Day 120 through 129: My Own Worst Enemy

 

Time for a new mission statement. My goal for 2025 was to lose 100 pounds by 12-31-25 but I've failed miserably. At some point I need to pick myself up and try. A realistic goal at this point is 50 pounds by 12-31-25, so that is where I will start. When will I start ? I don't know .. do I need a "starting point" ? I don't. Every day that I don't "start" just adds to my misery. I plan to just take each day as it comes and do what I can to move closer to where I want to be. Life has changed and I haven't been able to adapt just yet.

Well, here I am again after 5 days of zero progress. So, let's catch up yet again. I last wrote on Thursday 5-1 and that was a successful day, in that I got on the treadmill. Friday I went to the Mets game with Rich & Barb. It was chilly (50 degrees) and I was glad I brought my blanket ! We won the game and there were fireworks afterward, so we had a great time. I went easy on food. We all had pierogies and I also had a hot dog with salt potatoes. The potatoes were hot, done to perfection and there was plenty of butter in the cup. They will be my go to from now on ! No more cold fries for me ! Saturday and Sunday I did nothing but watch YouTube and play the online slots. Same goes for Monday and today. I did shower yesterday, got dressed AND put my treadmill shoes on. Problem is, I never made it to the treadmill. Today I showered, got dressed but didn't put my shoes on. Also didn't make it to the treadmill. Tomorrow is rock & roll bingo, so we'll if I can motivate myself to get a workout in.

I am just in such a rut. It sucks that I haven't gotten a new job and my life has no purpose. I'm unhappy with my weight but doing nothing to change it. I'm creeping towards better days though, because I'm showering and getting dressed. That is a start !

The online slots have become somewhat of an addiction. Dancing Drums has been generous with coins so I'm able to breeze through their challenges. The nice thing about this app is I can finish the week's worth of challenges in 2 days. They repeat several times a day and I usually do them twice a day even though I'm "finished" for the week. It's a fun app and I have plenty of coins. 88 Fortunes is still up and down but right now I have a good stock of coins and I'm able to get through their daily challenge relatively easily. I just have to be careful about blowing all my coins ! They only have the one challenge per day but I pop into the app a couple times a day just to catch the hourly bonus. My CluBillion coins are stable but not plentiful. I have enough to get through the daily challenge but I typically only visit the app once a day to complete the challenge. Jackpot World is the biggest PITA and time sucker. I played all weekend because I was winning, winning, winning. I think I got a Grand Jackpot twice on Saturday and I had my coins up over 9 trillion, only to lose them all by Sunday night ! I was so mad at myself and resigned to struggling all with the daily challenge all week. To my surprise I won several trillion on Monday and many more today. As of now (10:11 pm) I have over 7 trillion coins and I'm back in the MVP slot. We'll see if I stay there ! Over the past few days I've had a terrible time with my tablet saying I have no storage left. I deleted all the apps I could and any files I had and it was still giving me trouble. I even uninstalled Cookie Jam since I had play that on my phone or my other tablet. I also disabled Onedrive, though I don't think that did anything. Nothing was helping and I could see that Jackpot World was the resource hog. I was at my wits end today and googled to see if anyone else was having trouble. I found a post from 2022 where someone said this app doesn't replace files when it's updated, it just adds new ones. This is why it was taking up so much storage. The only thing I hadn't tried was uninstalling and reinstalling the app. I had to uninstall CluBillion in order to get Jackpot World to load so I could  add my email account to the app. That was necessary to recover my account. It was scary to hit uninstall on an app I've spent 3 months with ! Fortunately, the reinstall went smoothly and all my "stuff" was there ! I was able to reinstall CluBillion and enable Onedrive again and I still have 25G of available space ! I was also able to update all the other apps on tablet. Going forward I'll have to remember this "trick" whenever Jackpot World does an update or I start to have this resource issue again. I'm just glad I was able to fix it ! I also found out you can play JW on your PC, so I'm going to look into that.

