On being healthy

I have been thinking lately about being healthy, and what that means. Part of this is because I have been a little unhealthy recently. My diet has consisted of almost nothing but carbs and coffee! Coffee and a pastry for breakfast; a noodle bowl for lunch, a cookie (or crackers, or chips) for a snack, at least one more cup of coffee, pasta or rice for dinner. Maybe some juice. Lots of sparkling water. Lately, Helados Mexicos (which are these really tasty strawberries and cream popsicle things; beware though... the sticks are not centered, so they often fall off!). For someone who studies food intake, exercise, obesity, etc. this is pretty sad!

On the bright side, I have been running fairly sporadically, but about 2x/week, which is good, but otherwise I sit a lot. I should do more running, or maybe swimming, cycling, yoga, weight training, etc. More of something, anyway. I would like to be able to run 3 consecutive 8 minute miles without too much trouble. Thus far, I have had one mile under 8:00 TOTAL (I am proud of that mile!).

So, to correct my diet, and improve my exercise habits, I am turning back to my old friend Sparkpeople. I honestly don't have enough good things to say about sparkpeople; I lost almost 50 lbs using their website, and have kept [most] it off for a fairly long time. For those of you who are looking to lose weight, it is an excellent tool; their system makes a lot of sense to me (I will talk about their system later). I think that it is a decent tool for anybody (wanting to lose weight or not) to track their fitness accomplishments, and assess their diets (to see if they're generally eating a healthy amount/variety of food).

Annoying, cheesy before/after:

before (above), after (below) (FYI, if you want to lose weight, nix the cream and just put whiskey in your coffee).

The reason I hate hate HATE diets that encourage you to eat basically nothing for 3 weeks, since that is not sustainable. Sparkpeople starts you out making one or two positive changes; these can be going for a walk every day, drinking 8 glasses of water, or switching up a cookie for an apple. At this point, they aren't encouraging you to lose weight, just be a little bit healthier. Eventually, you begin tracking your calories and exercises, but they wean you into it. It secretly becomes a part of your routine, which is the best way to start one.

The other thing I like about it is that there is a lot of information about not punishing yourself too harshly for screwing up. So you ate a pizza... maybe 2000 calories. Sure, that's a lot, but there is very little harm done until you convince yourself you are a failure at dieting and quit altogether.

Anyway, I am not really trying to lose weight (maybe 5 lbs max), but I do want to be healthy, so I will try to track my calories/exercise (I keep wanting to write ingestive behavior jargon here! sorry!) for the next few weeks [maybe longer; i have mostly figured out how to eat a healthy diet, but sometimes need to be reminded, lol]. If anybody wants to join me, feel free!!! :)