250 Miles by April 1 -- March! New Challengers Welcome!

Good Afternoon Challengers

Yesterday I did all 6 of my main HHs, ate in my 💚 zone of pts. I had 3 meals, 0 snack, used 15 pts. We walked 2.2 mi before breakfast.

My “KISS” HHs (Keep it Simple and Specific) yesterday:
- Do at least 10 mins of PT/ST: N
- Avoid salted snacks: 💚
- No “seconds” with snack: 💚
- No eating out of a container: 💚
- Limit phone after 9 pm: 💚
- Evening: “Snack on Inspo”; Read prayers, quotes, whys and goals: 💚
- FFFE (Food-Free Fasting Evenings): 💚
- JGTB (Just Go To Bed) around 10 - 11 pm: 💚

Yesterday I paid property taxes online. The Los Angeles County one went through to our bank account overnight!

This am we went to town for groceries, which takes half a day. We came back and found the planking is finished on our front deck/entrance so we can walk from the front door to the driveway! The cabin is built on a slope, and we enter on the upper floor. Without the deck it’s just a a deep wide ditch. They just need to finish the fascia and the rails on the deck. Then they can start on replacing windows, replacing the woodshed, and rebuilding the outdoor stairs. We put in the composite deck in 2015, replacing a worn out wood deck. The composite deck was one of the factors that saved the cabin in the wildfire.

We still have to deal with removing the burned trees - waiting to see if the State/County program will remove some of them. They only remove ones that endanger the public right of way.

Be well, and take care, for ourselves and for each other.

Cait

Good Morning Challengers

Yesterday I did 5/6 of my main HHs, ate in my 💚 zone of pts. I had 3 meals, 0 snack, used 21 pts. No walk.

My “KISS” HHs (Keep it Simple and Specific) yesterday:
- Do at least 10 mins of PT/ST: N
- Avoid salted snacks: 💚
- No “seconds” with snack: 💚
- No eating out of a container: 💚
- Limit phone after 9 pm: 💚
- Evening: “Snack on Inspo”; Read prayers, quotes, whys and goals: 💚
- FFFE (Food-Free Fasting Evenings): 💚
- JGTB (Just Go To Bed) around 10 - 11 pm: 💚

Yesterday was a beautiful day for the 2 hour round trip drive for groceries. Our route goes from our Scott River and then along the Klamath River. The Klamath is muddy looking from the mud slides from the wildfire damage in 2022, and from the removal of the hydroelectric power dams which were obsolete and contributing to algae blooms and loss of salmon. It’s the largest dam removal project in US history - 4 dams that have been there over 100 years with mega tons of debris backed up behind them.

It’s raining this am so not sure about walk.

CAROL - GFY doing the lap swim and stretching. I don’t think we’d want to do a testimonial - there were lots of factors that helped save our cabin and there are lots of manufacturers of quality composite deck materials, plus now all that discarded composite material from the old deck is going into landfill probably. Plus our neighbors lost everything. Lots of mixed feelings.

Be well, and take care, for ourselves and for each other.

Cait

Good Morning!!

Just noticed I must have never hit to post my post on Tuesday morning.


Carol: Good job taking advantage of the other pool location. Nice to have options.

Cait: Your doing great with your consistency with your HHs. Glad everything is getting cleaned up at your home. So interesting that your composite deck saved your home. Hope that you get some help with the trees.

Waving to all!! Happy Walking!!

Waving to all!!! Happy Walking!!







WATP/EX: 315.76 Tracker miles:522.97
2024 WATP/EX miles:202.22 Tracker Miles:320.97

Good Afternoon Challengers

Yesterday I did 3/6 of my main HHs, ate in my 💚 zone of pts. I had 3 meals, 1 snack, used 27 pts. We walked in the afternoon 2.1 miles. I did 10 mins of ST before dinner 🥳.

My “KISS” HHs (Keep it Simple and Specific) yesterday:
- Do at least 10 mins of PT/ST: 💚
- Avoid salted snacks: N
- No “seconds” with snack: N
- No eating out of a container: N
- Limit phone after 9 pm: N
- Evening: “Snack on Inspo”; Read prayers, quotes, whys and goals: 💚
- FFFE (Food-Free Fasting Evenings): N
- JGTB (Just Go To Bed) around 10 - 11 pm: 💚

Yesterday it rained off and on most of the day and DH had both opening day baseball AND college basketball to watch, but there was a break in the rain and DH offered to leave his games and walk with me after lunch! 😍 I was planning to walk alone but he was reading my mind and doesn’t like me doing that out here in the forest.

In the evening I had salted popcorn and fruit for snack and was reading my book through the evening basketball games. At bedtime I stayed up reading the book on my phone and eating more fruit, but I stopped before 11 pm and I did JGTB. I read in bed too long, but that’s OK compared to the momentum I get, to keep reading and eating, if I stay in the living room reading after 11 pm. The choice to stick with fruit after the popcorn was a good one, but I didn’t do most of my KISS HHs - not perfect, but way “better than.”

