Day 130 through 140: Catching Up and Trying Harder

 

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, another week has started and though I haven't been on the treadmill, I haven't exactly sat on my butt for the past 2 days. Yesterday I mowed the lawn again. When I did it Thursday I had the mower on the highest setting since the grass was so long. I wanted to mow it again to get it shorter. That worked really well because the grass was drier. I did have to stop a couple times to clean the chute but a couple of those stops were because I ran over the piles of grass from the last mowing. It was warm yesterday so I also went ahead and put the screen in the top part of back door. Today I went out and did the week trimming. I discovered that along the driveway side of the house there are mats of grass on top of concrete that runs along the foundation. I think all that was exposed when I moved in but over the years the grass crept in and covered it. My next job is going to be going out and pulling all of that off. It'll help with weed control ! Today was really the first day I opened the windows ! I only opened the kitchen ones, but it's a start !

So yesterday I did nothing besides mowing the lawn. My free time was spent watching YouTube and playing the slots. Today was pretty much the same, though I did shower and do my skincare after my yard work and then I washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen counters and stovetop. It was nearly 80 today but the high for tomorrow is only 70. I also managed to get the trash and recyclables out today. Last task for today was checking in on my bills and scheduled my credit card and utility payments. Now the rest of May is on auto pilot !

From a food & diet perspective, I'm not there. When the Twinkies and cupcakes are gone, I will not buy them again. I just can't control myself ! Same goes for the ice cream. In a small victory, I managed to NOT eat the entire pint of peanut butter cup ice cream last night. I had the 2nd cheddar jalapeno burger tonight and it was delicious. I threw the extra 2 buns in the freezer for another day. My air fryer was pretty gross inside so I took that apart and scrubbed away all the grease and food particles. It's amazing how much grease is eliminated from your food when you air fry ! So ice cream will be gone as of tonight. The tater tots and burgers are gone. For lunch today I had one of the flatbread pizzas. I did eat the whole crust (200 calories) because I was really hungry. It was really good, so that will be my go to for pizza now. However, the next time I make it I'm going to only use half and put some veggies with it. I haven't opened the 2 bags of candy I bought and I haven't had any of the fudge I bought a couple weeks ago. Don't worry ... I'll get there ! I cooked the last of the frozen corn tonight but I'm not going to eat it. I'll put it in the fridge for tomorrow. The burger really filled me up. I also had a Michelob Ultra after my burger. That really hit the spot ! 

I probably won't be going to rock & roll bingo tomorrow as Kim is camping with her girlfriends and Rich & Barb typically don't go. I still plan to be "ready" just in case they do end up going. That just means a little makeup, brushing my teeth and getting dressed. Easy enough ! If I don't get to do that I may take a ride and see if my local ice cream stand is open ! For the summer my ice cream cravings will be addressed by them !

*** the content above was written on 5-13 ***

I haven't been writing lately and I think that is just me avoiding talking about the fact that I'm continuing to struggle with every aspect of life. Let's catch up first.

I last wrote on Tuesday, and at that time I didn't think I'd be going to rock & roll bingo. In the end I did go as Rich & Barb were available to go. We had fun but didn't win. Barb & Joe came close a couple times but I was never close ! I shared pizza & chicken tenders with Joe and not only did he refuse to let me pay but he also sent the leftovers home with me. He was going to hang out at the casino after bingo and wouldn't have carried the bag around with him. I did end up paying $10 for the tip and that was my choice and perfectly fine. Yesterday I went outside and did some yard work. As mentioned earlier in this post, I discovered a strip of concrete runs along the side of the house on the driveway side and over the years it's been covered with a mat of grass. I pulled that all out on the section of the house that covers the laundry room, kitchen and dining room. Having that gone will make it easier to mow since you don't have to get so close to the house. I'll get back out there another day and do the main house section. I'm thinking about putting landscape fabric and stone over it. We'll see ! I didn't do anything today. It's been a lazy day on the couch with YouTube and online slots.

