Goodbye June, Hello July!

What I learned in June

I learned about experiencing setbacks on your health journey. I define a setback as an experience in your life that over takes your focus on health. My setback came in the form of losing my grandmother this month. During this time I ate a lot of fast food and junk food. My initial reaction was to do a reset. My focus was on my weight. Whenever I feel that my life is out of control I focus on my weight. By focusing on my weight I ended up trying to do an extreme detox. I had a plan to eat soup for dinner for 24 days, among other things. I experienced a recoil effect from the deprivation and I was reminded of why it is important that I have after dinner snacks as I found myself binge eating on sugar. I am grateful I had this experience of dealing with a setback in my journey, because it helped me face my fear of back sliding on my journey. In the back of my mind there was a fear that one day I would return to my former ways and regain all that I had lost. Through the experience of dealing with a setback I learned that my fear will never be realized, because I am gaining the skills and knowledge to never be the same unhealthy person ever again. I learned that I can always get back up. I learned that the proper way to do a reset is to simply focus on one or two healthy habits and build your way back into your normal routine. I learned you should expect to struggle and that you should not beat yourself up. The two habits I focused on were my daily walks and eating a healthy breakfast and lunch. In a few days I was able to go from not taking any walks and eating doughnuts for breakfast to walking daily and eating veggie burgers and fruit for breakfast and lunch. I also learned that for me when it comes to detox plans my limit is no more than 3-5 days maximum.

This July I am looking forward to continuing to keep up my walking routine, adding back in some strength training. I got a brand new set of weights from 3LBs to 15LB’s. I will be taking the stairs more and doing squats. I plan to use a paper journal to keep a food diary that is not focused on calorie counting, and to record my thoughts and feeling’s each day. I am also making the choice not to focus on weight-loss, but to focus on maintain healthy habits and the weight-loss will naturally follow. I have designed my own simply filling foods list with foods that are best for me on my journey. My list basically includes fruit, vegetables, beans, soy products, brown rice, low-fat snacks, and I am trying to stay away from trigger foods and junk foods that are high in fat. I am doing weekly meal planning and daily meal planning. I will be eating lots of veggie patty’s with vegetables, brown rice or potatoes, beans and rice, salads and other special meal idea’s such as veggie fajita’s.

CLM