Just checking in ...

They say it takes three weeks to form a habit. I'm glad that I started doing this well in advance of going back to school/work, so that the vending machines won't be as tempting. Last night I went and got a DQ Sandwich because I had points to use up and had already gone well over my sodium limit. Well, for some reason, even though I had the points for that treat, I felt like I shouldn't be eating it. Because of that, I think the vending machines will have lost their lustre when I get back to teaching.

By the way, I always thought that a DQ Sandwich was three points, but when I plugged the nutritional info from their website into my spreadsheet, it came out to 4.4. Just thought I'd let you folks know.

Trying to stay under the RDAs for both sugar and salt AND get all of my minimum points in for the day is proving impossible. If one cooked for oneself, then maybe it could be done. But I hate cooking. I'm the kind of girl who would raid the kitchen cupboard while stirring the pot on the stove. Making my salad is about all the food preparation I can handle, and I really don't think I could do this without pre-packaged food.

Now, I've cut down considerably on my sodium and sugar intakes. (They're both hard to be exact on anyway, because not all labels have them on there, just like some don't have fibre. Grrrr.) Anyway, I'm still going to fiercely watch both of these components of my diet, but as long as I don't go over both of them by more than 25% in the run of a day, I'm not going to beat myself up. Just paying attention to them is huge progress, and I watch their levels very carefully as the day goes on, because I not only want to lose weight but be healthy. Trying to juggle the sodium and the sugar, and meeting my daily points target is proving to be pretty difficult, so I'm going to cut myself some slack. (I can only imagine what those levels looked like before! SCARY!)

Oh, speaking of losing weight, I'm down another 1.4 pounds. Please remind me of these heady times when I hit the dreaded "Dead Stop" in a couple of weeks. At least I have enough experience with this to know that it's coming. I still remember the first time and how maddening it was, and how hard it was to keep meticulously counting points when it didn't seem to be doing me any good.

Anyway, I'd better go get my day started.