Just 13 Days Away

I am just 13 days away from having passed the five month marker. One of the things that giving up soda has done for me is to give me encouragement to look closer at my life and take control of choices I am making, to see what else I can do to improve my outcome and get my body back under my own control.

A few weeks ago, I started doing planking. At first, my arms would begin trembling right away and I could barely make it to a count of 20. Last time I did it, I was up to a 60 second mark. I've slipped in the past few days and haven't done it every morning, but it's encouraging to see that I can make such large improvements over such a small space of time with daily effort.

Yesterday, I decided to do something I have never done before. I have decided to go on a diet. I will tell you that as a person with very limited financial means it was incredibly discouraging to look at the list of recommended foods and know that this was going to cost me a lot of money to implement, but I did my best.

This morning was my first day of implementing the program. The one thing I have noticed is that while I don't like the hassle of keeping track of calories, it has made me more aware of what I'm doing. It's made me think before adding more sugar to my coffee.

Here's what I had for breakfast:
1 hardboiled egg, large.
1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup non-fat milk
1 cup coffee

Doesn't sound bad, right? Except that in the coffee, I added a tablespoon of sugar. I normally add two. Then, I sat down to do my calorie counts. I realized that the one tablespoon of sugar was 98% of the recommended daily allowance of sugar! I have been adding two tablespoons to my tea, and I normally drink between 2-3 cups of tea a day. That means I usually end up having about 300 extra calories from sugar added to my diet each day.

There may still be underlying medical issues - but I can control my sugar intake. I can reduce this amount greatly just by controlling what I put in my tea or my coffee each day. I can go without the sugar entirely in my tea and save it for coffee (I really hate the taste of coffee). I can also gradually reduce the amount of sugar I put in my coffee. That way I'm getting my body more in line with where I need to be in terms of calorie intake.

Sometimes one positive change in your life is what you need to make the next positive change and get yourself headed in the right direction. Giving up soda hasn't changed my waist line the way I hoped - but it has changed my thinking, and maybe that's the more important thing.