June Bugs and The Big Plan

June is usually a buggy month.

The cats go out till Oct-Nov because otherwise the flea situation KILLS ME.

And a ton of things start "bugging me" about my life that didn't before, probably because there is finally enough consistent light outside that I drag my sorry butt out of its D3-deprived state and start caring more about my life again.

As you know, I love plans. Making them... watching them crash and burn... looking back on them sorrowfully... that's me!

I'm a few days early this year, but it's June Bug time: time to take a serious look at my summer plans and "the rest of the year". And it's time for my summer BIG PLAN!

I've come to a few conclusions recently about my eating plan. Such as:

1. It is more important to develop a healthy habit, than to do anything perfectly according to any numbered plan.

2. It is more important to do something consistently, than to do something perfectly sometimes, and terribly other times.

3. It is more important to better-establish a healthy lifestyle, than to lose any specific number of pounds.

Because if those three things are worked on, stuff like "losing fat" and "becoming more active" are inexorably inevitable.


I have a list of goals to meet between now and the end of the year:

1. Eat vegetables regularly.
2. Take supplements.
3. Drink more water.
4. Exercise more.

The only thing that has a specific goal-measure on it is this one:

5. Lose 30# (to ~<350).

That is less than 1 lb a week. Which at my weight certainly ought to be do-able.

I've lost a whole lot of weight fast in the past when I bothered really trying for any consistent period. It's combining the 'intensity' with the 'longevity' of an eating plan that gets difficult for me. I'm a sprinter, not a cross-country sort. I can do most anything briefly -- and the more extreme, the better -- but sane balanced approaches, even in the short term let alone the long term, are hard work for me.

The last year I've been "off and on" lowcarb, to the degree that I weigh about the same as I did in 1/07 (maybe 20# lighter) -- but then, I haven't gained anything, so that's good! I guess I've been 'on' again just enough to balance the 'off' agains.

But as you know, it's still depressing to look back on a long period of time and think, "How much healthier would I be right now if I'd actually got off my butt and been proactive about this?!"

THE VEGGIE DILEMMA

Eating veggies has turned out to be harder than I thought. Aside from bell peppers (and those, more 'in' things than on their own), it turns out most the things I like aren't veggies! Onions and mushrooms are alliums and fungi. Peas are starchy, but even if I take the carb hit, they're legumes. I didn't eat veggies growing up and have little taste for them. I sometimes like broccoli in stir-fry. Tomatoes in small dose. I don't like salad unless it's buried in blue cheese dressing, although I can tolerate greek salad (which is tossed with feta cheese).

So eating "3 cups a day of veggies" as Regina recommended (you may recall I'm following the eating goals she outlined for me--or I should be, anyway!) turned out to be a real pain in the butt for me. She suggests, ever the sensible one, that eating whatever I can veggie-wise is better than giving up on it entirely. Still. I didn't expect it to be such work!

Humor: the USDA's "food pyramid" website -- not that this isn't the most moronic contribution to diet in history since cult koolaid anyway -- can't even get straight what is a fruit, vegetable, legume, etc. It's just embarrassing.

I'm falling behind in the required physical work of my life: near-constant lawn mowing, the backyard is a jungle needing several things before mowing can happen, the garden apparently had 2.7 billion weed seeds in the soil as the minute it started raining, the weeds were so high and thick I'm sure my seedlings are dying of shade, I still haven't finished shoveling potting soil from the dumptruck, and so on. I haven't been getting enough protein which I'm sure is part of not feeling "up to" more than I have lately, but that is changing.

SO I WENT SHOPPING.

I bought meat, meat, meat, and meat. While there I also bought a little bit of cheese and some fairly LC jarred sauces. I didn't have room at the time but am going back tonight or tomorrow to buy produce, soon as I figure out what to do with it.

I also bought the 5000 IU capsules of Vitamin D from the proteinpower.com website where, interestingly enough, I went LAST, but I could hardly find any elsewhere and they cost more when I did. I'm going to use that the rest of the year and see if I feel any difference as a result. I'm light-olive complexion (the hint of cherokee in my ~14 nationalities) and grew up in a beach city so I suspect I'm probably chronically low on D3.

DA KIDDO!

The kid is on this eating plan with me! She'll be 12 in August. This is a pic of her wearing my vastly oversized- on- her sweatshirt at the walking park a few weeks ago.

Well that's all I have to report for now. I'm a day late posting on my exercise blog, gotta do that tomorrow with my initial measures and counts of what I can lift and do for exercise. I'll be doing chair-based half-squats until I am finally light enough that my knees can stand full squats.

LOWCARB SOCIAL LIFE

I recommend folks who want friends to learn with or hang with others, seek out the social forums for lowcarb, such as lowcarber.org, lowcarbfriends.com, etc. I don't know what I'd do without my journal buddies, who put up with all my kvetching about everything in life, all my Mad Scientist plans and experiments, etc.

Hope y'all are having a good early summer! And marshmallow, wherever you are, I lost your forum address, if you'd be so kind as to resend!

PJ