Worth It

Today is my third day in a row that I exercised, so I'm feeling pretty proud of myself.  I have hit a little bit of a snag in that, the minute I wake up, my dog expects to get loved up.  It's his routine.  When my husband works, he gets up earlier than me and takes the dog in the living room with him and I get to sleep a little longer uninterrupted.  Because he's on a rotating weekend schedule, though, he often gets a couple days off during the week when he sleeps later than me and I will have the dog in the living room with me.  Getting down on the floor to try and do some yoga was not happening.  His little nose kept nudging and nudging me, he even gets to the point where he gets vocal if I don't give him attention.  So my compromise was to stretch while I was petting him and it actually worked pretty good. It made me realize how stiff my back and neck perpetually are and I don't do much about it. 
Afterword I took him for a good half hour + walk.  He was so excited to get off the property that he was pulling on the leash the whole time, so I inadvertently got some arm muscle activation as well. 
The walk irritated my feet a little, the one that had the broken bone was hurting in that spot, and the one that didn't have the broken bone was hurting on top of the arch as if there is a pinched nerve.  I hate that my feet are causing me grief and I may see someone about it at some point.  I do sometimes try to resolve these issues on my own by watching physical therapy videos on YouTube, in particular I like Bob and Brad (physical therapists), they are amusing and show you things you can do to ease or even avoid pain.  I may have to search the archives on the feet issues.  I was uncomfortable enough to take an ibuprofen caplet today, which I am not supposed to take due to the fact that it raises blood pressure, but it really actually works, and I can't say the same for Tylenol unfortunately. 
The tracking is pretty easy right now, since I pretty much eat the same thing all week so I can just tap a few spots on my Fitbit app and it has recent foods so I can easily select them in the same quantity and it is smart enough to know which meal it likely is.  Yesterday's nubmers were right on track.  The other thing that is nice about Fitbit app is that it automatically calculates how many calories you have spent via activity and compares your 'calories in' to the 'calories out'.  For now I will stay this for convenience, but I may check out the other two apps mentioned in the comments of the last post.  I actually have an app called Fooducate, that rates how good a food is for you based on ingredients, caloric content, and how it's processed, etc.  That app is OK, but you have to buy it to begin with, then pay more for upgrades if you want to track certain things like fat calories, sodium, etc.  There are really way too many options out there don't you think?  A person could go mad trying to find the perfect one!  Plus, I don't plan on tracking long-term, maybe just when I start to have more significant changes in diet. 
Last night, due to hunger, I was considering having a bean burrito with melted cheese and sour cream.  I knew it was my hunger talking.  To be honest, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal, it is 210 calories, which I probably had anyway with the dinner I chose, but I was able to stick to my lower carb choice of egg patties with melted cheese and veggie bacon.  The fats on that dinner made me feel awesome!  I may have to try to increase my fats in order to be more satiated.  
So even though I'm not eating too much differently than normal, I am doing better at staving off the extra handfuls of chips and switching my planned meal for burritos or turkey sandwiches.  I know that's not enough to make a massive amount of difference, but I do think it will help in the longrun.  My mood is good and I feel like I have more energy even though I'm getting up a half hour earlier.  I'm doing fine with the food I'm eating right now and the only time I really have cravings (usually for fats/salt) is when I am physically hungry and that's an easy fix.  So this is pretty doable.  I don't feel too restricted so I'm not triggered to binge. Tracking makes me focus on food so sometimes when I am casually walking past a bag of chips and think about eating some, I think about having to track it and figure out how much I am eating and I pass on the chips simply out of inconvenience.  Yeah, I'm that lazy! 
So this is working for now.  I will likely weigh on Friday's, before the weekend mania, but I'll keep tracking on the weekends so I can see how much damage I'm doing with eating on the weekends, which is typically more lax than the work week.  It's an interesting experiement.  I've done this before and gave up easily because tracking is work and I kept thinking it's too hard, but really, now that I know the formula to build something for myself I know I can always make adjustments and keep moving on instead of sliding back and forth between commitment. I'm worth putting in the effort for.  Everyone is worth that!

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