Cheese is good! I ate a block of chipotle oven baked cheese with lunch yesterday and it was divine. I love it, but know that it halts any progress I'm making, and will even trigger eating in excess to where I'll gain weight. It's sad but I have accepted it. If I eat it in small quantities with a meal, it's ok, but I really have to work to keep it in check.

What's your favorite cheese? How do you incorporate it? Do you see negative results when eating it?

Happy Sunday! Sharing a video today from our week, one of the highlights. This was Wednesday evening church, normally they have a more casual prayer meeting where someone plays the guitar, but they were doing some construction in the fellowship hall so they had their prayer meeting in the sanctuary. No one was there to play the piano so my my Grandma did it, she's been playing the piano in church for probably 80 years.

For context, she's 88, she had a really bad fall 5 years ago now and hit her head and ended up with a lot setbacks, similar to having a stroke. She has a lot of dementia like symptoms also (I am sure related to her Type 2 diabetes), she really can't read music anymore, and she has trouble seeing well, and she needs to wear hearing aids to hear but hates wearing them, so on this night she didn't want to wear them. My 93 (almost 94) year old grandpa takes care of both of them on their farm. Anyway, on this night she sat down on the piano and led worship as people called ...

Happy Saturday! I hope you are all doing well. I know some people in the group have had some recent tough news for themselves or family members. It really puts the day to day issues we face into perspective, and reminds me to just focus on doing the best I can to be as healthy as possible. To those who are having a hard time, we are all here for you and sending you some prayers and support. 🙏🏼🙏🏼 Just focus today on doing the best you can and remember that food isn't going to bring you the comfort you are looking for.

Here is a little video of Penelopes performance from her piano recital l last night, she's been taking lessons for about a year and a half. 🎹🤍🖤

*Livestream Monday night at 4pm pst/7pm est

Happy February!! I hope you are having a wonderful weekend! I took some pictures at the beginning of January and then yesterday. It's amazing how much difference you can see in pictures even when there isn't a huge difference on the scale. I am definitely feeling leaner, less inflamed, and just feeling back to myself again. Make sure you take pictures, even just for yourself!!

We are going on a family vacation at the end of Feb so I plan to just keep my extra strict mode up until then. I leave for Spain in less than a week, but it's always easy to eat meat there. I will do a Livestream here in Locals later this week before I leave.

What is your non-negotiable for February?

Family! I've missed you all! We went on an overnight trip with the Besties just to the other end of the state. Just a little git-away to celebrate their new vehicle.

We left early afternoon on Saturday (after a quick babysitting time with the 3 younger grands).
We ate lunch at home so our usual Protein-based foods.

Dinner was at a local steakhouse. The prices were out of this world expensive!!! We were in the middle of cattle country so I was surprised. The extreme was a 96oz cut of prime rib for $235.00! Table cut for as many as were eating it up to 8 people. I guess under $30 for a 12oz steak isn't horrible, but it gave us sticker shock.
I had my usual med-rare ribeye. Sadly, it was just ok. And definitely not hot enough. (none of our plates) I guess I'm just spoiled with my home-cooked steaks & TRH.

Breakfast was at the motel. They had eggs & sausage, so we could eat.

Lunch was in the car snacks of protein bars, beef sticks and a few not-on-plan things.

We were happy to get away ...