NaPraGoMo 2008

The Ironic Catholic has started the second annual NaPraGoMo - National Pray to God Month.

Details can be found on this blog here.

Try, Try Again

It doesn't pay to get pissed off at your doctor and rebel by eating anything that isn't tied down. I've been doing that since my appointment in August and the scale hasn't been kind. So today it's back to business, back to the McDougall food plan.

And of course, last night I had another "last meal" and pigged out on burgers and muffins.

I just spent about 3 hours playing with the blogs - this one (added all those links on the right side), made a new one for my food journal, and added today's post to my vegetarian foods blog.

I did my morning exercises (See the Mindful Meditations post below) and will hop on the treadmill later, but first I have to finish breakfast and do some housework. I was so embarrassed yesterday when the landlord came up unannounced — we have piles of "stuff" everywhere. If it's not covered by a magazine or book there's piles of fabric or patterns on it. And CD's and DVD's fight for their own pieces of real estate. Eight bookcases, 4 CD racks, and a shelf around 2 sides of our bedroom wall and still not enough room. It's time to get rid of clutter, both in our home and on our bodies!

Mindful Movements

The trek for weight loss continues. During two weeks in August I didn't follow my regular food plan because of too many stressful things happening. Then the weekend after vacation I practically starved myself just so I would be a few pounds lighter on the doctor's scale the following Monday morning. Well, that worked, but as of this morning all the weight I lost is now back on.

Most mornings I was still getting in my daily hour of exercise. I would start off with the workout from the Mindful Movements book you can see them here) following along with the DVD that came with it:


and in the afternoons do a half hour on the treadmill. While the meals may not have been vegetarian, they were always low-cal.

I was thinking of just sticking to a calorie-counted food plan and going back to eating some meats and dairy, but then my husband had a minor medical problem, and with it came the reminder to him that his last set of lab work 10 years ago showed extremely high cholesterol and triglycerides, both of which might be contributing to his current problem. Last week he had the bloodwork repeated and next week e go for the results. In the meantime, he decided he's now going to follow in my footsteps and stick to the McDougall food plan 100%. Well, I told him he can do that after we finish up the non-McD foods in the house, like all the meat in the freezer for meals he requested and decide whether we should throw away or he'll eat all the potato chips and cookies he purchased that nobody in the house eats.

It was nice eating meat again, but I can tell my body really prefers the vegan low fat foods. My hypoglycemia has been acting up, my morning fasting blood sugars have been too low for comfort, I'm sluggish, even though my TSH is now within the normal guidelines (The new ones, too, not the outdated ones the lab had on their print-outs), my sinus have been clogged and I'm coughing from the dairy, and my weird heart arrythmia started up again.

It'll be good to get back on plan, and very nice to have my husband 100% behind me now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I tried. LiveJournal made some changes recently and things were going super slow over there, making it a bit frustrating to write a post, but over here things are so discombobulated and confusing it's not worth changing it to my main blog. I guess it's time to look into something different, like WordPress.

Music Meme from Vesta

Here's what she says to do:

A.) Go to musicoutfitters.com
B.) Enter the year you graduated from high school in the search function and get the list of 100 most popular songs of that year
C.) Bold the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate and underline your favorite. Do nothing to the ones you don't remember (or don't care about)

Got that? Too bad it doesn't say to do anything to which of these we currently own in either 45, LP or CD format. Just a quick glance says I currently own many of these, either on an album by the artist or on one of the many compilation CD's we bought over the years. Some I own but by different artists other than those listed here. Some of these I swear I never heard in my life, and I always had a transistor radio glued to my ear, either on WABC or WMCA AM stations or WNBC on the FM dial. Now I keep my radio n WCBS or WQXR, the 2 oldies FM stations here in the NYC area.


OK, here's my list.

