Day #70!!!

I did it! Reached another goal day of number 70 on my diet of fasting.

I have no idea what I weight but getting to day #70 and still being on my weight loss diet is a real big deal! I haven't been sticking to eating 500 calories, it's more like 1000 calories per day. I do have an afternoon snack of air popped popcorn and some days humas. I still try to make good food choices and still have some treats as long as its worth it! Am I at my goal weight? Hardly, but every day I move a little closer to the 145 weight. 

Saturday we spent the afternoon looking at newly built houses that were part of the Parade of Homes in the area. We toured quite a few houses in our area. I liked this idea for our basement fireplace. It was easy to do and a cheaper option then adding stone. We already have a lot of tile and stone in the basement this might just soften it up with just trimmed out in all wood and make it white! 

I love how they decorate the houses. I have no idea of how to decorate so I need to borrow ideas. I see this couch has 4 different size and types of pillows. Love that idea and will have to copy! No need to match up all the pillows as I was trying to do! 

I liked the outside lights and the garage doors on this house. 

This light looked nice for maybe our stairs light? 

This too is another great light option for the office ceiling light. 

I think this bed was super pretty with the pillows and all the silver and white colors. 

We also checked out the Mississippi river in Hasting last night. We went to the river for a before dinner drink and took some photos of the flooding. The water covered the path and was almost up to the rail road bridge. 

After having our drinks, we went to dinner. I tried to make a healthy choice. 

I didn't eat all, probably less then half the beef tenderloin and rosoto or how ever you spell it. The beef had a balsamic glaze that was a bit too sweet on top. I did have a super tasty salad with Gorgonzola cheese and fresh spring lettuce. I had my dinner with a Fair State sour beer, since all the wine was overly sweet. I'm leaning away from Moscotto since I have been off sugar for over 2 months. 

It's time to lace up my running shoes and get out and go for my morning run in 28*F sunny spring weather! I will also be working this afternoon. We'll be in St. Paul so more river flooding checking out is on our todo list. I do have a gift card for a resturant in the area but not sure we will use it. I'll just bring it along for a fun Sunday afternoon or evening outing! 

It's Saturday!!

It's Saturday and I made $55 this morning for selling our old bedroom ceiling fan!

Bye, Bye old fan, we won't miss you on the floor of our bedroom! Now I'm selling a few more items on Craigslist! 

My daughter's old kitchen sink and faucet. 

Two lamps that we no longer need. 

I'm using the money from selling this stuff for a new light above our stairs. I hate the old one and it's super dusty!We took this old light that use to be in our dining room and just used it above the stairs. It was good enough for years but now that styles have changed and we switched out other lights, its time for a new one. 

I'll be selling this one too soon! Just needs a good dusting to clean it up from the last 20 years. 

Friday we did a fun trip to Minneapolis for happy hour. We left early at 3pm to avoid the heavy rush hour traffic. Tried three new breweries and then went to dinner! All places had Kombuchi and I was able to mix it with my beer. I had no idea some Kombuchi is only 40 calories for 1 12 oz bottle! I was able to consume less calories and mix it so I enjoyed the taste and got to drink. 

First brewery was Mexican owned. They had the cutest bathroom sign, so I had to take a photo! 

This place had kombuchi and cold pressed coffee at Dangerous man Brewery. I had a tangerine sour beer that tasted just fine by not adding anything else. 

I forgot to take a photo at the last brewery. It use to be a old Iron metal building. We finished up our last game of cribbage and then went to dinner at Young Joni, I completely forgot to take a photo of our pizza, the Yolo. We added mushrooms to the pepperoni, bacon and sausage. I ate all three slices of our thin crust pizza, it was soooo good! We also shared some spicy peanuts at the first brewery. In all I ate around 1235 calories for the day. Way more then I wanted but I also splurged on drinks, pizza, and peanuts/peanutbutter! I'm 100% okay with my splurge! I've been on a diet for 69 days and now that I''ll be hitting two new diet goals tomorrow at day #70 and Monday with week number 11! I need to step it up and say on my diet to feel like I'm actually losing weight and not maintaining. I still have 10 to 15 pounds I need to lose for myself and summer! 

