Monday

Three nights of Benadryl.

Two days of working outside in the garden.

Two days spent eating crap, too.

Some weekends are better than others. Not sure where this one fell. I'm at 161.2 this morning, I'm sorry to say.

After last week, I decided to sleep with Benadryl on Friday night, and got a full night's sleep - at least, until the dog started throwing up at 5:22 am. I started feeling a little better, and did strenuous garden cleanup on Saturday as well as getting in a 2.7 mile walk. I figured that it being a weekend, if a second night's Benadryl caused issues, at least I had Sunday to recover, so I took one Saturday night as well - and got a second decent night's sleep. So I took a chance that I could push it to 3 nights, and repeated the process last night. It worked. I woke up at 5 on my own, and feel pretty darn good this morning.

As for the eating, well, I spent Friday craving cookies, and trying to figure out what I had in the house that might be cookie-like to eat. Ultimately, I went out and got myself a double Quarter Pounder and fries (no bun, but fries), which didn't really quash the cookie craving but helped a bit. Saturday, I hit the grocery store for a few needed items - and added potato chips, M&Ms, and malted milk eggs to the load. Ate all of the eggs on Saturday, and one bag of chips. Ate the other bag of chips and one bag of M&Ms (the little ones) yesterday. I'm not sure what's going on, but I still want cookies. I think I will make some almond flour shortbread tonight, see if that will help. It's the texture that's calling to me, oddly enough.

In addition to the junk yesterday, I ate:

• fish oil, magnesium and potassium, and turmeric (working on post-exercise inflammation)
• tea with cream
• cheese
• grapes
• leftover taco-salad meat with cheese and taco sauce on it
• cashews
• dark chocolate (1 Dove heart candy)

I think that was it. If I'd avoided the chips and candy, it wouldn't have been all that bad of a day. However...

Exercise over the weekend was pretty good. I cleaned out about 35 linear feet of garden beds, sprayed about half of our parking area with round-up trying to kill goats-head thorn plants now, and went for the walk. Hit Goal on my FuelBand both days. I hope that I'm feeling like going for another walk tonight, and maybe I can start a Streak on it. Maybe. I'm pretty stiff and sore this morning, and being that I have a sedentary job, may set up.

So, sleep tonight? I don't know. I think I will try to revert to the Melatonin, see if that will get me a night's sleep, in hopes that the Benadryl won't be needed. But if it doesn't work, I will probably return to my pattern from earlier this year - only use Benadryl one night in three, since I know that the sleep it provides is not as good as the real stuff. I've set myself up to help a bit in another area - caffeine consumption. I have decaf tea bags at work to use in the afternoons, and I made iced tea with decaf bags, since I tend to drink that in the evenings now that it's warmer again. Because if I drink a lot of tea at work, I get much more caffeine than I do at home, since each cup at work is made with a tea bag, and each entire pot at home is made with a tea bag.

And I don't know what I'm going to do regarding eating. Over the weekend, I ate when I felt like it, not really structured as "meals". Drank a lot of iced and hot tea and Perrier. Ate fruit - I had a 4-pound container of grapes that I went through last week. I should have a Cobb salad tonight, because the avocado is ripe. Should. Will I? Hard to say. I think I will try.