Livin on a Prayer & Other Revelations

First of all, thank you so much for all of the encouraging comments after my last post. You ladies are the best! :) I'm sorry its taken me so long to get back here & write again... my night of thought actually lasted far into Friday & then the weekend was busy, busy with family & friends.

After much thought & self-reflection, I have to say I've been approaching things with a "Livin on a Prayer" mentality on an increasingly frequent basis. What do I mean by this? Simply, I've fallen into a habit of doing what works in the moment as far as my meals & exercise (or lack there of)... and then when scale day rolls around I say a silent prayer as I step on to the scale that somehow, by some miracle, the number will be kind to me. Yes, I have gotten lucky the last two weeks & not seen an increase on the scale... but I think luck has run out. It doesn't take much thought to figure out that when I plan meals & do meal prep early in the week, I'm much less likely to fall into this pattern of doing without regard to the big picture. Next step in the self-revelation... what do I do about it???

Revelation #1: A few days ago, I asked if living a healthy lifestyle ever felt like a full time job to anyone else. The overwhelming response is YES it does & then some. So... I believe its time to approach this healthy lifestyle as I would a job where I was being paid (and there is definitely a reward for the hard work of this "job"), rather than attempting to squeeze it into my normal time frame for meal planning/prep & fitness. This means planning my days with specific times on the agenda for the gym, meal planning & prep, meal & exercise tracking, and blogging. I'm not quite sure how that's going to look yet, but I plan to figure it out for the upcoming week before I go to bed tonight... then I can hit the ground running in the morning.

Revelation #2: I need to get serious about tracking my meals! On the days I plan my meals, I do a decent job of sticking to it... the other days I pretty much shrug off writing down what I'm eating. Somehow, I've gotten out of the habit of entering my food on myfooddiary... and I can tell that its hurting me.

And an FYI for you: March is the month my Dad passed away... 22 years ago. I know its been a LONG time and so many people tell me just to be over it already. But, I'm sorry, its not something you ever get over... especially when you lose a parent in childhood. I'm the type of person who so strongly associates dates, times & places with the joys & heartbreaks of my life that just waking up knowing its such and such day can take me right back to the emotion of the situation (no matter how much time has passed). This year, I think things are worse for me than they've been the last few years due to some other losses over the past year. I mention this not so much because I'm an emotional eater, but because when I'm sad its hard to motivate myself to do much of anything, so things like getting meals planned & going to the gym are way more difficult... and I think we all know what happens to me if I don't have meals planned...

Highlight of the weekend: Saturday was gorgeous here on the island. With rain looming in the forecast, I decided to drag the husband and my son out for a walk with me. After packing each of us a bag with healthy snacks (more of a mini lunch I suppose), we piled in the car & headed out with no specific destination. We ended up at one of the nearby state parks- we are super luck to have 3-4 within a few minutes drive. This one sits right on the water & has trails all over. My plan was to walk the trail that goes along the bluff overlooking the water & then go to the part where you can get down to the beach; but apparently my son's sense of direction had other plans for us. We let him choose a trail & ended up on two miles of trails that went up & down steep hills, some parts with big ruts & tree roots to climb over. Normally, I don't really count these outings as exercise, just part of an active outing for the family... but let me tell ya right now this one I counted! It was very challenging & my heart rate was definitely up there for most of it. By the time we got back to the car, we had walked just shy of 2.5 miles and I was comfortably exhausted!

One of the "easy" trails & The view from our picnic table

Well... I guess I'd better get back to work on planning my week if I want to see dreamland any time soon. Hope everyone had a good weekend & best wishes for a Happy Monday!