Speaking of the slots, Dancing Drums remains my favorite as I am maintaining around 40B coins and their challenges are easy. I just wish they'd add more games. I had a really good run on 88 Fortunes yesterday and was up to 90B+ coins, only to spend them all chasing a dumb challenge. Now I'm right back to struggling to complete the daily challenge. I've been up and down on CluBillion but always have enough coins to finish the daily challenge. I still love Jackpot World but yet again I am bankrupt and struggling to earn coins. That takes ALL the fun out of the game. I didn't take my tablet to bed with me Wednesday night but I took it with me last night. I have to stop doing that because I end up staying awake half the night but still wake up relatively early (before 8:30 today) and have to get up to feed the cats. So today I'm really tired. From now on the tablet stays downstairs.

From a food perspective, I'm still all over the place. Ice cream is gone and last night I ate the last of the corn. I have one pizza crust left but I still have a lot of sauce, cheese & pepperoni, so I will likely buy more crusts so I can use that up. I haven't bought any frozen entrees or other junk, so that's a good thing. I have 2 cupcakes and 2 Twinkies left. I also have the 2 bags of fun size candy bars, but I've only eaten 2 pieces. I also still have the fudge I bought several weeks ago. In unrelated news, I've discovered that the sugar free coffee syrups taste better when I use unflavored coffee ! So going forward I'll be buying unflavored k-cups. Right now I'm drinking Wegman's brand "donut shop" coffee and it's pretty good ! I don't know if I'll save any money but at least I'll enjoy my coffee more ! 

*** the content above was written on 5-16 ***

As you can see, I'm not doing well with the daily blogs ! I guess I'm just avoiding it because it means documenting my lack of progress towards getting back to my diet & exercise program. However, this morning I decided today was going to be different !

Today is Tuesday 5-20 and there is nothing special about the day. I was awake shortly after 8 and got up around 9. Did the usual in that I fed the cats, made my breakfast and sat down to play my slots and watch some YouTube. However, I also took a shower and got dressed around noon. I sat down with a second cup of coffee and a yogurt and also completed my skincare. I also checked in on my bank account and all was well. Last item was checking Nutrisystem and it's a good thing I did ! Today was the processing day but I was able to move it out to next week since I hadn't bought the gift cards that save me $60 per shipment ! I ran through my order and changed a couple things and while I was doing that I discovered the lemon zest cake that I love is gone from the menu ! I hope this is just a temporary thing and boy am I glad I checked. They had defaulted my 12 lemon cakes to 12 of the pumpkin spice cakes, which are good but too small for the calories. I ended up selecting the ice cream sandwiches, since I am often craving ice cream. We'll see how that goes ! Once I was done with that I ordered the gift cards from Costco. It usually only takes a couple hours for them to arrive in my email. I changed up my breakfast selection to just cinnamon and cherry cheese rolls. I find the Eggo waffles taste better and. I've also been eating pancakes every day. I buy both items at Walmart and they have about 20 calories more per serving, which is fine with me. I always run out of breakfast items first so this helps me stretch out my order window.

Doug came by this morning to trim weeds and mow the lawn. I wondered why he was mowing so soon but the weather forecast answered that question: rain is forecast for the next 3 days ! That could change but I'm glad he mowed anyway !

It's just after 2 pm and Minnie is looking for her lunch. I'm going to get that for her, make a protein shake, put on my shoes and get on the treadmill !

Okay ! It is now 2:49 and I fed Minnie, made my shake, trimmed my toe nails, put on my shoes AND got my fat a$$ on the treadmill ! It might have only been 11m57s with the usual 6 minutes of warmup/cooldown, but it's better than nothing ! It's a start ! I'm so happy ! I was a little breathless at the start but by the time it was done I was starting to hit my stride. My heart rate peaked at 136, which isn't bad at all ! 