I made these amazingly good bars for my customers on Friday. I found the recipe on Pinterest. They are shortbread toffee cookie bars. Just search for the name. They are super simple to make and delicious! Better then my crack candy that is similar. This one has sweetened condensed milk to make the caramel gooey layer. Its a must make! Good thing there were plenty of leftovers. I only tried a tiny sliver but I can tell you, they are amazing!

Happy Saturday! 

It's growing!

I was reading about growing all kinds of left over veggie that we purchase from the store. I bought some bib lettuce with the root and decided why not try and re-grow this. I know you can do onions, potatoes etc. I just have never tried to plant them in dirt once they start growing. Might have to try doing that this spring! 

I'm on day #68 of my diet. After eating around 1000 calories a few time this week and last week and the week before, I decided I need to really try a lot harder to stay around 500 calories. I've been hungry mid afternoon and can't wait till dinner which is usually at 6pm. When I get up, it's early 5am, so waiting even till 1pm or 2 is over 9 hours of waiting to eat. I can't always just wait till 5 or 6pm to eat. I've been having some 35 calories per cup of popcorn to keep me tied over till dinner. I do put the popcorn into another container but the container has gotten larger and sometimes I refill it. Yesterday, I ate some humas and pita chips too before dinner.  Dinner was a little chicken with peppers and onion smothered in some salsa. A very low cal dinner. In all I was around 700 calories for the day. 

I was going to get out and run in the afternoon but instead after working a busy day, I sat on the couch and caught up on all the TV I missed Wednesday night. I did manage to go to Target with Steve at night so we did a little walking around. I was pretty lazy from 1:30 to bed time. I do need to make some changes in my afternoon. I don't accomplish anything because I'm all into sitting on the couch and doing nothing. My home fix it projects won't get done and my running won't improve if I don't do something about it! 

Zoey looks so cute here. That's kind of how I felt all day Thursday. Can I just be lazy and do nothing! 

It's Friday, and in two days I hit diet day #70! I am pretty happy that I can check off more diet days and that I've stuck with my diet and actually lost a lot of weight. I am still not where I want to be for weight loss. My goal is to weigh around 145 - 155. I'd say closer to 150- 155 is more realistic to maintain. If I'm around 145 or lower its harder for me to maintain but that's the weight I'd like to be, any thing around 150. Since I'm 5'8" and shrinking, that seems like the idea weight for me. I'm only a few pounds away from my high weight I'm guessing I am 160/159 right now give or take a few pounds? What really matters more then the number on the scale is if I can get into my jeans again. I know my weight was close to 145 to be able to wear them all and be comfortable again. I can get into them and zip them up, but they are just a little too snug around the middle. 

What I also failed to mention is that we had two left over cupcakes in the frig. They were sooo good I really wanted one last taste. So, Steve and I shared one and I only cut a small taste for myself. I still got to enjoy the cupcake with out feeling like I needed more then a bite. It was one delicious bite. If I wanted more, I would have been okay with that too. I don't believe a diet will ever work if you don't allow yourself to eat whatever sometimes too. Its all about choices and making sure its worth it. 

My Day was filled with a few new items

I tried some new magnetic eye lashes. I liked them, but I needed some help getting them on which was not easy! You need to phone a friend to get help! I could not do this by myself which is the only bummer. I would totally wear them all the time if I could just figure out how to do it on my own. Maybe with lots of practice? 

My feet felt great so I was able to wear high  heal sandles! I wasn't able to wear them at all last spring or summer. Nice to be able to wear any shoes I want again. 

I tried press on nails but used the glue to apply. A few came off right away but I added more glue and they are still on today. It's like super glue so they will be on for awhile. It's a bit hard to type with them. We will see how easy it is working with them on? I'm sure this too takes time getting use to. 

We went out and I tried three beers last night at Surly and Monster brewery. All were good as they were fruity and sours. We also tried the food at Surly and it was excellent!

It was Steve's Dad, Wayne's 80th birthday. We took him out to celebrate. 

We had the cupcakes I made at Monster Brewery since Surly doesn't let you bring in your own food. 

I made chocolate cake (from a box mix) and then made frosting three times! I tried to make some fancy Italian Swiss buttercream frosting but it  never worked, just was a runny mess two times! I gave up and switched to cream cheese butter cream with espresso coffee and decorated with sugar topping and 80 in chocolate. By the time we ate the cupcakes (They sat in the car on a 60 degree day) the chocolate and sugar topping kind of melted a little. 

