This week, I’ve been working on the house a lot.  I made a lot of progress with some boxes/piles that we dumped in the master bedroom weeks ago.  It’s not finished but it’s at 80% and feels so much better!  I have been sticking with my habit of making the bed every morning.   I still can wash all my clothes in two loads, which I LOVE.  I only need to do it every 7-10 days…the beauty of having enough but not too much!  I cleared off a counter in the upstairs hallway (been bothering me forever) and I have a plan for further improving both the master bedroom AND my craft-room/loft area.

On the spending side of things, I made a Sam’s run, which came in at a little over $400.  Not too too shabby considering there is 1-2+ months’ worth of:

dog food
snacks
cheese
cream cheese
smoked salmon
lunch meats
peanut butter
sugar/brown sugar
mac cheese
oatmeal
protein shakes (combined with the ones I have on hand)
paper plates, plastic cups and plastic silverware (why I do this)
laundry detergent
dishwasher detergent
tomato paste and sauce
bacon
eggs
so much more I can’t bring out of the recesses of my brain…

I also got some lettuce, cole slaw mix (egg roll in a bowl!), asparagus, green beans, bananas…I only buy produce at Sam’s when I know the price is better than local grocery store sales or farmers’ market prices and often, it is not.

I eluded to dietary changes in my last post.

Here they are:

K is no longer gluten-free…with her flare gone for 30 days we re-introduced gluten at her request and she’s been 100% fine.  I have over $100 worth of gluten-free products left and likely they’ll be tossed, but oh well.  I gave away the high carb GF baking supplies to a family who really needed them and decided to hang onto the frozen items and snacks so she can go back to GF at the first sign of issues with her belly.

The other one is me…I have pretty much been forced into a low carb diet.  I am staying under 80 carbs per day, but most days I’ve been at 40 carbs or less.  I had labs drawn and my blood sugar was worse in spite of having lost almost 25#, so I started two new meds AND this way of eating to get things under control.  I’m up to 31.5# lost now and I’m pretty happy about it, but have a long way to go!  I’m still having days where I feel terrible with huge blood sugar swings and other days where I feel great and stable.  I’m trying to figure out what leads to feeling good and what leads to feeling bad, but it often doesn’t make sense.  I’ve given up milk completely…I was having a little Fairlife (it’s about 50% fewer carbs) but lately the craving for milk is just gone, so that saves a lot of calories not even thinking about the carbs.  I’ve given up coffee (and creamer) and my treats are now 1 square of 85% or great dark chocolate, or a little sugar-free cheesecake. The goal is to get off one of the meds…hopefully in 3-6 months.

And that’s that…the first week of September is in the books.