Round

I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get to before going on vacation, including putting a post on this blog, but I didn’t get to that before I left.

We’re in the hot but beautiful South of France on vacation for a few weeks, and I have almost no internet access — which is in general a good thing, but y’all did make me feel very guilty today when I checked my email and saw all the “where are you?” comments!

Rest assured, I’m doing well, enjoying all the summer fruits and veggies and sunshine and relaxing, reading, a bit of swimming and in general the change of pace from city life.

I’ll be back in force sometime in August — thanks for checking in on me, & I hope you’re all doing great.

I love summer foods, and the best part about them is that they are almost all healthy.

Watermelon

Berries of all types

Tomatoes

Basil

Peppers

Cucumbers

Peaches

Necatarines

Apricots

Cherries

Eggplant

Radishes

I’ve been enjoying all these and more, and making lots of salads and veggie dishes, some smoothies (peaches galore!) etc.

I really think these kinds of foods in abundance helps us to eat better and stay on track.

I got on the scale this morning and was down one pound from last Monday.  Great, I’ll take it.

Especially because for the first time in a long time I’m feeling like what I’m doing now is decreasing the stress in my life and is enjoyable.  If I can live like this and lose weight, I can’t complain.

I ate generally healthy this week - not much meat as our beloved butcher closed forever, and what I did buy I stuck in the freezer when I realized I’d be solo for dinners most nights of the week.  I cooked a fair amount, and some of my old favorites and new one as well - I made chopska salad (Bulgarian), spring rolls (yum yum - that’s the new fave), last night I even made fish for myself, which is a shocker since I rarely eat fish, let alone make it, let alone by myself, but there was a small piece of my favorite fish (monkfish) at the market yesterday and so I grabbed it.

I had normal food during lunches (working ones) and ended up eating a fair amount of bread, as we had sandwiches 3 days running.  Plus one of the evenings a work dinner where I had pasta w a cream sauce (a mistake on my part, I should have asked more questions of the waiter, it wasn’t even very good for all those calories)…

Of course, quite likely the real reason for the pound of fat feeling free to leave me is the exercise.

Here’s how I did on exercise for the week :

• Monday July 7 : Swimming  45 min plus walking 40 min
• Tuesday July 8 : rest day
• Wednesday July 9 : 15 min light walking plus swimming 40 min
• Thursday July 10: 60 min light walking
• Friday July 11 : 40 min light walking
• Saturday July 12 :60 min serious walking, 120 min light walking
• Sunday July 13 : 40 min Swimming

I am not making a plan for this week because I don’t know what I’ll be able to do.  I am motivated to do a lot, but this week that might not be smart.

I will need to be more careful with diet if I don’t get in as much exercise, that’s for sure…

For a while now I’ve wanted to do several exercises related to mentally getting yourself into the “losing weight” mode.  Although I’m doing pretty well right now, there is still room for improvement (especially in diet) and the next few weeks with vacations etc will be full of challenging situations, plus I’d like to get this off the “to-do” list.   Upcoming days will have other exercises from this series.

What 5 positive steps for your health have you taken in the past month?

1. Started exercising 2 weeks ago
2. Re-started the vitamins consistently
3. Various medical tests and doctors visits
4. Kept doing multiple stress-managment things including reading, walking, and adequate sleep
5. Watching what I eat (reducing sugar, white carbs, volumes)
6. Eating lots of fruits and veggies 
7. New electric toothbrush (it’s fabulous!)
8. Keeping up my blog
9. Started doing the 100 pushups program (thanks, Josephine!)
10. Cooking regularly from healthy recipes and cookbooks
11. Planning my week with food, exercise and cooking
12. Bought several pairs of cute comfortable shoes so that I can walk a bit between appointments when I get the opportunity
13. Shopping on Sundays to stock up on healthy things
14. Several hours spent prepping veggies and cooking for the week on Sunday
15. Made extra efforts to walk at least 15 minutes if I didn’t make it to a “real” exercise session
16. Standardized breakfasts (cold cereal or oatmeal or museli)

I am living that song : movin’ movin’ movin’

I have been bit by the exercise bug, and I am really happy about it. I got some unexpected free time last night and the thing that jumped into my head was to go to the pool (I did).

Today I organized getting to several appointments by walking, and chalked up 60 minutes. And I’m bummed I can’t work out tonight. I’m trying to decide between having my eyebrows done or going to the pool tomorrow evening (although doing both might work out in the end).

With today’s walking around I passed my first 500 minutes of exercise, which began on Friday June 27th, which was 2 weeks ago. Not bad at all.

So, I’ve earned my first gold star :

I’m eating reasonably well but possibly not at dieting levels. I haven’t been keeping a food diary but might add that back in the upcoming weeks.

Recently I’ve been trying to simplify my life.  I am throwing out a lot of junk, going through closets, getting rid of old magazines.  I’m also “unsubscribing” from a number of email newsletters that clutter up my inbox.  It was with just such a spirit that I opened an email that contained a link to a quiz on “how motivated are you?”.  What the heck, I clicked.  And the newsletter remains subscribed to, at least for now…

Click this link to take the quiz yourself.

