We went for a nice long drive in the countryside yesterday. It was a beautiful day, blue skies and sunshine. We had no destination, just a big loop that took us about 50 miles in an hour and a half. It was nice to get out and see some different scenery.
We last filled up the gas tank on March 30, and when we left the house yesterday we only had about 50 miles on the odometer. The shame of it is we keep getting “Fuel Points” from our grocery purchases and prescription refills that give us a nice discount on our gas. The points expire every month but we have a hard time using them because we don’t need gas! A nice problem to have, I guess, but I hate to not buy gas when we can get up to $1 per gallon off.
We continue to avoid eating restaurant food, and have gotten to the place where it doesn’t have much appeal. One of these days we may go out for pizza, but we just bought some frozen pizza dough and are going to try making our own. It won’t be as good as pizza from our favorite place, but we’re on a roll now with cooking at home and don’t want to break the streak!
Someone blogged the other day about takeout being a “significant treat” but we don’t see the appeal of eating food from a cardboard or styrofoam container. We’ve been experimenting with beans and grains and different kinds of veggies, improving our ability to grill fish, and continuing our weekly steak habit (about the only meat we eat these days). The scale has been very happy with the higher quality of food. Just this week my weight hit the lowest point since we started tracking in 2009! Kathy is right along beside me. Life is good!
Congrats on the weight milestone! Do you use any particular tracking app, or just a notebook? I’ve found MyFitnessPal to be helpful. Looking forward to some fish grilling tips in a later blog post… I’ve got a few cedar planks in the pantry waiting for a good opportunity
That’s a great idea for a future post, or possibly several posts!
What Kathy & I have been doing is not a formal diet, but what we refer to as a long-term eating plan. That disappoints a lot of people because I can’t point them to a book or a website or an app, and it doesn’t have a catchy name. We’re essentially paying attention to food quality and counting calories. Kathy uses an Excel spreadsheet to track our daily calories, and does occasionally use a website like My Fitness Pal for calorie counts on foods. It isn’t fancy, but it works! And since we usually eat the same things over time, once she figures out the calories for a meal it is easy to carry the info into a new day.
Congratulations! I have not eaten as healthy during this stay-at-home order as I was previously. I sure do not eat out as often, and that was seldom, anyway.
I think I’m due one of those trips out east or up north with my camera, just because. I have also not used much gas, that’s a good thing.
Nothing like getting out into the countryside for some “social distancing!” We had planned to head to the Blue Ridge Parkway, but they’ve closed most of it. Hopefully we will see an easing of some of the restrictions soon and some of these places will be accessible again.