If you have ever seen the movie “The Emperor’s New Groove” you’ll remember the evil Yzma; you know the one who looks “scary beyond all reason”. Well when she is turned into a white, fluffy cat and tries to do an evil, maniacal monologue she finds that her voice has been changed as well her appearance, and she now has a cute un-maniacal kitten voice. This causes Yzma to stop monologue-ing mid-sentence and say “is that…is that my voice”. I had a similar experience the other day while looking at pictures I had been tagged in on Facebook. “Is that…Is that what I look like.” I have never cared about having my picture taken, or even seeing embarrassing photos of myself, but I get it now. I saw that picture and my heart sank. And it wasn’t in a "Poor me", self-loathing way, (well, maybe a little bit), but in a "How serious am I about getting healthy?" way. The guy in that picture doesn’t look very serious. I know that guy; He talks a lot, but how badly does he want this? I need to step this up.
Here are some of the basic things I will be doing to start my change -
No Eating after 9pm
Seems easy until you’re out late helping with the church Youth Group and you haven‘t had supper yet and your heading home at 9:30pm and Taco Bell Starts calling like the bells of Notre Dome for Sunday Mass. The Hunchback is up in the bell tower ringing the bell, but instead of yelling “SANCTUARY” he’s yelling “NACHOS BELL GRANDE”. No healthy eating happens after 9pm.
No Fast Food\ Especially at Work
I think this goes without saying. Anything I bring from home is going to beat anything I can go get during a half-hour lunch break; calorie wise, health wise, and money wise. I work very close to a Hardees and I can “taste its stink, if there is such a thing” from my workstation, so I must be vigilant.
No Gas Station Food.
Have you ever heard someone say “This is pretty good for gas station food”? Why do we compare gas station food to other gas station food when deciding if it’s edible or not? We compare things like this when discussing necessities like work; “As far as factory jobs go this is a pretty good one", but gas station food is far from necessity. Comparing Gas station food to itself is more like which poison is easier on the palate or which Star War Prequel is the worst. It’s all bad so why bother right? We bother because it's right there ready to eat, and you can get 9 of them for a quarter, but NO MORE. Avoiding gas station delicacies is an easy way to cut calories and garbage out of the diet.
Lots of Water\ No Soda
This one I have gotten good at, well at least half of it. I have cut soda out of my diet, Its very, very rare that I drink soda anymore and life is better because of it, but making sure I drink enough water for the day has not been on my radar. Not even just for hydration, drinking water will, in theory, help me to stay more full during the day and eat less. Drinking enough water appears on almost every "Ten ways to start living healthier right now" list and so it's going on mine.
Avoid Grains and Sugar
How can one live without delicious, flaky biscuits, and if they could is that really any life at all? I say NAH, and that is why the rules say avoid instead of cut out. The American diet is packed with carbs, it's every where like gremlins, or tribbles, or bearded hipsters. (Quick tangent, What's up with the lumberjack hipster look? It's like 90's grunge decided to untie the flannel from around their waist, and put it on properly, trade messy hair for messy beards and geeky glasses with no lenses, and ditch the skate boards and guitars for jugs of maple syrup and a steady diet of quiona and organic Emu eggs, but I digress.) By avoiding grains I will keep my carb intake low and it will make me watchful of what I eat. Having to avoid them causes me to be more creative with what I eat, and causes me to be more purposeful in my diet, but not entirely means I can feel like a normal person some of the time and not a crazy Paleo diet-pusher trying to force feed me $23.00 an oz. avocado mayo. For the sugar part, anyone one who has seen a toddler on a Snickers bender, or sat next to an elderly gentleman who wants to talk about "The daibetis" knows the dangers of sugar. Besides, once carbs hit your body they changes to sugar. Look it up - It's all sugar.
Count my Calories and Use My Fitness Apps
I want my calorie counting app to talk to me with the voice of Sesame Street's The Count. "ONE! One bowl of Ice Cream! ZERO! Zero calories left for the day! AH! AH! AH! AH!" But I've got the next best thing, I think. I'm using the MYFittnessPal app to count my calories, and my Fitbit pushes my steps to the app and it recalculates how many calories I can eat based on how many steps I've taken for the day. It's easy to use and it makes me think about everything I eat during the day. I have started with a goal of under 2400 calories a day, but I shoot for 2000. The 2400 is a number that the MyFitnessPal app came up with when I put in all my info and how much weight I wanted to lose. "ONE one more rule! AH! AH! AH! AH!"
Go to the Gym\Chart my progress
Go to the gym literally means go to the gym. Getting there is half the battle "GI JOE", or better yet "YMCA". I need to have regular days at the gym and a plan of what I'm doing while I'm there. I want to chart what I'm doing so I can see my progress. As a 'now thinker' compared to a 'future thinker', the idea of "I will lose weight in the future" is hard for me to grasp, and makes me want to quit, hide under the covers, and binge-watch Doctor Who, but hopefully charting will help me to see the small, immediate changes and help me to keep going.
