Perpetual Ruminations

Hump Day

Wednesdays tend to be a lazy day for me, since it's my first day off. I still get things done, but tend to just work at an easy pace. This week, I have another person on vacation, so I will be working for him this evening. I think this is why I have no motivation today, I just can't seem to get started on anything. Of course, I was feeling pretty ill on Monday, and even though I'm still feeling better, I think I'm still fighting off whatever tried to take me down.

On top of this, the soybean harvest is going strong around us and this time of year always has me feeling under the weather. I don't seem to have any allergies or sensitivities to soybeans, but I do have allergy symptoms from their harvesting. I suppose a lot of it is the amount of dust produced and another may be spores, molds, and fungi stirred up from the harvesting process. Today is worse than the last few days because it's so much windier today. Forget hay-fever, I have bean-fever!

Hopefully the weather stays nice and all the farmers in the area can get their bean harvests done and over with. The rest of the harvesting doesn't seem to bother me, so once they finish this part, I'm good again. I also want some nice weather for my wife and I to enjoy, even though we have a lot of things needing doing around the house and yard, I want to get out and play a little more disc golf.

We were introduced to the sport by a couple of friends a short while ago while out camping and had a blast. Of course, we didn't play competitively, just for fun. No large amount of money invested in various discs, just a basic disc for all purpose. I can see, in time, getting more specialty discs as we learn the game and improve our performance. For now, we purchased a couple of general purpose discs and just want to go through the course to have fun and improve our aims.

Awhile back, I posted that I am trying to reduce my weight and get in better shape. I've put on some weight, but have still been pretty active, so my main goal is to drop some pounds. Of course, exercising will help with this, so things like kayaking and disc golf are great. But, my greatest problem is my love for food. I enjoy so many foods and I tend to eat way to much of them.

With this in mind, I have been working on my portion size for meals, trimmed back on snacking, and especially cut back on the amount of high fat/sugar foods I consume. Not dieting, just eating smarter with smaller portions, cutting out seconds (and thirds on occasion), and consuming small amounts of sweets and goodies, on occasion.

So far, it's been working. I got on the scale the day I started and again today, ten days later. The weight is dropping! Of course, being out camping for a few days helped a lot with all the kayaking and hiking, but I have also done well with my smarter eating. I found a second reward today, after the scale, during lunch. I had taken a serving size portion of chili, a couple of cornbread muffins, a side of cottage cheese, and a glass of milk.

It didn't look like much compared to my previous servings, but I stuck to my plan and my goals for smarter eating. I didn't butter the cornbread, since I was dipping it in my chili, a good way to remove a lot of calories from the meal. I ate one and a half of the smaller sized cornbread muffins, couldn't' finish my chili and cottage cheese, and was feeling very full with what I had consumed -- about half of what I would have consumed a couple weeks ago.

The next step is to start logging my food and counting the calories; I have an account in SparkPeople to do this as well as log exercise. I'm thinking Monday will be a good day to begin this next phase because I can set it for my weekly goals here on the site and get a bit more motivation. My biggest problem is the time taken to enter everything since we cook from scratch and seldom find listings for our recipes.

Well, there's a summary of Hump Day so far, the rest will be another typical evening at work.