Day 593: Keeping It Real

                                                                                            🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤

“A real decision is measured by the fact

that you’ve taken a new action.

If there’s no action, you haven’t

truly decided.” 

~ Tony Robbins~ 

                        

It's Day 593 of Nutrisystem. I would say the decision I made on December 29, 2018 was the most real decision I've ever made in my life. That was the day I signed up for the Nutrisystem program. It's also the best decision I've ever made because it works for me. For the first time in my life I've been successful at losing the weight and I feel like I am learning enough about myself that I'll be able to keep it off. I finally bought a new scale and it should be here in the next couple of days. I haven't weighed myself in a while but I already said I will start with whatever weight the new scale gives me. If it's more than my last weight I will own that. My old scale may have been giving inaccurate weights before it finally died and I may have wandered in restaurants a bit too much over the past couple of months. Chocolate muffins also found their way into the house quite a lot during the COVID lockdown. So if I have to shed a couple of pounds a second time I'll call that a lesson learned. My last weight was 163.4 on June 24, so it's been a while.

Update on Tommy Rivs is that the reports are good. I will take a status of "good" all day long considering how ill he is. The day he is able to breathe unassisted will be worthy of celebration and we are all longing for that day. 

Breakfast was a 2.5 ounce 160 calorie package of buttermilk waffles with a drizzle of syrup and a 5.3 ounce 80 calorie Light & Fit strawberry cheesecake yogurt. Morning snack was a 120 calorie chocolate shake with peanut butter powder. Lunch was a 4 ounce 230 calorie spinach & cheese pretzel melt with a chef salad. Afternoon snack was a 1.24 ounce 190 calorie Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch bar. Dinner was a 4 ounce 190 calorie artichoke & spinach stuffed chicken breast with the last of my roasted veggies. Evening snack was a 2.2 ounce 140 calorie lemon zest cake. Total calories for the day are 1110 and I got 64 ounces of water in.

I managed to drag my lazy self out of bed early enough to get a workout in before work but that meant having breakfast afterwards. I completed a 32 minute hike in Iceland with iFit trainer Jonnie Gale. The pace ranged from 1.6 to 3.6 mph, depending on the incline. There was a lot of max incline so it was a good way to wake up the body. My lunchtime workout was a 38 minute jogging incline hike in Thailand with iFit trainer Gideon Akande. Since I don't jog (especially at 6+ mph!) I set the pace at 3 mph but let the machine control the incline .. and again there was plenty of max incline. After work iFit trainer John Peel tried to kill me in the studio with 34 minutes of ladder inclines. Speed ranged from 2.5 to 3.3 mph, which doesn't sound bad unless you mix it with 8-10% incline. This was a tough one that I will do again until I can finish without feeling like I am going to die. I logged 104 minutes, 4.8 miles and 663 calories. That might be a record for me and Fitbit says I did 16,000 steps today ! The good news is I finished iFit's first incline challenge for the month. There are 2 other treadmill challenges this month and I am starting the second one tomorrow. The workouts are a lot harder so I will most likely have to manually override the speed a lot more than this first challenge, but I'm going to push myself as hard as I possibly can to get through all 10. I don't know if I'll be able to complete the 12 workouts in the 3rd challenge too .. we'll see ! They all have to be done by September 7. After dinner I also put in the usual 45-50 minutes on the Total Gym so it was a full day !

Woke up at 2 am and again at 4 am to thunder and heavy rain. This was the first time I've experienced thunder that shook the house ! It was pretty intense. We had some water spouts on Lake Ontario during the 4 am storm so it was quite powerful ! It rained on and off most of the morning but I worked out on the front porch anyway. It cleared up by lunch time so the second half of the day was much nicer. Tomorrow is going to be a nicer (and drier!) day and I'm only working until 2 pm. It's my dad's birthday so my sister and I are taking my mom to Point Place Casino for dinner and a little gambling just to get her out of the house. I'd also like to stop and visit my dad's grave but it's not a place my mom likes to go, so we'll see. It's hard to believe he's been gone for over 8 years already.

Since my cats favorite food (Fancy Feast Savory Centers) is out of stock everywhere I decided last night to give them something else for dinner, to make what I have left of their favorite food last longer. To my surprise Abby, my most finicky cat, chowed down on regular Fancy Feast ! This is a huge relief because I was afraid she'd refuse to eat. My hope is their favorite food will be back in stock before the 22 cans I have left are gone. If it's not at least I know there is something else they will eat until I can get it again. Minnie eats a lot of dry food so I don't worry quite as much about her. I don't know if the problem is due to COVID - the company says it's due to "unprecedented demand". Tonight I found out one of my favorite snack items has been discontinued too. I haven't been able to find Jif Power Ups in the store and it turns out Smuckers discontinued the line. Just my luck ! Nutrisystem has also discontinued some of my favorite items. The artichoke & spinach chicken breast is gone. The mushroom stuffed chicken breast is gone. The ice cream sandwich is gone. They previously discontinued the chicken fajita melt, which I adored. The stuffed chocolate pie and stuffed apple pie also disappeared. So did the chicken marsala dinner entree. Carrot cake, butterscotch cake and cinnamon coffee cake also disappeared, along with the baked banana & chocolate oatmeal. Many of these disappeared long before COVID so they can't blame it on that. I check all the time to see if they've brought any of them back or added new items but there's been nothing lately. I plan to continue the program 100% until I reach my goal weight but then it will be time to start coming up with my own meals and weaning myself off the program. I still believe it's a great program and I would encourage anyone with a significant amount of weight to lose to give it a try but I really hope they expand their line of frozen foods soon.

The evening has flown by and it's time for a shower and then bed !