Treading Water

March 18 2024

I skipped a week blogging because I have to admit I got depressed. It's cold, it snowed, and my body is aching. My right leg gets bursitis or sciatic nerve pain and my left shoulder hurts. I still have full range of motion, but the pain makes it difficult to get to sleep at night and it wakes me up in the morning. Walking on the asphalt has given me pain in my left foot. It doesn't hurt when I walk but when I get up from sitting it hurts like crazy. I checked my shoes and got new sneakers. That is helping quite a bit. Since my foot is hurting, I'm unable to get 10,000 steps in, I manage about 8000 per day. It's not enough. It's barely enough to maintain and not gain more weight.

Besides the weather and my pain, I'm frustrated with my eating habits. I'm eating the right foods according to the MIND diet I told you about but I'm still not losing weight. I'm watching my portions and still using a salad plate instead of a dinner plate. I'm tired of planning the meals and preparing the meals only to find that I didn't lose a pound. We are not having cocktails or wine and I started out with salads. Hubby protested and didn't want salads every day, so I followed a meal plan from Eating Well for prediabetes to lose weight. We didn't lose weight. I like their meal plans and recipes though.

Gosh, I thought I would lose my mind and I asked if we could go find warm weather. Hubby was encouraging but we already spent so much money on the last trip, we really don't have more to spend at the moment. This winter has been dreary. I don't usually mind the cold and snow, but we used to have sunshine to go with it. I feel like this year has been cloudy every day. Not a lot of snow but cold and dreary.

It's supposed to be really cold this week with highs in the low 30s. So, I've opted to cook what we have on hand or go out to eat. We usually split a meal when we go out and get an additional salad or non-starch vegetable. Otherwise, if we each order something different we take home the leftovers. If we allow ourselves to go out, then I don't have to plan and cook every day. I find that it's not the preparation that gets to me but the planning and the tracking. We get our two walks a day in but they are the short ones not the long ones.

I've decided that in addition to not planning the meals, I'm not weighing every day. I've decided to wait and weigh once a week. We'll see how that goes. Right now, I'm going for keeping depression at bay and just maintaining my current weight. Hopefully the sun will come out more often and I can get back on track again.

Keep your fingers crossed! We'll get through this.