New Year, New Start - January WISH Challenge

Topic Tuesday... I don't do resolutions but I do reflect and set intentions. This year I'm going in to 2020 with an actual plan. Part One is to clear all the stuff out of the house and garage, Part Two is to seriously save money to go towards a house down payment and Part Three is to get back on the healthy train.

Woohoo Wednesday... the New Year's Eve celebration in Port Townsend was so much fun. A storm had been blowing all day, but cleared up enough in the evening that we weren't getting soaked walking from location to location and the fireworks were able to be set off. There were six locations around town with different types of entertainment, totally random stuff like a presentation with/about parrots, a hippy choir (think koom-ba-yah), a three piece folk band, karioki, square dancing, crafts and then the fire works. Just a total hoot!

Thankful Thursday... Person - my Niece Tara. We've always had special relationship and at the moment she is blazing a trail for me to follow. Place - I've fallen in love with Port Townsend and am starting to really see myself living there. Thing - my trusty little car. It's a 2004 Pontiac Vibe that is still going strong. This weekend it is going to get a serious deep cleaning as a thank you for the lovely little road trips we've been doing lately.

I'm on my business trip right now, but when I get home I am starting a hardcore Whole 30 program, since that is how I am supposed to be eating any way. Everything comes out of the fridge, I'm picking some recipes to cook up, ding meal prep, the whole shebang.
 
Thankful Thursday

Person
- I’m thankful for my mom. She prepares all holiday meals and wouldn’t have it any other way. She loves having the whole family come together at her house (even though it’s the smallest house since they’ve downsized. It really helps me to relax over the holidays, which was especially important this Christmas since I was recovering from the stomach bug.
Place - I’m thankful for our finished basement. As the kids get older, I feel like it’s harder to connect with them. But our basement is where we come together as a family. Sometimes it’s to watch a movie, other times it’s to play a game. This year it was to celebrate New Years Eve together.
Thing - I can’t believe I’m going to say this or admit this, but I’m thankful for my phone. It holds my schedule (calendar), keeps me connected to people when I can’t be with them, helps me track my health goals, takes pictures to hold memories, and much more. I know it can also be a distraction. But that’s something I need to control.
 
I am going to post my diary from my diet fix reset, including my notes from the audio book on Fridays.

It's LONG! but I like referring to old post I made on monthly discussions. My day 2 was actually 31st of December and I wrote the below few days ago


Day 2 Keeping Food Diary
End of Day Checklist (If anything’s missed, restart Day 2 again tomorrow, and don’t spend even a moment beating yourself up about it—life happens.)
☐ Your home-cooked foods were all weighed and measured
☐ Your food was completely diarized, nonjudgmentally, in real time—good, bad, and ugly, without artificial restrictions
☐ You read tomorrow’s daily plan and you’re ready for it

I tried to take few notes from the chapter but they aren't direct quotes.

Calorie counting/food diary
Comparing to budget, is it worth it? Can I afford it? It’s not that you can’t have high calorie foods. If your budget isn’t where it should be you can track where your spending are before making adjustments – that’s his suggestion for today for calorie counting too. It can’t be used for judgement; it should not be used to say how much you are allowed or are you good or bad. Guide for future decisions, not judge past decisions.

What to track
What and how much you ate, what time, how many calories, exercise, emotions/thoughts/concerns around food, triggers linked to dietary struggles and DDD score. Days degree of difficulties - rank 1 to 10 each day hunger & cravings.
Example – if you weren’t hungry all day or you found it easy to eat a treat in moderation – 1. If you were hungry all day, you had too much snacks in the evening – 10.

Time Once you get used to doing it, it will take you 3 to 5 minutes a day, initially more – 20 minutes.

Food Scape Most people eat same things over and over again. Up to 5 different breakfasts, 5 to 10 lunches and 10 to 20 dinners. It also helps to know the go to orders when eating out. It’s not about choosing the lowest calorie item on the menu, it’s about choosing the lowest you are actually happy with. Reducing the frequency of the higher calories, finding ways to lighten it etc.

