Creeping Toward Commitment

So, another no-progress week. The truth is, despite the parenthetical comment on this blog's banner, I'm not "on a diet." I have an extremely rebellious inner eater who does NOT like to be told that any kind of "diet" activity is going on. Past experience has proven many times that telling myself I'm on a "diet" leads to "you can't make me!" reactions from the inner eater and next thing I know I've scarfed down most of a package of Mint "NewmanOs". So I've learned to tiptoe around specific restrictions and denials, and try not to think in "diet" terms.

But I do want to trim down. The whole point of blogging about it is the hope that "going public" (on the slim chance anyone but me ever reads these posts) would provide some additional incentive, plus keep me somewhat more focused on my goals. The hope is that making small, incremental, not too onorous, changes in eating and exercise will eventually result in flab reduction, without scaring the inner eater into rebellious and self-destructive behavior. But I am not (yet?) truly committed to making it happen. I've made little changes (restricting cake, wine, and cheese to weekends only, that kind of thing), but have been less than diligent lately about the one challenge I stepped up to so far: drinking more water.

This week, I'm once again taking a deep breath and looking at what small shifts I can make to nudge me in the direction of progress, and have decided on:
1) Drink more water!
2) 360 minutes of exercise this week, which is one hour a day of some kind of activity, Mon-Sat.

The tracking minutes of exercise thing is not new. I like it because it allows for flexibility in the workout schedule, while ensuring I get my butt out of this chair for a while every day. When energy is low, I can do some kind of "better than nothing" activity. Days when I've got a little more juice in my caboose, I can tackle something of higher intensity. The idea is to increase the proportion of high-intensity minutes, but as I have not been tracking anything lately, I thought I'd start with just aiming for the total minutes goal. I've been good about getting some kind of exercise into every Mon-Sat day, but suspect there've been too many not-quite-sixty-minutes days lately.

Oh, and 3) Remember to take my vitamins!

Don't know why that one's so tricky, but I do have more energy when I supplement on a regular basis. More energy = more vigorous workouts.

So, by the time I click "publish post" it will be 9AM on Monday morning, time to get the new week started: water, workouts, vitamins. Surely that much I can do...

PS: I did achieve one chocolate-free day last week. Perhaps I should aim for another one? Won't be today, though: I started the morning by eating two dark chocolate eggs with my coffee.