January - Year of Resolutions

I know you weren't expecting another update so quickly.  Try to breathe normally; please, contain your excitement.

This is my good-faith effort to keep you updated on my Year of Resolutions, and seeing as how I'm actually a bit behind, I decided to go ahead and fill you in on my plan of action for January's focus on health. I gave you a basic idea of what my approach was going to be back in my full YoR post, but I am a detail-oriented person and a self-titled over-sharer, so get ready for more than you ever wanted to know about my weight-loss strategies!

Diet*

Though I've been lured by my share of popular diets, I'm choosing to stick with what seems most reasonable, and more importantly, feasible, for me right now. Everyday, I will try to eat the following:

• Fresh fruit or equivalent (fruit cups, applesauce, etc.) with each meal 
• Fresh vegetables or equivalent (canned, frozen, etc.) with at least 2 meals (still trying to figure out how to eat vegetables at breakfast)
• Lean protein (animal or otherwise) with each meal
• Whole grains with at least two meals (for me, this is usually a bread product - I am NOT a rice person)
• Two 'healthy' snacks, if I want them (whole foods preferred over processed)

You may have noticed a lack of dairy products in my plan. I quit drinking milk almost two years ago because I believed it was negatively impacting my skin and aggravating my acne.  I have seen so much improvement since then that I've stuck with it.  I never purchase milk for myself, though I still love it and will sneak an odd glass at someone else's home.  As for the other members of the dairy family, I regularly eat cheese, but would like to experiment with cutting it back, and I've never been a fan of yogurt or sour cream and their variations. Don't worry though: I do take supplements and am getting my recommended intake of calcium.

Three other guidelines I'm following in regards to what I'm putting in my body:

• Drink water more often than other beverages. There are competing schools of thought on this. Many say that the '8 8-oz glasses a day' stand-by is no longer true, and you should really be drinking half your body weight in ounces of water (so a 150-lb person would drink 75-oz). So far I get roughly 68 ounces a day, which puts me somewhere in the middle.
• Rarely consume alcohol. I've never been a regular drinker, but with an emphasis on weight-loss and health, I'm becoming even less of one. I don't want the extra calories or the munchies that sometimes accompany boozy beverages. Plus, it's always good to treat your internal organs with respect!
• Treat myself daily. Ok, I might as well admit it.  I have a whopper of a sweet tooth, especially with baked goods. Little Debbies are an outright weakness. I find it damn near impossible to do without something sugary for extended periods of time ever. Thankfully, one of something is usually enough to satisfy me whether it's a snack cake, a funsize candy bar, a cookie, or an ice cream. With all of that in mind, I've decided to have my cake and eat it too, and not feel guilty about it.

Exercise

There was a time when I enjoyed a fair amount of strength training at the Student Activity Center on Montevallo's campus, but now, I'm stuck at home on a budget that doesn't allow for a gym membership.  With that in mind, my focus right now is just on getting back in the swing of things.  My plan is to walk on my new treadmill (thanks, Mom and Dad!) every day, and maybe in February we'll see about adding some other things in.  I do have a few workout videos and one set of hand weights, plus there are lots of great exercises which use your own body weight.

I'm starting slow now, but eventually I'd like to begin the 12-week plan from Run Your Butt Off, a book from the publisher of Runner's World, on how to become a runner when you don't even walk.  Running (jogging really) was something I was just beginning to enjoy when I fell off the wagon, so to speak, and I'd like to pick it back up. My family, Mom especially, has enjoyed the journey this book has taken them on and recommended it to me.

*You'll notice I left out words like "servings" or other indicators of how much I'm eating.  I know how much fruit/meat/veggies is reasonable to eat in one sitting; I know that the calories from the foods I've chosen are more nutrient-dense than what I'm moving away from; and I want to enjoy my food without feeling the need to constantly measure it.  Because of my background in Family and Consumer Sciences and just constantly being in the kitchen, I can eyeball something and tell you with fair accuracy how much it is, at least in English measurements, which gets me by just fine on myfitnesspal.com when it's time to calculate calories (Join me or friend me, by the way! I'm bnsnwldwmn). I believe in the calories in vs. calories out theory of effective weight loss, and I am keeping a record of what I'm eating and what I'm burning, especially since I've been out of practice, but my goal is to lose weight without it becoming unduly stressful.

And that, in a very large nutshell, is my very basic, low-tech, no-nonsense approach to improving my health and losing the weight that's bothering me. I'll let you know how it is going in a few weeks!