Two Thoughts

Two new thoughts.  
With Weight Watchers, every member is allowed a certain number of points to eat per day. They figure out how many points each food item "costs" by looking at fat, carbs, fiber, and protein content. In addition to your daily point allowance, WW allows you to have 49 extra points each week to use as you choose. If you don't tap into that extra weekly amount of points, you lose them and start over with 49 new ones the following week. In other words, you can't save them up past a week. These are great if you have to go to a special occasion like a wedding, and you wanna eat all the food PLUS wedding cake, AND have a drink or two. What's a girl to do?? Use your extra weekly points!! YAY!!

First new thought (which i already knew but has been more in my face than usual): portion control. I am tracking every bite I eat.As WW says, "If you bite it, write it." I am finding that I keep using more than my daily allowance of points. Most days this is because of portion control. At least I am being honest!! When I eat a full bowl of whole grain cereal in the morning, it is tempting to write that I had one serving, but a full bowl comes out to more like 2 servings of the cereal I am eating. So I am recording the actual points that I am eating, and almost every day, I go OVER my allowable points. At least with the extra "emergency" points, I am still in the right ball park, but I would like to be able to stay closer to my daily point allowance. I could achieve this if I were more careful with portion sizes. 

Second new thought: Dirty Dishes. Yes, people who prepare actual meals have a lot more dirty dishes. And a lot more trash. Stinky trash like the raw chicken skin that you peel off before you cook the chicken. Anyway, I have started to settle into my new house and I am also starting to develop routines for keeping it half decent. I am trying to wash the dishes each night and/or load them in the dishwasher. I don't run the dishwasher every night cuz I don't dirty enough dishes for that, but I do have to wash things by hand almost every night. I am not perfect by ANY means, and there are nights when I just ignore the dirty dishes, but this can lead to problems! For example, who wants to cook a meal in a dirty kitchen? Waking up the next day and eating a healthy breakfast is not NEARLY as much fun when the kitchen is a mess! I am just saying that whether you thought about it or not, ROUTINES are important to a healthy lifestyle. We have to make sure we put the trash out on the right day for pick-up, and keep our kitchens clean, and keep our fridges stocked with healthy foods (which means going to the store on a regular basis). Do you see how all of this snowballs?? Routines are important. 
If you need help with things like ROUTINES, here is a website that I found to be super-duper valuable in my life. I hope it can help you too!
Flylady.net