Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Day 24, The end of the beginning

Apparently, it is possible to eat at fast food joints and casual dining places without crushing my efforts.  Not that it is recommended in any way shape or form, but there are ways to make healthier choices if that happens to be where you end up for chow.  This was the theme of my morning class today.  And true.  There is so much more bad out there than good with restaurants, but they can and do offer options.  We discussed many situations in class, but what they suggested doing for times where you may find yourself with little other option, is to take a proactive approach and do a little homework ahead of time.  Even to go so far as to pre-plan a future meal plan if you do cross the thresholds of some of these restaurants.  Go on their websites take a look at their nutritional info and make choices for five of your go to joints. This way if you do happen to walk into a McDonalds (heaven forbid) that you can survive by knowing ahead of time what you can do nutritionally.  That being said, and my own harder challenge is to keep the sodium intake low.  This is almost impossible with commercial food distributors.  There is so much salt in freakin everything, it is a little frightening.  I've sang this song already, but it was an interesting class and to me, a bit more on the practical side as I try to implement this stuff into my life back in the jungle.

Another water day, I plan on being in the pool for the next four days as much as I can...I can get on a tread mill or step machine anywhere.  I wish there were more umbrella drinks here though.

We had another "ask the expert", the fourth in the series, and this one was from the Medical department.  Basically, the doc sits down and fields questions from the audience about anything...most of all about what we have been learning here.  Many of the questions are more clarifying opportunities to dive into classroom answers a little deeper.  It has been helpful.  There are new devices that will be in my house beginning next week.  First, I'm bringing in two scales....one for me, one for my food.  The one for me, well that's obvious.  I need to monitor my weight.  Duh.  Who knew?  I really don't wish to back slide on the weight loss head start I've given myself at all.  I'm prepared for it as I adjust to my new routines, but I need to know when it is happening so that I can react and plan accordingly.  It seems so simple, but this is huge.  The food scale, which I already purchased, is pretty cool as it calculates calories based off of what you are weighing.  It's pretty slick and it will help me to monitor portion sizes.  We all get pretty good at knowing the calories of things because of the way they have you plan your menus here.  But what tend to happen to folks is what they call portion creep.  This is basically the way your eye perceives what a portion size is for a particular item.  We've been tested in this skill, but after about eight weeks or so, our brains start to accept larger portions as correct, when in fact, it is more than what the goal is.  So monitoring portion sizes just reinforces the guidelines that I will be following.  Lastly, I will be monitoring my own BP.  This has been such an eye opening experience to me in this regard, that I just feel more comfortable knowing what my body is doing much more often than my annual trip to the doc.  (nearly passing out will do this to you...as fun as it was...I much prefer to make my world spin with booze and not bodily function and blood supply to my melon.

Then began the beginning of the end of my beginning.  I'm here for four or five more days, but some staff, courses ect need to wrap up with me now because of the holiday. Some of the wrap-up classes on how I am supposed to take this binder and CD's worth of information and somehow make it work for my lifestyle at home.  There is a crap load of goal setting to do!  (I do like goals...not.  But I do understand their import at this point)  It's probably best that I'm setting my own.  It's all about reasonableness.  I think what I like most about this place is their mantra of "Progress, not Perfection".  It allows for lee way, slippage, and recovery.  It's not about being perfect at it all the time, but putting what I've learned in place most of the time.  If I do that, then I am so much further ahead of where I was before.  I don't really want to go back there.  I've elected to enroll in their coaching program for three months for now.  Basically, this will be an exchange of emails and phone calls of follow up, addressing issues and concerns and helping me to stay on the tracks.  I have the option to extend that if I need to later on.  The other thing is that they are offering a decent discount for a refresher visit.  I can't say today if I will, but I am strongly considering it to keep this momentum up...6-9 months from now when I tend to fall off the wagon with these things.  It could become a twice a year thing for me in the future...we'll see how it goes.

The remaining of the ranks here for the holiday weekend have a Monster water volleyball match planned for tomorrow at 10am.  Mom and Dad, if you arrive and I'm not around, I'll be up in a few minutes...

Cheers.

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