A wake up call!

I'm a pretty healthy and fit person. I hope to remain active for a long, long time and I've made some choices this past year. I decided that I wanted to get back down to an ideal weight instead of carrying those extra 20-25 pounds around. Imagine carrying a bag of dog food everywhere! Life is so much easier without that extra baggage.

As the year progresses, I remained fairly true to my new lifestyle eating habits. I tried to eliminate most of the refined sugar from my diet as refined sugar is my biggest culprit. The rest of the food decisions is easy for me to make. I don't do chips or snack foods, but I eat sugar! And I've been naughty - but don't tell Santa cause I really, really want my Christmas present!

After cranking out my 31.5 KM on the spin bike yesterday morning, I decided to weigh myself. No big deal there, I'm right in the middle of my 5-pound fluctuation zone. BUT this scale also measures the fat content in your body. Granted - it's not perfect, but it's relative to previous measurements. Oh boy - that refined sugar that I've been sneaking into my mouth has gone directly to my fat cells and those fat cells are dancing with glee.

I'm can't remember what my body fat percentage was when I was doing so well earlier in the year (and I can't find the paper), but I'm going to say that the percentage is about 5% higher. That's HUGE!!!!!!  No weight gain - just happy fat cells.

I'm going back on a detox program in January to kick start myself and I'm back to using MyFitnessPal to log my food intake. It's Christmas and I'm allowing myself some flexibility. But have a look at this - which will make your head spin. At least it did mine.

So here's one of my FAVORITE cookies and I think they only come out at Christmas. My Mom used to make these. They're called icebox cookies.

Two icebox cookies

Now let's look at the Nutrition Facts. Each cookie has 170 calories in it. EACH COOKIE!!!!  The fat content is 14%.  HUGE!!!!!!   My fat cells jump up and down with glee when I even look at the container. Yes - I bought one LAST container of these damn cookies.

Nutrition facts for the icebox cookies

These are the cookies that I normally eat because I don't want to give up eating cookies, It's just about choosing a better option. These are the Digestives from Simple Pleasures.  No, they don't look as exciting, but they still taste good and there are 7 different kinds. Some are better choices to eat than the others.

Digestive cookies by Simple Pleasures

Now let's look at the Nutrition Facts for these. The calorie count for THREE cookies is 130 calories. That's less than ONE of the icebox cookies. And I don't normally eat three of these digestives,  I eat two. The fat and the sugar in these cookies is a lot less than the icebox cookies.

Nutrition Facts for Simple Pleasures cookies - Digestive

 You see where this is going?  It's not about giving up any particular food - it's about making better choices when you eat/drink something. It's so easy for those bad habits to creep back into your life and BAM - you've messed up. Big time. I keep on top of the issue as far as the weight goes. I don't weigh myself every day - I don't need to, but I had been letting the refined sugar thing slip - a LOT. 

Here's the thing - I was a HUGE sugar addict. I wanted sugar - the more I ate, the more I wanted. When I eliminated it from my diet - I didn't crave it anymore. The detox helped me get over the craving. But I've found that the more that I snuck sugar into my diet, the more I wanted the sugar. In other words - eating sugar makes you crave more sugar.  So I'll give myself a wee bit more time to enjoy the limited amount of extra sugar in the house and then - that's it. It's gone. All in all, I feel that I did a great job this past year. New eating habits which I'm thrilled about, but just goes to show that you can NEVER let your guard down. Kind of like an alcoholic!

Think about that when you're eating over the holidays. Offer healthier snacks or meals. People laugh at me - but who feels better? who has the most energy? Nuff said!

Yesterday was a day of running around. I got a lot of errands done - things picked up, things dropped off. I still have a few more errands things to get done and of course, the list of e-mails never seems to slow down. I'm going to try and work on all that today.

BUT I did manage to get Audra's Garden Twist done. The binding went on this morning and that is finish number 79 for the year. Yeah!!!!  Only 21 more items to finish. Seriously - there's about 20 bindings sitting on that table. Well - not that many, but at least 10. I'll be binding my little heart out today.

Binding on Garden Twist

Today, I should be working on the last (of five) quilts for Audra, but I haven't heard from the daughter yet (I was hoping to deliver them tomorrow) so I'm going to leave it. We'll do the delivery another time.

When I got home I was tired and decided to work on the puzzle. Where to start???  The sky of course. So I got most of the sky done last night. Yeah!!!!  And the next grouping of pieces are chosen and waiting for me to tackle them. Notice how the rest of those pieces all look alike??  Yes - this is going to be fun. The pieces also do NOT always interlock nicely to each other so that makes it a challenge as well.  In case you think I want more puzzles? - I do not. I counted the puzzles in the puzzle closet - 27 and some of them are FOUR THOUSAND pieces. I think I shall not have to buy another puzzle for the rest of my life!!!

Working on the puzzle

 Of course, the ladies in the apartment building where my parents live - I think they average one a week!!!  Well - when I'm retired, I might need more!

Yesterday I got rid of the rest of my paper pantographs for the long arm to a good home. I had tons of them, some of them had never been opened. But with the computer, I have no use for them any longer. Half went to a new long arm quilter months ago (the easier ones) and the harder ones went to a more experienced quilter. They are GONE and I'm happy.

But I was showing Jeannie how the computer worked yesterday. It's so amazing and I've just barely touched the surface of what it can do. However, I've also learning how to fix the problem that most times I'm the cause of!!!!  It's been a great learning curve and I can't wait to move on and do some fancier things.

When I was going through the quilts on the rack (getting things ready for the next week of quilting), I found a quilt sandwich that was supposed to be a practice piece. So I loaded that so I could demonstrate the computer. We were playing with spirals. Normally I make these about 6 inches in diameter, but these little guys are only 2 inches high. That's the beauty of the computer - you can size the pantos to whatever you want!!!  I do love it. Now I want to mess around with some other designs to finish off this practice piece. Then it'll get chopped into two and make a couple of nice cat beds.

Playing with the computerized designs on the long arm

So - I picked up some patterns/supplies to work on projects for next year, got the backing fabric for a quilt that was missing a wee bit of backing fabric, picked up some dies for the Accuquilt die machine. I also made one more stop. I'll share that with you later this week. It was a lot of fun and it's going to lead me to a new resolve for 2019. I decided it needed a day by itself.

Before I go today, I have to leave you with this hilarious video. It's about an engineer to decided to seek revenge on the PORCH PIRATES - those people who steal packages off the front porch. It's about 11 minutes long but well worth it to watch. I was laughing so hard my stomach muscles were hurting and the tears were streaming down my face. This is EXACTLY the kind of revenge that I'd love to do - not that I'm revengeful. But there are times when you just want to prove a point. Check out the video.

Have a super day!!!!


Ciao!!!