Heading for the Final Stretch of the First Week

I can't believe that it's already Wednesday night. It's hard to grasp that we started our project nearly a week ago. I'm astonished when I think about the progress we've made in this short amount of time. The pantry is free of junk food, we're eating smaller portions, I'm cooking healthier, and we're starting to break out of bad routines. It's shown me that maintaining a healthy lifestyle doesn't have to be painful. In fact, we've all had a good time this first week as we've navigated our way to what will hopefully be a successful first weigh-in on Friday.

My daughter and I were out and about this afternoon and discovered that we hadn't had lunch. Hunger was at a high, so we stopped at Jersey Mike's. My daughter had a roast beef sub, and I had a roast beef salad. We both left totally satisfied and ready to finish our errands. There was no pleas for candy or ice cream, no begging for Burger King. In fact, my daughter turned down cream puff samples at Costco. I was very proud of her. Dinner was very late this evening. On a whim, I decided to make chicken fried rice with organice brown basmati rice. I'd never made brown rice in our handy dandy rice cooker, so I wasn't prepared for the rice to take a whopping two hours to cook. After many cries from my husband for food, I resorted to nuking some frozen jasmine rice and using that instead. My mother often says that "appetite makes the best meal," and she couldn't have been more accurate than tonight. My dinner wouldn't have won any awards, but we were all starving, so there wasn't a single complaint to be heard.

After cleaning the kitchen, I often head into my office and spend an hour or so on the computer. Well, after my little routine tirade this morning, I decided to break this habit and instead, I coaxed my daughter to join me on a walk with the dogs. She was a tad reluctant at first, but as soon as she saw how excited the dogs were to be outside, she begged to go for a walk EVERY night. It was so fun to watch the pups run around in the park. We had never taken our Toy Poodle, Snow, for a walk on a leash until tonight. At first, she wasn't too keen on the idea. However, as soon as she saw how much fun her big brother was having, she raced to the park as if she'd been hundreds of times. In all, it was a glorious time for everyone involved. Isn't it funny how we'd have never considered doing this a week ago? A lot of good things can happen in six days.