/80 BP or less for each of us. DH's BP fell too as did his sugar level slightly. My sugar was 7.7 (up 0.3 on yesterday) - but if you eat less your body dumps glycogen stores so may not be significant.

Another bright shiney day here today and we are now all of work. Happy Passover and have a good Easter all.

mark55man

Hi SH - can't believe I've missed your diary for so long.  I had a quick flick through but had to stop as I was getting dizzy with all the swings and arrows you have faced!!.  

Good luck with the weight loss plan - you can weigh in too often, but I tend to do it daily more as a reminder but only record on my spreadsheet at the weekend  

Busy_Mee

Hope you have a great Easter SH. I also had a click and collect order from the local garden centre and have just filled my pots with pansies and tete e tete. They look so cheerful and have brought me a lot of pleasure.
I have been doing too much comfort eating these last 3 weeks, so I am starting weight watchers again properly online From Tuesday ( I usually do it on line as I can't bear the classes )
Have a good Easter and don't feel guilty about eating chocolate x

savingholmes

mark88man said:

Hi SH - can't believe I've missed your diary for so long.  I had a quick flick through but had to stop as I was getting dizzy with all the swings and arrows you have faced!!.  
Good luck with the weight loss plan - you can weigh in too often, but I tend to do it daily more as a reminder but only record on my spreadsheet at the weekend  

Thanks for joining me. I think life is definitely a roller coaster! 
I find I have to fully commit to see results. If I don't weigh in everyday I fall prey to the "it''s only one" syndrome and end up going backwards - as epitomised by the last few months of not weighing often where the weight has crept on.

Busy_Mee said:

Hope you have a great Easter SH. I also had a click and collect order from the local garden centre and have just filled my pots with pansies and tete e tete. They look so cheerful and have brought me a lot of pleasure.
I have been doing too much comfort eating these last 3 weeks, so I am starting weight watchers again properly online From Tuesday ( I usually do it on line as I can't bear the classes )
Have a good Easter and don't feel guilty about eating chocolate x

Good luck with WW. Thankfully we have bulbs and other perennial plants flowering o doing well so far. Also fruit trees in flower, a white camelia and a purple flowering azalea. My delivery hasn't come yet but I am hoping it will arrive some time this next week or so. Last year I bought some Seagrass paint to finish painting the back of the shed - it took me 20 minutes to find the  darn thing - but now I've painted side three. I can't get to side 4 because of the fence. I'd have to go in the neighbours back garden which is a double no-no right now. I am glad I had it in though as you can't buy it right now. I also bought decking cleaner last year - not sure if I also bought the stain for afterwards. I should probably check before trying to do any of that. 

I have enough indoor paint to do 2 or 3 rooms LOL that are in my house already so if it starts raining I do have stuff I/we can do!! I also spent about half an hour organising stuff in the garage and came across a big bottle of hand sanitiser. We'd bought it when we got the dog - nearly 2 years ago now but hey - still good - barely used.

The kids have been moaning asking for yoga type mats - but the prices have shot right up to £20 or more. Thankfully one good side effect of being a semi-hoarder with a good memory - is I knew we had some mats somewhere. DH just dug one of DS's out of the garage. I thought we had another somewhere but DS thinks it might have been binned. It was one of those rubber ones that like to stick together in the heat so he wasn't keen anyway. The kids used to have foam camping mats - don't know whether they got passed on or whether they are hiding in the loft.