Not an auspicious beginning to Week 2

Incidentally, all my fretting over the Gone Hardcore WW friend was for no good reason; by the end of the night she was going for Krispie Kreme doughnuts. No diet discussion there. I feel kind of bad for gaining a day of peace because somebody else had a day of diet disaster, but... man, I'm glad to have not had that conversation. I've come to the conclusion that the best time for me to discuss these things would be somewhere around the 12-week mark, when I'll have results to show off. (At least, I certainly hope so.) At that point I'll have a good grasp of the program and not feel-- for lack of a better word-- so defensive about being on it.

I had a lovely free day, although it went a little haywire there for a while because barbeque was involved and, well, the first barbeque of the season does something to my brain. The smoke! The sauce! The glory of it not being my grill, which means I don't have to clean anything! I ate too much. You know, there have been studies done that prove that people eat more when more is provided to them, so I'm far from alone in this phenomenon, but I'm still kind of kicking myself about it.

Why? Oh, let me tell you. No, not guilt; it's even more special!

I was feeling a bit sick to my stomach when I woke up on Sunday. I charged ahead through the lower-body session anyway, which turned out not to be a great idea thanks to all the ab work at the end. I got it done, but then I was promptly sick; my stomach had held on as long as it could and had decided we were DONE with this. My Hub woke up and found me curled up on the couch in my robe, moaning over my stomach cramps, avoiding church and daylight and everything, and making trips to the bathroom every ten minutes or so. Oh, not happy.

My heroic Hub went to the store and got medicine and fluids. Sweet, sweet man.

I managed to get back onto my meal schedule around three PM or so, although nasty gastric things kept happening. Nonetheless, I perservered. Since we couldn't go do the laundry with me like this, I made a new batch of Four Apple Tuna Salad to take to work (and if I do say so myself, I've fixed things from the last batch and it's much improved), then invented a new "glop" dish for supper-- chicken, Canadian bacon, onion, garlic, canned diced tomatoes, canned mushrooms, canned green beans, and some whey powder (which, as I discovered last week, pairs with the juice in a can of diced tomatoes to make a fascinating cheesy-tomato taste sensation). Had myself a serving and then packed the rest up for lunches (more on that later).

Woke up this morning and had to promptly hit the bathroom. Still not well. Ick. I went back to the bedroom and was weakly struggling into my sports bra, trying to get my oomph up for HIIT, when it occurred to me: Meg, you moron, you're sick, you're dehydrated, and you're about to go do something that you KNOW makes you a complete sweaty mess. If you pass out during HIIT, el Hubbo is not awake to hear the crash and dial 911. Go sip some damn PowerAid until your complexion is no longer a lovely shade of vampire pale.

So, I am being good. I am eating carefully. I have had a great deal of water. Things in TummyTown seem to be settling down. I am going to do HIIT when I get home from work-- I have in fact announced this to my Hub, who's not thrilled about the idea but is glad that I'm doing it when he's awake, at least. I think I'll be fine; I feel much less woozy than I did this morning. My Hub will probably be hovering outside the door anyway; he's a paranoid soul.

In the meantime, I have put myself in charge of slapping together food for lunches. Back when I first went on WW, we started getting Lean Cuisine meals for about half of our take-to-work lunches, and generally throw leftovers into small containers for the other half. It's never been a particularly organized process, much less a planned one. Thing is, BFL requires a bit more thinking, so you either plan ahead or die, really. My initial reaction was to stock up on those South Beach Diet wraps that Kraft has put out, but after two of those it occurred to me that I could make these damn things for myself for less money, one hell of a lot less sodium, and more fun with the customization. And hell, even the Lean Cuisine meals were essentially all the same-- meat plus pasta or rice plus sauce (and occasionally vegetable). What's hard about that? Nothin'. Just requires planning, that's all.

I've been making sugar-free Jell-O every few days and pouring it into four little 1/2-cup containers to set up-- voila, take-along cups o' Jell-O. (And at $4.25 for five flavors, I get 20 cups for about a buck more than I'd pay for six ready-made ones.) We're already used to throwing frozen green beans or broccoli or peas into a little container to bring along and heat up and eat on the side of whatever dish we had, so that's no big. All that's left is the meat & carb & sauce glop. I've got four such glops under my belt now: chicken/bulgur glop, TexMex glop, 4 Apple Tuna Salad (which my Hub has been begging to have for his very own lately), and my white-girl fried rice. More to come. Burritos and wraps and pitas and sandwiches to come, too. I can get this figured out-- and the weird thing is, lately I'm inclined to. I never really bothered before.

Also on my to-do list is to learn how to do a good poached chicken breast. Those, I'm told, are the best for shredding, and if I can shred my own chicken then I'll never need to buy the far-too-expensive canned chicken. (Note to self: canned tuna is cheaper than real tuna; canned chicken is NOT cheaper than real chicken.)

We seriously need to find out when our local farmer's market is starting up, too. I hear they have huge bunches of basil for $1, and that, I could seriously use.