Lisa I think you are doing great and its good to hear from you. I check into your journal now and then but only have time to lurk these days on most of my fourms and other sites.

Here's my update for October.
Work continues to be very busy. We are finally hiring a full time assistant for my department (which, by the way, consists of me fulltime, and about 1/4 of my boss' time if that.). I'm thrilled! Wrote the job description this week and hope to have it posted in another week. I'm so bogged down that I'm taking work home constantly and have lost track of several of our projects. Operating in continual crisis and bandaid mode is not a good way to run a public policy department. I still love this work and even if I had no help i'd keep doing it regardless.

On the plus side, the Triangle Low Carb Cooking Meetup group is really taking off. A year ago I started a local meetup to cook and eat with other low carbers, but then D's mom died and it seemed like most of our time was taken up with family and work. I totally ignored the group until a member offered to help organize it (thank you thank you L!) and with renewed intrest things have really taken off. We will have our second meetup at my house with about 6-8 of us bringing dishes to share at an Italian themed potluck meal and we have about 25 active members (and a dozen or so inactive ones I'm trying to reconnect to the group). The group is still cooking focused right now, but I thnk there is interest in other low carb events, discussions, coffee meetups, etc. so we might even be looking at a name change to make it more general to low carb support.

Personally I've been trying to break all these big tasks into smaller ones that I can easily tackle. Its a skill most adults have likely learned by now but not me. Rather than bemoaning the number of emails I need to deal with or the number of documents I need to read I'm actually able to set small goals and get things done over the course of a week or month instead of trying to cram everything in at once and getting very frustrated.

Weight continues downward trend after three months of staying steady (I refuse to call it a stall since I was having regular off plan days and eating at higher carb levels.). I'm still on the no dairy, no grain (even LC ones) bandwagon and aside from a few meals where dairy was integrated into my food during a hotel stay (and that gelato vacation), its been pretty smooth. There are so many recipes to make without dairy although I have had to drop a few favorites for now since it seems odd to make them without cheese. This week we have had turkey meatballs, and steak and chicken salad, and in the crockpot right now is a coconut curry chicken stew bubbling away.

The budget reamins a challenge. Its not unlike when I started back on low carb 15 months ago. At first there is the enthusiasm of making a change and committing to something that you know is right. You have some initial success that shows you you are on the right path. You feel confident and think this is going to be a piece of cake, (er, piece of steak?) - how come it took some long to do it? Then a few weeks go by and the realization settles in that this is going to take a while, not forever, but quite a while. And its hard. Not hard in the sense that there is anything complicated (eat less carbs lose weight, spend less money pay off debt. duh) but hard to change habits and manage the mental game of ignoring both internal and external influences (ooh those shoes are pretty. gosh maybe we need new furniture? hey is that caramel? lol). You do the calculations and realize its going to take a year (or two, or more!) and dobut creeps in...is it worth it? YES! YES! demon begone!! ugh. It is toally worth doing as are most things that are hard. its good to keep reminding myself that a year ago I weighed far more than I do now and that slow and steady wins the race.