Improving ... knock wood

I continue to cough, but I've noticed a change since adding homeopathy to my treatment with my sister's help. She has been studying homeopathy for years and has helped all of us in the family over the course of time. What I noticed is that I don't cough or cough hardly at all until late in the afternoon ... as I approach the time for my evening inhaler dose.

I've been on inhalers since November and have continued to cough a lot, but I found out that it's definitely better with the inhaler than without, but still not really good. I don't want to jinx it, but it's been greatly improved in the last few weeks. So maybe there's hope after all.

On the eating front, I'm still sticking to my new eating plan without much difficulty. I don't find myself craving snacks much any more -- like entire bags of popcorn. :-) And not snacking at night is finally getting easier. I do make sugar free frozen yogurt for my husband and I sometimes -- it's really good. But I'm not snacking constantly and I'm doing ok with that. That's been the most difficult change for me. I think it was harder than cutting back on how much bread I eat, which surprised me. I guess I really was snacking way more than I thought ... if I missed it that much.

But I've lost 22 pounds which is awesome. I think a lot of that is my workouts and my effort to boost my metabolism in general. Since I sit all day at my job, I needed to figure out ways to keep moving periodically. So I walk at lunch (walk fast and include stairs) and I do Wii tennis and whatever in the evenings. But the biggest workout change was the Denise Austin Bootcamp Workout DVD. That workout seems to work for me as well as jogging used to. So, everything combined adds up to 22 pounds! Woo hoo! And all this stuff is a maintenance plan, so the weight should stay off. Woo hoo!

I'm back into pants that I haven't been able to wear for a few years. I can get into my skinnier jeans, but I don't think they're a good idea yet. They are really tight and I don't like really tight, so they'll stay on the shelf. I'm still feeling so much better even at this not-so-thin size. I have to try and not let myself get into that kind of slump again. I won't be 20 again. I won't have young skin again. I will continue to acquire new aches and pains and problems. But that's no reason to give up on myself.

I hope I can actually do it when the going gets tough.