I think it's time to give some thought to the slot apps that are taking up so much of my time. I need to scale it back and I've started by deleting the Grand Cash app that I just installed over the weekend. I didn't really like the app for 2 reasons. #1 is that it is very hard to win anything and #2 is there is too much "stuff" and it's not organized very well. You spend a ton of time clicking through all the "stuff" and end up not gaining much in the way of coins. I like 88 Fortunes because they have one challenge per day and you can't repeat it. Same goes for CluBillion and Jackpot World. Dancing Drums puts our their challenge for the week on Monday and it's easy to complete the whole thing in a couple days because you can repeat the challenge several times a day. I'm doing ok with coins on all of them except Jackpot World. I can't seem to win anything so it keeps me from playing the app. Their loss if they rely on user data to make money. I'm going to stay with these 4 apps but I am going to reduce the playing time. I will run through them all to complete the daily challenges and then put them aside to ensure I do things like shower, clean, get dressed, exercise and do skincare. I need to add litter box detail to that list as well because I've been slacking lately.

From a food perspective, I went to Walmart yesterday and managed to avoid buying a ton of junk food. I did buy one package of pizza crusts so I can finish the pizza fixings that are left. I also bought a lemon meringue pie and one pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I'm trying to wean myself off the candy/chocolate habit and I actually had none yesterday. Today I decided to put the fudge in the freezer since I haven't been eating it. It'll be there in case I get a sweet attack some day and have nothing in the house ! What's a typical food day look like ? Well, yesterday I had pancakes and a yogurt for breakfast. Lunch was a spinach & artichoke melt. Dinner was a pizza and a Michelob Ultra. Evening snack was a piece of the lemon meringue pie. That's a contrast to today. So far I've had pancakes & yogurt for breakfast and a protein shake during my workout. It's 3:35 now and I'm going to go and clean the litter boxes and then have that lunch. I may try to get on the treadmill again later, but I'm not going to promise anything ! I need to take a progress photo (I'm not going to call it a "before") and check in with the scale today too. Last I checked I was crowding 300 and I'm so, so unhappy with myself.

Well, it's 7:43 now and I've accomplished more today than I have in weeks. The litter boxes were long overdue for cleaning so I got that done. That involved scraping out all the clumps and adding new litter, then disposing of the bag of used litter that has been accumulating. It was heavy but I put my roller bin on it's side and that makes it easy to get the bag in. I also managed to get the trash out, since they hit my street pretty late today. It was 4:18 when I put it out and 4:49 when I brought it back in. I put out a small box of recyclables but forgot the bag of cat food cans ! Oh well, I can put that out next week. I also swept the floor in the laundry room, refilled the dry food container and generally straightened things up. The room looks much nicer now ! It was sunny enough today to open the front door for a couple hours, since the sun beating through the windows warms up that room. The high temp today never made it out of the mid 50's and we're going to be in the low 50's with overnight low's in the 40's right through the weekend. Ugh. Well, at least I have rock & roll bingo to look forward to tomorrow. My last task today was running the dishwasher. I had enough dishes and silverware in there to justify running it. I have a couple plastic items in the sink to wash (along with a couple pans) and the plan is to get that done tomorrow.

As much as I enjoy the Jackpot World app, I may end up deleting it if it doesn't start letting me win soon. 

*** the content above was written on 5-21 ***

It's Thursday and the week has flown by. Yesterday was rock & roll bingo and though no one won, we had a good time. I did come close - 4 out 5 ! Kim and Joe came close too. Today I slept in a little since I didn't get to sleep until after 2 am. I was awake at 8 but lingered in bed scrolling my phone until 9:30. Once I was up I had much more energy ! I fed the cats and settled down with my pancakes and coffee. Lately I'm only seeing the orange female cat. I don't know where the 2 young orange males or the old orange male have gone. I spent the morning playing my slot games. Jackpot World let me win a bit but I ended up bankrupt again. It's ok - the less time I play the game the better ! 88 Fortunes took a lot of my coins so I've scaled back my playing time on that one too. Dancing Drums remains pretty steady when it comes to coins, so I do still enjoy this app. CluBillion remains in rotation but their games are kind of boring and you have to bet a minimum of 1B if you want to have a chance at winning a Grand. The coins go fast at that bet level !

