Boom Time Day 26 (3/6/10)

I had a nice, relaxing day today.  Originally, I had planned to go to Calabasas to do a voice lesson and then, possibly go visit my relatives out there.  However, the person I had scheduled with, forgot that we were doing the lesson and wasn't at home.  So, we have to reschedule.  She was on the soccer field watching her children at the time, so that wasn't the time to handle it.  I will see her on Wednesday and maybe we can work it out then. 

Anyway, that one change shifted my entire day and I ended up with lots of free time that I didn't expect.  I handled some basic errands and then went to the library to do a few things online.  The internet was rediculously slow, so I went home to see if I could log onto my friend's internet service.  Unfortunately, the signal strength was too low to do anything even though she just lives across the street.  So, I made a lot of phone calls for my business and left a lot of messages.

I was excited to have some time to go grocery shopping because we were getting low on food in the house and I wanted to stock up on healthy foods to support me in my weight goal.  I have been wanting a lot of salad recently.  I think my daughter and roommate are starting to get sick of it.  I'm not giving in to them, though.  We've all got to do better with our diets.  I took my daughter with me to the store and was able to get a lot of great food for a fairly decent price.  I even was able to get my daughter some little "goodies" which I usually wouldn't do because money had been tight for so long.  I felt great to have the cash to get what I needed and more. 

We decided to rent some movies and stay home for the evening.  I was really enjoying the idea of keeping my schedule simple.  I've got lots of days to keep busy.  Plus, it is really important to me that I keep time in my schedule to be with my baby girl.  We've been through so much together in the last year-and-a-half and I want her to know that she is still my priority even while I'm building this great momentum in my life.  We rented 3 movies.  My daughter picked "Confessions of a Shopaholic" (a bit disappointing) and I got "X Men Origins" and "Angels and Demons".  I really enjoyed those two movies.  We were going to get popcorn until I read the labels and was shocked!  I picked up a box of Orville Redenbacher's popcorn that said "organic" and "50% less fat".  I discovered that there were 2.5 servings in each bag and each serving had 40 calories of fat!  This is supposed to be the healthy stuff!?! Just out of curiosity, I looked at the regular movie butter popcorn and saw that they had 3 servings and each serving had 90 fat calories.  Can you believe it?  A person who eats a bag of that popcorn by themselves (which I have done before) is actually eating 270 calories of fat!!  That made me never want to get any microwave popcorn again. 

So, people, the moral of the story.... Read the labels!  Don't go by what they say on the box.  Sure, the Orville Redenbacher popcorn was better than the movie butter kind, but it was far from healthy.  It's too easy to get caught up in the words they feature on the front (which is why they do it).  Organic and half-the-fat sounded good at first glance, but once I read the label I saw an entirely different picture.  Fat is fat!  Organic or not, that popcorn would have been a bad idea.  Instead, I got some pretzels (0 fat) and managed my portions so that I didn't eat too many empty calories. 

For those of you working on your weight, reading the labels will help you to make sensible choices.  There is nothing wrong with having a few snacks as long as they are healthy, kept in moderation and are part of a healthy diet in general.  Stay committed to the goal that you set for yourself.  There is a lot more joy in feeling healthy and energetic than there is in eating comfort foods. 

Gratitude:  I am grateful for quality time with my beautiful daughter.  It is so wonderful to see her smiling and happy after such a long time of great difficulties.  God has really taken care of us....and I must say, we didn't do too bad ourselves either.  Thanks to faith, taking personal action and having lots of support from family and close friends, we have come a long way!  And that, is something to be thankful for.

Blessings!