melworks

Last night, for some reason that totally escapes me, I broke down and ordered a large Ultimate Pepperoni pizza with thin crust from Domino's.

It was both extremely satisfying and extremely disgusting. I haven't eaten anything like that in over a month and my taste buds were recoiling from all the salt. I don't think I'll be doing it again for a while.

Alas, I now must deal with the consequences of my decision. So, for the next four days, I'll be avoiding sodium. I try and keep mine under 1500mg a day, so four days should do me.

I'll be eating a lot of plain rice and fruit salad the next three days.

My poor stomach is not going to know what hit it.

Oy vey.

*Le sigh*

I stepped on the scale this afternoon and confirmed what I had been suspecting for a little while. Over the winter, I have packed on the pounds. About fifteen to be exact. Pheh.

So, now I am sitting here and brainstorming a plan to shave these pounds off. I'm thinking of just slowly reducing caloric intake over the course of a couple of weeks, or just blacklisting all sodas and breads. Either one should be effective.

I'm wondering how this happened? Well, I know how it happened, but I'm wondering how I didn't really notice until now?

I'll admit, gaining weight is one of the things that kind of freaks me out. I do NOT want to return to being that guy who weighed over 300 lbs and had chest pains when he bent over to tie his shoes. That guy's been gone for almost three decades and I am NOT letting him come back! Believe me!

So, the dizziness has definitely improved. I still get a bit woo-woo when I get up in the morning, but I can now tilt my head back without too much worry of everything spinning. So, that's progress!

Also, I've gone down a size on my belt.

So, things seem to be going pretty good.

*looks up, waiting for the anvil to fall from the sky a la Looney Toons style*

Gonna have to rething the point system for my diet. Went back and looked over my old notes and realized that I changed things up so the system wasn't so extreme. Pheh.

Will pick it back up in March when I've had some time to think about stuff.

On the good side though, I've already gone down a belt size.

Yay!

I'm feeling a bit off today for some reason.

Woke up at 10AM (!?!), got dressed, threw out some trash then ran some errands. Went to the bank, then my local RPG store to see if they had anything new in. They did not. After that, I went by Kroger, which was just deeply disappointing, and then I went to Food Lion and actually bought some stuff: grapes, apple slices, some cold brew coffee and a pack of hot dogs.

Home now and just feeling . . . off.

I don't know, maybe I'm coming down with something. :(

Points:112
Points Used: 12 (hot dogs)
Points: 100

I'm not feeling very Halloweeny this year. I haven't even decorated the Store, which I normally do. The most I've done is reposition my old witch figure from her secret nook to the front counter by the cash register. I'm just hoping no one decides that it's okay to sell her.
I'm surprised Jorg's wife hasn't done anything to decorate the Store. She bought one of the 9 foot skeletons and a pumpkin arch for their house, but hasn't done anything for the Store. Eh.
In other news, my roommate is in the Phillipines and he's been there for about a week. He's been chatting with this woman online for, like, ages, and they decided to meet. I honestly don't know how they first met, but he seems to be enjoying himself over there, at least from the pics they've posted. I was a bit worried because no matter how many common interests you might have with someone, if there isn't any realspace chemistry I don't think the relationship will work. Just my humble opinion.
I've been playing around with Chat GPT as an edition tool and it is HORRIBLE. I may give Gemini or Claude a try, just to see what they're like. From what little I've used Gemini, it seems smoother. At least, when it's working.
The weather is starting to get chilly here and I have pulled out some of the winter clothes and my winter sleepware. I'm amazed that my inflated bed remains as comfortable and functional as it is.
I need to lose some weight, so I'm doing intermittent fasting(IF) again. I thought I might do OMAD, but that just isn't practical for me. IF works better with my schedule. I just have to drink a hella ton of water outside my window, which isn't a bad thing. My hydration has dropped quite a bit lately. :/
Also, and this is really good news, a new Barnes & Noble bookstore has opened up on my side of town! Yay! I've already bought 3 books from them, so I'm set for reading material for a while. Although, after looking at their free rewards program, I've realized it's a waste of effort. You have to spend $100 to get $5 off your next purchase. *eyeroll* What the hell kind of reward is that? Also, every time I go into the store someone tries to convince me to buy John Scalzi's 'Starter Villain.' Ew. No.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read outside.

Yo, I am failing HARD at this diet.

*sigh*

I have fallen into the trap of just grabbing stuff when I'm out and about, which usually amounts to eating junk. Salty, sugary delicious junk.

But still junk.

Today, I need to go shopping for the week's Staples. These are the things that I eat most of the week. Usually, I get: milk, orange juice, bread, eggs, sausage and turkey. I'll usually get some other type of protein(chicken nuggets, ground beef, etc), and I'll have a couple of slots left that I can use to get other things, as needed, such as mayonaise or sunflower nut butter.

But last week, I realized I was kind of bored with eggs and bread, so I left them off the list. Which sort of had a trickle down effect on everything else that I buy. Without bread, there's no point in getting sandwich type stuff like sliced turkey or bologna. So I had to buy different things for this past week's staples. I wound up buying: milk, orange juice, sausage, chicken nuggets, instant ramen, instant rice, a can of mixed vegetables and a can of corn.

I'm still not feeling like I want to go back to bread and eggs this week, but I'm trying to think of stuff I can buy that isn't super-processed or high sodium(like instant ramen) that I can fix on the fly. This week's shopping list is looking a bit bare: milk, juice, sausage, instant coffee.

That's it. Anything else I think of adding to the list is super-processed and/or high-sodium. I get all the fruit and veggies I want from the fresh produce section, so canned/frozen is off the table. Heh. I suppose I could get dried beans or something of that nature, but that would mean planning ahead for meals. Same thing with pasta. And, honestly, not a big fan of pasta anyway.

So, I have no idea what in the world I'm going to get today. :/

In an attempt to curtail my intake of salt/added sugar, I've put together a menu of 18 food items that I'll restrict myself to until the end of this month.

The grocery list consists of:
Broccoli
Canned Chicken
Canned Tuna
Cheese
Chicken Nuggets*
Corn Chips
Eggs
Fresh Pineapple
Grapes
Ground Beef
Instant Rice
Mac & Cheese*
No-Salt Soup
Oatmeal Cookies*
Salad Greens
Sugar-Free Fruit Cocktail
Sugar-Free Pears
Yogurt

The items marked with an (*) are not low-sodium/low-added sugar, but I know myself. Some days, I'm just going to want to have something bad, and I can live with these things.

I think there's enough variety in this list, so that I won't get bored. And, at the end of the month, I can swap some stuff out if I want. No-Salt vegetables in place of No-Salt soups, etc. The list also factors in my low-oxalate diet; that's why I specify "fresh pineapple" rather than canned. Canned pineapple, for some reason, has way more oxalate than fresh.

We'll have to see how this goes.

So, I've finally started to get back on a healthier diet. I'm making conscious decisions to mitigate my intake of sodium and processed sugar. So, since Saturday, I've been trying to eat better and slowly wean myself off of excess salt/sugar.
This is not a fun process.
I LOVE salty/sugary things, but I know that I'm getting older and I need to be more mindful of how I treat my body if I want to live longer without unpleasantness. So, we make the effort.
But now, after a couple of days, I feel pretty crappy.
This is a common reaction when you change your diet. Some people refer to it as a Herxheimer Reaction, but I think that that is more specific to conditions like Lyme disease, etc. More likely, as I've changed my diet, my gut flora/intestinal biome is shifting and that's causing the low-level nausea and general crappy feeling.
It'll pass eventually, but until it does, I'm just feeling generally blah and yucky.