Thursday

 Good morning, everyone.  I woke up this morning to the sight of falling rain and a lovely, soaked ground which did my heart good.  Just what the garden ordered!  It looks as if it's been going on for a while so the soil will have been given a good soaking and it will make the allotment so much easier to fork over.

Diet or no diet, healthy eating plan or not, yesterday's meal out was gorgeous.  We all (all 30 of us) had the set meal (£19.95 for three courses) which starts off with sharing platters.  I managed to stick with the vegetables - tomatoes, carrot, pepper and cucumber.  They were dressed in, presumably, olive oil but it wasn't too oily.  My main was skinny pizza primavera which was 'goat's cheese, spinach, artichokes, roasted peppers, balsamic tomatoes, olives and rocket on a wholemeal, white and spelt base with a 'summer slaw' in a citrus harissa dressing' (a quote from their web site!).  I got a shock when it arrived as it was HUGE, but it was OK, the base was paper thin and the toppings were only a reasonable amount.   It was delicious and I didn't manage to finish it all.  Dessert was naughty though - three scoops of delicious ice cream.

Although the food was lovely, the best bit of the evening was socialising with old friends, people I have worked with years and the real highlight was someone who started at school not long after I did who retired at the same time as I and who I haven't seen now for nearly three years.  She didn't recognise me!!!  Yay!
I keep getting nice comments from people - I think one doesn't realise the change because it is day by day and gradual but there does seem to be a significant change, enough for people to look twice and then look again and say something.

It's been a lovely week for eating out but it is back to normal life again now and fingers crossed for those scales; I have tried not to go overboard and I think I have more or less succeeded.  A maintain would be great!

On to today!  Normality rules again.  Aqua is at 9:45 so I will do my usual, get there early and warm up with twenty minutes or so of up and down, then do the class, then another time of swimming (to avoid the post class queues for the showers) before a relax in the spa.

I will need to go to Matalan.  About three weeks ago I needed to get a belt (to keep my jeans up!) and had to get the larger one because the smaller one wouldn't quite do up.  Well, it is now on the tightest notch so I need to get the smaller one.  That's how I know for sure that, although the weight is a bit up/down/plateau right now, I am still losing those inches.  I reckon that's a result of the swimming.

Well, after that I shall come home and take a rain check - literally.  If it has cleared up, I'll pop along to the allotment where the forking over and weeding should be loads easier and I won't need to water.  If it hasn't, I won't.

Then it is a lazy day until tuition.  I have ironing to do and stuff to get sorted so I can use the time usefully.
Despite the rain, a nice, cheerful day!