Diet Day 6.
Saturday morning. 
I pretty much plan on keeping myself busy throughout the day both in and outside of the house.
Plenty to do around here, as we haven't raked the yard in a while and it's full of these things they
call gumballs - they all from the big trees.  I assume it's the tree's version of populating itself. They are nasty.  They have prongs that stick out in every direction and hurt the dog's feet.  They fill up the back yard.

The front yard is covered with acorns.  They have always wanted to take that tree down - the thing is scary frankly It's huge, 80 feet tall anyway, unknown amount of weight but in the tens of tons at least.  One branch broke off of it and did $11k worth of damage to their house.  These old trees don't live forever and poor choice for planting around a home.  But it will cost 3.5k to take it down, the exorbitant cost due to it being right next to power lines.  You'd have to bring a crane in here, literally, to cut that thing down.  one piece at a tame with cables to safely put it on the ground. 

They could recover a portion of the cost by cutting it up, splitting it and selling the wood.  I'm guessing there must be 8 cords of wood at least in there.  At $200 per cord - the going rate around here - that's half the cost of cutting it down.  Okay, they'd have to buy a chainsaw and rent a splitter.  Lots of work, too, but when you are financially strapped, you figure out ways to do things on the cheap and still have good results. Been doing it my entire life.  Tho looking back, I should have taken the steps I took last year much sooner and I would be in very healthy financial shape right now. 

But that's a different subject.

It's the diet I'm focused on right now.  It's not necessarily the easiest thing.  Sometimes I get cravings for sugar and it's hard to resist.  I have some water I got from Walmart that is sweetened with Aspartame that actually tastes like you are consuming a sugary substance. Drinking it sparingly, but it's a go to when the cravings hit.  I'm not a big sugar eater, but obviously the normal diet I have been eating has some sugars in it.  It's sort of like an addiction in itself.

Seems like the headaches I have been waking up to are tapering off. 

Anyway, I have several projects that I will be engaging myself with this weekend. They will kill 2 birds with one stone. First, just to keep my mind off of eating - this is a pretty low caloric intake diet - and 2 - get some exercise. Raking and picking up stuff and digging and such is definitely a good output of energy.  I'm trying to gear myself up for the eventual trip to the gym, a thing I need to start up and get into the habit of again. 

Dieting alone can reduce weight and fat. That's science.  But not near as effectively as with a cardio program and also a weight training program. 

I think it's best to do this in steps. The diet is a very good start and just getting into this habit will take some time.  My morning weight and evening weight are a bit odd.  4 to 5 pound difference I've noticed.  I'm not eating 5 pounds of food, tho I am drinking large quantities of water.  I can only assess it's the water for the weight gain and subsequent weight loss the next morning.  If I go by the morning weight, I'm down around 5 pounds. If I go by evening weight, I"m down a pound.  I'll take any down weight over a slowly increasing weight and fat gain. 

So that's it.  I have a closet to clean out that I was using while they were in Georgia.  Not that much in there but they are waiting on me to clean my stuff out of there to put the pool in there.  I'm not sure the reason it can't go into the storage shed.  She doesn't want bugs and stuff to get into it.  Okay.  Well that's interesting I guess. It's time to take it down, that's what I know for sure. 

I'm clearing out the space where I will put up the greenhouse.  And I'm going to do a lot of raking and cleaning up.  Might be a waste of time since it's fall and the leaves on some of the trees haven't even started falling yet, but again, this is to keep myself busy and distracted.  There are other things I could do to that end, but I am trying not to spend any money except on bills right now because I am having 5 days off, apparently, to get the truck fixed. 

THAT is an untenable situation.  If I had a new truck as they promised at the beginning, I wouldn't be having all of these problems. 

No sense in going into all of that, it is rather annoying.