Journal Update - 2/5/10

All in all it's been an ok week.  I was certainly better than last week, but I probably should have done better.  I ate well all week long and got at least 64oz. of water in every day.  I exercised every day except for today because I had to go shovel snow in the morning so I could get to work.  Today was a strength training day so I need to make it up tomorrow morning. 

On Wednesday I went out for lunch, and was pleasantly surprised with my performance.  I did get a soda, but then I just got the salad bar and stayed away from the burgers (even though I really wanted one so bad!).  I'm expecting that tomorrow I'll post a loss.

This week has been a lot about reflections for me.  After last week, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about my life.  During the week I wrote an article about making sure your happy because losing weight will not do it alone.  I wrote it because I've started to realize that this is one of my problems.

I think I've always used my weight as an excuse for not dealing with the things that make me unhappy.  For years I've spent my time convinced that my weight was the only reason why I wasn't happy but the reality is I can lose all the weight I want and I'll still have the issues I have now.  The last thing I want to do is go through all this trouble losing the weight only to gain it back because I'm still not happy.  I use food to make me feel better so I have 2 choices; I can stop using food to make me feel better or I can start feeling better!

So now I have 2 journeys; I'm going to lose this weight and I'm going to start focusing on what exactly makes me unhappy.  My first focus is going to be on my activity level.  I've started to realize that since we moved I have become very inactive.  Here's a sample of my typical work day:

I get up at 6:00 and (most days) I work out for 20-45 minutes.  I go to work and about 80% of my day is spent sitting at a desk.  At lunch time I eat a quick lunch and then spend the rest of it on the internet reading blogs I follow,  researching stocks, and writing drafts for my blog posts.  I get home usually around 5:30 and then spend the next hour decompressing.  Decompressing is really just a fancy word for being lazy.  I bum around on the computer, sometimes playing Miniclip games or polishing up my blog articles.  Sometimes I read a book instead and sometimes I do nothing but hang out on the couch and watch Pink Panther cartoons with my kids.  Sometime around 6:30 we eat dinner .  After that I watch the news.  Then it's back to the computer or sometimes I just sit and watch whatever happens to be on at the time.  The kids get put to bed and then me and the wife usually watch TV until 10:00.  Then it's off to bed.

How's that for being inactive?  What's interesting is that I never used to be like this before we moved.  Before we moved, I was busy renovating our old house, or doing yard work, or sometimes I would just play with the kids.  Now I do nothing.  I have plenty that I could be doing, I have a huge list of projects that need to be done.  For some reason I keep telling myself I'll do them on the weekend but then the weekend comes and nothing gets accomplished.  I won't bore you with my typical weekend, but let's just say it's not much better than my workdays.

So the first order of business on being happy again is to start being more active.  I have my list of activites and it's time to just get started.  I'm going to try to stay off the computer and TV until 8:00PM during the week.  That gives me a lot of time to get things done around the house.  We've been in our new house for almost a year and a half and I haven't done hardly anything to it to make it feel like our home (probably another source of unhappiness).

What's cool is that if I start being more active again, not only should I feel better, but it should also help me with losing weight.  Based on my diet I should be losing about 2 pounds a week, but lately it's been more like 1.  That other pound isn't coming off because I'm not moving around enough.

So wish me luck as I try to get moving a little more and mope around a little less.  Good luck to everyone out there, I hope everyone has good numbers this weekend.