Level up!

So the good thing about not fitting into all your clothes is it makes you take a hard look at yourself and your habits. And I realized it might be time to go a little boot camp on myself. I have been giving myself a lot of excuses these past 3 months to take it easy on the exercise (walks around the block are better than nothing but nothing close to a good gym trip, run or class) and on my nutrition (everything seemed to be a special occasion and I have eaten way too much bad stuff).

I decided I would start making some small changes that would be easy to implement, and keep adding until I wipe a lot of the bad habits that creeped in away. First up was a new snack rule: "Nothing but fruit after dinner." This started last night. I had some delicious clementines and an apple. There was a good sale at the store so I stocked up. Usually by dinner, I've eaten most of my Points allotment for the day, and now that fresh fruit is free, this is a good way to hit that sweet tooth.

Another one, at least for the short term, is that I'd like to workout every day for the rest of the year. No easy workouts. I hit the elliptical and weights yesterday when errands got in the way of a run before dark, and totally busted it in kickboxing tonight. I already have the rest of the week planned: repeat of Sunday tomorrow and Thursday nights, Zumba on Wednesday, a class or cardio on Friday depending what time I make it to the gym (as I have a pending car repair to deal with but there's a gym across the street!). If I get through that, then I'm off on vacation the rest of the year and remaining scheduling should be much easier.

The next change I want to tackle is two fold. I want to cut back on afternoon coffee for several reasons: 1) even though I get a nonfat latte, it's still 90 calories. 2-3 of those a week are worth a decent workout, 2) I'm a sucker for Starbucks, so this would save $8-12 a week. That's a new piece of clothing by the end of the month! and 3) it helps with part 2, making sleep more a priority. I need to get back to 7 hours a night during the week. I need to make 11 p.m. a usual bedtime. This will be the hardest change, so I'm giving this one a few days to do it.

I'm hopeful that these changes, while small, will be the start of some big progress. Time to take things to the next level! (Speaking of ... I plan to blog again this week about exercise intensity. Stay tuned and bug me if you don't see it by the weekend.)