For my first post, I’d like to confess that I had lobster mac & cheese for lunch and it was everything I hoped it would be. Afterwards I felt tired and full, kind of good, kind of groggy… and tomorrow I have a family party that will be full of more delicious food, so attempting to eat healthier this weekend will be a challenge. Oh, and did I mention I’m meeting my best friend for dinner tonight? lol…
I’ve realized over the past couple of years that eating healthy is easy if I’m organized. I actually love healthy foods, I feel better and I like preparing them. The problem I have is time. I don’t have a lot of it. I drive 150 miles a day for work so I spend a lot of my time on the road when I could be home or ransacking Whole Foods. But, in the end, it’s just an excuse. I also watch a lot of TV in the evenings and don’t get enough sleep because of our recent Stargate obsession. It’s tough coming in on a show after it’s ended, 10 years later. That’s a lot of episodes! We try to limit ourselves to 1-2 per night, but sometimes we just HAVE to see what happens, and we inadvertently put off going to sleep because it means tomorrow is that much closer. It’s more an issue for my hubby than for me. This is a tough time of year for him at work – a lot of long hours and a lot of BS.
Anyway… I used to say that I didn’t have the time to exercise, but I managed to carve out 45 minutes each morning. Now it’s time to get organized with my food. Because I love to cook and make up recipes as I go, I miss out on routine, which can save a lot of time. If I could eat chicken on Mondays, salmon on Tuesdays, pork chops on Wednesdays… and so on, life would be a lot more simple. I do get bored easily, but there is something to be said about ritual and routine. The less I need to THINK about what I’m going to eat, the less time I’ll spend at the one of three grocery stores I shop, and less time I’ll spend wondering how to prepare it.
So, that being said, I’m going to focus on coming up with my own menu plan, including snacks and my daily ‘mud’… [I'll elaborate on that in another post]. Once I’ve got that down, I’ll start working on drinking more water – I’m horrible with water. I could go the whole day without drinking anything, especially when it’s cooler… and after THAT, I need to work on getting more sleep. I used to function on 4-5 hours a night for years and years, all through college and even after that. Then I hit 30 and all of a sudden I need a full 7 1/2 to 8 hours or I’m useless. But, they do say that getting 8 hours a night can INCREASE your metabolism by up to 40%, so that alone is reason enough to keep trying. =)
Cheers!
~ HELENA
