Weekly Wrap Up - 16 July

I didn't quite make my goal to track my food. I started off strong, but the end of the week proved to be my undoing. Between feeling seriously under the weather and eating foods which cannot be tracked (since I live overseas and there is no way for me to read the nutritional content of restaurant food, if it were even to be provided), I just didn't have a hope. I am aiming to improve for this week.

BUT I'm really glad that I started to (more or less) accurately track what food I'm eating because I never would have figured out the problems otherwise. Here are the three surprising (and problematic) trends that I've already noticed:

-Too few calories. I never would have thought this was a problem. I honestly thought that I was likely getting too many calories. Not the case at all. Because I'm breastfeeding, I need to make sure that I'm getting at least 2000 calories a day. At of this week, my highest caloric intake in a single day has been 1795 but this was an outlier. The average amount was around 1400 calories. This is likely putting my body into starvation mode and holding onto all the fat and such that is coming in. I really, really need to increase the amount of calories I eat. (already working on this one!)

-Wrong balance of carbs/fats/proteins. I knew this was likely to be a problem, but surprise! I trade off on which I'm too high on – fats and proteins. I regularly have too few carbs. The low carbs likely occurs because I like high fiber fruits and veggies, don't eat many beans and don't eat much grains. The high protein was a surprise though, considering that for a good 10 to 12 years I was a semi (sometimes full) vegetarian. Nowadays they call it a “flexatarian”. In any case, I need to start bringing the proteins and fats down and add more carbs. (already working on this one too!)

-WAY too much sodium intake. This was another semi surprise. I grew up in a household that had limited sodium intake due to my grandfather's congestive heart failure, so I recognize that I have certainly added salt to my diet. What I didn't realize was just how much salt had been added. On every day so far, I've at least hit the upper limit for sodium. Some days I exceed. One day I almost doubled what is recommended (and I could tell... I felt like a salt lick). I know for a fact that chicken broth is my biggest downfall currently, but there are other foods that are proving themselves to be much saltier than I expected. (Not working on this yet.. this is going to be a monthly goal in the near future)

As for the exercise part of my goal.. I made it, but barely. I'm not too worried about it though, since I was feeling unwell.

All in all, not the most amazing start, but I didn't fall completely flat on my face. And for that, I will celebrate.

July Goals

I think it's important to have goals. It gives you a specific road to follow and that makes it much easier to keep on target. You can track your progress much more easily.

Since my end goal is very nebulous – be fit – I want to map out specific goals to make it a little more concrete. Among other reasons to have concrete goals, it's much easier for my husband to praise and encourage me if there is quantitative evidence that I'm doing better (and I need that positive reinforcement).

I'm also a fan of an idea posed over at unclutterer.com: make mini goals to be accomplished on a monthly basis instead of a large goal to be accomplished over a year. Or, if you must have a large goal, break it up into smaller steps that can be accomplished during a month.

I'm starting this part way into July, so these goals, though still very important, are going to be a little bit lighter than the goals that I will end up with later in the year.

I will have at least two goals a month – one geared towards nutrition, one geared towards exercise – though, my guess is that I will usually have three. I'm going to try to limit it to no more than four so that I can really focus on getting them all done. I will allow four because I'm not trying to complete any other goals in my life. This is my first priority.

Nutrition: Track what I'm eating. I can't effectively balance my diet if I don't know the nutritional content of what I eat on a regular basis. In addition to tracking calories/carbs/protein/fats, I will be tracking water intake, sodium, fiber, caffeine, calcium and iron. There are a number of other things that I could track, but I don't want to make myself insane. These are the ones that I have dubbed most important to me at this point in my life. I know that I will eventually get more vitamins and minerals as I vary my diet and eat better, so I choose to just not worry about this other stuff until I have tackled other, more important items.

As a sub goal on this, I will try not to feel down on myself when I don't have particularly healthy days, or even weeks. The purpose of this month is to track what I eat so that I know how to balance my diet, not to track my food and feel so badly about how I am currently that I either eat for comfort or stop tracking altogether. I'm not sure how I will do on this, but I need to try.

