Oh what a night!

Oh what a night indeed.  I trudged home at 9pm tonight.  That's right, that's when I walked through my door.  My job requires that I drive...a lot...to see clients.  They live within a 200 kilometer radius of my house.  So I was in Peterborough, which is roughly 200K from home, and I just dropped my client off and went to fill up my gas tank (why gas is 10cents cheaper per liter in Peterborough, I'll never figure out).  As I'm pulling out of the service station, my car jerks, the dashboard lights up, and I stall.  I start the car and I'm able to move just enough to pull into a parking lot.

So now I have to call my mechanics in Scarborough (125K away), to let them know that my car keeps stalling and to also let them know I'm having it towed there and to expect my car in their lot the next morning.  I call CAA, and they send Bob's Towing over to assist me.  So Jake, not Bob, shows up and he's a spry young buck who has my car on the flat bed truck in record time.  A trick he told me he has perfected since he does a lot of repo work.  I'm driving to Scarborough with Jake and he's really into Christian Rock, and sings loudly and out of key quite a bit.  That's all good, but the endless stories of his repo work get old really quickly and I'm just guessing that a lot of them were exaggerated.  Many sounded exactly like some episodes of Repo Wars that I've seen.  He was very chatty, jumpy and animated and I guessed he was either ADHD (which I hoped), or really stoned (which I couldn't tell because he wore sunglasses).

My dad was good enough to meet me at the mechanics (since he only lives about 10 mins. away), drop me off at the subway and give me 3 bucks so I could get on said subway.  I haven't been on the subway in Toronto in a couple of years.  Apparently the service has improved, but the smell, not so much.  (On an exciting side note, I only took up my space on the double seat instead of spilling over onto my neighbours space:)  Of course, the train was delayed for 5 stops because of signal problems.  I finally make it to Union station and hop on the 7:40pm Go bus to Hamilton.  I'm sitting on the bus and wondering why I have such horrible pins and needles in my feet.  I finally realize that its fine (and sharp?) water dripping on my feet, so I move my feet...but it took me 20 minutes to realize this and I don't know where the water was coming from.  I get off the Go bus at 8:36 pm and walk home from the downtown Go station, making it into my house just before 9pm.

I'm bummed.  I don't know what's wrong with my car, and neither does Jake.  Not only is he a repo man, but he used to be a mechanic.  Seriously, he's like 23.  He told me he's getting his wisdom teeth out next week for Pete's sake!  Oh, he's also a math genius...according to his high school principal.  Anywho, I just got my income tax return back (all $2200 of it), and I'm sure that what ever is wrong with my car, will be very expensive to fix.  I'm never lucky with cars.  Oh, I forgot to mention, someone dented my passenger door in the Walmart parking lot on Monday while I was grocery shopping.  Not a huge dent, but noticeable. So goodbye tax money!

On a happier note, I had my weigh-in today with Dr. Pitt.  I'm down 10 pounds in 23 days.  What the what?  I was expecting a loss, but that took me a little a back.  I can only attribute it to the running.  I'm eating A LOT, and more Phase 2 foods than usual and even drinking wine.  I think I'm going to stick mainly to Phase 2 of the diet now and see what happens over the next month.  My next weigh-in is May 17th...4 weeks away.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the loss, but that's a bit quicker than I like to lose.

Yesterday we kicked ass during our practice run.  Our clinic instructor, Carol, is a great motivator and knows just when to push us that little extra.  We did 5:1 intervals and we were doing 4 of those for the past week.  Yesterday we not only did an extra interval, we did it running up the Cootes incline.  You know the one I almost expired on Easter morning.  Not only did I run for 25 minutes, I found it almost easy.  Tomorrow we start with 6:1 and on Monday, Enz, our running gal Tanya and I are going to run 5k doing 6:1 to prepare for my (and Tanya's) very first 5K race the following Sunday.  Oh, and just for the record...about an hour after I wrote my last post, I too came down with the same virus that plagued my husband and son!