Habit formation takes much longer than 21 days. It takes consciously reminding yourself, over and over again what is it you are trying to do. Food diary can be awareness tool, the few minutes you take to check in can be reminder of why is it you do what you do

Investigation tool What works for most folks may not work for you, having data to go back to you can identify and make adjustments

Completeness record as you go. Don’t leave it for the end of the day. You could write the foods down and find the calories later if you find time to lookup calories time consuming. Calories are not bad, and you shouldn’t think about calorie ceiling. Keep accurate record, be honest. Don’t stop recording if you go over your calories – life is dynamic, so are your calorie needs. Each day is different, you are aiming for the smallest amount of calories you are happy with not the smallest you can tolerate. Some days you just need more calories to be happy

Accuracy. Use scales to measure. They are not there to limit you, they are there to inform you. Studies show that most people, even dietitians underestimate calories/portions

Find the way to like it. Refuse to let the food diary to judge you, use it as information. Try to keep calories lower, while you still enjoy the food. Look for ways to adjust recipes, or cut food not worth the calories. Be consistent, not perfect. It’s best choices you an enjoy, not best choice there is. If you miss to track one meal pick up where you left, try to recall the meal missed. Don’t "start again tomorrow".
Perfectionism – you don’t like how your day went, you eat more than how many calories you planned, you don’t track it and you tell yourself you will start again tomorrow. All or nothing – ends up being nothing. Track it even if you don’t like how your day went.

Do you have to do it forever? So what if you did? It takes 3 minutes. Some people will need to, and no way to guess who will this be. Some don’t and find it easy to maintain after period of time. Ultimately if it takes 3 minutes a day and if you finding it hard to manage your weight and if keeping an eye on your weight is important


And my day 2 comments
Day 2 End of Day Checklist (If anything’s missed, restart Day 2 again tomorrow, and don’t spend even a moment beating yourself up about it—life happens.)
☐ Your home-cooked foods were all weighed and measured - done
☐ Your food was completely diarized, nonjudgmentally, in real time—good, bad, and ugly, without artificial restrictions (done, with estimations for meals out
☐ You read tomorrow’s daily plan and you’re ready for it - will do this morning on my walk

Tracking calories is not for everyone, there is no hope in hell this will work for DH. He will do much better with something like Slimming world with less tracking and focusing on getting his 1/3rd of his plate being fruit and veg.

Dr Yoni has obesity clinic in Canada and his book is based on experience with his patients

He offers adjustments/advise on many other plans - weight watchers, paleo, low carbs etc so he is not lobbying that one way suits all. There is a lot in the book, there is no way for me to give all info and is what I am taking form it. Lose it the way you want to live, figure out how to enjoy it is his thing. I find MFP easy so that's what I will do

It was good to listen to day two yesterday on my daily walk. Lately I have been doing the all or nothing. I am "good" all day and at 8 pm I would have few chocolates or cheese and crackers, I do not like the fact that I didn't stick to the plan and I opt for not track it and start again tomorrow. Because I go off until tomorrow, accountability is gone - it's messy so I may as well.. First it builds expectation that tomorrow something will be off limits as I will be good, second today feel like a very limited opportunity to indulge and feel that it won't count - nice fresh start tomorrow. It's the diet, on and off mentality. Writing when things don't go by plan is even more important. Tracking the good bad and ugly, estimating instead of skipping tracking meal out etc keeps the awareness there. I get to ask myself, do I want more? no fear that tomorrow I will have to be anything else, going over the calories is part of life - not every day is equal. Getting in the habit of being honest/aware, not expecting to be perfect was a game changer and I have forgotten about it.

I took few minutes to estimate my food yesterday. We had lunch out to our favourite restaurant, walk at the sea side and gelato after as we do every 31st of December. I was good 650 calories over my calorie needs, and that's with very brief estimates. I didn't want to leave it to 1st of January. It was a good day, I had plan to enjoy it and I did so. There will be more days like this ahead
 


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It's really nice to have Friday follow right after "Monday" (things got back to work/school schedule yesterday here, and I came home exhausted!!)
 
Happy Friday all. I guess my topic Friday is food dairy this week!

Great topic! A couple of things stood out to me -

Comparing to budget, is it worth it? Can I afford it? It’s not that you can’t have high calorie foods. If your budget isn’t where it should be you can track where your spending are before making adjustments...

Comparing eating habits to a budget is a great analogy!! Especially about tracking your "spending" before you start. It makes so much sense!

...you are aiming for the smallest amount of calories you are happy with not the smallest you can tolerate.

I love this as well. An eating plan is not sustainable if you're miserable.

All or nothing – ends up being nothing.

So many people I know could use this quote!! I am very much a "small steps" person (definitely the tortoise, not the hare).
 
