Weekly update, 7/29/09

Whew! We're Back! (Again!)

Well, we're back! This past weekend we did the final leg of our Summer '09 Parent Visit Trifecta! We went to Michigan to visit Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's plethora of family. Lots of visiting and yummy food, lots of time for the cousins to play and bond with each other, just a general good time with family. We saw one of my nieces performing in Peter Pan, played miniature golf, went to the pool (hotel one morning, community pool with water slide another day), played at parks, amply fed the apparently undernourished mosquito population of Michigan, and divided forces for a train show (boys)/shopping day (girls). Michigan is so beautiful and green in the summertime, lovely wildflowers blooming, and the weather was pleasant (albeit rainy, which messed with some of our plans but worked out okay overall).

Again, the kids proved to be excellent travelers, in spite of a red-eye flight on the way there and a stressful time at the airport in Chicago that turned out to be okay after all. Hearing the Beach Boys song "Sloop John B"--you know, that one that goes, "I wanna go home/let me go home"--on the Avis bus sort of alerted us to impending doom...our ORD-LAX flight was delayed more than 3 hours. We would have missed our LAX-SFO connection and been stuck in LA in the middle of the night, but thanks to the persistent Mr. H&H and the kind United staff and some nice folks on the plane willing to swap seats so we could sit with the kids, we got in on standby for an ORD-SFO flight and ended up getting home around the same time (still around 1 a.m. Ugh.) as we would have, without the LAX layover. Whew!

Part of our delight in Michigan are some of the foodstuff that can only be enjoyed properly when there. I did make a couple of excellent food finds. Uncle Ray's Dairyland, a long-time favorite of mine, has no-sugar-added soft-serve vanilla frozen yogurt, which they use to create any flavor on their regular frozen yogurt menu. It's not sugar-free, of course; no frozen yogurt is free of milk sugars, and when they mix in the fresh fruit, it adds fruit carbs to your dessert. But it worked out well for me. I had a small combo with both banana and pumpkin pie flavored yogurts; I shared some with my family, but enjoyed a nice portion for myself. I got a few bites of the Mr.'s sundae, too, which satisfied the chocolate tooth. Post-treat blood glucose level was 112 about 1.5 hours later, so I consider that a success! (I'm sure the impromptu dance party our kids started there on the patio helped a little....who can say no when one's son asks one to dance, and is bustin' a move so joyfully?) Honorable mention goes to Dairy-Go-Round in Plymouth and their surprisingly good fat-free, no-sugar-added soft-serve vanilla frozen yogurt. (Any frozen dessert that makes me go, "Wow, is *this* no-sugar-added?" is a winner in my book.)

Progress last week

7-day blood glucose average: 97*
7-day fasting blood glucose average: 95
* This does not really tell the whole story. I had a nasty (for me) spike of 146 post-meal after eating 3 White Castle burgers, some onion chips, and a sip of chocolate shake. I probably had some unmetered variations that would have surprised me had I tested...it would have been an interesting week to have had a continuous glucose monitor. Too bad one can't rent something like that for going on vacations, or for when one is first diagnosed...it would be a great tool for educating people about how their food/activities impact their blood glucose levels.

Weight goal: -1.6 lbs. (My goal was to maintain this week, so I'm tickled that it went back down to where it was a couple of weeks ago. It seemed counterintuitive, because I was not working out at all this past week, but I wasn't totally sedentary, either, even though it felt like it in comparison. I made a lot of healthy food choices, and some not-so-healthy ones.)

Food goals: I didn't track this week at all. It was a nice break to have a *planned* week of not tracking. (As opposed to slacking off non-tracking.) Does that mean I totally abandoned my food plan? No, of course not. I had my general game plan (to make lower-carb, health-as-possible choices at each meal), and then I had some planned indulgences. Things that I considered worth it:

• Some of a Villa Bakery deluxe pizza roll. (They're huge, so I can only manage half at a time.)

• A taste of ice cream from Uncle Ray's Dairyland. (Which turned out be able to be so much more than just a taste, thanks to their new-to-me menu item! Yeayy!)

• Better Maid potato chips. (Like any truly great chip, easy to overdo, and fortunately not readily available west of the Mississippi. Surreal moment: downing a handful of BBQ Better Maids while fielding questions about my fitness routine: [*crunch*crunch*crunch*] "Yeah, I'm still running, and I take classes at my gym. I really love my BodyPump class.")

• A White Castle cheeseburger. (What *is* it about these things??? It's not nostalgia, because I was well out of college and not going on a post pub-crawl munchie-fest when I first had one.)
  

Otherwise, there were no foods that I felt like I had to have, and so it went pretty well: we took fresh veggie and fruit trays with us to several of the pot-luck family gatherings, and there were some really good choices. (Thanks for the healthy homemade cabbage rolls, J! Yum-o!) One nice surprise was that our first hotel we stayed at had hot protein items at their free breakfast bar. They had cheese omelets and sausage patties two of the days, eggs and bacon another one...yes, somewhat prefab, but they were nice variations on the week of oatmeal+peanut butter I'd planned on. I think my only food regrets I had were eating too many potato chips in general and the White Castle overdo day. (The next time we went, I half of one, and then I ate chicken with most of the skin stripped off.)

Exercise goals:
*sigh*...This is where I felt a little disappointed in myself, even though I'd planned to take it easier than I usually do. But I had expected to do more work-up-a-sweat exercise. I did get in a half hour on the treadmill at the hotel. And that was it. I think it made me feel a bit antsy toward the end of the week, too. I did dangle on the bars at the playground the few times we went, and I got in some pool time with the kids a couple of days. I'm a little bummed that we didn't get in a day at a lake, but the weather didn't cooperate with us for both that and the train show. Oh well. I just keep having to tell myself: my muscles will NOT be totally atrophied after a week off. I just need to not overdo it when I get back to my classes. I tend to not overdo when I work out on my own, but classes really make me push myself, so perhaps a couple of weeks away from the gym will have actually been a blessing in disguise, from a recovery standpoint.

Misc. goals: Plenty of sleep! I had not expected to sleep in as late as the kids did, so that's where my workout time went.

Monthly Measure

Oh wow, it's that time again. This month, it was -0.5" off my hips, +1" on the bust, and +1.5" on the ribcage, with no change elsewhere. Weird, but I think it's the bra. I will remeasure the the bust with the bra I used last month, to confirm the result.

[Update: Remeasure showed that bust was the same, +.5" in the rib cage.]

Goals for this week

7-day blood glucose average goal and fasting numbers: below 120.
Weight goal: Maintain or make progress toward goal.

Food goals:
- Back to tracking.
- 4 or more meatless, low-fat meals and 2 or more fish meals.
- On work days, switch to tea and plain water after that first cup of coffee.
- Track fiber. Minimum 30 grams fiber/day. (Include both insoluble and soluble sources.)

Exercise goals:
Minimum of 30 minutes of workout 5 days/week. This week, I want to do whatever 30 minutes of cardio fits into my schedule, plus 2 days with some strength training. (Might not be BodyPump class, but I need to do *something* this week, other than yesterday's dangle from the monkey bars before we jumped on the airplane.)

Misc. goals:
- 7 or more hours sleep/night.