Oh my goodness! Look at the picture in today's email. This is exactly what it looked like here this weekend! We had tons of snow and were stuck at the house. We went out sledding and had a good ol' fashioned snowball fight! I gotta tell you, the last snow storm we had like this was in 2008. Ryan was about six months old and I was at my heaviest -- ever. I weighed about 75 lbs. more and had about 90% less energy. We have a lovely sledding hill in our back yard, but I didn't think it was lovely back then. Nope, in fact, I despised it. I wanted to have fun, but my body wasn't up for the challenge. THIS winter, however, that is a much different story. Not only can we keep up with our kids, we spent hours outside playing and having fun. As I reflect back now, I don't think I realized then what I was missing out on. I accepted life in my tired body and all the limitations that went with it. If I knew then what I would be doing this winter and enjoying the best snow storm since 2008 (some people say the worst, but it was so much fun, I say the best!). Check out the picture of me (on my hands and knees -- without pain!):
I've had some technical difficulties getting my daily emails, so now I am playing catch-up a little with the challenges.
Today's challenge introduces us to the color coded grocery shopping system from my health program.
Saturday's challenge is to reflect about the last week's challenges and hard work. Boy have we come far! We're almost five weeks in and doing great! I've reinforced the great habits I've learned over the course of my program.
This week's challenge is a tough one for me: eat fish three times each week. Before my health program, I ate no fish. NONE. I didn't like the taste or the smell. Well, when I started my health program, I told my coach I would do whatever it took. Doing what I was doing at the time wasn't working or getting me to where I needed to be, so I knew that if I wanted to be healthy, I needed to be open to and create change. I now eat fish periodically, but still not nearly enough as I should. It's actually one of the biggest things holding me back from improving my health score. So, I am going to incorporate that change.
Today's challenge is look at causes for over-eating. For me, that is often boredom, stress, low energy and simply sitting at a computer. Knowing that those things trigger me to eat away from my meal plan, this challenge is a great one for me to revisit. Today, we're supposed to make a list of activities that we can do instead of over-eating. (Over-eating, by the way, means eating when and what you haven't planned. It doesn't necessarily mean eating more than your stomach can hold, which is how our culture tends to use the word "over-eat.")
Here is the list I made:
Today's challenge is to optimize your environment and create one that promotes health and your goals. I work with a health coach as one way of reinforcing my environment. I know I can call on her when I struggle and she walks along side me through the struggle.
We choose most of our environment and we can choose to make it full of health or disease. For instance, I only buy groceries that are healthy. If I brought candy and unhealthy food into the house, I am more likely to eat it. When those foods aren't in the house, it makes it very difficult to eat them, right?
When I started this program a few years ago, I went through my kitchen and created a healthy environment. That was a step I needed to do to get started. That doesn't just mean cleaning out the "bad" food from the cabinets, but we also did the following:
- Put our food scale out on the counter
- Used measuring cups as serving spoons (until we were able to eye-ball the right portions)
- Kept Food on the stove and counter away from the table so that seconds weren't easy to get
- Started cooking smaller portions so that there wasn't food leftover to tempt us to eat seconds
- Turned the TV off at meal time
- Chewed gum while cooking to avoid taste-testing too much
- Painted our kitchen a cool color (blue is best, but we chose a blue-green), which studies show tends to decrease your appetite
- Started eating right under our kitchen light where it is brightest in the room (studies show you eat less in bright light)
I just took a picture of our fridge and counter and wanted to share it with you and a few of my tips:
Today's challenge discusses reaching our healthy weight.
I want to digress a little here for a minute... I am at a healthy weight now, and have been for several years, but for most of my life I wasn't. I was obese. I still feel like my mind hasn't caught up -- years later. It's a hard thing to face that I still feel like I have an obese mind. I still look at chocolate like the devil on my shoulder. I still want dessert I know would not be a good choice. I try to be strong and a good role model to my kids and my clients, but I am still developing my own strategies to cope and deal with those situations when temptation is so strong I feel like I will fold. The longer I am at a healthy weight, the harder it is for my friends and family to understand what it is to want desperately to never be in that place again. In fact, the peer pressure (yes, at MY age) is sometimes intolerable.
I have an upcoming trip out of town with some friends and I am dreading the choices I am going to be faced with. Normally, it's not an issue. I can ignore or avoid the choices that are inconsistent with my health goals. But there has been a lot of pressure to "have just one" or that "one bite won't hurt." The problem is that, for me and my history with food, one bite sometimes leads to ten or twenty or thirty. In fact, I sometimes feel like justifying eating some treats with the hard work I have been doing. I talk myself out of those thoughts usually and that works fine.
While I told my friends that I can't do certain things or go to certain places, they brushed it off and I think that is due in part to the fact that they don't understand how hard my journey has been or that I still struggle every day to be healthy. It isn't easy for me, but I am trying to do this the best I can. This challenge is so important to me, and I am becoming better because of it. I don't want to sacrifice my health for a weekend with friends. I don't know what choices I will be faced with, but I am going to work really hard to keep those goals at the forefront of my mind to help me stay on track.
Now, back to today's challenge...
Today's challenge is to share my success with the challenge on Facebook. I get so much support and wonderful encouragement when I share what I have been doing to be healthy that I just want to share with people that it is possible for them too. This is a short post, but I am still working at my daily habits to continue this challenge in a way that the habits are sustainable. Health is a lifelong choice I have adopted as a lifestyle and that isn't going to change. I want badly to build on each habit and become better every day. I never would have dreamed it would lead to the life I have today. Sometimes dreams are bigger than we can imagine.
Today's challenge is reflection. (I love these reflection challenges!) How often do we sit, often overwhelmed, dreaming of all that we have to do still with no end in sight? It's something I do all too well. Having a few moments of reflection to relax and relive some recent success in your life is peaceful and calming.
Today's challenge is to create a timeline for success, which creates some urgency and doesn't allow our minds to wonder into "Someday Land," which is where we tell ourselves that "Someday, I will ________________ so that I can be healthier." Sometimes "Someday" is replaced with "Tomorrows" or "Next Weeks," but they really all mean "Someday." First, we list things that are going to help us get to where we want to be. Second, we assign a realistic timeline to complete those things. I am using the action steps and timeline from Day 25's challenge. Here is my timeline:
