Mid-February Wellness

I sat down a few days ago to write a detailed food update. I couldn't do it. I literally tried for hours and could only produce 2 incoherent paragraphs. I haven't discussed food here since the beginning of November so a large part of me wants to tell you every little detail about what I've been eating. But for some reason, my brain can't make it happen! So I'll  just say that from November to now I've exercised about 4 times and I've been eating the unhealthiest that I have in about a year and a half--mainly junk food, lots of sugar, lots of refined carbs, lots of alcohol. Ironically, I've lost about 5 pounds on this "diet" and am the smallest I've been since high school. Not ironically, I've had the stomach flu and 3 colds during this time-- the final cold lasted a whopping 5 weeks.

Yech.

I am amused that I managed to lose weight while eating 90% junk and not exercising. I've learned that, for me, the quantity of food consumed has a more significant impact on my weight than the quality of food consumed. Although I scarfed down junk for the past couple of months, I ate sporadically. On most days, due to poor decision making and the lack of an appetite, energy, interest and/ or time, I only ate one or two meals. And so my tummy shrank, and my pants got baggy...and my immune system went on vacation. I had a physical about a week and a half ago and learned that I had borderline low blood pressure. This was also funny to me considering the high sodium content of everything I'd been eating for the past few months. Less funny, however, was that my iron levels were low and that I basically had no Vitamin D in my body! Ok--I exaggerate. My levels were just abysmally low at 19 (according to my doctor, 30 is the adequate level) !

But good news:

Last week's sole green smoothie

I've come to a place where I again have both the desire to eat well, and some of the [mental and physical] energy I need to make that happen. I planned to make February my month to focus on wellness, or something, but we're almost half way through the month, and I've still been eating junk, averaging 3 hours of sleep a night, not exercising, and drinking too much [liquor]. I'm not stressing about it though. Over the past couple months I've really realized that I'm not mentally at the place where trying to be a stickler about food will be beneficial to me. . It's been hard for me to admit, but I have "deeper" things to work on before I'll be able to successfully follow a "strict" food regimen.

So I have some simple daily goals (SDG's--you know you like that) for now:

1. get 7 hours of sleep
2. do 20 minutes of exercise  (not including my walks to and from work)
3. drink a green smoothie and eat a serving of steamed veggies
4.  have 30 minutes of communion with God in whatever form seems best that day
5. journal
6. drink 8 cups of water

A list of 6 things might seem too long, but I have at least 10 other things I want to add. So I am pleased with myself for committing to only 6.

And these are foundational. I need rest, veggies, and water. I need to move. I need God and I need to have sorted thoughts and feelings. I don't think I'll be able to make any other long-term positive changes in my life until those 6 things are standard.

I'll start tonight with a green smoothie and 7 hours of sleep. This is going to go amazingly well.