Resolution update

I did only so-so last week on my resolution not to eat fast food. I got a bit down in the dumps about mid-week and didn't feel like making meals to take with me. Which was bad, because Wednesday and Thursday were also the days I worked the second job and so had to worry about two meals away from home. So I ended up eating out Wednesday through Friday's lunch.

I didn't do that bad, really. Wednesday's lunch was salad, soup and some fruit off the grocery store salad bar, and Thursday's was a turkey flatbread Sammie with soup from Quizno's. Dinner was another matter, though. Wedneseday, I had Chinese again from the place in the mall, and Thursday was KFC. And Friday, I really did bad with a chicken sandwich and fries from Wendy's.

But I did take dinner to work at the mall last night -- a baked potato with cheese sauce and shredded chicken for toppings, and I added a salad from the grocery store salad bar. So that's some redemption, right?

Happiness

Saturday afternoon, I took Buster on a walk along our usual route -- over the bridge just to the west of my house, south down the dirt road, back east over another bridge and then back towards home.

Going over that second bridge, I noticed some blue-colored birds flitting back and forth between the branches of a tree that had fallen into the creek and trees on the bank. I figured they were bluejays, because we have plenty of them around here, although it seems during winter they usually take off for other parts. There was one thing a I noted a lack of, however, and that was noise. Bluejays are pretty vocal birds, especially when disturbed, and I should have been able to hear them even with my headphones on.

Then I noticed little flashes of orange as they flew. They weren't bluejays, these were bluebirds! I don't recall ever seeing bluebirds before around here, although where I live is included in their range.

Bluebirds are supposedly the bird of happiness, so maybe seeing them now, just after the beginning of the year, is a good sign of things to come! OK, maybe I'm reading too much into that, but I'm a creative person -- symbolism means a lot.

There's more interesting ideas about bluebirds here and here.

Doing good

Forgot about updating, for those of you not following the tweets. Both checkups went well. Some of the numbers on my bloodwork were a bit lower than normal; the doc said those numbers usually indicate an allergy and viruses. She's going to have me go back in about a month for another blood test just to make sure. I have felt like I've been fighting something lately, waking up with a dry, scratchy throat, so maybe that's it.

Otherwise things are a-OK. And both the surgeon and oncologist said I don't need to go get another MRI. That was good news, because I don't want to go through that mess again.

So far, so good

Six days into the new year, and I've eaten out only once! And it was sorta healthy. Chinese food. I mean, there were lots of vegetables. OK, I didn't eat all the vegetables. But it wasn't a greasy burger or corndog, after all.

Tomorrow and Thursday are my three-and-half year checkups with the surgeon and oncologist. Feeling good, so everything should go well. Send some positive vibes, though. Every bit helps.

Healthier 2009

So it's the new year, and I've been thinking about resolutions, as everyone does. How can you help it with all the diet/exercise product infomercials and organization stuff in the stores?

One thing I want to do, as I've said every year, is to get healthier. It means a lot more now than it did, say, five years ago, though. And I have done better, at least somewhat. I eat a little better and exercise more. But I never seemed to be able to lose much weight. Until this year. Once it warmed up this spring to where Buster and I could walk everyday, I lost about 15 pounds without even realizing it! That's the difference, I guess, of walking with an elderly dog vs. walking with a 1-year-old dog.

Really, I'm not that bad off. According to this site, I have a BMI of 26, which is just over the limit of being "overweight." According to that site, I could get down to 100 pounds and be considered normal weight. Yikes. I look of pictures of myself from right after college, when I was about 110, and that just looks too skinny (although it probably didn't help I always wore baggy clothes). I'd be happy with about 130-135, so I don't have far to go.

Anyway, back to resolutions. I've tried lots of different methods of keeping them, and it never really seems to work. So instead of saying "Lose weight" or even more specifically, "Lose 10 pounds," I'm going to go with small steps. So first step for January: Cutting fast food from the diet. This one should be easy, because I've already done a lot of that. I quit eating at McDonald's about a year or so ago after they ripped me off on my change in the drive-through and the manager was a jerk about it, and I lost about five pounds in the two months after that.

I go to Sonic once in a while (OK, more often than I should) for a corndog and tater tots (they probably start fixing them when they see me drive up now). Chicken (popcorn chicken, nuggets, KFC) is my downfall. But I hardly ever eat fast-food hamburgers anymore. And there are healthy options at fast food places. Wendy's (which is one of the best places for lunch here, service-wise) has chili, baked potatoes, salads, etc. There's a Quizno's near where I work, and I'm taking my lunch/dinner to work a lot more often now. So if I can just control the corndog/chicken nugget cravings, this one should be a smooth way to start.

I'll be working on some exercise goals this month, too, but I'm really going to focus on success on one goal each month.