Day 138: The Sun Will Shine

"The day your forgive your past and close your eyes. You will hear a river flowing inside you again. You will hear the waves of the ocean hitting the seashores of your soul once again. And again the sun will shine, lighting up your darkest nights."     ~Akshay Vasu~

I tend to agree you have to reconcile your past and forgive yourself and others for whatever happened, before you can move forward. Holding on to all that anger and resentment does nothing but eat you up inside and turn you into a bitter and unhappy person. In my case the person responsible for most of those feelings is deceased, so what good would holding on to all that anger do ? After all, there is nowhere to direct it. Being that he was a narcissist, my feelings didn't matter anyway. Letting it all go was not easy but it was transformative. For many years I felt nothing. I buried my feelings so deep inside that even when I should have been happy I couldn't be. Letting all the anger and resentment go made room for happiness. It took the fire and the remodel of my home to push the bad feelings out and allow happiness to fill my soul. I sometimes wonder where I would be if Alex hadn't died so suddenly. Or if the fire hadn't happened. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but sometimes I can't help but wonder. When you haven't felt anything for so long it can be daunting to suddenly feel so happy. Today is one of those days that I am just overflowing with positivity. I think the blue skies and sunshine helps ! Winter seemed like it was so long and dark and dreary, so any day with sun is a special treat ! There is no rain in the forecast for a change too !

Breakfast today was a 2.1 ounce 160 calorie cherry cheese roll with Green Mountain Breakfast Blend coffee. That cup of coffee just disappeared, it tasted so good ! 2nd cup was toasted coconut. Morning snack was a 155 calorie chocolate shake with peanut butter powder. Lunch was a new item - a 4 ounce 220 calorie thai style chicken melt. It was pretty good ! Had that with the usual raw carrots. Afternoon snack was a 170 calorie Sargento Balanced Breaks. By the time I thought about packing something different for afternoon snack last night I was too tired to do it. I had 495 calories left for dinner and an evening snack, which was more than enough. Dinner was a 9.5 ounce 260 calorie roasted turkey medallions with mashed potatoes and gravy. This is a favorite entree ! I had green beans with it but about 5 green into eating I found a bean with something funky and fuzzy on it and that was the end of that. They went in the trash. They were fresh beans and I didn't wash them first - lesson learned ! My evening snack was a 3.5 ounce 130 calorie ice cream sandwich. Totally love these and could have eaten 4 of them ! My calories for the day are 1097. 

It wasn't quite so hard to get to sleep last night, but it wasn't as easy as it usually is either. I thought maybe I don't need quite as much sleep but it was not easy to force myself out of bed this morning. I was awake before the alarm but I have no idea what time it was and I forced myself to go back to sleep. I really need to try getting up when I wake up, unless it's ridiculously early. One thing I no longer struggle with is daytime sleepiness. Sometimes I would get very tired in the afternoon and I suspected it was because of my carb heavy lunches pushing up my blood sugar. Same thing would happen sometimes after a carb heavy dinner. There were times I could not keep my eyes open and I would fall asleep on the couch, sometimes with my computer still in my lap ! That no longer happens, so Nutrisystem is definitely helping ! I'm not diabetic so I don't monitor my blood sugar, but I can tell it is not jumping up and down anymore because I don't get that shaky feeling from it being too low or that sleepiness from it maybe being too high. I firmly believe I was developing insulin resistance, which is a pre-cursor to diabetes, so that played a part in my decision to change my eating habits.

When I first started Nutrisystem I decided I would only weigh myself once a week. I've noticed a lot of people in the support group I belong to weigh themselves every day and say it helps keep them on track. Since I don't "cheat" or deviate much from the program I didn't feel the need to weigh myself more than once a week, because I was always on track. However, I've taken to checking the scale more frequently anyway. It's given me some insight into how my body weight can fluctuate from day to day or even from morning to night. Last night it registered a weight that is about 5 pounds less than what I recorded on Saturday, putting me into the 60 pounds lost range. Not believing that, I checked a second time. Same result. Still not believing, I checked again this morning. Still the same, within a couple of ounces. So either I read the scale wrong Saturday, was retaining water, or I've had another whoosh of fat loss. This morning I realized my new jeans, which were skin tight when I got them a couple weeks ago, are now starting to get baggy ! So this adds to the happiness that is threatening to burst out of my heart ! The fact that it's only 3 more days until vacation helps too ! I've decided not to record the weight I'm seeing until I weigh myself on Saturday, because I can't allow myself to get overconfident. This is going to be a long journey and it may get harder as time goes on, so I can't sit back and think I don't have to continue working so hard. The hard work is making the difference ! Last night I really wanted to stop about 20 minutes into my workout but I pushed through it. I ate dinner a little later so that didn't help. It's my own fault - I had to stop for gas and that is something I could easily have done Friday night or over the weekend. I've mentioned before that I really need to let my dinner settle a bit before getting on the treadmill. Another thing I've come to realize is just how important the water is. When I am better about getting at least 64 ounces of water a day I seem to have more success on the scale. I'm also breaking up with the salt shaker, which has been hard. Nutrisystem entrees do not have huge amounts of sodium and I know we need a certain amount in our diet, but right now less is best when it comes to added salt.

Tonight's workout got off to a bumpy start. iFit and my treadmill were not playing nice so I had to fiddle around with the app for a few minutes to get things working. I am tired so I'm heading up for a shower and bed now.