Another great day on plan, and my weight is still dropping - 179.5 today! My cravings have been little to none, and that's ALWAYS a boost. I did find an EXCELLENT and easy sweet treat... made with Ricotta cheese! Who would have thought. I was sceptical at first, but after one bite I realized that this was a snack for me... Basically you need .5 cup of Ricotta cheese and a packet of splenda - after that it's up to you. some suggestions: .25 tsp lemon zest and .25 tsp vanilla extract or .25 tsp almond extract and 1 tsp slivered toasted almonds or simply .25 tsp vanilla extract or .5 tsp unsweetened cocoa .25 tsp vanilla and a dash of espresso powder, or .25 lime zest and .25 tsp vanilla extract. My guess is that you could add just about ANY extract to it (I have coconut at home and may try that with some ccocoa powder tonight)... It's creamy sweet and reminds me slightly of cheese cake... one of my favorites.

Lunch yesterday ended up not being a challenge at all. I desided to skip the pizza place and got to Fresh Choice (That's a salad bar chain for those of you who arn't familure with it) I knew there I could have a much better selection and a greater supply of protien. SO... Lettuce, greens, spinach along with chicken, soybeans, eggs, bacon bits, cheese, sunflower seads, olvie oil, garbonzo beans (my 'special treat to myself) and black olives... all went into one of the best salads I've had in a LONG time... I skipped the bread even though it was included and the pasta, pizza and potato bars... amazingly the salad was satisfying all on it's own and I ate almost all of it... something I don't normally do. I did make sure that I had a LARGE variety of favors on it though and I think that helped a lot. Dinner last night was another 'new' meal for me. I had bought sirloin steak and though I love steak, I'm the WORSE at preparing it, plus I didn't have time to let it marinate overnight... So a little searching on the reynalds wrap website and I found a recipe... I sliced the steak, threw some low sugar tariki sause on it along with ginger, sasami oil and garlic powder threw it and some apareagus on some aluminum foil, wrapped it up and threw it in the oven for about 20 minutes. That and some brown rice and dinner was SERVED. I made enough that I have leftovers for lunch even! I am feeling SO much better about things now. Food is easy again and I like it that way.

No, I'm not currently exercising. I want to get through this week ON plan. Focusing on making my food goals. Next week I'm going to start to hit things once again. I'm hoping that I'll have enough extra money from this check that I'll have the down payment for my treadmill - YAY! I don't know how long it will take to ship but my hope is that week after next it will be here. In the meanwhile I may just do something simple like calastenics and/or walking for my cardio. My fiance and I have a physical challenge coming up that's lit the excercise fire in both of us. It seems one of his coworkers was complaining about the hike she went on last weekend. Of course the 'brag session' started and that lead to a challenge being layed down. We are all going to do the hike next march so we have some time to 'train' for it. It'll be fun.

Overall I would have to say my mood and outlook are improving once again. I've actually taken a few steps toward starting my own business once again. A 'temporary' webpage is up I just need to reload FrontPage on my home computer so I can upload the 'upgraded' temporary webpage. That one will probably stay there awhile until we can totally redesign. My fiance wants to write our webpage and has ALL these ideas but I know what his time is like and so I'm not going to hold up everything for the 'new and improved' website. We need to sit down tonight and set goals for our first 'cutomers' I'm thinking we might be able to have everything in place in June, or maybe even May... I want to have things established enough that we will be in full swing by winter. There I've said it!

Ok - I think I should get some work done