Decided to go on a personal "lent" for 30 days. Oct 4th, I gave up random snacking and snacks. I said goodbye to cheese curls, cheese balls, Spee's fried Split peas, cheese sticks, kiss cakes, and other assorted snacks that can be my "tie over" to the next meal or just a random thing to do. First day started with me remembering how ingrained this snacking habit was. Popped 5 chocolate chips into my mouth first thing in the morning. Only remembered my commitment after I swallowed. Great. But that's ok. I've been chugging along since. I'm in the hallucination stage where snacks are talking to me at the grocery store. But that's ok. It's 30 days. Well..
While I was exercising today, decided to push for an end of year bang. After my 30 days are up (interestingly Nov 4th) I'm gonna allow myself a 1 day free pass to touch base with my snacks again and release any cravings I may have. But the next day, I'm back on my no-snacks PLUS I'll be adding another "Lenting" item. Thinking of giving up soda and fake juices. Not sure what my December "give up" item will be though. I'll be allowing exceptions for the Christmas day but now as I type, I think I should still be able to do it with no snacking and no soda. I can still enjoy Christmas without those. So we'll see. I'll also throw in some exercise as I've been doing. Nothing scheduled. Just fitting it in as I can and as inspired. So far, I did 2 days last week and I exercised today.
I'm liking the experience so far. Instead of focusing on multiple things, I'm dealing with one thing, the habit. All my snacks are dispensable calories that I can live without and don't need. I am allowing some healthy "snacks" (like 94% fat free popcorn) but I haven't had any all day snacking experiences. Used the popcorn to "make it through" while cooking a meal etc. So, if I'm hungry and it's not meal time yet, I have to eat something healthy that can not fit into a random snacks list. Requires me to be honest with myself of course, but so far no probs. I'm kinda looking forward to the success of saying I did it for 30 days. Well, 29.5 (the chocolate-chipgate experience).
Spent the year vacillating around 210lbs give or take a few pounds. Weighed in at the end of the first week of "lent" at 205.4 lbs. Last year around this time I was 205.2lbs. The next week I had gotten down to 204.2lbs. I'm hoping to get past 204.2 lbs this year and even lower.
Come Jan 2009, I'm hoping that I'll want to continue the discontinuance of the habits that I tried to kick in the last months of 2008 and then I'll be adding things on instead of giving things up... example... one month I may add on vegetable/fruit servings.... or taking calcium pills or vitamins.... Basically, adding on some new habits.
I'm rediscovering the whole thing of as I focus on one health thing and implement it, I become aware of other things. So while I feel no pressure to exercise, cause all I've committed to is the giving up of snacks, I feel good about getting some workouts in. It's like a little perk. I'm also figuring that with a little exercise, I can max out a bit more from combined diet modification and working-out.
If anybody's willing to join me on giving up some habits for a weight-loss "Lent" I'd love to have company!
Here's to keeping up the fight-- whatever strategy we're doing!
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