Getting Healthy - Update #1

Hey guys!

I hope you're all doing well today. :) It's so rainy and yuck here in Austin, but I'm about to brave the weather to grab some coffee and run some errands!

For those of you who remember the New Years resolution I made to get healthy, I wanted to give you a little update! Now, I have not lost as much weight as I was hoping to, but I have lost a little. :)

This is really 2 updates in 1 because a lot of the struggles I've had with our house situation have taught me some important health tips for people who are A) really busy and B) don't have a kitchen! :)

To catch everyone up, we did some MAJOR renovations to our house this fall/winter and it looks amazing. We are soooo pleased! However, we were told it would take about three weeks and we were out of our house for over 2 months! We stayed with some incredibly gracious friends and family during that time and now we're back in the house and loving it! There's still not really a kitchen yet because none of our appliances can go back in without our counter top. The whole world is in the hands of the counter top people, but we're doing just fine right now and this gives us some time to move all of our furniture back in!

Anyway, I wanted to share a few tips with you guys about trying to eat healthy in the midst of chaos. I hope this will help someone!

1) We've been doing a LOT of eating at restaurants. Enough to make me gain 20 lbs if I wanted to. However, I've learned that if I make a rule for myself regarding restaurants, then I do pretty well. Here's the rule: Salad, soup, grilled anything, pasta. In that order. I browse the menu, looking for their salads first. If I don't like the sound of any of the salads, I then go to the soups. If none of the soups sound good to me, I can then look for grilled ___________ (for me, it's usually some kind of fish). And if after ALL of that, nothing looks good, I can get a pasta dish with a marinara sauce and eat half of it. I almost never get to the pasta dish, but if I do, I am guaranteed to find something I'll love! :) (Who doesn't want pasta?!)

2) Always carry something in your pocket/purse. I found out during this last couple of weeks (the hard way) that if I ever let myself get to the "I'm starving" point, then I will eat anything and everything that crosses my path. Now, instead of letting that happen, I stick something in my purse every day - whether it be an orange, a granola bar, some prunes (personal fav), or something else, I have something I can eat if I get really really hungry. It doesn't necessarily even have to be something super low fat as long as it's a small snack and can tide you over until the next meal.

3) Chart your progress. If you guys haven't heard of it yet, I wanted to introduce you to Calorie Count. Man - this site is awesome! You can track everything from your weight loss goals to your calories consumed and your exercise on this site. It's FREE and I love it - check it out!

4) Forgive yourself. I cannot tell you how many times I used to eat something bad for lunch and then say "Oh, heck, the whole day is ruined, I might as well eat whatever I want." Then I would spend the entire following day scolding myself for such erratic behavior! :) Those days are gone. Now, if I make a bad eating decision, I just go ahead and forgive myself right away. I try to think of WHY I chose that thing and what was going on in my mind when I made that decision. I tell myself to move on and I don't let it ruin the rest of my day. I won't be controlled by food in ANY way. This has been a very important and very big change for me!

Well, I hope this has helped someone! :) How are you guys doing with getting healthy in 2008? :)

Love
Stacy