I'm fairly certain I don't have a dipstick...

Aren't I amusing?  Yeah, don't answer that.  Oh wait, I forgot to set up the joke first.  This morning, I went in to the doc's for the annual check under the hood.  Always so much fun, what with the poking and the prodding and none of it in a good way.  My left arm also got fairly abused, what with the blood pressure cuff twice, a flu shot, and the blood draw.  It could just be my big, meaty moose arms but I wonder if those cuffs have latex in them?  They always turn my arm a bright red that lasts for a while, and since I have a latex sensitivity that would explain it. 

The injection site is pretty sore, as they advise will happen, but who wants to lay bets on whether I will be one of the lucky people who go through all the "you may experience the following symptoms after receiving your flu shot"?  Put me down for $20.  I have a pretty good sore throat developing, although that could be from when I nearly hacked up a lung earlier this morning after inhaling my glass of water.  Yes, like Ted Stryker, I have a drinking problem.  I foresee tea with honey in my near future.  I'm also getting a headache, but hey it just wouldn't be a day ending in "y" if I didn't have a headache. 

I talked with my doctor about marathon training and fitness in general, and she recommended that to lose weight I should cut my calories to 1500 a day.  I'm typing it out here for accountability purposes, because I'm really wishing I didn't have such a good memory and that I could forget she ever said that.  I've done 1500 calories a day before and I did lose weight, but -- and let's do a big BUT, shall we? -- I was doing zero exercise at the time.  I ran yesterday and was starving all day, even with taking in about 1900 calories.  She did say that on the days I run that I could have some extra calories, then she added that by extra she meant maybe 100 calories or so.  That would be my pre-run granola bar right there. 

I've been meaning to write about holiday meal strategies, so this seems like a good segue into that.  Many of my fellow bloggers are discussing how to handle the holiday meals when you're counting calories and striving to lose weight.  Most are along the lines of, don't go nuts.  Not the food, as in "cwazy."  Yeah, I got that part.  The suggestion that has stuck most in my mind comes from Sean who adds extra calories to his daily allowance on those days.  I am thinking I will do a variation of that, where I have X number of extra calories in the week.  As I've mentioned, this is my insane time of year due to work.  Thankfully, I don't have all that family crap to deal with on top of that or I would be climbing a bell tower with a sniper rifle.  No one lives nearby and except for Thanksgiving and Christmas I just don't answer the phone.  Helps that I turn off the ringer on a daily basis and frequently forget I haven't it back on the rest of the year.  Anyhow, I will be doing as much preventative meal planning/taking meals to work as I can but there will come a point where I am likely to be eating other things like cheese, wine, chocolate, bread -- all that good nosh food that shows up often in our office. 

As far as reducing calories goes, for December I will make it a goal to reduce my calorie intake to 1750-1800 calories a day.  In January, after seeing how that goes weight-wise (and how close or far away I end up to that calorie number, plus I'm going to start weight training at least one day a week soon) my goal will be to go to 1750-1800 officially.  I'll see how that goes and if I'm still not losing weight (I'm talking about only one to two pounds max per week) then I'll go down to 1500-1600.  If I'm still not losing any weight there, then I will eat a large thin crust pizza and the biggest order of BBQ wings I can find and then I will go back to my doctor.  Otherwise, I'm scheduled to go back two days after Eugene, provided I am not otherwise dead.

I know my weak spot diet-wise is dinner.  I almost always bring my lunch to work each day, and on weekends I tend to eat a bigger brunch rather than breakfast and dinner, thereby eliminating some of those typical temptations (breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the day).  But when I'm tired and hungry, it's easy to load my plate up for dinner, conveniently forgetting how yuck I will likely feel after eating too much so late in the day.  I've been trying to make sure to eat each bite completely before forking up another, going slow in my eating to allow myself to feel full.  I want to stick to a reasonable serving size with the idea that if I still feel hungry 20 minutes or so after eating that I can have more.  I often stick with a reasonable sized dinner with the idea that afterwards I will have some sort of a treat; many times I forget about having dessert all together until I'm getting ready for bed an hour later.  Some or all of these practices may become a goal for December. 

Until then, it's time for my lunch.  Have a great day!

Cheers,
the CilleyGirl

In other news, I spoke with the personal trainer yesterday and it turns out, as I suspected, that she thought we made the appointment for 6:15 PM whereas I thought it was for 6:15 AM.  We're now back on for tomorrow evening, which we repeated to each other several times.  All should be well.