All over the place (Week 7)

• Lights out at 10pm!
• This did not happen at all. Caught up in watching Veronica Mars Seasons 2 and 3 on DVD and kept staying up late to watch "one more episode"
• Stay within points for the week (daily + weekly + activity)
•  Just barely managed this. My dinner last night used up the rest of my extra points for the week, but I stayed within them which was the goal. :)
• Try to plan meals 1 day in advance 
• Outlined a meal or two ahead of time per day, but I think my separate post covers my new stance on this well. 
• I am successfully working on cooking food on Fridays for lunch/dinner over the weekend since I do prefer having the kitchen to myself to cook and on the weekends Rose is in the kitchen more. (success being defined as this being the second week in a row that I've done this since having the idea last week) 
• Earn at least 8 activity points for the week
• Sunday - moving boxes and containers for about an hour and a half total - 5 activity points
• I may have earned more, but I'm rounding down a little so that those I say I earned for the day I know that I really earned.
• *the day after* I am extremely sore. My back I expected, but my forearms I was not. That's what happens when I am active for 3x as long as I am normally when I work out.
• My hips were really bothering me this week, and while I tried doing different DVDs and the Gazelle, the movement made them hurt worse. They are slowly feeling better, so I hope to get back to my workouts next week.
  
• Keep up with the vitamins
•  Still hit and miss, but at least getting them in on a few days is better than not at all.

 New Foods/Food Reviews:
 - Raspberry Dark Chocolate Attune bar - Good dark chocolate. Crispy bits of raspberry, though the chocolate seemed to overshadow it a bit.
 - Dark Chocolate Attune bar - Now that I've had the plain dark chocolate I definitely notice the difference between this and the raspberry bar. Still very good. Not sure which of these I prefer as a dark chocolate bar.
(Not really an adventurous food week)

Weigh in results:
Up 0.2 pounds :(  Oh well.  Going to chalk it up to bloat and the only activity I got this past week being all in one day. (Yes it was 5 APs worth, but that was still the only day I exercised.)




(I didn't want to make/update my ticker because of the gain, but I knew that it was important to do it to remain accountable.)

I may go price membership at this little gym that is like 10 minutes away from here. One of the women from my WeightWatchers meetings goes there, and I finally figured out where the building is last week. I don't know if I'll join or not, but I can go see what I think of the place. I'd much rather have my own treadmill and a total gym, but those aren't financially possible at this point in time, so I need to look into some other options. I don't really know if joining a gym is possible either really. 
Sigh.. I think I'm just feeling frustrated because I know what equipment I want to use and I keep thinking that maybe joining a gym would be a good substitute. Unfortunately I know from experience that if I'm not satisfied or enjoying a workout (be it the workout itself, the environment, etc.) I stop doing it. I wasted 2 Curves memberships that way. I know that I don't necessarily enjoy using a treadmill, but I don't hate it either. My problem with treadmills in the past is that I never know what speed to go at or how to go about using the incline feature. That's what I like about the newer ones is that they are programmable either using memory chips or by syncing with a computer to have pre-designed workouts for you that then control the machine. No button pushing needed except for Start.

My job search has been expanded to looking out of state. This weekend will be spent writing extremely customized cover letters and some slightly customized/re-edited cover letters.

Eating out of my pantry and freezer is going pretty well. Finished off 1 of 2 boxes of oatmeal, the open bag of rice, and the Just Strawberries. I haven't started in on the venison yet. Still trying to figure out how I want to prepare some of it. I need to remember that I have turkey burgers that I can eat too. (I wonder if I defrost them if I can crumble them up enough to use as a ground meat substitute; they are pre-made patties.) I need to work on eating my canned peaches (in 100% juice) and my cans of Sweet Potato Puree. I was going to use the puree instead of pumpkin in some oatmeal recipes/combos from some blogs I'm following, but as I'm picky about my pumpkin products, I'm not sure I'd be happy subbing in the sweet potato. I keep thinking of meal combinations that include mashed potatoes, but I'm a little nervous about making them and having them around. I do want to try to have homemade ones and see if the desire to binge is as bad as having instant or tubs of them available. When I do decide to try it out, my plan is to determine portion sizes and divide them out immediately, potentially also paired with their protein and vegetable at that time too, tv dinner style.
*I think that if I find some small potatoes that I like the looks of I will try to make some mashed potatoes this week and portion them out right away like I did with the tuna pasta salad and shrimp alfredo I made Friday afternoon.


For the coming week:

• 4 days of activity
• Earn 6+ activity points
• Lights out at 10pm
• Wake up 6:30am 
• Sleep schedule is so out of control. Really need/want to work on it this week.
• Stay within points for the week (daily + weekly + activity)