I plan to be back on the treadmill by Thursday, in the event I don't make it there tomorrow. I'm starting to work on what I eat as well. Yesterday I sliced up an entire cucumber and had that with some olives, pickled onions and some fat free Italian dressing. I ate the whole container ! I'm just about out of the "bad" food in the house. I have 1 serving of frozen corn left. I have no pizza or hotdog stuff, other than an unopened bottle of pizza sauce and a few pepperoni slices. Chocolate covered almonds & cashews are gone. I have no baked goods or cookies in the house. Cheese puffs are almost gone. I still have fudge but I've only touched that once. I have an unopened bag of pretzels. Tonight I opened one of the big cans of green beans and had them with a chicken breast for dinner. I air fried the chicken and it was delicious. I actually cooked 2 of them and will likely have the 2nd one for lunch tomorrow. I have a few more of them that are "out of date" so I'll be cooking them up over the next few days. I thought a big part of my eating problem was laziness but I can cook a chicken breast in the air fryer in the same amount of time it takes to air fry 2 hotdogs. It takes longer to cook a pizza in the oven ! Speaking of the oven, I still have a few tater tots left too. I may cook those up tomorrow as well, then have a "fresh start" on Thursday !

My next shopping trip will contain zero contraband. No more hot dogs, pizza, baked goods, frozen entrees, candy, etc. Sigh. I forgot I also have a bag of chocolate covered pretzels. Those will keep for a while ! If I need something "extra" I can have something like a waffle or pancakes. I bought some frozen pancakes to supplement my breakfast items and tonight I had 2 after dinner. OMG - they are SO good. Light and fluffy and so much better than Nutrisystem pancakes. Sigh. I just remembered I also have a package of frozen hashbrown patties. I'll eat those over time as well. I've also started drinking the canned sparkling water that I've had since 2022. It is so refreshing ! I will likely buy some more next time I go to Costco. I'm going to try and get off the Diet Coke and artificial sweeteners in general. 

The content above was written on 5-6 and never published. I'm going to continue "catching up" and try to get back on the daily track tomorrow. 

Wednesday 5-7 was rock & roll bingo and it was Kim, Joe and I along with 2 of Kim's friends from her twins club. We had fun but didn't get any wins ! I had my usual flatbread pepperoni pizza and it was huge ! Must have been someone new in the kitchen but I'm not complaining. I brought about half of it home and reheated it in the air fryer for lunch on Thursday. I managed to get the lawn mowed on Thursday and that was the most real exercise I've gotten since the last time I shoveled snow ! It took 3 rounds because the grass was so long and really wore down the battery on the mower. I was so happy to get it done. Doug came to mow his daughter's lawn on Friday and asked if I no longer needed him. I told him I'd still like him to mow but I'm going to mow "in between" when I feel it is needed. I went ahead and mowed only because the grass was so long and more rain was predicted on Friday. It didn't rain until later in the day but right now you really need to mow in the afternoon because the grass is wet in the mornings still. Friday I forced myself out of the house at close to 3 pm and gassed up the car, stopped at Wegman's to buy stuff I didn't need and then headed to Walmart where I bought more stuff I didn't need. More to come on that. Yesterday I did nothing but watch YouTube and play my slot games, though I did shower and wash my hair. That brings me to today, Mother's Day. Kim invited everyone for a cookout and I was assigned the potato salad. I was too lazy to make it yesterday but managed to get it done this morning. I cheated a bit and bought eggs that had already been cooked and peeled. They worked so well that I doubt I'll ever boil my own again ! It was an odd day because Michelle & Mike came in separate cars, with Mike arriving less than 20 minutes after Michelle. He ended up leaving early so I suspect he came alone so he could go home long before Michelle was ready. Alyssa and Lauren had a bit of a tiff and Alyssa and Erin left early too. It was something stupid over a game they were playing and Alyssa wanted to take some shortcuts to shorten the game. Lauren objected to that and it got a bit ugly. Rich & Barb left relatively early too but I stayed, mostly because I knew Michelle was parked behind me and she was playing the game still with Lauren. Around 7 I finally asked when the game might be over and she got the hint that it was time to go. I don't have to go to work tomorrow but they all do and I'm sure Kim & Joe wanted to relax a bit before heading for bed.

