Me: On a Diet progress
Since Sunday last week, I’ve lost 1 inch in my waist and 2 pounds. Whoop! Down 9 pounds since January 1 (when I started 2007 Taking Care and Improvement plan!). And that’s without much (any…) exercise due to avoidance and laziness and then being congested for over a week now.
This morning, I put on my gardening clothes (2 old t-shirts, ripped and sloppy green plaid flannel long-sleeve shirt, too big sloppy pants, hat with brim) and pruned the roses, cut down dying and dead plants, picked up dead leaves, pulled weeds - and got in my exercise for the day: bending, sweating, breathing hard, pulling, clipping, stretching, kneeling, crawling…
After our usual Sunday morning "breakfast by Bill" (2 whole wheat pancakes with sugar-free blackberry jam, 2 scrambled eggs, 3 slices of red potato), I took the You: On A Diet shopping list (PDF) grocery shopping, read a lot of labels, and discovered that we eat pretty well but need some adjustments. I bought more fruit and different types of vegetables than usual. And bought items we don’t usually eat: walnuts, almonds, semi-sweet chocolate chips, low-fat yogurt, etc.
There are a few items on the shopping list that I didn’t know what they are, such as calamata olives (also: kalamata olives) [dark eggplant-colored Greek olives, usually packed in olive oil or vinegar]. And some items were just not found (such as unsweetened canned peaches), so I substituted as close as possible (canned peaches in pear juice).
I’ve read the first 3 or 4 chapters of You: On a Diet and am taking care to read the sidebar items and review each figure. In a playful way, the book explains the science of how our bodies digest and use food and how different foods affect our hormones and organs.
I am excited about feeling better physically and mentally by making some key changes to the foods I eat. I’m still not keen on the exercise part of it, but think that when I begin to feel better, I’ll not find exercising to be such a sweaty, miserable burden.