HYC Check In – “The Plan”

Happy Tuesday and week…um…973?

I don’t have much to report as I’m not weighing or measuring, so I have no idea what progress if any I made on that front this week. But:

I am making continuing progress through Perfect Weight, and discovering a lot that really makes it make sense. It’s not about losing weight so much as it’s about adjusting your lifestyle so that your body can be healthy and find its natural equilibrium point. That probably will involve losing, but losing isn’t the main focus.

It’s sort of nearly exactly precisely what I keep saying is my real goal. So I think I have to sit up and take notice, because if I’m going to be about the health and not the numbers as I keep saying I am, then it’s time for me to walk the walk, yes? It’s time for me to start listening to my body and figuring out just how I’m going to be living for the next – hopefully! – 50 years.

So I’m making baby-step changes already, though I’m still working through the book. I’m taking what feels right, what I can use, and leaving some of the stuff that feels a bit counterintuitive. As it happens, though, that’s not a lot of stuff. Most of what I initially resisted was bothering me because I was looking at it the wrong way, I think.

The changes I’m making right now are these: I’ve started with one of the very simple steps, sipping hot water at regular intervals throughout the day. It sounds revolting but actually I have found it surprisingly soothing. Once I adjust to the complete lack of taste, it’s nice. Just a few sips every fifteen to thirty minutes, and I’m good.

Right now I’m doing the awareness exercise he asks you to start with, which is simply eating only when you’re hungry, and every time you’re hungry. You use the satisfaction meter we’re probably all pretty familiar with – you eat only when you are experiencing actual physical sensations of hunger and your stomach is perceptibly empty, and you eat only until you feel neither hunger nor fullness. Now, this is not different from the way I was eating before in that I always ate only to satiation – neither hunger nor fullness – but I was eating by the clock, not by hunger. I actually found, yesterday, that I ate a bit less than I have been. I am not going to worry about that fact, though. That’s part of the exercise.

So I’ll do that for two weeks, to get in touch with the messages my body is sending me. After that, I’ll start eating a light breakfast, making lunch my biggest meal, and eating a much lighter dinner. Snacks will be very small, generally only fruit or vegetables. I will not be counting calories but I will be building these meals out of the elements I already know I need to be eating.

In a nutshell, what I am eating won’t be changing, I will just be focusing on the structure of my eating patterns and getting them into balance with the way my body is processing food. And it won’t be all that much of a change.

As for exercise, I’ll be listening to my mind/body there, too. I’m going to do what I want to be doing, which right now is walking and biking. My plan is to walk three to four times a week – at this point, Monday/Wednesday /Friday and probably Saturday. I will be biking on the alternate days, Tuesday, Thursday and hopefully Sunday. I’m doing my Hundred Push-Up Challenge on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, with today being Day One. And I’ll be doing yoga as many mornings as I can stand.

I neglected to mention rest days, for a very good reason. There, too, I will be listening to my body. I’m not scheduling specific days as rest days; I will take one when I begin to feel the need. Not when I’m completely worn out, but when I first start to feel overtrained. I’ve learned firsthand the importance of that, particularly when I’m doing a lot of cardio, which has never been my strong area.

The final element is going to be meditation. I’m going to make a concerted effort to build daily meditation into my schedule, because the whole goal of this process is to get my mind/body as balanced and connected as possible. So I am aiming for at least a 15-minute meditation every day, and hopefully some longer ones on weekends when I have more time available.

So that’s my plan. I’ve started the two-week “hunger awareness” exercise already, so that will end on July 7. At that point, I will already have all the healthy foods stocked up, so I should be able to move into the structured eating with little difficulty. I’ll do that – without counting calories, without weighing, without measuring – until July 24, the end of the Birthday Challenge. At that point, I will not only weigh in, but I will assess my comfort level, how my body feels, and make some decisions about how I feel this process is working for me. I may decide to stop and go back to what I’ve been doing, or I may decide it’s worth keeping up.

One thing I am sure of: change is good. Whether this actually causes me to lose weight or not, it is going to be very good for me to spend a few weeks listening to my body and getting myself balanced and grounded and connected with myself. It’s going to be good for me to do exercise I feel like doing and enjoy. I expect that as the weather gets bad in the fall and winter, I’ll go back to doing my beloved circuits. But I think that doing one thing in the summer and another in the winter is no bad thing. I think I can live that way.

And that’s what it’s really all about. Finding a healthy way to live, for the rest of the time I’m given. Not about a number on a scale, no matter how much I love those numbers (or hate them!); not about a clothing size, though I do care about that. But really, about being healthy and doing it in a way I can sustain, forever.

So that’s my plan. And right now, I’m definitely loving it. Have a wonderful day!