August Check-in

Well! That went by quick! Here we are in August.


Here's my progress report:

1. No more than one piece of bread or one sandwich at a meal.

Uh... yeah. About that. I'm not sure that this one is a good one for me. I've been making sourdough bread that's around 1/2 wheat, 1/2 white. Sometimes it pushes toward 2/3 wheat, but if I go past that, then it's not tasty; I really want to find a recipe for whole wheat sourdough, but oddly enough, that's been difficult. But I've had my biscuits 1/2 wheat, and the muffins -- did you know that you can use sourdough instead of baking powder? Sourdough's cool. Though it's really tough to keep in the summer if I'm not using it every single day. Whatever. I'm growing new skills, and I'm discovering some things, using this much wheat flour.

When I eat wheat like this, fresh ground and usually sourdough, my cravings back waaaay off. I've known for a while that I'm typically low on magnesium. Actually, most women are -- which is at the root of the stereotypical chocolate cravings (among other things): chocolate has magnesium, though not enough to satisfy the need. So I was taking magnesium supplements for a while. But when I started eating the whole wheat sourdough stuff, the cravings backed way off. Turns out, wheat has a lot of magnesium, too. Other things are also good when I'm eating whole wheat. I feel good. Go figure: "wheat [is] for man". So I'm amending this goal: Find a whole wheat sourdough recipe by September 1. There's plenty of time for practice in getting it right!


 2. If I have dessert, it will be only one helping in a day.

As long as we don't count the chocolate chips, I'm doing well here. I keep the chips to a reasonable quantity, and if I do them near daily, it's not much on any day, so I don't feel bad. This one, I'm doing well with.


3. Drink 2 quarts of water - every day.

 I don't know why this one is so tough. I'm great at being a sedentary water drinker -- used to actually do a gallon, when I spent more time at my computer. But now that I'm up and around more, and having tons less computer time than I used to, getting my water in is very, very difficult. I don't know what to do about this, other than just keep trying.


4. Weekly bike rides.

This one is going well, now that we've got Dragon up to speed without his training wheels. We're actually doing two rides a lot of weeks. At least for the summer and into the fall, I'm feeling pretty good about my activity level. Yoga most days, gardening and yard work, and regular bike rides.


5. Notebook tracking.

I've (mostly) been doing this, but I haven't got any huge insights,  yet. It does, however, keep me thinking about this stuff. I do better, overall, when I'm tracking. I eat more veggies, I move more, I get more water, and generally make more healthy choices. So even if it's not showing me how to fix things in an obvious sort of way, it is definitely helping. And the data is accumulating, so hopefullly I can put it to good use at some point. I definitely have a hormonal element to my weight, still, and I'm determined to ferret it out.


 I've been pondering what Emma had to say about her thin friend's family customs around food and health, and I'm thinking that I want to talk to some of my friends, and see if I can find out more about this, and discover if there are any common threads in what people do, what the family culture is, where people are successful at this stuff. If I can learn from people who are being successful, then maybe I can have that kind of success for both myself and for my kids. I'd like that.