Personal Health Challenge

I've decided to use the weight watchers points system to track my eating and exercise habits for 2 months, to see when and how I eat, and maybe even take off some of these extra pounds. It is definitely proving to be a challenge, but so far in a good way. The first week I thought I was starving, trying to stay within point limits, but then I had to remind myself to eat "normally" and eat when hungry, and just watch the results. I'm trying to both learn more about eating in general, and about my own habits, while also altering my diet in subtle ways for greater health results.

What I'm learning: I have a weakness for cheese and avocado (but I already knew that). But since points are limited, I've naturally had to cut back on amounts of cheese and avocado on a daily basis. Strangely, I don't feel like I'm missing them; or a little does go a long way. I wonder if it is because I'm eating a lot more fruit and trying to eat more veggies (always a great challenge to eat more veggies...). On the w.w. plan, most all fruits and veggies have no point values, so you can eat as much as you want. Of course, one might argue that fruits have a lot of sugar so maybe you shouldn't eat only fruit all day long, but most of us (me, me, me) don't ever fall into a danger category of eating too much fruit. I love fruit and I love veggies and have no problem, in theory, eating more. But keeping them fresh and on hand and remembering to eat those instead of chips, that's another story...

So far, I'm undecided about how week 2 is going. I'm trying to obsess less about the points, worry less about whether or not the results will show on the scale on Thursday morning, and work more on paying attention. This is where yoga practice comes in really handy: just paying attention and letting go of the anxiety. Most days I go way over the daily points allowance. But one day I used only 28 out of 29 daily points and I wasn't hungry all day. Hmmm. What did I eat that day? All sorts of stuff, including plain yogurt with almonds and fruit, vegetable barley soup (filling and very low in point value), pasta with asparagus, tomato, and Amish chicken sausage with just some olive oil and Parmesan cheese, and I even had some popcorn with a little butter while watching TV.

Now, I'm not going to eat vegetable barley soup every day just because it has so few points. But I think this is where w.w. is really helpful: you get points for a whole week. So some days you eat more than other days, and you get extra points to use anytime during the week; you also earn back points when you exercise. So over the course of a week, it becomes more like a normal practice of paying attention and eating well and exercising, instead of feeling like you're failing for eating too much cheese one day and blowing everything away. For me, having to pay attention over days at a time (because I have a short attention span) is most helpful. Everything becomes more big picture than small pieces that don't always seem to relate.

Wondering what will happen in week three, but I'm in no rush to get there...