Monday, July 21, 2014

Lately

July 20, 2014 10:57pm

I’ve spent a couple of hours putting my handwritten food and drink notebook into an Excel spreadsheet. I need Internet access to look up the protein grams, fat, and carbs, but once I make my way through three weeks of food and liquid notes, I should be able to determine the nutrition info from repeat foods without having to look them up. I eat a lot of meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, and iced coffees. No surprise there. I did, however, notice a trend with my liquids: I’m not getting in enough. I’m averaging 60 ounces of liquid a day. Although this is not BAD, it’s too low. I need to be closer to 100 ounces of liquid per day. If I hadn’t started charting my meals, I wouldn’t have noticed this trend, and I wouldn’t be able to make a change. This is why writing down your food is SO important, and what I started doing on July 4 after I went up 4 surprising pounds.

This past week my husband had some job-related stuff to do out in a desert town and he called me up and said, “You know, it’s only another 180 miles from there to Vegas…” I bit that lure and packed some new (smaller) clothes that I had yet to wear, and headed over to my in-laws place Tuesday night. He had two appointments, one at 10 a and one at 2pm, so he felt he needed to drive out to the city, get a hotel, get some sleep, and then pop over to the first interview rather than get up real early to drive out there and run the risk of bad traffic, an accident, a Sig alert, or any number of things that can happen on Southern California freeways. We fed and snuggled our cats and hit the road.

He went to both appointments, we had lunch, then headed out to Vegas arriving about 8pm. I had gotten us a great deal at the Luxor for $39- a night. Of course, there was a $45- resort fee for the two nights in total on top of that, but it was still a great deal on a nice hotel in Vegas. We were on the sixth story facing west, overlooking the two pools (that I never got to swim in *pout*).

So here’s something that perturbed me about our lovely hotel room, flat screen TV with all the good news channels I like, soft sheets, and beautiful bathroom:  No refrigerator, no coffeemaker. I like a little wake-up coffee bracer before I have any “real coffee” while I’m getting ready to go out. WTF? Even Motel 6 offers both of those things. (I'm guessing that the resorts want to herd customers to the casino floor. Sort of like the free WiFi in every room [part of the "resort fee"], that only worked on the casino floor. *ahem*)  I wanted to put my Vitamin Waters in to chill, but no such luck. Also, even though it was 112 in the daytime and 97 degrees Fahrenheit at midnight, the pool closes at 8 o’clock in the evening. WTF? I don’t get it. I would have been in that pool every night.

Also? In Vegas? You cannot get a decent meal after 10 o’clock. WTH? When did Vegas turn into a family-oriented, daytime-focused town? Granted, the last time I was there was in 2004…it’s not my favorite place, not even close, but an opportunity to stay in a nice hotel was too good to pass up. So we got gussied up, I put on my new size 2x blouse and white capris, my sparkly wedge flip-flops, a buttload of makeup, and we went out looking for food. We walked through the Luxor, Excaliber, the MGM Grand, and part of New York New York, then the train to Mandalay Bay and then back over to the Luxor and every restaurant we encountered that was not fast food…was closed. Unbelievable. We started at 8:30 pm and didn’t get back to our room until after 1 am. We ate at a “deli” near our room (walking for five hours with no results). A chicken salad sandwich for me, coleslaw, a grilled chicken pesto sandwich and a small drink for my husband was $30-. Un. Be. Lievable. Vegas used to be the town of all-night restaurants and cheap, cheap food. No longer.

The next day, my husband took our car to see if it would pass a smog check (it’s registered in Nevada), and dropped me off at Walgreens. I purchased some beautiful gold nail polish with pink glitter in it. I painted my nails later in the car and they looked beautiful. It’s a lovely nail polish. I left it at my in-laws or I’d tell you the brand.

While we were out, we had brunch at Coco’s. I had a slice of quiche, two bites of spinach salad with almonds, and gave the rest to R. For dinner, we went to the Hooters resort and had chicken wings. I love me some chicken wings. I had five. J Sooo good. We then went back to the room, got dressed up (well, I did), and decided to do some exploring and a plan to ride the monorail down the strip. We walked about four hours that night. The monorail trip was fun. We got off and walked about a mile to Ceasar’s Palace, which BTW, is NOT near the monorail station, and then my “energy—OFF” button clicked over. My husband wanted to walk the mile back to our hotel, and I told him there was no way I could do it. He walked back—his choice: he used to be a marathoner before ankle injuries sidelined him—and got the car and came and got me. Still…I had walked the mile or so from the monorail station, through the Flamingo Hotel, out the door, up the stairs, over the pedestrian bridge, and then into Caeser’s Palace hotel because we couldn’t find the entrance to the resort, and then all over the hotel before my energy gave out. We’d been walking for about four hours. Not bad for a formerly fat chick. *wink*

We argued a lot while we were there—my husband was just being annoying—I can’t detail it, it’s not fair to him, but some of the crap he was pulling was just…incredible. Honestly, I’ve yet to meet a man with any common sense, I swear to Buddha. UGH!

At any rate, we got back to Orange County around midnight after a long truck stop diner meal before getting back on the road (steak for me!), so I spent the night at my in-laws before coming over to my mom’s. My point, and I’m getting to it, is that I’m down five pounds to 253. My lowest weight in decades. 


I had some Alouette garlic and artichoke cheese spread along with some nuts on Tuesday night, and it did give me ferocious squirts about three times. No more of that. *huff*

It’s so strange to me to see pictures of myself or look at my body in the mirror—it’s like someone stole my body while I was asleep and replaced it with a similar, smaller version.


I got into this to be healthy and put diabetes in remission—well, I feel GREAT and I’m off all diabetes medications—the weight loss I knew would be a “nice” side effect, but it really is weird. I can’t believe how motivated I am to eat and drink right to watch that scale continue to go down. OK, confession, yesterday my mother and I split a piece of Denny’s cheesecake with whipped cream. I liked the whipped cream more than the cheesecake. Now this splurge was planned about two weeks in advance, and it wasn’t as good as I had remembered it, so I’m in no big hurry to have another slice.
But…I do have some SF hard cinnamon candies that are good; several different flavors of almonds and some BBQ macadamia nuts (nuts are nearly all fat! Squee!); and Outshine makes some 40 calorie berry and lime popsicles that I have 3 or 4 times a week or the SF 40 calorie fudgesicles, and those items make it easy for me to keep my mouth and body happy simultaneously.

I’m really enjoying the hell out of this journey. Mostly. LOL

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