Fitness: Do something, anything, that counts as a healthy activity, totaling 3 hours/week. These are likely to be gentle activities that can be modified to meet my level of fitness, like yoga, walking and swimming.

Miscellaneous: Try to figure out how I can keep these two goals when my life gets busy. I can't count on a regularly scheduled time to be able to exercise or track what I eat, so I would like to know what contingency plans are in place when I don't have enough time to do one of these. As a bonus mission for this goal, I'm going to try to figure out how much volunteer time is a reasonable amount – allows me to get out of the house and be involved, without taking up so much time that it interferes with my goals. This determination will be mostly through observation, I think.

Where I Want To Be in Six Months

After thinking about my first post a little more, I realized that I wanted to clarify an important point.

I don't believe that I can be a perfectly healthy fitness guru in six months. That is not very likely for most people and I'm certainly in the masses on this one.

Rather, I want to get to a place where I have a better idea of how much and of what I should be eating. I need to see it with my own eyes. Diet plans (I shudder at that term) are not right for me. I refuse to sacrifice taste to be “able” to eat my favorite foods. If I can taste the difference between the regular version and the low fat/sugar/calorie/whatever version, then I will use the regular version and just make sure that I don't eat it as often. I refuse to be unhappy with what I eat because I truly believe that life is too short to have bad food.

I want to be active. I feel better when I've get regular exercise and I want that feeling back in my life.

I want to feel better about my weight, my looks. If I don't lose weight or lose inches that's okay. It's more important to me to feel healthy. But right now, I know that this is not a healthy weight for me because I'm not healthy. As long as I'm healthy, I care much less about what my weight is or if my waist is bigger than it once was. I feel much more beautiful when I'm healthy.

But I know that it's a work in progress. Even if I am only halfway to these goals by January, that is still significant progress and I will celebrate wholeheartedly.

Six Months to Fit

I've decided to embark upon the journey for the Holy Grail of Motherhood* – to lose weight/eat nutritiously/be fit.

I've known for a while now that I need to make this change. There are a myriad of reasons, but most importantly is that I want to learn now how to eat healthy so that my husband and I can be good role models for our son. Since he is only 3 months old, I knew that I needed to get this show on the road. He's going to be starting solids in a couple months and after that, I know he'll be much more aware of what we are eating. I don't want him not see us as we are eating now. I'd rather start him off right from the beginning.

Why 6 months? In about 6 months, it'll be 2012. The new year is such a nice, easy date to remember and easy to track how much time I have left. Plus, what better way to start a new year than feeling better about myself? I'm hoping that this will inspire me to make other nutrition or fitness goals for next year.

This is going to be hard. I have some serious challenges that I'm going to have to overcome. First and foremost, for most of my life (childhood, high school and even into college) I was that person who could eat pretty much whatever they wanted. My mother enforced a two-vegetable-at-dinner rule and there were specific guidelines about what we packed for lunch (and were expected to eat). I got most of my nutrition through those meals and in between, would eat less than nutritiously. It didn't matter as much though because I was always super active. I played sports or did marching band/winterguard and took the hard academic classes. Add in that I was just super skinny and my body expended a ton of energy just keeping me warm, and it means that I needed a high calorie diet just to keep up with everything that I was trying to do.

I no longer need that. My lifestyle has drastically changed. I'm not active in any kind of sport or fitness program, I'm no longer attending school and my job now consists of making sure our house doesn't turn into a complete disaster and caring for our son.

But unfortunately, my eating habits changed for the worse when I married my husband. Not to say that it was his fault, just that it was the catalyst. Veggies no longer are a meal time necessity. High fat, high calorie foods with less than desirable nutritional content became regular meals just because we liked them. Husband actually likes a lot of veggies, but he's perfectly content with just a meat and a starch. And because he is in the military and doing PT every morning, he doesn't necessarily keep a close eye on what he eats (plus he's blessed with an envious metabolism).

Our eating habits are not bad, persay. We don't have overly decadent dinners on a regular basis. We don't eat out more than (on average) once a week. I have started adding veggies back to dinner and trying to add them into my lunch as well.

