Healthy Start 2010 - Give Myself Credit

I'm winding up the first week since I started tracking and it's really, really helping me stay accountable. Also helpful: finding out that the slice of Kirkland raisin bread is 3 points (150 cal, 2.5g fat, 3 g fiber). Yikes. Wish I had looked at the label before eating it. I definitely would have taken more time to appreciate what I was eating. In fact, I would definitely benefit from more appreciating in general; even appreciating myself.

There are times when I have it all together. I'm waking up early, exercising, getting the kids off to school with time to spare, the house is immaculate, Hubs is taken care of, my hair looks good, I'm getting some time to myself. It feels like everything almost takes care of itself, and I don't have to think about how it all comes together. There are other times when it's just the opposite. I resent having to scrub another toilet, I can't figure out how I could possibly fit in exercise or a trip to the grocery store with 3/4 of a dozen hands pulling me in different directions; the house is a mess and I don't even know where to start to get things back in order. When I'm in that place, my eating follows with a similar chaotic quality. All the while I'm telling myself that I'm a sucky mom, wife, and housekeeper. That I'm an insult to the mirror, that I hope no one calls because I really have nothing to say. Usually, like everyone else, I'm somewhere in between.

To keep myself closer to the preferred end, I intend to Give Myself Credit where credit is due.
Last night, I avoided eating a cookie that I didn't need - something I haven't done in months - because I told myself that I could. We definitely can't control everything in our life, but we can control our response. Just reminding ourselves that we're doing well, looking good, and making our best effort certainly doesn't hurt.

So, when I exercise, I'm going to celebrate it. When I eat right, I'm going to notice. I'm going to choose to find something good in the mirror and acknowledge it. If I can do it, so can you.

What do you like about yourself today?

Healthy Start 2010 - Write It Down

I have a tendency to be completely useless when it comes to personal responsibility. Unless I write it down. So, for me it's time for baby steps, and the most important one for me is tracking. The picture in the post shows the way that I track. The best way for me to eat is the old Weight Watchers CORE method. Any food that isn't CORE gets counted as points. For me that's usually nuts, peanut butter, a cookie or piece of bread. I get 5 points a day to use as I choose - no more. So if I want a piece of cake, it's the small piece of cake and clean eating for the rest of the day. I can do this, and still cook for my family without a PhD, charts, graphs, and third-year Calculus. Otherwise, I'd be eating frozen dinners while the kids eat pizza or some other crap on a daily basis. That's me.

Also really important (possibly more important for me) is exercise. When I exercise, I put a big star on the top of the page and write in what my activity was (as you can see, no activity yet today). I haven't exercised regularly since the kids started school in the fall and I've been spending 4 hrs/day taking them to their respective destinations. Now that wrestling/skiing has started, my personal time just took another huge hit. That's why the new goal is to be in bed before 10pm nightly so that I can exercise before everyone gets up. I've done it before, and though it's not my preferred time to move, I can do it if it's my only option (and it is right now). Today I'm going to park the 4-y-o in front of Dora the Explorer after lunch so that I can do my workout. We're going sledding after I pick up the boys from school on the great hill near Maltby (in this part of MI, you have to actively find hills big enough to sled on and travel to them).

I'll be posting my thought on a Healthy Start to 2010 for the rest of the month. Any thoughts would be really welcome.