Saturday, June 20, 2009

Headed in the Right Direction

I'm down two pounds this morning, which puts me at 319 even. This is great! I don't know about you, but I am starting to suspect that exercise is really key to my success... after a week of nothing but the occasion bout of gardening, I've been C25King or walking every day for the past few days. It's obviously making a difference—not to mention it makes me feel good each day.

As I said, I haven't been too diligent about eating lately, but semi-trying to not overdo, too. Just trying to maintain a balance, which really is the ideal anyway, isn't it?

It recently struck me that I can approach this process in the same way I do my gardening and my art: it's an ongoing experiment. Sometimes the things I try work really well, and I keep them to use in the future, and sometimes they can be a gross failure, in which case I never do them again (or at least try not to). With my gardening and art, I fully disclose to everyone that it is all a big experiment, so I never really feel disappointed when the mistakes happen, I just move on and try something else. I am realizing now that I am beginning to do that with my approach to losing weight and maintaining a more healthy lifestyle, and it feels awfully good and right. Sure, I still get mad at myself from time to time, but lately I have been more forgiving and more willing to go through trial and error to figure out what works best for me.

This is a big difference from last year, and even last month. This attitude will help me get through the tougher times and allow me to proceed to the next round of successes.

It'll be interesting to see if these plateaus I am having each month will continue to be monthly occurrences. It's good to look for patterns, to see if there is something that you can expect and that you might not have a lot of control over. Our bodies are curious things. Our weight will fluctuate naturally, and it's OK. But it sure makes it a lot easier to deal with when you know what the patterns are, which is why I love the Physics Diet website so much. Honestly, if I didn't have that data to refer to, I doubt I'd be able to really hang in there through plateaus and even slight gains. It's funny how science and statistics can be comforting!

Anyway, I took a nice long walk this morning, sort of unexpectedly. I didn't feel like I had much energy, but as usual once I got going I felt fine to try to go beyond the just 20 minute walk I'd committed myself to initially. It was a slow walk, two miles in 45 miles, but it felt good to be out there early in the morning, breathing in the air and listening to the nothingness of 6:30am on a Saturday. I did it because I wanted to, and because it is important.

Tomorrow: C25K 20 minute run! Wish me luck!

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