....aaaaaaand then a month goes by.

Sorry I haven't been around, but I kind of fell of the wagon pretty hard due to some personal stuff - a funeral and a car accident - but am back on track.

In a lot of ways, that was the ultimate test, and I feel a lot better having gone through it. The funeral in itself was quite stressful and emotional, and since we're Filipino and it was in Philadelphia, my eating habits were pretty deplorable that weekend. LOTS of heavy, meaty, starch-tastic and, let's face it, fucking delicious Filipino cuisine was on hand, as were cookies, cakes, cakey bread things, ice cream, and the ever-present Philly cheese steak. (If you really want to know, Pat's easily rules over Geno's, and I had been a Geno's fan for years before that.) And then the accident was pure mindfuckery. I didn't actually hit anyone, but a guy fell off his motorcycle in front of my car and I'm stuck with two tickets and a traffic court date on Monday. It was very much a wrong-place-wrong-time situation and I'm just praying for it to be over. Group these events with my sporadic start-and-stop work schedule and you've got yourself a dietary landmine. I've been really bad. Hell, I ate a patty melt yesterday. And the day before. However, those have been at lunchtime, and after long walks. Also, my other meals have been really sensible, and those patty melts are anomalies in my general food intake for the past month. So I guess I could be worse, like eating a dozen box of Dunkin' Donuts in front of my TV, watching Oprah, chainsmoking and crying with unshakeable self-hatred. Instead, I've tried to just accept my mistakes and try to make a better decisions the next time.

Apparently I've been rewarded by having my waistline shrink a half inch. Hooray! The exercise (while present, should honestly be more frequent) have been helping as well. Things that have really been making me happy and working for me:
- Greek yogurt. I love the regular Fage yogurt with the honey compartment, but obviously finding the 2% plain and dressing that up is better
- Barbara's cereals, namely the peanut butter Puffins. If I'm not careful I could eat the whole box in one sitting, but thankfully my willpower (and stomach capacity) is stronger than that
- bean salad with wild rice. Tasty!
- teas! Lots of green tea, although I occasionally have an earl grey lavender. Just a little honey, no dairy.
- ordering egg whites at the diner, and no potatoes
- when not working, forcing myself to leave the house for at least a couple hours to walk around, even to just windowshop. If not, then I have to do something at home. Case in point: today I did a lot of laundry, even washing my bathroom rug and my hiking sandals, and vacuumed
- no red meat! Minus the patty melts, I hadn't had red meat in 3 weeks.

Hopefully this is the start of just a general lifestyle change, and the results will just come naturally...