Here are my results :

14 — 20 points:

Strongly Likely To Stick With It

• Based on your score, you may describe yourself as self-motivated, ambitious and achievement-oriented, but also balanced. You are likely to make exercise a priority even when tight for time.
• When exercising, you tend to stick with programs that are challenging and within your comfort zone, which keeps exercise from losing appeal.
• You are likely to seek out ways to maintain your exercise commitment by working out with a friend, hiring a friendly and knowledgeable instructor, varying your exercise activities, rewarding yourself for sticking with it, setting goals and exercising with music.

How To Stay Motivated:

• Although these strategies help you to avoid long periods of inactivity, you may still find yourself totally unmotivated for weeks at a time. There is no need to worry. Instead, enjoy your break. After all, even elite athletes take breaks to invigorate their bodies and souls.

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The interesting thing is that I would have had just about the same score before 2 weeks ago when I started to come back to exercise. 

The article mentions taking a few weeks off, but what if weeks become months become a year? 

Well, apparently you can get back on track even then.

I got in control of my breakfasts again.

When I eat poorly it often starts with breakfast - living in Paris it’s easy to gobble down hundreds of calories and many many fat grams first thing in the morning (actually, that’s pretty easy to do anywhere!).

When I start with oatmeal things are really great, but I haven’t felt like oatmeal in a while. Two weeks ago I decided to buy some different cold cereals as I savor the end of my imported shredded wheat (ah, the strange things one misses as an expatriate!).

I bought 2 boxes of Special K, one with red berries, the other with chocolate.

Chocolate? In cereal? For breakfast? Not just any chocolate either - it’s real dark chocolate (also available in milk chocolate, in fact). Not ‘chocolatey’ like in the US either. Real shavings of chocolate. Of course, the calorie-saving aspect is in the fact that the pieces of chocolate are shavings and not chips, and of course the ratio of chocolate-to-flakes. But after my initial hesitation I spent a few minutes examining the nutrition info on the boxes and since the calories for the flavored cereals are about the same as the plain Special K, I figured what the heck.

These past few days it’s been an treat in the mornings. Healthy, quick and easy, but also a bit of an indulgence. I even had that twice over the weekend while my DH indulged in a rich brioche with our fabulous farm-fresh butter and a friend’s homemade jam for breakfast. Other than that first moment of decision I had no regrets with my choice. That said, maybe the bowl is a little more full than usual, so while it fits within the healthy breakfast criteria, I don’t think I’ll be buying it every week…

But having breakfasts back under control makes a big difference, and if it took a bit o’ chocolate to do it, what’s the harm?

Planning, planning, planning.

There is nothing that can take it’s place, is there? Without a plan things rarely take the form we’d like - even with a plan it can be hard.

There is no way I’m going to be able to get in exercise if I don’t plan it.

So here’s the plan for the week, written down, visible, committed and able to hold myself accountable.

• Monday July 7 : Walk to and from appointment (40 min) AND either swimming or elliptical
• Tuesday July 8 : Some form of serious cardio
• Wednesday July 9 : 15 min light walking (get off metro early)
• Thursday July 10: 15 min light walking (get off metro early)
• Friday July 11 : cardio
• Saturday July 12 : cardio
• Sunday July 13 : cardio

At least one, maybe more, of these days towards the end of the week might be rest days.
And just to report in on this past week - I made my focus coming back to exercise and I did a pretty good job of it.

• Friday June 27 : swim
• Saturday June 28 : walk
• Sunday June 29 : swim
• Monday June 30: none
• Tuesday July 1 : 15 min walk
• Wednesday July 2 : 45 min walk
• Thursday July 3 : 15 min walk
• Friday July 4 : 15 min walk
• Saturday July 5 : 75 min walk
• Sunday July 6 : 40 min elliptical

All in all it adds up to something that would not have me thinking I was a complete slug 2 weeks ago… Plus I’m down 3 pounds today.

July 6 of last year I began my blog.

I am really glad it’s still here, it’s been a real help to me and an aid at many times. These past few days I haven’t felt like I have much to say, but overall I’ve really enjoyed having a place to reflect and plan, share and listen too.

I plan to keep up the blog indefinitely, although this summer on vacation it might be harder to do.

I’m going to resist the urge to compare where I was a year ago to where I am now, since the scale hasn’t moved in the right direction over the year and there is no point beating myself up about that again. I think what’s really important is that I’m still here, still working on it, still learning how to make this into a lifestyle.

Well, I have had good intentions of continuing to exercise but it’s met the road of reality and nothing much has happened. It’s going to take some serious effort on my part to be able to exercise during the work week - my days are too hectic. I should have gotten my act together Monday, as I knew it was my only really sure day, but I felt lazy after 3 days in a row (from a base of nothing) so I took it off. The rest of the week has been the usual crazy stuff. Getting out of meetings at 9pm or getting stuck in the suburbs for a  teleconference that I’d hoped to have from home (and therefore getting home 2 1/2 hours later).

The strange thing is how much I missed exercise. I haven’t exercised for a LONG time but somehow after 3 days I missed it already. Well, I at least took advantages of opportunities to walk a bit more than usual, getting in an extra 15 - 30 minutes each day. I was counting on going to the pool on Friday evening but I just found out the pool is closed for a few days before opening for summer hours on Saturday, so tomorrow might or might not be an alternative form of exercise…

In any event, although exercise hasn’t been there, it’s been missed, and that itself is a big move forward.