Day 9 Pre-Christmas Challenge--Christmas is Coming!

"Where did day 8 go?" you might be asking. Well, here's a brief recap of my day 8:

• Woke up with a fever and headache and had a runny nose on and off all day
  
• I had 5000+ words to finish for NaNoWriMo (yes, I managed to finish! woot!)
  
• I was looking after my nieces and nephew yesterday (they had a day off school), which involved my 5-year old niece showing me magic tricks she created, making cupcakes, seeing my son come upstairs with a Nerf gun and sunglasses on and oh, so much more
  
• I still did school work with my daughter in the morning, and she had dance class in the evening, which I drive her to and stay in the waiting room
  
• Had a Christmas card design to work on

Any wonder I didn't write? :) I did eat raw in the morning. Actually, I have a picture. Know what's better than Ani Phyo's Coconut Breakfast Cakes? Let's have a peek at before and after pics:

lol. Coconut Breakfast Cakes with blueberries! Soooo amazingly good! We've got a very low supply of fruit, so I was kind of stuck with what to eat that would be raw and fill me. Technically, the blueberries are frozen, which means they probably aren't raw, but I'm not going to be a stickler with this. It's fruit. No sugar added or anything. It's all good.

And yes, I did my exercises and yoga!

Now we are on Day 9 (I wish I could write it the way that sounded in my head):

It may be Day 9, but it is also December 1st! Nothing like hitting December 1st to really feel like Christmas is coming. I weighed myself this morning, as I did a couple other mornings, and let's say that it's prompted me to up the ante on this challenge. I had lost three pounds right off the bat when I was eating lots of fruits and veggies; when my appetite started dwindling in the morning and I have not been getting a whole lot of fruits and veggies, the weight's gone up a pound or so. Those fruits and veggies are so crucial to our well being, but especially my water retention issues!

Trying to convert what's going on in my head to something measurable to challenge myself with is, well, a challenge. I know I need more fruits and veggies; I know I need fewer grains. I know I need to keep up the water. Maybe for right now, that's just what it is: Trying each day to improve my fruit and veggie consumption beyond the previous. Well there, that's given me an idea: I will track my food the next few days and see just what is it that I'm eating, how much, where can I really tweak things to improve. With busy days, it's easy to just eat out of habit rather than consciously!

There are 23/24 days until Christmas. Lots of time to start up your own challenge! What will you do today?

Busy, busy week

It's been a crazy busy week this week. It's left me finding it hard to figure out what to tackle first and it has led to, as it always does unfortunately, dropping all progress I was making with my eating. :( On top of that, we had a get-together yesterday where there were all kinds of yummy things. lol. Okay, well, I made one of the yummy things (pics and recipe review to come later!) and I ate one of the other yummy things (another vegan item), but that is actually it. I didn't want to ask everybody what was in what they brought, so I just stuck with what I knew to be dairy-free.

I did find I was kind of reacting later on in the afternoon. I don't think it would be from the cake I made--cake flour, sunflower oil, organic sugar, cocoa, vinegar, vanilla, rice milk, the usual baking powder and baking soda, I think that's all that's in it--but I'm wondering if it was from the vegan cupcakes. I'm guessing the vegan spread she used for the icing was a soy-based one and I don't think I normally react to soy the way I reacted to something yesterday (kind of like a sudden tightness/congestion in my lungs or bronchial area--I've had it before when I've had things with milk), but I reacted to something. That or my body got fed up with the level of grains and sugar the past week and was just trying to expel it! lol.

It always feels awful when life seems to take over and things back track, but I guess that's just how life is. I have time now to take life back over. Creating the drive to do so, especially after a not-very-good sleep, might take a little work. ;)