Hi everyone! I hope you had a great week. Spring has truly SPRUNG here in the midwest. Here are a few frugal things that are happening. Flowers: several perennial flowers that I planted in past years are coming into bloom. In the front I have some beautiful double-blossomed daffodils that I planted last year. The forsythia bush that I planted five years ago is finally blooming at full capacity. It's particularly special to me. At the house I grew up in, there was a genuine hitching post by the driveway, hidden by a big overgrown forsythia. As children, my sister and I would pretend it was our "fort", and hide underneath its branches. Before my parents sold the house, I dug up a little piece of the bush and planted it at our current home. It took a full year to even grow leaves... I thought it had died! But the second year it grew a few leaves, and the third year it grew a lot of leaves. The fourth year it grew some flowers, and this year it is full of flowers. Not only does the plant have special memories, but it was free to me and will produce flowers every year now. Figure: I'm happy to announce that I did make some progress toward my weight goal this week. I weighed in at 138.8 pounds, with a loss of 1.4 lbs and a body fat percentage loss of 0.5%. I've continued to weigh myself at least a couple of times every week, and this week my weight spiked to 140.6 on Saturday and got to its lowest point this morning, Thursday.
The intermittent fasting has become almost easy for me now, but not eating sweets still takes a lot of discipline. But it's not just sugar that takes discipline. I've realized that I just enjoy eating. Chewing, tasting, swallowing. I like it. Yesterday for lunch I had half of a hamburger (it was a restaurant hamburger, so it wasn't small) and a pint of cooked squash. I was kind of full, but I still wanted to eat more, so I ate a few leftover fries from my daughter's plate. Before dinner I ate two cheese sticks, and then for dinner I had a ham and turkey wrap and a tall glass of jamaica (hu-MI-cuh) tea. I was full, but I still wanted to eat. There was so much more food left! For the last week I've been eyeing some blueberry bagels, and I just haven't had a chance to eat them. I thought about eating them last night, but I really was full. There are so many foods that I want to eat, just for the sake of eating them. Instead, I ate what amounted to a quarter of a sandwich from my daughter's plate. It made me feel like I wasn't shorting myself out on extra food, even though I was already full. I seem to have this "thing" where I need to eat until I'm full, plus a little extra, "just in case" I get hungry later, or to finish off food that is still left, as if it's my job or something. In the coming weeks I'm going to practice telling myself that I don't need to eat food just because it is there, and that more food will always be available. I wonder if I wasn't making progress with intermittent fasting because I had a food shortage mentality: "My food window is only 8 hours, so now I have to eat three meals in the time it takes to eat one meal!" and then sometimes I would think that because I was only eating two meals, that I "deserved" a snack or something sugary in between those meals. Not going to lie, sometimes I feel gypped because I only get to eat two meals. Then I feel gypped because I'm too full to eat all of the things I wanted to eat in a day. There is just so much good food to eat and not enough time or stomach capacity to eat it all. The thought that I've been encouraging myself with lately is: "Being fit costs so much, it's not even something money can buy." Self discipline is actually a type of wealth, and sometimes I picture myself "spending" big amounts of it, like I'm some kind of rich self-discipline banker and no amount of discipline can bankrupt me because I'm so wealthy that way. Normal people practice the normal self discipline of waking up every morning to go to work, bathing themselves and not supersizing at McDonalds every day. Folks poor in discipline sleep in every day, slack off on personal grooming and can never say no to processed food... especially a LOT of processed food. Poor people love buffets. People who have a lot of discipline-wealth, however, can get up a little earlier, do a little more personal grooming than the average person, and they can ALWAYS say no to food. I love a good buffet, so I still have a long way to go. But as I continue to use this analogy in my mind, I hope it will change my thinking and make it easier to say "no" to food. Garden: I planted parsnips, spinach, radishes and turnips in the garden this week. I also transplanted some strawberries. Books: I started reading Dolly Freed's Possum Living. Although half of the suggestions aren't pertinent to me or practical to our lifestyle, there are so many suggestions in the book that it's still well worth reading. I've taken a lot of notes so far. Chickens: I bought a warmer plate to use with our chicks this year in order to replace the heat lamp we've used in the past. The warmer plate cost about $50.00, but it will save $20.00 per year in electricity costs, it's better for the chicks, and less of a fire hazard. That's it for this Thrifty Thursday! I hope it's helped or inspired you in some way. Be blessed, ~Prudence~
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About PrudenceI am a Christian homemaker who lives in the Midwest. I enjoy sewing, gardening, reading and thrifting. Archives
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