Alright, I took a few weeks off from "dieting" and ate just what I wanted when I wanted. I enjoyed my giant cookie with my coffee every morning, but I cannot continue doing that. By the end of the week I felt horrible - not necessarily about my body, but about my lack of self-control. I wasn't totally out of control like I have been in the past, but I was allowing food to control me a bit. I kept reminding myself that I would start again on Monday (like usual). But I also knew that I kind of needed to get a little out of control in order to be motivated to be serious again.
I also took the last half of the week off from exercising... I couldn't find my running CD on Tuesday so I did turbulance training instead and it really kicked my bum. Then I shoveled the snow later that day - it was really wet and heavy and the end of the driveway was icy so it kicked my bum even more. By Wednesday morning I could barely walk because my hamstrings hurt so badly. So I lifted on Wednesday morning, but I took the rest of the week off. And it worked. I'm totally motivated now to get back into hardcore workouts and to clean up my diet.
I have struggled with knowing what to do about my eating. I don't want to obsess. If I go entirely back to BFL/BFFM I will have to obsess in order to be successful. I don't do well with palm/fist portioning. But if I go with WW I truly feel in my heart that I'm not eating enough. Everything I read, that I believe is a healthy look at fitness/nutrition says to eat 5-6 times a day and to train hard with weights, do interval cardio vs. long bouts of steady state cardio. Everytime I go on any kind of calorie calculator and plug in my weight & height it tells me I should be eating around 2000 - 2200 calories/day for maintenance, which means 1600-1800 calories/day for weight loss. This reiterates to me that WW is not incredibly healthy - 1000-1200 calories/day is just not right. And as long as I believe in my heart that it is unhealthy for me, I will never be successful at it - or committed to it. So I need to cancel my membership.
So the question remains - what will I be doing? I don't want to obsess. I want to be healthy and make good choices.
Here are my plans so far - I do need to sit down and write this out, though:
* Eat 5-6 times a day: 8:30, 11:00, 2:00, 4:30, 6:30, 9:00
* add a fruit and/or vegetable to every meal
* have a "normal" dinner, but watch the portion
* drink 100oz of water every day
* no sweets - except for Saturday night
* no beer during the week, 2 beers over the weekend
* Running 3x/week - have to figure out if I want to continue my 3.5 miles/45:00 runs or do interval training instead
* Weight training 3x/week - lifting heavy/to failure with a goal of 12 reps per set.
* at least 100 squats/day
* decide on some daily affirmations and write them out every day
* weigh myself once each week on Friday
I weighed myself this morning and saw a number on the scale that I haven't seen in a while: 136.4. I don't believe that it is a "true" weight since I know I'm dehydrated, but I have indeed gained some weight in the last couple of weeks. It is time to get a handle on this and be serious about wanting to be healthy. I don't want to focus on losing weight, but if I truly, truly want to be active in my later years, then I need to focus on being healthy now. Being healthy does not necessarily mean being a certain weight, but instead making healthy choices, retraining my brain on eating healthy and NOT having a big free day/gorge fest on the weekend. I HAVE to get rid of the free day mentality - if I allow for a free day, then I'm not truly living healthy the way I want to.
