This morning I weighed in a Weight Watchers and... I didn't lose anything but I also didn't gain! I am so, so relieved because I seem to be picking up a bad habit of... picking up new bad eating habits throughout the week. It's getting to be frustrating but I cannot let it get to me. I have to remind myself that it's good that I'm recognizing the behavior so I can work on changing whatever bad habit I've picked up throughout the week and make specific changes to stop said habit. It's also good that I'm recognizing I'm in this cycle of picking up new bad eating habits every week since it's making me consider why I'm in that routine of forming new habits every week.
After much consideration, I've finally realized that my mental health is not in a place where it should be in order for me to be successful on plan. I'm a firm believer that being healthy should be looked at from a holistic point of view. I think it's vital to not only be physically healthy on ALL aspects but to also be mentally healthy for your overall well-being. I came to this conclusion last week and have already made an appointment to seek professional health. I'm almost ashamed to admit that because I really feel the world (and/or the United States) has such a negative perspective/stigma on mental health and seeking necessary help. If you know anything about me at all, then you'll know that I'm generally a happy, carefree, calm kind of person. There's nothing dangerously wrong with me, I'm just going through stuff that I need to work out more extensively be truly happy as opposed as to just showing that bubbly façade on a daily basis.
The one downside of my past week was discovering the inexpensive bags of mixed granola, nuts, & dried fruit that are sold at the cafe located at my workplace. I never knew such a delicious food item existed until this past weekend but once I knew they had it, I had a bag a night for three nights in a row. Terrible, I know! What's worse is that Tuesday night -- my last night of eating said granola -- I didn't even really want to eat the granola. It was a mixture of the newly-formed habit of buying the mixed granola as well as having some feeling some perplexing emotions that led me to buying another bag of the delicious treat. However, it's a new week and a fresh start. I've made it half-way through my day at work without strolling over to the in-house cafe to buy a bag of the granola. My plan for upcoming weeks (until I have firmly broken the habit) is to 1) not walk through the cafe as I go to & from work, and 2) keep myself busy at work with doing work stuff, writing, or talking with others until the craving goes away (or the cafe closes at 11pm).
So, yes, I formed a new habit that cost me 12 or more points+ a night for all three nights that I ate the granola but at least I have a specific plan set for how I'm going to break my new bad habit.
Anyways, aside from that small set-bad, I feel that I have made some noticeable improvements with my tracking and eating this past week. My biggest change was creating a handy Google Excel document to track my daily intake of fruits and vegetables. My goal is (and has been) to eat a "rainbow" of fruits & veggies every day, as inspired by something I've heard from The Dr. Oz Show (although I don't watch his show, my mom often tells me things she's learned from his show). Since participating in the challenge my Weight Watcher Leader created, she has brought to my attention that I need to watch how much fruit I eat in a day. Therefore, I'm hoping this spreadsheet will help me track not only what colors of the rainbow I eat in a day but also help me track how many vegetables I'm eating compared to how many fruits I'm eating on a daily basis.
My overall goal for my Google Excel document is to help me expand my knowledge of the fruits and vegetables out there. In particular I want to learn how to prepare and eat different veggies so I find them more enjoyable to consume. Right now I obviously prefer to eat fruit over vegetables but I'm hoping this will eventually change.
For this upcoming week, my goals to work on are similar to last week's...
- T R A C K E V E R Y T H I N G
- Check off my daily Good Health Guidelines (GHGs)
- Update my daily WW reminders on my phone (since my iPhone's operating system got updated, I had to reset my phone to a previous back-up so I lost a lot of information in one of my apps including my log of daily work-outs and my WW reminders)
- Continue writing or blogging as often as possible to help my clear my mind
I'm adding the last goal of writing on a daily or semi-daily basis because writing can be very cathartic for me. The days when I didn't write, I ate the aforementioned bags of granola only to realize a couple of days later that had all of these pent-up thoughts running through my head that were really making me sad. So I've been a state of sadness for the past few days without anyone to really talk to about my feelings but I also haven't sat down to properly write my feelings or emotions down, which can often help in the absence of a friend. However, I do think this is ultimately why I'm seeking professional help: because for the past seven weeks or so, I've been blogging/writing more to help cope with the roller coaster of emotions I've been feeling but I still don't feel whole again. For almost two months I've felt very amiss for various reasons. I haven't felt grounded and, in fact, I've felt very lost for the past seven weeks. I feel that with some guidance from someone with an outside perspective, I may be able to cope more with everything that's been happening since March.
Since this post has now gotten quite long, I'll try to keep my Non-Scale Victory part of the post short. My NSV for the week is trying out a new cardio machine! When I went to the gym on Monday, I noticed that all of the ellipticals were in use. Since my knee was still hurting from an inexplicable injury over the weekend, I wanted to stay away from treadmill and I absolutely HATE Arc Trainers. So I ended up hoping on this:
It's called an Octane Lateral X and the picture just doesn't do it justice because, in person, the machine looks very intimidating. However I tried it and loved it since not only is it fun (yes, fun!) but it's also a VERY different work out compared to using an elliptical. You can use the stationary handle bars in the middle to adjust your body so, for example, you can be in a squat position while your legs are moving in that later direction as shown above. On the machine, you can change the width of the lateral movement, the difficulty, and program. With the awesome built-in fan, I definitely plan to continue using this machine!
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