Small wins?

 Years ago, when I first lost weight I had so many ups and downs I would get so discouraged. Back then I was weighing daily and writing it on my mirror. I started weighing everyday again this year.  I had stopped, only doing weekly for awhile and then when I wasn't doing well, not at all.  But I discovered that recording my daily weight really helps.  It is frustrating though when my lowest weight of the week is not on my official weigh in day.  Today (Friday) it was the lowest it's been in a year or so at 163.8, but my official weigh in was 167.

If we count my annual holiday weight gain, I've lost 8 lbs since the beginning of the year, and if we go on today's weight, 11 lbs.  It feels good to be seeing lower numbers, but I hate posting about it.  How many times have I posted "I've lost weight!" only to come back in a month and be where I started.  But this feels good right now.  I've consistently been seeing the numbers on average go down.  I do have days that are higher, usually Monday because I'm not as careful on the weekend, but even the high number is lower.  

I've been taking monthly measurements, and those aren't so great, but I am feeling better.  I think in my last post I mentioned I am no longer doing intermittent fasting, it wasn't helping and doesn't really fit my day. My sister found a supplement called Bioma that is a fancy probiotic.  It has really good reviews, so I started taking that.  I have a few others that I am taking, ashwaganda is supposed to help with metabolism, and the Bioma helps with the gut health.  I am also drinking Metamucil every day, I don't know if it helps with weight loss, but it helps with being regular, and I know I don't eat enough fiber.  I've also started drinking a green drink, it's a powder called "Clean Simple Greens" or something, but I feel it helps with the veggie intake since I'm bad at that too.  The green drink is actually good, it does have a little bit of a powdery taste/texture if not shaken well enough, but it doesn't turn me off.  

I am not running, I am pretty lucky if I get one run in a week. The 10k training plan didn't work at all.  I don't know what my problem is. I see memories that pop up on my phone of me running, and I want to run again, I know I enjoy it.  I just don't do it.  I think some of it is discouragement from running 2 miles and feeling like I'm dying.  I used to be proud to be 10k ready all the time, so it's hard to feel like I've let it slide.  2024 was supposed to be the year I got my mojo back, but I haven't.  I am walking most work days, I take a 30 min walk at lunch almost every day.  

I truly believe the lack of motivation is part of this crappy premenopausal journey I am on. Right now the high protein and the supplements seem to be working to help with weight loss.  

My picture from my one run this week.

Project

 Recently I found an old journal of mine, at the end of it I was keeping track of my measurements (not just weight) and I tagged it, but didn't actually read the journal.  I started writing regularly in March of 2014, and was keeping track of my weight and quit regularly journaling in August, the last entry was October 2014.  I have always been a sporadic journaler.  I have kept this blog up longer than anything I've ever done, but here I write as if I have an audience, definitely not a big one, but I do have a few readers.  In my paper journals I write more as if no one will ever read them.  I'm pretty sure this one is the last one I've written. Well, right now I have a food and weight journal, but I don't write about my thoughts as much., every once in a while I do, but not much.

  There were so many things in it that I forgot about, and some things I still struggle with.  I was in the contemplation stage of running a marathon, I lost my job, at the end of it we moved . . . well, after the last entry we did.  And I weighed between 147 and 145.  I didn't remember that I got that low before my marathon, I thought I lost it when I was training for my first marathon in 2015, I know I got down to 140-141, but thought I had started at 150.  It's disheartening because 10 years later I'm a full 20 lbs higher than that.  😞 

The other thing I forgot was that I was trying low carb/no sugar.  I think I did better back then.  I think I need these things to get me motivated again.  Although, it's 9:15 at night, I'm in pj's, in my bed, I'm not getting up to work out.  One thing that has helped a little is the photo memories that my phone pops up, I have a lot of running pictures, and I used to take a lot of selfies, so those pictures really motivate me to get out of the house.  Although, I only ran one day last week.

I printed out a Hal Higdon's 10k training plan and put it on my bedroom door . . . problem is, I'm supposed to be starting the 3rd week and so far I've skipped 3 of the 6 runs I was supposed to do, and haven't done any long runs.  The long runs are only 3 miles, but I've been really busy on the weekend and just haven't done them. This week I got roped into our project on Thursday and didn't go run, so that was another run I skipped.  Maybe I should start the training over.

Project ~ 

We started the spring out trying to get a greenhouse together from an old guinea pig enclosure. We took way too long on it, and it doesn't really work well, so I decided we needed to stop that one and work on the BIG yard project I wanted to do. . . . redoing our garden area to try to get rid of the weeds.  

Yes, you read guinea pig enclosure correct.  We were told by our neighbors when we moved in that the people that lived here before has a guinea pig rescue.  Well, I have no use for that, or making it into a chicken coop (which is what we thought it was), so we made tried to make it a greenhouse.  We'll go back to it in the fall and see if we can fix our problems.

Anyway, we I wanted to redo the garden area, especially so I could plant all the roses I dug out 2 years ago and put in temporary cloth planting bags.  The weeds were so bad, I didn't want to be fighting them in the roses all the time.  Plus, the garden area was outlined by railroad ties that were rotting, so I wanted to remove those as well.

This is before, the end of last year when my garden was thriving (but not the roses).

You can't really see them, but the roses are on cardboard in the cloth planter bags along the fence line.

These are after (obviously) we tore everything out and then the progress we've made.

I put the planter boxes in first because I wanted to get my veggies planted, but I didn't and it would have been much faster if we had done the outside wall first.

We ended up cannibalizing the planter boxes because we ran out of dirt on the weekend, and couldn't get more delivered until a weekday.  Oh, I didn't mention, that was Memorial day weekend, so we had to wait until Tuesday.  

We rented a tractor for a week to get it done, and not break our backs.

It's not finished, we're going to put river rock in the empty places, because I hate bark, but the boxes and border are finally done and I can plant.  

Video of the finished garden area, without the rocks.

The Saturday of Memorial day weekend, was a lot of shoveling for me and I hurt my right forearm. Not sure what I did, but a week later it really isn't feeling a lot better.  

Today it was supposed to start raining (it did) but before it did I was able to get out and put my poor sickly seedlings from the failed greenhouse in the ground.  Not sure how much will grow, but the rain won't hurt them.  😊 The little bit of planting I did really hurt my arm. I need to give it a rest, but it's hard when it's my right arm and I'm a busy girl.

Next weekend is supposed to be ridiculously nice, so we're putting up the pool.  I joined a couple above ground pool groups in facebook and I have pool envy now.