@HappyGrape - thanks for the informative post. A lot of what you said is what I care to realize a few years ago when I first lost all the “baby weight” (only about 10 years after actually having babies 🤦🏻‍♀️). Since then I have been back and forth. I’m good for about 11 months. Then I regress slowly until I realize I’m gaining it back. So then I’m good again for several months. I have been able to make it a most of the time lifestyle. I’ve really fallen back this fall. So it’s time to get back to my healthy lifestyle.


Completeness record as you go. Don’t leave it for the end of the day.
I am also using MyFitnessPal to track my eating. I also use it for planning my eating. No will often enter my food that I plan on eating that day and see if there is any wiggle room for snacks. Then as I eat, I go in and adjust. For example, we had chicken tacos last night. When I entered all my food in the morning, the serving size was 3 tacos. But I’m only ended up eating 2. But then I had a few chips and guac in place of the 3rd taco. So I adjusted that in MyFitnessPal. It helps to keep me aware as I go through the day . But I agree that it can be time consuming. Especially in the beginning. And it is easier if you keep eating the same meals, like you mentioned here:
Most people eat same things over and over again. Up to 5 different breakfasts, 5 to 10 lunches and 10 to 20 dinners. It also helps to know the go to orders when eating out.
I will put on our Weekly meal planner (which hangs on the fridge) eat out. But when I’m really good, I put the restaurant and I already know what I’m going to eat there...just to stay within my calorie range.

Thanks again for your post. It reminded me of many of my previous good habits that I need to put back into practice!
 


I also agree it's nice to have Friday come right after "Monday", and to make it even better things are so quiet here that I just changed my flight to an earlier one, and I'll be leaving the building around 11am - granted I did have to start work at 5am, so it isn't that short of a day.

Weekend plans... clean the car, take down Christmas decor and go for a walk. And cuddle with kitties... in the past two weeks I've had three short trips where I was gone over night and they are kind of over it. And clean out the fridge, start Whole 30 and plan out meals for the week.
 
hope @4Mickeys is ok. I am thinking about her and family every time I hear about the fires currently ongoing. hope her family and her are doing ok and are far from the fires.

Hello @HappyGrape thank you for thinking of us. I am safe and am far from the fires that you will have been seeing on the news. I am a long way north of these fires. We had a couple of bushfire outbreaks here on the Sunshine Coast in September and December, they were still about 20 minutes from my place - maddeningly lit purposely by teens - homes were lost. Fires started early this season, Queensland (the state I live in) seemed to kick it off back in August/September and DS's school 'survial' camp was impacted and had to be postponed due to fires in the national park they were going to use - when it did go ahead their route was altered due to the burnt areas, Fingers crossed things seem to have quietened down in Queensland for now but there have been many outbreaks in other states in these past months as well as the current ones. It is awful to see the loss of lives, homes and wildlife.
 
It's all the time in the news here. Even all the evacuations - it must be hard to pack up your life and go somewhere as your home and your town and your world really is likely to be unsafe and even burned down. The wildlife too. It's tragedy
 
@4Mickeys, thanks for posting! I didn't know what response button to click on - so glad to hear you are safe, and at the same time so sad that the fires are happening. 😥
 
Well tomorrow we all go back to reality. My first day off was December 20th and that was the last day for work/school for the kids and DH. We cut up everything for salads and I put one together for tomorrow's lunch. Here shortly I will get all of my workout clothes together so I am ready to work out tomorrow. Having all of this together will make my rough morning a better one. Part of me is ready to go back. I am ready for the routine but I am so not ready to go back on the same hand.
 
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It’s Motivation Monday!
Hope you all had a great weekend. What little things are you doing to start your week off right?

I hit snooze on my alarm without even realizing it. But I still got up and got my workout in (just 10minutes later). And I did my food prep yesterday. So I’m ready to eat healthy this week! Let’s do this!
 
@4Mickeys good to hear from you. I’ve also been thinking of you and trying to remember what part of Australia you are in. Thanks for letting us know you are safe. Thinking of those who have been effected by the fires!
 
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Saw this today and had to share. I’m not sure how accurate the picture is, but that’s not what’s important. It’s the message! Don’t get tied up with the numbers in the scale. For me personally, I’m going to make Mondays a day to measure myself...not just my weight, but that will still be a piece of it. But arms, chest, waist, and thighs will be measured as well. I’m also going to start and end each month with...*gulp*...pictures. These will all just be for me. But it will help me see progress is many different ways. Measurement Mondays will help motivate me = Motivation Monday 😉
 

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