The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

So I’ve taken a break from art and writing to work on formatting and editing my book in preparation for self publishing. It’s been a slog, but I’m getting through it. I have about 3/4 of the book formatted and edited. I already went through and cut a lot of poems out and arranged everything in the order I wanted it. Now it’s just a matter of getting it into a file format that is appropriate for printing. That and I have to make a second file formatted for Kindle.

As for my New Year’s resolutions, I have started working on eating healthier. I am just doing what my husband does and eating only one meal a day. He’s done that his whole life. My aunt does that too. They simply don’t eat breakfast or lunch and they maintain a healthy weight. I’m trying to make my one meal mostly healthy, but I’m allowing for variety so I don’t get bored. I’m allowing for a single serving of dessert every third day. I go to the bakery and get home-made treats so I’m not eating ultra-processed store-bought sweets.

So far I am doing really well on this regime. I don’t particularly feel hungry until around 3 pm and by that time I can wait two hours in a bit of discomfort until dinner time. I’m not over-eating at dinner, despite being hungry. Been having a moderate portion of food. Decent sized because I don’t have any other food during the day, but no seconds. So far I am down 6 pounds since January 1st. I don’t expect to lose weight at this rate indefinitely, I have already hit a bit of a plateau the past 3 days, but if I am consistent with this one meal thing, I should keep losing. It’s really simplified my diet and made it easy to follow. No eating until dinner and dessert around once or twice a week. That’s the only rule. I’m not cutting out any foods or following a specific diet with strict rules that could get boring. Everything is allowed, it just has to be at dinner time. I am not counting calories anymore, but I did it for the first 7 days and figured out that I was eating an average of around 1500 calories a day which is exactly where I want to be at.

I have been exercising every day which is one of my New Year’s resolutions. For now I am not running because my baker’s cyst has really been acting up and I need to give it a chance to heal. I am doing 40 to 50 minutes of walking a day instead of a 20 minute jog. I will introduce jogging again when my calf is no longer swollen during the day. For now I need to stick to low impact and walking fits the bill. Walking is really good for you mentally and physically and I feel pretty good about 40 to 50 minutes of it a day. That’s about the equivalent of a 20 minute run. I figure twice the time walking will equal a run.