But I know that it's not enough. I'm ignoring a lot of nutritional content because I don't want to have to put my favorite meals into the “on occasion” category instead of being a regularly rotated meal.

It's now time to change that attitude. I've always been an advocate of “the truth will set you free”. Time to accept that I won't get my favorite meals all the time, but the trade is more energy and feeling much more at peace with myself. I'm banking that the trade off will be worth it.

Rather unfortunately, I have other challenges that I need to work around.

One is that I live in a high humidity climate that is in the middle of the hot season. I will look up the temperature and it will regularly say something like “90 degrees Fahrenheit. 90% humidity. Feels like 105 (due to the humidity).” This means that exercising outside after about 8am or before 8pm is going to be a no go, unless it's swimming.

Two, I gave birth only three months ago. And while I've bounced back amazingly well, the limited activity I had during the end of my pregnancy as well as the first couple months of my son's life have put me into the category of unfit. In all honesty, I don't think I have ever felt so weak in my life. I can't just jump into a program with anything above a light to moderate intensity.

Three, if it feels like exercising, I'm likely not a fan of it. I've always loved playing sports, marching, dancing, rock climbing and the like. I don't want to feel as if the move that I'm doing has been added to the routine purely for the sake of wanting to have exercises that target all the muscles. If it feels like that, I won't stick with it for long. This includes all those “belly dance your way to a better body!” type classes/videos, weight training (I know, I know, I need it. I'm planning on adding it in once I have a decent routine going), aerobics, running or jogging, even lap swimming.

Four, I like to be able to do things in my own home. Couple reasons for this. One is that our situation (unfortunately) means that I can't rely on my husband to be home to take care of our son while I go off and take a class at the gym and I can't necessarily get babysitters regularly either (part of this is because I'm breastfeeding and don't always have a supply of milk available). Plus, I live on a military installation overseas. This means two things – one is that there are a ton of people who are super fit and they always seem to be at the gym and yes, I'm very intimidated. The other is that I'm limited in what classes I can take. There is only what the on base gym offers and the classes don't necessarily fit my time availability, interest level or need for a smaller class size. (example: Even though I like zumba, I don't go here because it's at a bad time for me (7pm) and because there are only a couple zumba classes offered during the week, it's usually PACKED).

Five, I don't have a ton of time available. Well, I do and I don't. Caring for a three month old baby is incredibly time consuming. The only time I can really exercise is while he is sleeping, but there is no guarantee that he will stay asleep. Plus, it means getting over the idea that his nap time is when I should be doing the chores around the house.

Six, I'm breastfeeding. I can't simply cut calories from my diet (even if I thought that this was the right approach, which I don't). I have to make sure that I'm getting enough calories for my body to be able to produce sufficient milk without it going into starvation mode. My task is to try to consume enough calories while keeping the nutritional content high. I'm starting to find that this is probably going to be the most daunting task.

Seven, produce is expensive here and I have a very hard time paying so much for so little especially when what we do get is of suspect quality. I know that we are lucky to get certain items that the locals don't really eat here, but it's hard to remember to be grateful when the veggies too often are moldy before we can even use them. Basically, I'm going to have to get creative if I want to have fruits and veggies as often as I should be having them.

Eight, we are somewhat limited by what foods are available. Even frozen foods are limited. Things that I consider to be no brainer to have stocked in the freezer section (pearl onions, snow/snap peas) have never been there (that I've seen). I'm not sure if this is because I am from the West and we like those “weird” foods or if I just have a different idea than normal about what is a staple.

Nine, I'd rather do this as least expensively as possible. We have a couple major things that we are saving up for and I don't want to have to put less money towards them each month if I don't have to. That being said, this is the least problematic challenge because both my husband and I are willing to pay a little extra for groceries if it means that we don't have to sacrifice the quality and taste of the food.

I do believe that I can do this. Otherwise, why even try for it? It's just going to take serious work but like I said previously, I'm banking on it being worth it. Cheers to taking my first step forward!

*There are actually two Holy Grails of Motherhood. The first being this one, the second is raising a child so well that everyone you know sits back and admires the job you did, including the child. Both are absolutely worthy goals.