She Said
We have taken this Weight No More contest as an opportunity to return to the healthy lifestyle we used to live-whole foods, daily activity, more energy, better sleep, lots of water, and a lot less coffee. There have been plenty of small wins in the last few weeks:
- I’ve stopped making excuses and started working out again.
- We bought fruit that didn’t go bad before we could eat it.
- The dogs have had some nice, long walks,
- For the very first time in 32 years, I drank the recommended eight glasses (64 ounces) of water in a day! (Only one day.)
It’s all about progress and making better choices every day.
That being said, there have been plenty of poor choices along the way too:
- We ate an entire pint of ice cream in 2 days.
- I counted 4 minutes of stretching as “yoga.”
- Mr. B drank (the NOT recommended) 8 cups (64 ounces) of coffee in a day.
- We let the girl child count pizza sauce as a vegetable.
- We followed up a great hike with three rounds of whiskey & ginger ale.
It’s about half way through this year’s Weight No More contest, so it’s time to get serious! As a family, we are headed in the right direction, but we haven’t pushed it and made any difficult or uncomfortable commitments. There are changes to be made that won’t be easy at first but are necessary to meet our goals. These are things like:
- Sticking to suggested servings and portion sizes. Yeah, an apple with peanut butter is a healthy snack, but not if you’re using a measuring cup as a serving size. (A serving of peanut butter is two tablespoons. Please don’t look in my lunch box.) It’s not just snacks that need to be measured out; cereals, cheese, pasta, etc., are easy to over serve. How difficult is it to check the side of the box for how much you should put on your plate?! (Not as difficult as it is only to eat that much!)
- Cutting out snacks before bed. Healthy snacks or not, we all know you don’t have to eat after 8 pm. It’s simply a mindless habit we’ve fallen into.
- Consistently prioritizing our health & well-being over other commitments. What can we get done and what good will it be, if we’re tired and hungry and using stressful work days as an excuse to ignore what our bodies need? We already have the answer to this- it’s what our family has been doing, and we know it doesn’t work because that’s why we’re in the contest this year! (Yeah, I’m looking at you, Mr. B., no more mulligans!)
We have six more weeks until the final weigh in. It’s time to double down and make those changes for good!
Making better decisions more of the time is a start, but making the best decision most of the time is the goal.
He Said
Halftime, time to look in the mirror and look at the progress ( or regress) I have made since the beginning of the Weight no more contest. I have named the theme of this reflection the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Working out. The good. I have worked out more the last 4 weeks than I have in several years. The bad, it has been sporadic, different times of the day and lacking focus. The ugly, I have not worked out enough to see results in my quest to lose weight.
Water. The good, water has been a much larger part of my daily routine. I have been getting the “recommended” 8 eight ounce glasses daily. The bad, after some research, it seems water intake should be based on your weight and activity, the more you weigh and the more active you are, the more water you require. It actually makes sense instead of the standard 64 ounces no matter your size. My recommended daily water intake is 136 ounces. I see many more trips to the bathroom in my future. The ugly, coffee. I am still drinking too much coffee and although it does count toward daily fluid intake, the cream and sugar adds to my daily calorie intake.
Food. The good, as a family we have been eating more fruits and vegetables on a consistent basis (I would be doing much better if coffee were considered a vegetable) The bad, adding butter and cheese to your vegetables is counter productive as is adding a banana to your bowl of ice cream. The ugly, there was a lot of ugly this week. To start, as soon as I finished last weeks column where I took a mulligan, a co-worker brought in a dozen glazed donuts (Thanks Ashley) I ate 2. The pizza I grabbed on Friday had pepperoni and sausage. The pint of ice cream that Mrs. B said we finished in 2 days was actually a half-gallon of ice cream. The last ugly of the week I will call Super Bowl of chips and dip.
This week I will focus on more of a structured exercise routine, setting aside time in the morning and evening for strength and cardio. The other focus will be on eating, concentrating on when I eat, and how much (no more 9 pm dinners followed by 10pm dessert).
We have made some progress in our goal to lose weight and make healthier choices in what we eat and what we do, there is, however, a lot more wok to be done….