I'm sloshed ...

... and not in the way you might think.

When I'm "on-program", I drink 3 litres of water a day. The first couple of days are pretty rough, as I run to the bathroom every 20-30 minutes, but things generally settle down after a day or two. Well, I'm hoping I'll be able to sleep tonight without too many trips "across the hall", if you get my drift. I can almost hear it sloshing around inside when I move.

Today wasn't difficult until about 9:30 pm or so. When the leader said today that I might find it difficult to get to my minimum points, I thought back on the old days and assured her that it wouldn't be a problem. Well, guess again! Now that I'm watching things like numbers of servings of milk and vegetables, and sodium and sugar, I don't seem to be eating as many empty calories as usual (and therefore not blowing through my points). That, coupled with the water, means I've spent a good portion of today absolutely stuffed! But I got to the minimum and used a spare point and everything is accounted for, so that's good.

One thing that shocks me is the amount of sodium (that's Na for you scientific types) in food. I never thought I had a lot of salt in my diet, since I never add it to anything, but there's so much in the frozen foods that I buy -- I was stunned! I always figured that my Diet Pepsi would be the kicker, but it barely has any sodium in it at all, especially compared to some of the other things I've been eating. Tomorrow's grocery trip is going to take a little longer than usual because I have to ferret out some new "food-in-a-box" choices that aren't so insanely high.

Oh, yes -- 9:30 PM. Doug closed my office door when he went downstairs to cook his steak, but I could still smell it. I was stuffed to the gills, but man, did that steak smell goooood. So I spent about twenty minutes envisioning the big, kind eyes of benevolent bovines in a sunny field. I figure if the want for that steak was psychological, then the best thing to do was to psych myself out of it. It seemed to work, to the point that my inner vegetarian may take over sometime in the future.

For those in need of a good chuckle -- I've already made two math mistakes in my "QuikTrak" journal. Thank heavens for liquid paper (and my software which can add!)

Day One is down. Many, many more to go, but I think I've started off well.