In my last post I came up with a great plan….but things have been going a little downhill…the past month has been insanely busy with school and work, so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to devote to healthy eating.  Instead, I’ve been stuffing my face with halloween candy in an ineffective effort to combat the stress.  I fully understand that emotional eating is a bad thing, but when you’re pressed for time and have to devote all your time to things like homework, you start to feel that you deserve that candy.

*sigh*

I have this HUGE desire in me to lose weight…I even had a dream about it last night where I had lost so much weight that my pants were baggy…I just need to find the right way to go about it.  Lately it seems like my main problems have been a lack of time, and then a lack of willpower when I am faced with food… I definitely find that healthy behaviours lead to more healthy behaviours, while unhealthy behaviours lead to more unhealthy behaviours. 

So, for example, if I’ve had a great week filled with lots of exercise, and reasonably healthy eating, I’ll be more likely to have the willpower to turn down treats…while if I’ve had a busy week with little exercise, I’ll be more likely to indulge…

And of course, this is a major problem, because they say if you indulge one day, you should just keep better control of your eating the rest of the week, but I seem to work the opposite way…

Ok, so lets look at the positives for a second:

- I usually manage to fit in at least 30 minutes of exercise a day.  Usually it’s walking, but I’ve gotten better at fitting in high intensity workouts and yoga in there too.  And if I do miss a few days, I always manage to bounce back.

- For the most part, I like healthy food.  I rarely eat fast food or takeout, and even then I lean towards salads with healthy dressing.  I even find it to be kind of a fun game at restaurants to try and ‘beat the system’ to order food in healthier ways (ie. dressing on the side, no bacon bits, less mayo, etc).   And at home, I drink skim milk, eat whole wheat grain products, and generally watch my portion sizes with snacks.

- I never let ‘being healthier’ get too far in the back of my mind.  It’s definitely something I think about on a daily basis, and I always try to ‘think healthy’ when making my food choices.

- I like fun things like notebooks and spreadsheets where I can track my progress because I find it motivating and neat.

And now the negatives:

- I will knowingly make bad decisions if I’m having a bad day.  I need something that I can always fall back on…even when I’m having the craziest day ever…a reason to stick with my healthy eating.

- I’m affected by the weather…when it’s cold or rainy outside, my instincts tell me to stay inside when its warm.  I need to act like an adult and take responsibility for my body…instead of whining like a kid and ignoring my responsibility to myself.

- I need to find time to come up with a system (spreadsheet, notebook, etc).  I know that my health is a foundation for everything else in my life…if I’m not healthy then I can’t perform to my full potential, so I have to make time for it like the important thing that it is.  I have gotten better with this lately, but I still have a ways to go.

 

Speaking of devoting time to my health, I gave myself one of my study hours to think about my weight loss issues, and that hour is up, so I have to go.

Thanks for listening,

L.L.