I did manage to get myself on the treadmill around 2:30 ! I had made my protein shake earlier so I checked the iFit app for updates and then hopped on. Today's workout was 20m56s plus the usual 6 minutes of warm up/cool down. I am keeping my 3 minute warm up at 2 mph and my cool down is 2 mph for 90 seconds, then 1.8 mph for 90 seconds. For the workout I'm going with the programmed speed. I'm redoing the Mexico "Road to Recovery" series with Tommy Rivs and the workouts start out at 1.5 mph then increase to 2.2 mph. The last minute or so the speed drops back to 1.5 but I reset it to 2.2 until the end. I do this to ensure the cool down starts at my custom speed of 2 mph. If I were at 1.5 when the cool down started the machine would not increase to 2 mph. I had a short power outage a little while before the workout and I was glad I hadn't started earlier ! Not sure what happened but the power was out for less than 5 minutes.

I feel like I'm making some strides and I just need to make sure I keep the momentum going ! It's 3:30 and I cleaned litter boxes, got dressed and worked out. I'm going to try getting back on the treadmill around 5. There is NO reason i can't exercise twice a day when I'm here all day. I may designate Wednesday as my day off when I go to rock & roll bingo. Tomorrow will likely be a day off too since Kim wants to go to Boscov's. I'll get my exercise walking around the store ! My plan for the rest of today is possibly another workout, a shower, skincare and brushing my teeth. Easy enough ! I haven't had lunch yet so I think I'm just going to hang in there until after 5. I have one pizza crust left so today will be my "last hurrah" with that. I also have one (large) piece of lemon meringue pie left.

Well, it's 10:08 pm and I'm about to head to bed. I wanted to finalize and publish this blog and "start fresh" tomorrow or Saturday. I didn't get that second workout in and I realized that yet again I'm getting ahead of myself. One workout a day is fine for right now. I need to get my eating under control and once I get a few pounds off I can think about working out 2-3 times a day. I ended up having 3 hash brown patties for dinner instead of pizza. They've been hanging out in the freezer and I need to get them gone ! They were delicious ! I microwaved them for 1 minute and then put them in the air fryer for 12 minutes (3 of those 12 minutes were to allow the air fryer to heat up). A little salt, a little ketchup and you basically had flat tater tots ! I also finished the lemon meringue pie for my dessert. The only other stuff I ate today was pancakes, yogurt and a protein shake. I pretty much spent the day on the couch otherwise, playing the slots and watching YouTube. I have to be at Kim's by 11 am tomorrow so I'm going to try and get to sleep at a decent hour tonight ! All my slots are "up to date" but I'll check in with Jackpot World after the 11 pm reset. I managed to win close to 1T coins after I went bankrupt earlier today, so I have a little cushion to complete the Friday challenges. The only game I need to touch tomorrow is 88 Fortunes and I can do that when I get home if I don't have time in the morning. My goal is to get up at 8 am tomorrow and shower first thing. I didn't bother to shower today. I had a 1911 hard cider this evening and that might help me sleep ! I was looking for my Boscov's credit card and the one I have is expired. I don't think they ever sent me a new one as it seems their system doesn't like my PO box address. I'll visit their customer service tomorrow and see what's up. I have a couple gift cards to use so I probably won't charge anything, but I'd like to get the credit card straightened out.

So that's where I am right now. I feel like I'm ready to get back on track. Saturday will mark one year since my career ended. Hard to believe it's been a year already ! At this point I'm over it and enjoying not working. I miss the paycheck, but I'm going to be fine financially. I hope to have a long and happy retirement ! 

On that note, I'm going to wrap things up and head to bed !

** a last thought: I'm thinking about starting a "2025 Part II" blog, since I've accomplished nothing in the past 140 days. We'll see ! I'm also thinking about making some video's of myself on the treadmill, weighing in or talking about getting back on track for YouTube. I'm not sure I want to put myself that far out there though. That's another "we'll see". **