More Motivation :)

I've been tweaking my menu a bit. I went shopping today for everything to be ready tomorrow and although I bought some sugar free chocolate chips, I noticed they have a lot of malitol in them. I'm pretty good with sugar alcohols (I use xylitol as my sweetener and haven't had any problems with it) but I don't feel good having all that sugar alcohols.

So I did a search from some easy sugar free fudge and found a few promising recipes that use all whole ingredients. The problem is that most require cream cheese. I'm already having 2 oz of cream cheese each day and 3 oz seems like a lot! So I thought over my evening snacks again and I did some fitday totals and found that I can do a quick and easy snack with nuts, butter, xyliol, and cinnemon that will take care of the crunch I crave and be within my calorie and carb budget. So that gives me a lot more variety and gets me eating less cheese and creams and more natural ingredients. I'm happy with that.

Today I talked to my parents (2 hours!) and they need to come to the States in May to take care of some business. I'm part of the business (a property we're trying to get hold of) so I also need to be there at some point. My parents want to pay for a ticket for me to come visit them for a few weeks and then have all three of us go on to San Francisco together to take care of the business and see my brother. It means taking at least 3 weeks off from my work (I work as an independent contractor at home) which I'm not sure I can do. I'm checking it out, though. It would be nice to have a vacation for a few weeks and to see them. I haven't been back to Israel since 1996! I've been avoiding it for many complex reasons but the truth is, I have a lot of family there who are getting older and this might very well be my last chance to see them. I'm not against going (despite the political situation there) but I don't want it to hurt my chances of getting work in the summer.

But since there's a good chance I might be going, I really want to hit the health goals intensely. I'll have about 3 months and I want to lose as much weight and inches as possible. I gained 25 pounds in the last 3 years and I can't even think of going back to see family when I look like this! I haven't even gone for a hair cut in months because I'm embarrassed to go to my stylist with this weight gain .

So this just gives me another motivation to stick with the low carb eating after I figure out if it works for me. I think the thing I'm most scared of is that I will be disappointed like I was with the vegan low fat thing - that I'll end up gaining weight and inches instead of losing it (or at least remaining the same). If I don't see some changes with this, I'm really going to be scared that there may be a health issue with me and I'll have to go and get it checked.

Tam