Doing Well:
- Following the allergy-free diet: I had one moment about a week ago where I seriously contemplated chucking in the towel that night and eating a cheeseburger and fries. It would not have been the end of the world if I had done so, but I'm glad that I stayed with my emotions, addressed my hunger nutritionally and let myself have a bit of a freak out. So, still on the allergy-free diet and even emotionally okay after that tough night.
- Cooking: I'm loving the cooking. Love, love, loving the cooking. It makes me happy to be in the kitchen, I've been making treats and meals and snacks and everything and I'm just enjoying food and its tastes and my own cooking. This little girl loves her some food. And it is good, healthy food too!
- Menu planning: For a majority of the last two months, I was on a six week menu plan that I created. Now, I didn't follow it to the letter but it was such a treat to have a meal planned for every night and have the food in my fridge to make it. I think that is part of the reason I enjoyed cooking so much too. I love the the six-week menu plan because I hate doing it every week. So, that is a habit I want to keep.
- Weighing weekly or monthly: I'll admit that there has been a week or two that I was nearly weighing myself every day, but I recommitted to the notion to stay off the scale except on Saturdays. And I'm really planning on sticking to this one, except that last Saturday that I weighed, I had gained weight so I weighed myself again on Monday and had dropped 8 pounds. Yeah, water weight or something. So, there will definitely be such caveats but for the most part, I'm going to keep to my private weekly or biweekly weigh ins and then post my weight monthly. The goal being that I'm do not want to become OCD about the scale like I did in 2004-2005 when I was deep in diet mentality. So, the scale is not the source of my pleasure or my ever-present fixation.
The improvements are things that I think will make a marked difference in my overall health the next few weeks. Also, I really want to get my HDL (good cholesterol) numbers up and I want to clear up this PCOS and the metabolic syndrome. Each of the steps below are ones that I think will help me make significant strides in that direction.
The Improvements:
- Eat breakfast: This one has taken on a particular importance recently as I realize that when I eat breakfast, I usually eat lunch, and then dinner instead of starving myself for breakfast, not eating lunch and then packing in all my food intake within a two-hour window after I come home from work. I'm sure that this is not helping. I'm more irritated, more emotional and just generally more off. But eating breakfast takes work. So, I'm focused on work this month.
- Exercise daily: I'm ticked because my HDL numbers didn't improve over the last two months and I know my eating has been wildly improved so I can only attribute that to my lack of exercise. So, another goal for the next month is to walk 6 days a week. Then I think the goal will be established.
- Pack food the night before: If I can conquer eating breakfast, the next step is packing food for each day. I have had the most success at good health when I've packed food and snacks for work each day. Then I'm not starving and going searching for food at the bewitching hour of 3:30PM when I don't always make the best food choices. So, I will be more conscious of prepping, freezing, and then packing food for each work day.
- Make a new 6 week menu plan: After my 6 week menu plan ran out, I didn't start it over again. And so I've defaulted again to trying to figure out what to cook each night and staring at the fridge for a while and generally snacking and munching rather than making an entire meal. So, I've got to get the menu plan back in rotation.
And that is the state of things around here. Let's see where these improvements take me.
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