The one constant in the past 10 days is my online slots. They've become an obsession, a distraction, an excuse not to exercise and sometimes a source of anxiety. Until tonight Dancing Drums was the only game I didn't have to struggle to get coins. Tonight CluBillion decided to let me win and that led me to move my bet up to 1B and the coins rolled in. I played some of them but left the game with 150B to play with. 88 Fortunes is making me struggle to get enough coins to complete the daily challenges, but I'm not bankrupt ! Jackpot World is making me work for coins and I'm not happy about that. It sucks to go from 9-10T coins to less than 3T. It feels like they lowered the payouts and the jackpots. I know the goal of ALL of these games is to get you to buy stuff with real money. I will NEVER do that, so I'll just struggle along. All that being said, I need to get my fat a$$ off the couch and get back on my diet. Is tomorrow the day ? We'll see.

So my Friday shopping trip was a nightmare of unnecessary purchases. I went to Wegman's looking for this new pizza crust they have, but my store didn't have it. I strolled through the prepared foods and selected an $11 container of chicken pasta with broccoli in an alfredo sauce. I ended up putting that back because I knew pizza was what I wanted. So I grabbed a 2 pack of pepperoni calzones. They were $8.50, and I didn't think $4.25 each was a bad price. I cooked one in the oven that night and it got so hard. I ate it but it wasn't really enjoyable. Yesterday I wrapped the 2nd one in a wet paper towel and microwaved it. Then I air fried it. That was better but I won't buy them again. They use some cheap cheese and the pepperoni was practically non-existent. The best part of that purchase was the 2 little cups of Marzetti marinara sauce ! They didn't have the pizza crust I wanted and they didn't have the pizza crust I bought there before, so I decided to try a package of flatbread crusts. They are 100 calories if you only make half, which I intend to do. The four crusts will equal 8 meals. I also bought the potatoes and celery I needed for my potato salad. Last item I bought was a 2 pack of cheddar jalapeno burgers, as I've been craving a hamburger. I had to buy a 4 pack of rolls too. I had planned to split the burgers in half but didn't end up doing that, so I'll probably freeze the extra 2 rolls. I had one of the burgers last night and it was delicious. I cooked it in the air fryer, which generated a lot of smoke ! I opened the kitchen windows and turned on the fan over the stove to keep my smoke detector from going off. Next time I put a burger in the air fryer I'll make sure the windows are open ! I I had cooked the last of the tater tots on Thursday but didn't eat them all so I warmed up what was left, also in the air fryer. That works amazing ! After Wegman's I headed to Walmart to get the rest of the stuff on my list. Milk, whipped cream, mayo, cat food, AAA batteries and eggs. Diet Coke was on the list but Walmart had none. Apparently someone was too lazy to restock. This was not the first time this has happened. From there I went off the rails a bit. I bought 2 bags of fun size candy bars, as I like a sweet treat at bedtime. My goal is to limit myself to ONE per night. I also bought a box of Twinkies and a box of Hostess cupcakes. Why, you might ask ? Well, I've delayed my Nutrisystem order and didn't want to run out of evening snacks. Well, bad move because I've already eaten 5 or 6 twinkies and 2 cupcakes. My plan is to reign myself in tomorrow. Will Day 130 be any different than the past 129 ? I guess we'll find out. I also bought 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I've been craving ice cream and really needed to satisfy that. Last night I ate one entire pint. I also bought 2 boxes of corn bread mix. Sometimes I just need a baked good and corn bread is a favorite of mine. Last items were cheese, pepperoni and sauce to go with the pizza crusts I bought. I am low on lunch items and don't want to be stuck with quesadilla's every day. 

So that's where I am. Still sabotaging myself, still not on schedule or locked into a routine. Still trying to figure out where I go from here. I'm never going to work again and maybe that is sinking in. Thing is, sitting on the couch eating myself past 300 pounds isn't going to help. So I have to pull up my boot straps and try hard. I've examined some of my food habits and I keep seeing the same thing happen over and over. I have a food craving and instead of just satisfying it I eat something else and THEN end up eating what I really wanted. Going forward I'm just going to satisfy the craving (within reason) and move on. 

So my plan for tomorrow is to get up, feed the cats, have my breakfast, shower, brush my teeth, do skincare and then hit the treadmill at noon. I'd like to trim the weeds in the yard so I may do that in the afternoon when the grass is drier. I need to capture a "before" photo too and that's going to hurt. If I don't get out and do the weed trimming I may try getting on the treadmill in the evening. We'll see !

It's just about 11:30 so I'm going to head to bed. Tomorrow is another 24 hours to get it right. Wish me luck !