It is indeed a journey but Russ and I are determined and it is finally beginning to really pay off. He just mentioned to me that folks at his place of employment has begun to notice…well, they should! He’s lost twice as much as I’ve had and he’s looking good for his effort.

It is a well known fact that men lose weight quicker. I believe it might be because they are just more active. You would think doing housework would do the trick…but it doesn’t. I was doing housework the whole time I was putting on the weight.

Well, you say… perhaps that’s because you were eating the wrong things. Well, that is true in part but even when I began to eat properly, I was still putting on weight The bottom line is that you must burn more than you take in…bottom line!

In my case, I just started to take walks everyday in addition to what I normally do. It did the trick! There is no miracle cure for overweight! Eat less and proper…get exercise! How many times do we hear it! Me? I’d rather just take a pill but that’s where we all go wrong…

Anyway, things are going well and I’m hoping by summer I will be a reasonable weight. I doubt if anyone will ever look at me and think of me as being skinny but losing down to where I feel comfortable will do for me.

That’s all for now but weigh-in happens in 2 weeks. Let’s see what happens then!

Since it became apparent that we hardly had room for one, certainly not two! So…one had to go. We found a good home for the worse one and kept what I thought was the best one. I was pleased and our home was looking more and more like “our home” (keeping in mind I am the 2nd Mrs. Marriott and was living with the 1st Mrs. Marriott’s taste).

Anyway, I spent many happy hours amusing myself and then along came other hobbies, duties, obligations and little by little it barely got played. As our redecorating moved along, the organ ended up out in the Conservatory (Sun Room) and now came the time it needed to go.

Funny how one becomes attached to things. Not so much the things usually but the meanings and stories behind them. The decision was finally made that it was time for my trusty organ to find a new home so back to Ebay it went. Yesterday, it became someone else’s and according to the buyer, his Dad will now enjoy what helped me through the long lonely hours Russ was working and I was home alone.

All that remains now is the empty space where it was and the memory of what was.

Yes, I can hear you dieters saying… “what she doesn’t know is that was just water weight”… Well, I’m hoping with just a little more exercise, I can improve. Stay tuned here for the next weigh-in in 2 weeks.

Oh, Russ? Humph! He lost 18 pounds in 2 weeks. So you can see why I was a bit grumpy! He’s really tried hard though. So with the sounds of the nurse saying “men lose weight easier you know” ringing in my ears…we left patting each other on the back! Was it worth it? You bet! And we are continuing.

It all really was worth it!

there it was! A loss! Lots of clapping…but… there was a problem…something must be wrong with these scales…”I know I haven’t lost that much…surely!” It appears as if he’s lost about 8 pounds…and I seemed to have lost 5 pounds… but we both feel like the scales just might not be right…so we’re going to the doctor next week and weigh there again…we’ll all have to weight to see what the real verdict is…here’s hoping… but I know we’ve done great and I’m pleased.

The only trouble spot is at night… from habit, I want to eat something… Last night, it was a nectarine… the night before it was a stalk of celery… so even though I’m eating at night (which I don’t want to do)… at least it’s not a bowl of ice cream…

Keep wishing me luck as we travel on our journey. The next milestone will be on Saturday night when we have a social evening with Russ’s sister-in-law and her boyfriend. I’m sure there will be some alcohol consumed…uh oh…

I found this award that Mary took the time to think of me when she was carefully giving such a lovely award. What better compliment could someone receive when they outwardly claim that you are “nice”… (See Mary’s Blog).

Think of the number of times someone has done something special one of your online friends have done for you. I consider my online friends as special as my offline friends.

It is so easy put a foot wrong online. Afterall, you can’t see the person and you are relatively safe from consequences of your actions. I learned early on that the person on the other side of the monitor has thoughts and feelings just like me and after making that discovery, I have tried so hard to treat others as I want to be treated and that applies online as well as offline.

I hope I really am worthy of this award because it really is true here in the Internet world…nice does matter! Thanks Mary for the reminder and being so nice yourself!

That’s right! There they were! All four cauliflower plants turned into lovely cauliflowers. I was just so excitied. No one expected them to work out. You could see that look and with comments like “well, don’t worry if they don’t come up, they’re hard to grow” and then I heard “I’ve never had any success with those — don’t worry, it’s alright” and further I heard “here these are but they ‘might’ turn out okay”…

Anyway, we shared two with Kevin and Janet (who gave us the plants) and we cooked and ate one on Sunday (and yes we had more than enough for four people) and froze most of one (other than what we ate) yesterday! That way we can have one with our Christmas dinner. Yippee!! 

I’m so pleased! 

