On July 1st, I began counting calories. As a result, I’ve already lost weight. I hate counting calories and tracking all the food I eat. However, it’s always been effective for me. I’ve gotten through the first couple of days which are always bad and I’m always hungry. But I’ve been over eating for a while. Hopefully, the dieting will be easier from here on out.

I wrote every day, though not a lot. I need to make some changes so I can get in more words. More on that later.

I averaged 6.7K steps per day this last week, which is my goal, and pretty good for me and my bum knee. Just walking is fine. There were days when I did more, such as weeding or lots of hills. I could always feel it the next da. Tomorrow (Tuesday) I go see the surgeon. We’ll see what he says in terms of exercise, what I should be doing pre-surgery, etc.

I missed a few days of email, and am behind in other things. Might catch up this week. We’ll see how Wednesday goes.

Now, talk of diet and food.

For the last month or so I haven’t been on track in regards to my diet. For the last few years, I’ve been having what I call a big-ass salad for lunch almost every day. Eating all those veggies is really healthy and really good for me. I have varied my salads and tried lots of things but I’ve finally reached my limit. I need to start eating something else for my lunches.

One of the things that I’ve learned is that I get headaches and brain fog when I don’t eat healthy. Guess what’s been plaguing me recently? It’s part of why my word count has been so bad. I’m not eating right. I’m not getting the right vitamins and minerals inside of me.

I have, in the past, transitioned to smoothies during the summer. Starting next week, I’m going to pick up that habit again.

Part of the problem is that I currently have a merely okay blender. I decided to spoil myself and so went ahead and bought a Vitamix. I need to be able to put all those veggies in a blender if I’m not having salads. My current blender only mostly blended things. Frequently I had lumps.

As part of this, I’m going to up my smoothie game. Going to try some of those exotic smoothie recipes. I’m also investing in one of those greens powders, to see if that will be a quick fix to some of the issues I’ve been having. We’ll see.

Plus, I’ll continue to count calories. Honestly, seeing the weight move down after just one week was very encouraging. I maintained quite a deficit last week, primarily because I’m not walking as much as I would like, so I’m not burning as many calories as I would like. Which means less food if I want to lose weight.

We’ll see how this week goes. I will be doing heavier physical labor at least a couple of days. That should up my calories burned but I’ll be keeping the same calorie deficit.

Because I’m an older female, and because I have thyroid issues, it is more difficult for me to lose weight just through calories in-calories out (CICO). Therefore, at some point, I plan on doing some fasting to help with the weight loss. That’s been very effective for me in the past. Get up, eat breakfast, but then don’t eat again until the next day. So limited calories for a day or so, about a 20 hour fast. I used to do these weekly. We’ll see how often I feel the need this time.

And I guess that’s about it for me. Do you make smoothies? Love them? Hate them?