Changing!

I feel like changing. For the past few weeks I've been mulling it over in my head and my new fitness buddy, Brandi, has convinced me that I can feel more energetic and fit more fitness into my life. I have to walk her 3 times a day to keep her happy and its an energetic walk with her. Not meandering along slowly with this pooch. I look a little better in the mirror to me, perhaps that's in my head, perhaps it's not but its kind of jump started something. I find myself less willing to consume gads of junk food and soda pop at work or at home. That stuff is becoming less important, especially as I get closer to that 30 mark. I see people all around me with diabetes and all kinds of health issues. It's scary really!

So I am going to make it a point to try VERY hard not to put bad things in my body. I'm doing pretty good so far this week. After all, I am hoping to increase my trail conditioning this year and to achieve better timing when backpacking and hiking--to stretch myself and become the best me ever. :)

Hike your own hike and good night!

Stairs

Hills are rare around here. Flat land walking has nothing on mountainous trail hiking elsewhere. My best option when I can't walk hills are stairways at work. So when ever I have an opportunity to, instead of using the elevator, I use the stairs. Six flights up or down. I find down stairs is tough and I have to take it slower, due to the strain it puts on my knees. I'm fine with the upstairs. Add to the self imposed challenge of getting my stock unpacked and shelved as fast as I can to get my heart rate up for a couple hours at a time, a walk on lunch break outside around the hospital, and that is my normal daily exercise, although I do go for walks at home too. I am trying to sneak in ways to burn more calories and build more strength and muscles.



"Without wilderness, we will eventually lose the capacity to understand America. "
-- Harvey Broome (Co-founder of The Wilderness Society)

Day One: Arms and Frittata

Used the exercises that came with the resistance band and the big ball to work my arms this morning.

Made a egg white, turkey bacon and spinach frittata and oranges for today.

Exercise Plan Week #1

40*, feels like 33*, 93% humidity, SSW 12 mph wind, cloudy

Sunday-- Exercise ball and resistance band work out
Monday-- Walk 1/2 hour easy
Tuesday--Exercise ball and resistance band
Wednesday-- walk 1/2 hour easy (if hill is not icy) and 15 minute hill
Thursday-- Exercise ball and resistance band work out
Friday--Rest
Saturday-- Walk 30 minutes easy, 30 minutes hill

21 days untill a new habit.

19*, feels like 0*, 65% humidity, SW 31 mph wind, light snow, WIND ADVISORY

I've been working on deciding what new years resolutions I would like to make concerning my health and fitness. But I didn't want to go with the old stand by of counting calories for a week and going to the gym for a month before petering out. Part of the reason those methods don't work is that I am incredibly busy all the time and I work too much to want to force myself to sit down and count all calories every minute of the day or to drag my tired body to the gym after a long day's work.

But, I have to admit right now I DO want to gain health and lose weight. These few weeks I have been under an incredible amount of stress, which has led to over eating and eating nothing but JUNK. To top it off, my injuries have made exercising a non-existent thing for the time being. I mean absolutely very little of anything healthy has entered this temple lately. It's becoming a HUGE bad habit that is not helping my HUGE butt at all.

So just as I was trying to figure what kind of resolutions I would make this year I picked up several magazines out of boredom for something to read at work when I saw several articles that made sense and I thought I would try them. They aren't diet plans, but habit plans. The first article lead me to eatbetteramerica.com, a website community devoted to helping Americans to eat better and to encourage us to live healthier lifestyles. Once I registered, it gave me about 4 choices for resolutions. What did I want to accomplish this year? I chose the loose 10 lbs. option. (I have much more to lose then that, but they didn't give me a bigger option. Perhaps that is a good thing though, 10 lbs seems an easier goal.) It gave me a calender of hints to print off. 21 days to a new habit. Each day it tells you to think about something new, or to try something new. OK, I thought. This looks much less intimidating then those diet plans where every meal is planned out for you even though you don't like certain foods and would never really eat or make room in your meager grocery budget for. (After all, I am a busy person and I have no time to cook 3 meals a day plus snacks all day long... who are these people who can follow those plans? Stay at home wives? Come on, get real!) OK, I can do this.
So the other articles that interested me were about these women who lost weight simply by WRITING. Huh? I thought but as I read the articles it made sense. The rules were simple, write 3 pages every day about whatever, how you feel, what you ate and why, anything really. It helped them to realize what they were doing to themselves and to make changes from the things they saw they did not like. So, I'm combining the two things. I'll use the 21 days to a good habit tool and a journal as a way to record my thoughts and feelings along the way. I was so excited about this that I actually started my new me resolution yesterday.
The first day asked me to rate your confidence of achieving my goal. I gave myself an 8. After all, its only 10 lbs. much easier to envision then what I actually have to lose in the end. I wrote quite a bit about that but I don't feel like going over it here since it was yesterday. I have it written in a paper journal.
Today I was asked to identify my eating triggers and to work out a plan to remedy the urge when it hits to eat.
I am both a bored eater and a stress eater. As I said further up, I am definitely under a lot of stress. If I were to list everything I ate last week you would be shocked, and I would be ashamed. So I came up with a plan to help should the trigger situations occur. (See next post)

Exercise Hurdles

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. No walks due to a few injuries. From a car accident and now a twisted ankle from slipping on ice. Such is life sometimes!

Autumn Walk

I've had a bad cold/flu for the past couple weeks that involves a LOT of mucus and coughing my lungs out so I have had no energy to get out for some real exercise other then yard work and moving around at my job. But today was too perfect to stay at home, and so I took a short and slow walk at the park to take in some fall colors and this is what I found:



Nice, eh?