I need to work on adding more coffee. The cream cheese kind of covered up the flavor. More coffee is needed. They still tasted really good and I ate the whole thing! Speaking of eating, I had french  fries, pulled pork, smoked turkey, brisk, some pretzel, and popcorn yesterday with three 10 oz beers. I figure around 1200 calories for one meal with drinks. I knew this would be a high calorie night. I'll have to stay at 500 today! 

Summer like

The temperature will get to the mid 60's today. We haven't had warm weather since October! With that warm air, there will be a lot of wind. 

I went for a run around our neighborhood after working. I usually like to run right away in the mornings but wanted to wait till it warmed up. Today, I'll do the same but maybe run the lakes since I'm sure the snow/ice will be all off the trails. It felt hard running 1.4 miles. Nothing like it use to feel, pretty effortless. My mile time was slower around 10:30 minutes per mile. It took a quick 15 minutes and then I was done. I'm easing back into running slowly since I don't need my foot hurting issue to come back. I did put the heal inserts into my running shoes and I think this will help and going at it slowly and then increasing my miles. 

Even thought running felt tough, it felt good to be outside and running again, foot pain free. 

I found this stop watch outside in our snow bank. It still worked. I have no idea who's it is and how it got outside in our front yard. 

Our hairy monster went to the groomer and she is now all cleaned up. I'll have to take a photo of her today. 

I'm trying to sell our old ceiling fan. So far I've had a few interested but no takers yet. I hope to get rid of it soon since it's on our bedroom floor. 

One large sink, yeah or nay? We are thinking of replacing our divided sink with this one and getting a new faucet. Just not so sure about the drain placement? I'd like one in the center. 

How is dieting going? I'm on Week #10, day #66 and should have hit another big weight goal day. What is my weight loss right now? Projected to be at 22 pounds lost. My waist is down 3.5 inches! 5.4% fat loss. While its taken a while to lose the weight, I'm feeling so much better! But is my weight loss noticeable? 

Sometimes, I feel like I've lost weight and other days it feels like I'm just stuck not losing much. It doesn't help to eat 1000 calories and feel like I'm sticking to my weight loss plan. It's still low, and Tuesday I burned calories running and only ate around 700 calories. I did have a few too many sugar free lemon cough drops. I paid the price last night with my stomach pains. They did have a warning and I now understand. I'll be skipping the drops from now on! My stomach still hurts this morning. 

Monday was our fun day!

Steve had the day off and I only worked in the morning. We decided to use up a restaurant gift card in Hudson Wisconsin,  but found out Monday is the only day the restaurant is not open. So we checked out a few other places instead. 

They had a brewery in town so we stopped in for a drink. They only had beer and not any sours or ciders so I opted for a semi non -ish beer to drink along with some popcorn. We decided to now bring our own popcorn because a lot of breweries don't serve food. You can order some from other places or bring your own. I just need to be prepared because I'd rather eat my low cal popcorn or some veggies with my drink. 

Hudson is a river town, so we checked out the St. Croix river flooding. 

The walkway was underwater and all the tables. 

It was a nice warmish day to walk around. We sat on a bench that was heated from the sun, so that felt good to just sit for awhile and soak up some sunshine. 

We had lunch at another bar that was highly recommend. It did not disappoint. We split the wings. I only ate 4 and zero skin. We also split the burger and it was the best one I've had in ages! I even ate a few of the bar made fries. Yes, high calories for the afternoon meal. No dinner for me! I did have a few pretzels with PB when I got home but that was it and ate around 1050 calories with 400 calories for the day of liquid drinks!

No not diet foods but you can eat foods like this if you don't eat the skin and only have a few, not all! 

I was going to weight myself on Monday. Instead I opted to try on some skinny black jeans/pants that I had in the closet from when I did weight a lot less a few years ago. They were a size 8 and they fit but I need to lose a little fat on my waist still. I could not believe that I could button them up and fit into them!  One or two more pounds of weight loss should do the trick and I'll be back to wearing another pair of pants. I tried on some Capri too and they fit! I just need to do some sewing as the bottoms are far too wide and I don't think people wear Capri.