What I need to do and stop doing

To do

*Keep tracking my food intake on the daily

I used to use Livestrong to track my food and exercise. It’s free to join and it tells you the amount of calories, carbs, fats, cholesterol. etc that you take in on the daily.  You can enter in your current age, weight and height and then control your settings like if you want to lose a pound or two a weight, gain weight or even maintain your weight. They have just about every food to enter in for the day and you can manually enter in your exercise or search their database. I used it for so long but then stopped because I felt like I was becoming obsessive over it with tracking every single morsel that went in my mouth.

Well apparently, being obsessive is how I roll.

Many of you know about my former job situation and the effect it took on my health-mental and physical. I was in a deep depression and gained 25 (yes, 25) pounds. With a seven month period—it’s never good to gain that much weight, especially in that short of a time frame (and on a short girl) Now that I’ve quit my job, I’m dealing with the repercussions of gaining that weight. And tracking is what works for me. I can’t do the guesstimation at this time of what I eat every day, I need to enter in everything to hold me accountable for what’s going in my body. I lost two pounds last week which is a small win on the road to a larger victory.

*Plan my meals

This is only going to get more difficult in the next few months since I will be living as a gypsy. I have planned out my meals for this week by using what I got along with some produce that’s on sale this week.

*Find gyms while out of town

Finding and going to the YMCA while in Florida and Indiana was such a success, I can’t wait to find other locations wherever my next stops will be.

*Cutting down on the hooch

I’m a drinker, there’s no question about that.  And it’s fine in moderation but my problem is that I heart beer. In the summertime there is nothing as a refreshing as a cold, beer (those who say lemonade is the ultimate summertime refreshment are lame and in denial) But those empty calories are not my friends and I’ve been drinking more and more lately. Two summers ago, I barely drank. I would go out once or twice a month with friends for a night and drink and that was it. Unfortunately, it’s the main thing to do when I get together with friends so I need to find a way to cut down or limit it to just once a week for the time being.

*Mix up my playlist

I’m horrible about changing my playlist. It only happens a few times a year and I don’t know why I don’t change it more often. I think it has something to do with laziness. I can proudly say I have quite a variety on my playlist though:

Stop Doing

*Freaking out over the numbers on my heart rate monitor

I thought I forgot my heart rate monitor band in Indianapolis. I went a week with working out without it and it was nice. I felt naked at first since I couldn’t see how many calories I had burned or what my heart rate was. But instead, I was listening to my body and concentrating more on the movements instead of the numbers in front of me. Sometimes my heart rate monitor will read my heart rate as 0 while working out (I guess I have died a few times?) and other times, I wonder if it is an accurate read of how many calories I’m burning. I tend to focus solely on the number and that’s and will get disappointed if I don’t have a good burn. So I am going to continue to use my heart rate monitor since I think it’s a good gage but at the same time, I’m going to listen more to my body.

*Letting other people distract me

Airports are one of my favorite places to go to for the people watching alone. And the gym is similar to the airport, well except for the planes and travel aspects of it. The people watching at the gym is spectacular especially since the location I go to is on the outskirts of Uptown Charlotte. You got yuppies, gays, urbanites, college kids, elderly folk-the whole shebang. And sometimes I just can’t help staring at people and wondering what their situation is or why they are freak. If I could have one semi-superhero power, it would be the power to know what people are listening to on their ipod. I’m always intrigued by this for some reason like “Oh, she looks like she’s listening to Gloria Gaynor” or “Yep, he’s Def Leppard all the way” But other times, I let the people around me distract me. Such as the guy working out next to me who sang Rod Stewart the entire duration of my workout (um, I don’t like Rod Stewart so kindly shut up) or the mini’s AKA the yuppie moms of four children whose sole purpose in life is to compete in marathons, go to bookclub and Starbucks. I start to get into comparisons and feel like I should be doing more.

*Going in with a plan

You read that right. While most people swear on a workout plan before they go into the gym, I don’t. I don’t like committing to something (#29 why I’m not in a relationship) and if my plan doesn’t follow through, I tend to just leave saying I’ll come back tomorrow to do it. So, I keep it broad just saying “Today I’m going to do x minutes of cardio and strength training concentrating on my lower or upper body” if I keep it vague like this, I am more likely to succeed. I think it’s about knowing what works for you as opposed to what works for the general public.

*Being emo

I get down on myself about my weight and get all emo. It sucks and it needs to stop. I’ve come a long way and while I’ve gained some weight back, I’m not at my original weight. I need to keep thinking positively and move in the right direction.

What do you need to do and stop doing in regards to your health?