Day 73: Improving Yourself

“How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day.” ~Anne Frank~

How can you not be inspired by the words of Anne Frank ? Life dealt her an incredibly bad hand but she made the most of it and refused to give up. It’s only fitting that she live on forever in history. It’s sad that we still have so much hate based on ethnicity or religion in this world today, 74 years after Anne died in a concentration camp.

These notes are my way of examining each day and there is little I don’t share, whether it’s good or bad. For me it’s a way of acknowledging what is working and coming up with a new plan for anything that isn’t. It keeps me accountable as well. I’m doing something right because I lost another 2 pounds this week ! That’s a total of 39.4 pounds ! It feels like everything is working perfectly. Even when I eat away from home I’m able to easily stay within the guidelines of the program. I don’t feel deprived and I have no desire to “cheat”. I’ve mentioned before that many folks in the Nutrisystem group I belong to write about cheating or having cheat days. I still don’t get that. Maybe I’m just fortunate to be in a better place emotionally than they are. I am 1000% committed to sticking to the diet and I crave nothing. I couldn’t tell you how I got to this place as there is no magic formula. Sure, I have little luxuries here and there, like that glass of wine yesterday, but they are always within the program guidelines. Wine is allowed on an occasional basis so I only indulge occasionally. I do try every day to improve myself or at least maintain the improvements I’ve made. Devoting 20-30 minutes to exercise was a long time coming but now that I’ve made that part of my routine I am determined to keep it that way. Never in a million years did I expect to be on the treadmill at 11 pm last night ! My official workout time is only 20 minutes but there is a 3 minute warm up first at 1 mph. That speed is too slow for me so I boost it up to 1.8. I also add a couple minutes of cool down at the end at 1.5 mph. These minutes aren’t counted by the iFit app so you don’t see them in my results. Water continues to be my challenge - some days I am good about getting it all in and other days it is a struggle. So I need to put some extra focus on that. It’s not the fact that it’s plain water, it wouldn’t matter what the liquid was. Even before Nutrisystem I did not drink enough. There were many days I had my morning coffee and didn’t drink anything else until dinnertime !

Breakfast today was a 2.8 ounce 160 calorie package of pancakes spread with peanut butter, which adds about 95 calories. I had a cup of french vanilla coffee with them. My 2nd cup today was hazelnut. My morning snack was a 155 calorie chocolate shake with peanut butter powder. I also had a 90 calorie veggie cake for my Smart Carb. I haven’t been eating them lately - I guess I got a little tired of them. Lunch was a 1.7 ounce 200 calorie cup of cheddar broccoli rice. You add 4 ounces of water so the cooked weight is closer to 7 ounces. This was only the 2nd time I’ve had this item and it’s pretty good ! I had some fat free cottage cheese with it for my Power Fuel. That’s about 80 calories in a half cup. I skipped the afternoon snack because I had lunch so late. Dinner was an 8 ounce 200 calorie package of mushroom risotto that I served over broccoli and sprinkled with romano cheese. This is the FIRST dinner on Nutrisystem that I couldn’t finish. Part of it was the fact that I don’t really like the entree. I’ve had it twice now so I gave it a fair shot. I also chugged about 24 ounces of water not long before dinner so that is probably why I couldn’t finish it. I ate about 2/3 of the risotto and maybe half of the broccoli. I’m ok with tossing the rest as I’m not hungry and why stuff those calories down if you don’t want them ? So I’m going to end the day with a little bit of a calorie deficit. I’m ok with that once in a while. I had a 2.3 ounce 140 stuffed apple pie for my evening snack. I think one apple makes 1000 of these pies .. lol ! They’re pretty good and satisfy my sweet tooth so that is all that matters. My calories for the day are at about 1100.

I lazed around much of the morning and into the afternoon ! I blame the Star Wars marathon on TNT !!! I did finally eject myself from the couch to prep some food items for the week. Since all of my frozen breakfast items are gone I decided to bring a weeks worth of non-frozen breakfast items to work tomorrow. It’ll be one less thing to worry about each morning before I go to work. I also bagged portions of crackers for the week and threw in a couple days worth of lunch entrees. It’ll be less to cram into my lunch bag ! I have a new shipment of frozen items coming but I want to eat all of the food I already have before I start eating any of the new. I know myself - if I start leaving the “leftovers” behind I’ll end up wasting a bunch of food.

I got my first workout of the day in just before having a very late 3 pm lunch ! Got the 2nd workout in shortly after 7 pm. I’m very pleased with my stats for the week. I’m also ready for a hot shower and a warm comfy bed !