More victories...

Wheeeeeee! Guess whose lovely hubby has been back to his GP and has now been taken off blood pressure medication too! That's pill number 2 off his prescription, and I'm so happy I want to put banners up at the window and shout through a megaphone from the tallest building around.

He's hitting these health targets out into the stratosphere at the moment. And his daily control of blood glucose levels, with sensible foods and careful thought given to what and how much to eat, is going pretty darned well too. What a star!

OK, we still get the odd surprise, but they are not really horrendous surprises (more of a little 'huh?' moment) and we are definitely learning more about the foods we eat... a whole lot more! If we average his readings for the period he's been testing, they fall merrily into the 'strict control' range. More power to him - so I'm officially awarding him the 'fat lass' gold medal for significant health improvement.

Now, if you'd like to step up to the podium, sir...

And me?

Well, the cunning plan that the dodgy knee would respond politely to exercise has paid off. After a weekend of some serious furniture shifting, and moving the associated mountain of books (my passion), and a good thorough cleaning, I did ache and realise I'm not twenty-something any longer (as every bit of me felt it), but my knee ached no more than any of the other bits. It had swelled a bit again by Saturday evening, but had settled by Sunday morning and seems back to normal... apart from my customary random welter of odd bruises, which I pick up all the time without having a clue what I did. Phew!

My eating is also going well and I'm sitting at my 'happy' weight and not really missing any of the sources of carbohydrates we used to eat more of. For me, this low-carb business is a great excuse to add some extra delights to my favoured veggies, and I'm getting a real taste for the proteins... To be honest, it suits me just fine :-)

We've even added peanut butter back into our lives. Those of you who have known me for a while will be aware that this is a very big step for me. Why? Because peanut butter is a firm childhood favourite and something I have never been able to be moderate around. For the course of my journey to weight loss  I haven't even been able to keep it in the house.

However, what we are doing now is mixing a teaspoon of gorgeous, crunchy, no added sugar PB from the wholefoods shop (sorry, Sun-Pat, but I just don't love you any more 'cos you're too sweet for me) with two or three teaspoons of Greek yoghurt and that's enough to give me the taste and the pleasure of eating it, and provide my darling with the necessary fats and proteins, without loading up on the calories. I'm happy to have this occasionally on a thin slice of seedy toast and, so far, this seems to work well. Victory indeed.

Some exciting (certainly to me) news too. We've bitten the bullet and ordered a lovely new (well, a second hand, but professionally refurbished) rower!

We are upgrading from my beloved old Horizon Oxford II (which has been a great workhorse and helped me a lot) to a sleek and athletic-looking Concept 2 Model D which is very like the ones they have at the gym. I've always got on well with these and the Concepts are the rowers I've always secretly coveted. We feel that now the extra cost (er, £££ ouch) is justified as we KNOW we'll both be using this Rolls Royce of rowers for a long time to come.

It should arrive in about ten days time, and we felt it deserved a rather more suitable home than our current beast, so this is why we spent the hottest weekend of the British summer totally reorganising our home office, replacing the mega-huge desk with a smaller version, to convert it into a home office/gym (and freeing up much needed space in our bedroom in the process).

Onwards ever...