1. Joy To The World, Three Dog Night
2. Maggie May/(Find A) Reason To Believe, Rod Stewart
3. It's Too Late/I Feel The Earth Move, Carole King
4. One Bad Apple, Osmonds
5. How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, Bee Gees
6. Indian Reservation, Raiders
7. Go Away Little Girl, Donny Osmond
8. Take Me Home, Country Roads, John Denver
9. Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me), Temptations
10. Knock Three Times, Pawn
11. Me And Bobby Mcgee, Janis Joplin
12. Tired Of Being Alone, Al Green
13. Want Ads, Honey Cone
14. Smiling Faces Sometimes, Undisputed Truth
15. Treat Her Like A Lady, Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose
16. You've Got A Friend, James Taylor
17. Mr. Big Stuff, Jean Knight
18. Brown Sugar, Rolling Stones
19. Do You Know What I Mean, Lee Michaels
20. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Joan Baez
21. What's Going On, Marvin Gaye
22. Uncle Albert-Admiral Halsey, Paul McCartney
23. Aint No Sunshine, Bill Withers
24. Signs, Five Man Electrical Band
25. She's A Lady, Tom Jones
26. Superstar, Murray Head and The Trinidad Singers (??)
27. I Found Someone Of My Own, Free Movement
28. Amos Moses, Jerry Reed
29. Temptation Eyes, The Grass Roots
30. Superstar, Carpenters
31. My Sweet Lord/Isn't It A Pity, George Harrison
32. Sweet And Innocent, Donny Osmond
33. Put Your Hand In The Hand, Ocean
34. Chick-a-boom, Daddy Dewdrop
35. For All We Know, Carpenters
36. Help Me Make It Through The Night, Sammi Smith
37. Rainy Days And Mondays, Carpenters
38. If You Could Read My Mind, Gordon Lightfoot
39. Gypsy, Tramps And Thieves, Cher
40. Never Can Say Goodbye, Jackson 5
41. Rose Garden, Lynn Anderson
42. Don't Pull Your Love, Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds
43. It Don't Come Easy, Ringo Starr
44. Mr. Bojangles, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
45. I Love You For All Seasons, Fuzz
46. Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get, Dramatics
47. That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be, Carly Simon
48. If You Really Love Me, Stevie Wonder
49. Spanish Harlem, Aretha Franklin
50. I Don't Know How To Love Him, Helen Reddy
51. Yo-yo, Osmonds
52. Bridge Over Troubled Water, Aretha Franklin (Aretha? This is a Simon & Garfunkel song!)
53. Doesn't Somebody Want To Be Wanted, Partridge Family
54. Draggin' The Line, Tommy James
55. Proud Mary, Ike and Tina Turner
56. Beginnings/Color My World, Chicago
57. Stay Awhile, Bells
58. Sweet City Woman, Stampeders
59. Me And You And A Dog Named Boo, Lobo
60. Another Day/Oh Woman, Oh Why, Paul McCartney
61. If, Bread
62. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), Marvin Gaye
63. One Toke Over The Line, Brewer and Shipley
64. She's Not Just Another Woman, 8th Day
65. Bring The Boys Home, Freda Payne
66. I Just Want To Celebrate, Rare Earth
67. Never Ending Song Of Love, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends
68. Easy Loving, Freddy Hart
69. Liar, Three Dog Night
70. Stick-up, Honey Cone
71. Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, Mac and Katie Kissoon
72. Love Story (Where Do I Begin), Andy Williams
73. Wild World, Cat Stevens
74. When You're Hot, You're Hot, Jerry Reed
75. Funky Nassau, Beginning Of The End
76. If Not For You, Olivia Newton-John
77. Groove Me, King Floyd
78. Watching Scotty Grow, Bobby Goldsboro
79. Woodstock, Matthews' Southern Comfort (By CSNY - who are THESE guys?)
80. Amazing Grace, Judy Collins (I love Judy Collins but HATE this song)
81. I Hear You Knocking, Dave Edmunds
82. Lonely Days, Bee Gees
83. Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again, Fortunes
84. Won't Get Fooled Again, Who
85. Trapped By A Thing Called Love, Denise Lasalle
86. Mama's Pearl, Jackson 5
87. Timothy, Buoys
88. I Woke Up In Love This Morning, Partridge Family
89. Theme From "Shaft", Isaac Hayes
90. If I Were Your Woman, Gladys Knight and The Pips
91. I Am...I Said, Neil Diamond
92. Wedding Song (There Is Love), Paul Stookey (I prefer Captain and Tennile's version)
93. Don't Knock My Love, Pt. 1, Wilson Pickett
94. Love Her Madly, The Doors
95. Here Comes The Sun, Richie Havens
96. Sweet Mary, Wadsworth Mansion
97. Right On The Tip Of My Tongue, Brenda and The Tabulations
98. One Less Bell To Answer, Fifth Dimension
99. Riders On The Storm, The Doors
100. It's Impossible, Perry Como

To be honest, most of the ones left untouched I never heard. Only 1 or 2 I did and just don't care about.

