Weight: 158.0
It's raining and the forecast is predicting heavy thunderstorms all morning, so my scheduled run is postponed for this evening. This will be the second time in a week that I had to run in the evening instead of the morning because of rain. The good news is that last week I actually did come home and run. I know I can do it again tonight.
I've maintained a "perfect" diet for about a week and a half, now. What I mean by perfect, is I have not eaten anything, not one bite of food, that was not part of a planned meal and that was not an On-Program food. I've had a little mini-plateau at exactly 158 pounds for a few days, but that was after rapidly losing a few pounds. It's not unusual for me to lose 2 or 3 pounds over a few days and then stop losing weight for several days. I don't know exactly why it works that way, but that is the way it works. What is unusual is to be exactly the same weight over a several day period. It actually made me laugh when I saw the number on the scale this morning. Think about all of the things that need to be exactly the same for your weight to not fluctuate by even 2/10ths of a pound. I guess I know the magic formula for maintaining 158.
Yesterday, I felt great, better than I have felt since before my surgery in December. What a wonderful feeling to go through the day feeling terrific. By the end of the day I got a little cranky, but that was work's fault. A day full of meetings will do that to anyone. Today is a brand new day and I am a little sad that my run is getting postponed until the evening. I prefer exercising in the morning because it "gets my blood flowing," so to speak, but I really don't want to go out there in a thunderstorm. Maybe someday I will invest in a treadmill. I kind of doubt it. I really dislike treadmills. But it would be kind of nice to have an alternative to running when the weather stinks.
I found myself wanting to eat off program last night when I got home from work. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because there has been cake, brownies, and donuts at the office for a couple of days and I've had to tell myself no about 100 times a day. The good news is that I doubt that the cake and brownies were very good, anyway, as they came from a grocery store chain. Donuts are a different story. For some reason they can be very appealing, even though they are kind of a disgusting food. I didn't eat any cake or donuts, so it doesn't really matter if it tasted good or not. And I did not eat anything after I got home last night. I had a few cravings, but they passed and I moved on.
It really helps that I am eating my dinner at work. I don't eat any food after work. I come home, dump my plastic containers in the sink, and I am done with the kitchen for the night, except to get water. Eating no food after work is so much easier than eating a little food after work. If you are struggling with food in the evenings, give it a try. Pack your dinner, as well as your lunch, for a week, and eat dinner about a half hour before you leave work. By the time you get home you'll have had a chance to digest your food and you won't be anywhere near as likely to grab a snack as you come in the door. At least that's the way it works for me. If it hasn't made a difference after a week, then maybe it's not for you.
Speaking of what works for me, I have learned a very important lesson over the last 5 years: What works for me very likely won't be what works for you. We are all different when it comes to figuring out what will motivate us to succeed at our own personal wellness initiatives. A few years ago I thought I had found the magic formula that would work for anyone. Actually, I found the magic formula that worked for me. In fact, it was the magic formula that worked for me in that moment. Even I require different approaches at different moments. The key is to keep trying different things. If a particular set of tools isn't doing the trick and helping you stay on program, that isn't a reason to give up, it's a reason to get creative and think of something else. It would probably be a little amusing (but mostly really boring) to go back through my blog posts and count the number of times I've changed my program, each time proclaiming I had found the holy grail of motivational tools to keep me on program. I have no idea how many tips and tricks and tools I've implemented over the last 5 years. It's been quite a few. They key has been to never give up. That's the way it will be for the rest of my life, anyway. It's not about getting healthy and then going off program. It's about getting healthy and staying healthy for the rest of my life. That is going to take a bit of creativity!
I'm going to sign off and do a little on-line shopping. I want a rack for my new barbell set and a little running pouch that my trainer showed me. I'll see what I can find. I can't deny it, I'm becoming a gear-head. I don't need much of an excuse to buy something new for my exercise regimen. And Chris (one of the co-authors of Younger Next Year) proclaims, "Invest in good gear!" Yeah, OK, I can do that!!
Have a great day!!
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