On to Other Things

I went through an eight week nutrition program that helped me immensely. I lost eleven pounds through it! YEAH ME!

Helpful new things I learned:
If a nutrition label says 20% of something, it is considered to be high in that thing. I found I eat a lot of high sodium things. It's a bugger. If the food industry takes out one thing, like sugar, they make up for it in another thing, like fat or sodium.

If a nutrition label says 5% or lower, it's considered low in that thing.

I don't eat often enough. If I don't eat every three to four hours, I gain weight.

When figuring out why I'm gaining, food logs are a blessing. Easier to see when I ate, how much and if I exercised.

When I don't get enough sleep, I gain a couple of pounds.

I must exercise at least five times a week. Day before yesterday I did not exercise and I should have. So yesterday I made that up by doing 30 minutes in the morning and an hour at night. Didn't mean to do an hour, just kind of happened, but it helped anyway. :)

I floundered for about a week after the class was over. I need to have a goal, a reason for losing. I got my reason today. I have to renew my drivers license on my birthday. I would really like to not have a double chin in that picture. A goals a goal. No matter what the reason, it gives me a target. Fifteen pounds by then. I can do it.

I exercise at least once a day, sometimes twice. I aslo floundered really badly on wanting to exercise.  I was convincing myself that I had to exercise in the morning. Then I slid into if not then, then you've missed your chance and too bad for that day. I pulled myself back from this thinking. It's an easy road to think myself out of something that is so obviously good for my body. Get in, whenever. As long as it's done, it's better than nothing.

I also have to keep it interesting. As much as I would love to say "Biking did it!" or "It's all to running!" or "Swimming saved my life;" I can't. Limiting myself to one exercise is bad for me. I have to keep it varied to keep it interesting. For example: My husband and I have been going on walks. Those were getting boring, even when we tried to vary the route. Yesterday I said "Let's go to the park and play tag!" Well, we're too out of shape for tag we found out in the beginning of the walk. We walked to the park and played on some of the equipment instead. It was silly but it gave us a reason for walking there and walking home. Most importantly, it added a small element of fun.

I'm going to continue to explore keeping some sort of element of fun in the exercising.