Half-Assed, the Viral Video Contest

Jennette Fulda, of the blog Half of Me and book entitled Half-Assed, is having a contest, and the embedding of this viral video is part of it.

Shrinking Suzy

As much as I hate to do it, I really have to stick to the McDougall food plan if I want to stay healthy. I also have to cut back on the amount of foods I eat, including the healthy ones.

Why?

Well, at age 50+ I've got to admit to myself that I just cannot eat the way I was and stay healthy. If I eat too many salty foods my blood pressure is going to go up. If I eat too many sweets (from the bakery, especially), not only will my arteries get clogged but my blood sugars are going to go crazy again. And if I eat meat, my gut is going to rebel, as well as my blood sugar and arteries.

And I've got to exercise regularly. I simply must treat it as if it's a medication I have to take daily if I want to live without pain and cardiac problems. It might also help in achieving weight loss, too.

Weight loss dieting. Those 3 most dreaded words in a fat woman's vocabulary, especially if the person has been on weight loss diets for her entire lifespan. But as much as it goes against every fiber of my being, it must be done.

Over the weekend I started getting those weird heart palpitations again. My doc once told me they were totally benign, but still, they're scary! And I had some chest discomfort with them this time, something that never happened before. Well, the discomfort also could have come from the half an apple pie I ate before bed. Or the turkey burgers with onions and cheese I ate about 3 hours before that. Or the peanut butter and jelly muffin 3 hours before that. At least I had a healthy breakfast and lunch yesterday! It still doesn't erase the bakery items hubby brought home and I helped eat Friday and Saturday, either.

Looking back at that paragraph, no wonder my body is rebelling right now! It's time for a serious detox again!

And another serious weight loss effort. The difference this time is that hubby is going to go along with it, as opposed to trying to sabotage it, like he usually does. He's three years older than me, and although he still weighed the same the last time he got on the scale as he did back in high school, he's not as fit as he could be.

So it starts again today. Each day I might post on either or both of my blogs not only these rambling thoughts and whines, but my daily food intake and exercise. Then again, I might just keep that info on my private, off-line journal and just do a summary now and then. I know I secretly smirk to myself when reading others' diet journals when they post their failures, and get angry and jealous of them when they're succeeding, so I really don't want others to do that when reading my blog posts.

Exercise: Each day I plan to do an exercise video from my stash to the best of my ability. With the arthritis, neuritis, fasciitis, CFS, and whatever else is wrong with me medically, I'm certainly not going to be jogging around the city for miles or doing anything as strenuous as tae bo, but I'll do what I can with Leslie Sansone, Richard Simmons, and a few others.

Food Plan: It's back to strict McDougall, and as soon as I get some off-plan foods out of the house, I'd like to go back on the Maximum Weight Loss Plan 100% of the time.

Same Old Song and Dance

Nothing to say, really. Still obsessing over food and calories, yet my weight is still the same as it was in previous posts, +/- 5 pounds either way.

Kid is preparing to graduate magna cum laude in a few weeks with his MS in Electrical Engineering. Too bad the only job offers so far have been an unpaid internship for the summer in Rhode Island and working a register in Target.

A few more weeks and I get my thyroid lab work repeated, and the week after that I'll see if I get to go back on Synthroid or just remain in this fatigued state for the rest of my life. Since my pulse is still dipping into the 40's I'm sure to go back on at least a low dose of the med.

And it took almost a month but I finally sewed the City Bag from Lazy Girl Designs. One of these days I'll take a photo of it. This is the one from the web site, but I used a similar color scheme.