We’ve done so well! We did go out on Saturday night for a BBQ hosted by Meryl (Russ’s sister and my sister-in-law) and Alan (Meryl’s boyfriend) and that was a tough one because she had lots of goodies however with us in mind, she did have fish (made on the grill) and it was truly delicious. It was the first time we ever had Mackeral like that. Also included was lot of other things but I stuck with the bbq’d chicken, a burger (without the bread) and did have a bottle of wine. So although it wasn’t exactly what I should have eaten it was light years away from what I would have eaten.

We both climbed right back onto the wagon the next morning for breakfast and have done well ever since. I felt the dinner I made for Sunday was a bit boring but there were lots of different vegetables (mostly out of the garden) with no butter on of course, potatoes (boiled with mint) along with beef brisket of which Russ and I had a very tiny piece and no gravy although I did make gravy for our guests. Russ and I did wonderfully and stayed within our caloric limit.

Since the weekend, we’ve done well including the lunches I pack for Russ. He had been taking sandwiches but we have banned bread from the house (since he loves it) and although we have a freezer full, we are giving away the uncut loaves (they’re so good!) and keeping the sliced and only getting out of the freezer the exact number of slices for any company we might be having. Before the beginning of our life changing diet, we would have polished off those loaves within a couple of days between us (including what he took for his packed lunches).

It is quite easy to see how we managed to double our body sizes and although I’m eating more healthy than I have, bread wasn’t something I used to have much of until I moved here. A great habit to get out of it. Russ quit cold turkey but hen this is the person that stopped smoking years ago without any help at all…just stopped!

Thanks so much for the emails of encouragement (including comments here) we have received. It is so helpful we have backup support. It’s difficult for us although both of us are committed. I said this morning that next year this time we should be doing quite well in the weight department.

I’m sure we will weigh in with good results tomorrow as Wednesday is our weighing day. I don’t really want to weigh more than once per week.

I’m sure I’ll have weight results tomorrow!

Until then….keep us in your thoughts!

Meanwhile, I will put here only the amount of weight I lose each week. I won’t even think about telling my real weight here but I will share the weight loss. What I can tell you is that Russ weighs 2 pounds more than me so…we both desperately need to lose. My goal is to reach my goal weight by May of 2008. The story will be told here.

Please, please, wish me luck and any encouragement you can give will be much appreciated.

The biggest shock came when we decided it was way past time to change the colors. I thought since we were stuck with the red carpet and bergundy furniture…at the very least, we should have a couple of shades of gray on the wall.

If you’ve ever worked with gray, then you already know it is almost impossible to find the right combinations of grays that go together but I was willing to tackle it armed with the knowledge I had gained the last time I attempted such a feat.

Little did I realize what I would run into. First, Russ wanted to be completely involved. Well, that shouldn’t have surprised me as we do everything together. To make a long story shorter, we ended up with a living room full of the paint I needed to have it the color I wanted and to shorten the story even further, we ended up halling all the paint back a week later. He just didn’t want it!

It took about 1-1/2 years later to finally go with neutral colors and so different shades of cream is what we ended up doing. I can say that with these colors (as boring as they seemed to me), the cost was cut in half.

Now we are facing changing the carpet (finally) and I dreaded going to the stores looking for carpets but we decided to brave it today with both of us not wanting a repeat of the arguments that insued the last time.

Off we went and bracing myself, I looked at one that was a deep shade of burgundy with a small pattern…he liked it! Wow! But as I got to thinking…there will be nothing bergundy in the room (other than the furniture and since we’ll likely be changing that at some point…shouldn’t I stay with the neutral tones. So with trepidation, I pointed to one with different shades of cream and brown.  

I knew that the bergundy was going to turn red and the brown shades would be my choice but…I had to get it past Russ.

The next obstacle we encountered is we needed to see the samples in the light of our own house and compared to the walls, etc…but…the store clerk would not let us take the samples out of the store. What good does it do for us not to see it in our home?

There was only one thing to do! Beg! And that’s what we did. I suspect (after a £5.00 deposit, name and address) that he let us have them just to get rid of us out of his store. Anyway, we brought it home and there Russ could see what I meant about the blending of the wall colors and the carpet with the creams and brown that I wanted! Wow! Another hurdle covered.

Since we weren’t actually buying it today (We’ve decided to brave a few more stores just to see we are getting a good deal), let’s hope our next store encounter will be as nice as this one was.

Imagine! Not one single argument and we even managed to figure out what we’ll do with the carpet in the hallway. This all involves a leaky radiator which allowed for a claim and what we’ll use to fund this exercise but…they won’t cover the hallway (which is the same now)!

I am so happy! Not because we are getting new carpet, although that’s a good thing (this one is close to 15 years old) but…we came away from the color choosing without one cross word! Life is good!