Official Weigh-in: 20 pounds down!

Weight: 316.6
Total Weight loss: 20 pounds

My weight is up a little today from yesterday, but I think it's because its TOM time again! Woo hoo! (not.) Still, I can officially call it at a 20 pound loss and that is a thrill. That's a nice, steady average loss, just over 1.5 pounds a week. Perfect.

I'm feeling better about things today, even though (or maybe because?) it's still early. We've been doing fine on our forced diet, and it makes me wonder why we can't just eat less like this all the time. C. wants to lose weight, too, so I don't know... we obviously would be able to eat better foods overall than we've been eating this week, but we could stick with smaller meals for sure. I don't feel like I am missing much. And since we obviously need to manage our money better, keeping a budget in mind as we are planning our meals is a very good thing—even if we don't happen to be in such a bad place like we are now. This was a very good lesson.

After work yesterday I stopped at the store to get a few things to last us the next few days. I bought a large package of split chickens for just over three dollars, and a large package of boneless pork chops for about the same. I picked up a bag of russet potatoes on sale. Yesterday we also had the good fortune of several tomatoes on our neighbor's plants fully ripened, which we can make into a yummy salsa or whatever else. In case you're wondering, no, we didn't steal. My neighbor is away for a while and asked us to water her gardens and keep an eye on things. She said to go ahead and eat the tomatoes so they don't go to waste.

Her tomatoes don't taste nearly as good as the varieties we grow, but fresh veggies is fresh veggies! That's something I've really missed this week. They're so expensive at the store. I wish our peppers, tomatoes, and squash would hurry up already! We've got plenty out there growing!

Speaking of which, I've come to realize that as time goes on, I'm not only concerned about what I eat to lose weight, but more and more about where the foods I am eating come from, and how they were produced. Gardening for my own food makes me so much more aware of these issues and how much I'd like to adjust what I buy and eat based on that. More and more I (and C.) would like to grow our own food. We have a very small plot of land to work with right now, but have possible plans with my mom to go in a property together where we can live and grow things together, maybe to the point of providing extra income. A very small farm. Probably just vegetables, but I was also thinking bees... I don't think I could raise animals for food, though maybe some chickens for eggs would be nice.

I'm a Phoenix, Baby got me really thinking about this in her recent post stemming from seeing the film Food Inc., which I have yet to see but would really like to.

It's nice when doing something for one reason becomes the catalyst for doing it for other even better reasons!