Ever since that time, I've become more aware of my health. My eating habits weren't that bad, but they could have been better. I hardly ever got any regular amounts of good exercise. Diet and exercise - where have I heard that before?
I am happy to say that I have made some decent progress. For the first time in my life, I've been exercising 3 to 4 days a week. I 'ride' my elliptical for 30 minutes, then do some stretching and strength training. I've been doing that for 3 months now. I started long before that trying to do regular cardio exercises. It took a while to get to this point. It's hard to imagine that this will be what I do 4 days a week for the rest of my life, but I try to keep telling myself that, so it will happen.
On the diet side, I've been trying to eat better by cutting out bad things like caffeine, sugar, white flour, bad fats and bad carbohydrates. I recently read that if you're trying to loose weight, the most important thing to do, is to keep track of the number of calories you consume every day. I bet that wasn't very easy 5 or 10 years ago, but now of course, we have the Internet and that has changed. Thanks to our friends Scott and Paula, Tracy discovered http://www.sparkpeople.com/.
Tracy signed-up first, and I just started using it 3 days ago. This is a great health and fitness website that makes it super-simple to enter all the things you eat and drink during the day, so you can see exactly how many calories, carbs, fat, protein, sodium, fiber, etc. you're getting from your food. You tell them your height, weight and weather you're trying to loose weight, gain weight or maintain, and they give you recommendations on how many calories, carbs and other nutrients you should have each day. All this - for free!
It's been very interesting to see just how many calories, or sodium or fat is in the food I eat. Did you know a small package of Planters Peanuts has 330 calories!?!? It has actually given me more incentive to eat better, so my numbers will look good that night when I plug in my food for the day.
Speaking of calories - check out this page that shows the 11 worst foods of 2008.
If you're becoming a health-fanatic like me, check out SparkPeople - It's cool!
I am the opposite of you. I did cardio in the form of swimming 3 or 4 miles several times a week. I probably spend 6-8 hours a week with my pulse above 150bpm but then as soon as I get out of the water, I eat every red meat product in site. These last 3 months that I have not been able to swim have resulted in gaining 10 pounds, and that is with being aware and cutting back. Thank God that I am back in the water now! I think that I might start using that site to monitor my red-meat-a-diction.
ReplyDeleteLast night, I didn't get dinner in the oven in time and sent Derek to Sonic. Today, we had errands to run at lunch and stopped at McDonalds. This afternoon I had to nap. I felt TERRIBLE with a capital T!! I know you're reading my blog and the struggles we're having with priorities. Last night, we REALLY decided we need a re-do if we're going to enjoy what's left of this earthly life. We agreed that reading the WORD daily, spending quality time at gym 3 times per week, and eating Dinner My Way at home (healthy ingredients, more veggies) needs to begin now. I just got off the phone with the gym. We really need to do this!!
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