Valentine's Season and What I'm Doing.

First Valentine's Season. Last year my husband instituted Valentine's Season. Basically, every day the week before Valentine's Day he gave me a card and a little small gift. A Box of Candy Hearts, Valentines Day pencils, Hersheys Kisses...etc. Nothing very grand, but it was the sweetest thing. Well, Valentine's Season is back and my husband is again putting all men to shame. It began yesterday with a package in the mail. It is an apricot colored Chef N Switchet Speader silicone Spatula. You are all probably scratching your heads thinking....THIS is a romantic cute gift? Well yes. I had asked for a sandwich spreader a while back for Christmas, but hubby hadn't found one by then. But he remembered and found one online! It's different than one I had been thinking of, but it's a cool orangey color and serves 2 purposes! I'm all for multipurpose stuff! Today's Valentine Season - valentine's themed pencils and a heart tissue banner for the house. It was so cute because K is incorporating the kids into it too! He is such a sweetie!

Ok, now for what I'm doing. I'm up to 46 *gasp* readers and I was thinking that I should review what I'm particularly doing to help me lose weight. This works for me but I make no guarantees it would work for anyone else.

First - I eat less and exercise more. I don't count calories, but I have a basic idea. I eat less fruit (no more than 2 a day) more veggies and proteins and less carbs. Again, I don't count how many. I just know vague amounts. I eat what my family eats for dinner. I just adjust the portions accordingly. Friday nights are pizza nights and I always eat 2 pieces of greasy, sausagy, pepperoni pizza. (and the leftover crusts of my kids) But I stop at 2. I generally eat a few scrambled eggs for breakfast and a piece of fruit. For lunch I have a turkey or ham wrap with lettuce and tomatoes, either with Miracle Whip or Avocado. I use Joseph's LAVASH flax flat breads which are only 100 calories for the whole huge wrap. I don't get sick of them. I've been eating them most every day for 6 months. For supper it's a variety, but it's what my family eats...usually sausage and spaghetti one night, chicken and corn another night, pork chops, hamburger. Nothing terrible restrictive. And I DON'T eat tofu.

I move more. I work out usually 5 times a week. I do spin a couple times of weeks, a weight class a couple times of week and a yoga/taichi class once a week. Sometimes I work out less, sometimes more. I always take classes because on my own, I know I won't push myself. Sometimes I take aqua aerobics.

I don't keep a running record of weekly pounds lost. I decided a while back that I will have weekly 2 lb goals which I can meet or not meet and I can always tell how far behind I am by whether I have met them or not. I only adjusted them once between Thanksgiving and Christmas because I had fallen so far behind it would not have been healthy for me to try to catch up. Either once or twice a month I update my actual weight but I don't keep track of lbs lost week to week. I don't do this because some weeks I might lose 4 lbs and another week I might lose 1 lb and it's possible that I might even gain. I didn't want to get caught in the trap of being disappointed with myself if I had a big loss one week and a small loss the next. And as a woman there is always that one week a month we hold more water. That's part of the reason I think I've failed so many times before. So this is a very solid stable way for me to gauge my loss without getting too caught up in numbers. Sometimes I'm ahead of my weekly goals, and sometimes behind but I always know where I am and where I'm supposed to be. I'm not saying keeping a weekly tally is bad, just that it doesn't work for me and plays too many tricks with my mind.

Have a Happy Day!