The contractor and his helper are finishing the railing on the deck today - no work this Wed or Thurs due to rain.

Sugar - It gets easier as I keep avoiding it. Avoiding it becomes a habit 👍. There are still 2 Reese’s packages in the pantry from Halloween. DH says he keeps forgetting they’re there. He goes in that cupboard pretty much every day! How can he NOT see them. Lately I see them, but I don’t keep thinking about them. Except last night…. But I’m out of the habit, so it wasn’t a super strong urge, and I was bolstered by just enough strength from my prayer and meditation and snacking on Inspo. 🙏🤗

If I eat some, I risk starting up again with the candy habit and it can be a rough one to deal with. But the avoiding habit helps me. Getting more info about the harm sugar does in the body helps me. I can’t un-know these things! I have these in my notes in my phone, my “Prayers, Quotes, Whys and Goals” that I read from for my evening “Snack on Inspo.”
Sugar is pro-inflammatory
Sugar is a toxin.
Highly processed foods are pro-inflammatory

Last week I was listening to this podcast, and we definitely can change our taste receptors to be more sensitive to sweets, more appreciative of natural sweetness, and less attracted to manufactured over-sweet food products. Here’s a transcript of that section of the podcast:

Q. “So do you think it is possible for people to become accustomed to less sweetness? I mean, let’s say the food industry is required to gradually reduce sugar and sweetness from the sweeteners. What do you think would happen?”

A “Absolutely. It is not only possible, it is eminently doable. And I know why and we have the data for why that is. So there is a very smart lady, neuroscientist at the University of Michigan by the name of Monica Dus, who has done all this work in fruit flies of all places. She has shown the desensitization of the tongue to sugar has to do with changes in receptors and changes in specific substrates in the taste buds of the tongue. When you stop the sugar availability, it takes three weeks for those receptors to increase and repopulate, and for those problematic substrates to go away. You can actually retrain your tongue in three weeks to be much more sensitive to the sugar that is in the food naturally. After a three-week abstinence period or a reduction or a weaning period, a blueberry will taste like a sugar bomb in your mouth. So we know this can happen and we actually have proven this for salt previously. The UK, as you know Kelly, back in 2003, the Blair government convened all the food industry concerns in Great Britain. So Marks & Spencer, and Weight Rose, and Tesco, et cetera, all around the big table, didn’t let media in, and basically said to every single food industry concerned in Great Britain, “Look, we have a hypertension and stroke problem and it’s because of the salt content of the food and we are going to play referee here in the government. And each of you is going to reduce the salt content of your food by 10% per year over a three-year period so that you’ll reduce your salt by 30% at the end of this and everyone’s going to play together, so that there’s no competitive disadvantage and most importantly, we’re not going to tell anybody.” That’s what they did. Sure enough, in 2011, a paper appeared in Burge Medical Journal, demonstrating a 40% reduction in hypertension and stroke because of the public health effort that the Blair government made in terms of reducing the amount of salt in processed food. We can do the same with sugar today.”

It’s an interview/discussion between Kelly D Brownell, PhD, clinical psychologist, Duke Univ, and Robert H Lustig MD, Univ of San Francisco.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-leading-voices-in-food/id1444757309?i=1000613396072

And there’s this:
"The effects of added sugar intake — higher blood pressure, inflammation, weight gain, diabetes, and fatty liver disease — are all linked to an increased risk for heart attack and stroke," says Dr. Hu.
www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-sweet-danger-of-sugar

Be well, and take care, for ourselves and for each other.

Cait

Easter blessings to us all,
Challengers!

Yesterday I did all 6 of my main HHs, ate in my 💛 zone of pts. I had 3 meals, 0 snack, used 30 pts. We walked after breakfast 2.2 miles.

My “KISS” HHs (Keep it Simple and Specific) yesterday:
- Do at least 10 mins of PT/ST: N
- Avoid salted snacks: 💚
- No “seconds” with snack: 💚
- No eating out of a container: 💚
- Limit phone after 9 pm: 💚
- Evening: “Snack on Inspo”; Read prayers, quotes, whys and goals: 💚
- FFFE (Food-Free Fasting Evenings): 💚
- JGTB (Just Go To Bed) around 10 - 11 pm: 💚

Yesterday I finished my book - another in the DS Cross series by Tim Sullivan. I’m really enjoying them. Also reading “Found in a Bookshop” by Stephanie Butland. It would make a good Book Club book.

Enjoying the signs of Spring - love how these maples start their annual process with bright green dangling berry clusters topped by little leaf clusters.



And interesting how this burned tree in our yard is hosting
mushrooms.



Be well, and take care, for ourselves and for each other.

Cait