I have researched many healthy eating programs. The challenge is the data is always so conflicting. For example, I looked at the following:
The End of Diabetes
The blood sugar solution
Atkins Diabetes Revolution
Eat to Live
Dukan Diet
Leptin efficiency
Made to Crave
SASS yourself slim
The skinny Gut Diet
The Venus Factor
It Starts with Food
Dash Diet
Peles Diet
Green Smoothie Diet
Fed UP
Statin Damage Crisis
Have a New You by Friday
Weight Watchers
Medical intervention
Appetite Control programs
OKAY, enough already… After all my research I think I have decided that I have such a head game going on with weight control and I have lost sight of the importance of a strong body and healthy nutrition. Yes, there are many reasons to choose one or more of the approaches you will find in these programs, but not one of the programs will do the work for you until you decide to put all that knowledge and wisdom together with an action plan.
I am, by nature, a person who wants to plan and organize and analyze all the options that are available before I actually make a decision. I spend so much time analyzing it that I actually fail to launch any plan! Yep, how many of you have been caught in this trap?
So, today is the first day of 2016. I can’t find any reasons lurking in my head that will convince me to wait and start the plan 2 or 3 months from now. However, it doesn’t mean that my analytical brain won’t go back into those cob webs and unearth some crazy idea that I will fail if I start before [fill in the blank here with your excuses].
As I finally take the first step, I realize that my biggest problem is sugar and lack of movement. I work at a desk everyday with an occasional walk to meetings or better stated…a walk to the elevator bank and ride it to the floor where the meeting is to take place. This is followed by a walk to the cafeteria to get my food and come back to my desk only to down it in less than 10 minutes. Are you seeing a problem, yet? I will repeat this same behavior when I get home. I stand in the kitchen for an hour (at best) preparing the meal to eat for dinner and then I eat in front of the TV and then spend the next couple of hours catching up on social media and TV shows. Really, some days I fall asleep and actually miss the 2 hours of social media stalking/browsing and wake up later to just go ahead and go up to bed. The only exercise I get is taking the 12/13 steps upstairs to fall into the bed. Yes, I am being brutally honest.
Today, I am choosing to make healthier choices. So I have a Fitbit that will track my steps. The rule of thumb is to aim for a certain amount of steps per day. For example the Fitbit program tells you to achieve 10,000 steps per day. This is so intimidating to me. I can’t let this get to me… I have to start with what I can do. So instead of steps I am going to focus on walking for a few warm up minutes first thing in the morning around the house ending with taking the stairs – up and down – 5 times. This will be simple, because I will go downstairs to fix my lunch and coffee, then back upstairs to do the shower and get ready for work then back down stairs to head for work ( I hate this and usually make a minimal amount of up and down trips to avoid). Once I get to work, I will set two alarms to walk for 15 minutes twice a day (AM and PM). This will help me get exercise in when I have energy. I know that I can’t do any exercise after work, at least not to start with…but this can be reassessed once I feel some success on what I do during the day.
Next hurdle, sugar… You know this is going to be hard because I am all sugared up with various types of sugar from breads, rolls, sweets and candy, chocolate and more sugar. I think this will start with eliminating at first. I am not good about cold turkey on this… So, all natural carbs stay, but anything processed or altered with sugar goes. For example, a potato can stay but anything made with flour goes, for now! Anything that isn’t altered (veggies, fruit and nuts) stay. Meat that is lean stays, with the exception of red meat which, for now, will be completely removed.
So here we go…I will keep you posted!
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