Phase two follies

Well I went to see my family doctor yesterday for my weigh-in.  I was one day shy of not being weighed for three weeks.  That is a LONG time.  Over the last three weeks, I have lost a whopping....drum roll please....one pound.  That's right, I said one pound.  I know, I know.  What happened to my 5 pounds every two weeks record.  I kept that up for a while.

Well I take full responsibility since I know exactly what I have done over the last few weeks.  I had a drinking evening with friends, I've been eating a lot phase 2 veggies (and not following the serving size restrictions) and I've also eaten more phase 2 carby stuff, and some phase 2 snacky things.  And most importantly, I stopped keeping a food journal for a couple of weeks.

I never full out cheated (meaning that I still have not had any processed carbs or sugar), but that's not the point.  I lost a bit of momentum and maybe I needed a bit of break.  Even though nothing like bread or pasta or rice or sweets or chips or anything like that has touched my lips, I have been sloppy with my diet.  And even though on phase 2 I'm allowed 8oz of wine in one day, on my drinking night, I had like 48oz!!!!!!  Yeah, I went a bit overboard, but I'm also exaggerating on the 48oz:)

So am I upset?  Nope.  Not even a bit.  I think I needed a bit of room to wiggle and now I'm good to go back onto strict phase 1 again.  I'm getting weighed in less than two weeks and I want to see the scale go down.  In two weeks today, I start the learn to run clinic with Enz.  I'm soooooooo excited.  We're also looking to sign up for gentle yoga with the local Parks and Rec.  So I really need to get my butt moving, and that will also help with the weight-loss.  On a positive note, I still do the stairs all the time!

I really hope that this is my yoga instructor...

I think I was getting lazy (and bored) with my meals and was making the same things over and over.  I have a bunch of new recipes to check out and I will start posting recipes again.  I was going to try some out this weekend, but new recipes will be delayed one more week because my hubby is away for the weekend and I have to keep the boy entertained.  So in order to get my weight-loss back on track, I have started back on strict phase 1 again, and I'm keeping my food journal again.  In a couple of weeks, I'll also be running three times a week.  I'm looking forward to seeing the changes once again!

The weight

We had a pretty busy weekend.  And I inadvertently began Phase 2 of Dr. Poon's diet.  We went for dinner to a friend's house and there really weren't any Phase 1 friendly foods for me to eat.  So in order to not be rude and difficult, I ate Phase 2 foods...and ribs, that aren't on any phase:)  Oh well, they were delicious!  I carried my Phase 2 eating onto today and ate a chicken soup with cooking onion and carrots in it.  Even though I'm allowed these foods on Phase 2, I still feel like I'm cheating.  I'm feeling a little discombobulated and will be returning to Phase 1 tomorrow.

I don't know why I'm so afraid to move onto the next phase of this diet.  It allows for more carb (through veggies and nuts etc.) which should be a good thing.  I think that because I'm such a carb addict, I'm scared that I can easily fall off the wagon.  This is definitely something I have to work on, because I can't eat the way I do for the rest of my life and will have to learn to live in peace and harmony with carbs.  Can carbs be my friend one day?  I'm not feeling too confident of that right now.

I also cancelled my next appointment with Dr. Stephen.  It was scheduled for this coming Friday, and due to scheduling difficulties, I cancelled.  I would have had to drive and hour away, only to drive right back home because I'm not working on Friday.  I have a parent observation day at my son's school.  I do have an appointment booked with my family doctor the following week, and that is when I will weigh-in.  So there will be no weigh-in until the 23rd of February.  Seems like a long way off, but since I'm not moving with the clinic I go to, I have no choice but to get my family doctor to monitor me.  S'all good though.  I'm just going to focus on eating well and keeping my food journal.  I can wait, and all will be right with the world again!

Here's a dose of Sunday cuteness:)