My planning

Ok! So I said yesterday that I needed to come up with a plan I can stick to. I've found that drastically changing every little thing in my life all at once, yeah that don't work for me.

Here's some things I know.

Soda consumption needs to decrease and water consumption increase. I know this, but I <3 my soda. I generally will drink 2 or 3 16.9 oz bottles of diet dew and 1 20 oz bottle of water per day. This needs to change. My plan to change, every time I drink a bottle of dew (and I prefer bottles) I will immediately refill it with water and I am not allowed to drink any more dew until that bottle of water is gone. I will do this until I can get away from so much soda. For obvious reasons, if I'm drinking that water, I'm not in need of a drink of soda right?

Next.

I need to decrease my eating out and increase my better for me food at home. This week I'm happy to announce that I bought a week and probably 1/2 of groceries for about 50 bucks at the store. That was mostly for meat and veggies with a few quick "processed" sides for those days in which I just don't have time or energy to make a full meal. I've been doing a lot more cooking from scratch, or at least cooking from frozen veggies already chopped up. For example, I made breakfast for dinner one evening and we had scrambled eggs and I threw in some frozen onion/green pepper mix I bought at the store and a little cheese. I also made bacon though I only had 2 pieces because bacon isn't exactly the best to be eating, and a piece of toast. Being able to just use the frozen veggies cuts down on the possibility of said veggies being wasted if I don't get around to making whatever I bought it for in time, as usually happens :( So my goal for each week is to eat dinner at home 5 out of 7 days per week. Two days we go get D's little girl and we're kind of at the mercy of his parents as to what we eat, so I can't really control those two days too much, but the other 5 days I want to eat at home unless it's a special occasion!

Finally, the dreaded one. Exercise...

I'm horrible at exercise. Getting me to move my fat ass out of my computer chair to go exercise is like pulling teeth! I want to exercise, but not only do I find excuses, I am genuinely afraid of exercise. Why? I'm afraid of hurting myself (as I did November of last year by going on a 5 hour hike through Carlsbad Cavern!), or of causing myself to have a massive asthma attack. What was holding me back before was that I was without an asthma inhaler because some jerk in July stole my purse and thus my 60 dollar inhaler went poof...But I managed to get a new one! As I explained in my first post ever in this blog, I am genuinely afraid of exercise due to my asthma. When I was about 7 or 8 I had my first asthma attack, and it was not good. I passed out, went to the hospital, was on oxygen and then to "test for asthma" they took that oxygen away and of course I was still mid attack and after a few minutes I was having problems breathing again. That scares me. Try taking a straw and pinch it slightly and breathe through it and see how it feels! Scary right? Yeah well when I'm having a full blown attack, it's like that and I can't get away from it. I can't take that "straw" away to be able to breathe better. On the other hand, though, I don't feel like I'm doing anything if I'm not sweating. Telling me to "go for a short walk 5 days a week" gets me nothing. I feel like a failure if I'm not breaking a sweat, and not just because it's hot outside either >.>

This is the part I'm not sure what to do about. While I have the personal stamina for long walks, I do not have capability physically to do so as I found out going through the Carlsbad Caverns. I'd rather not repeat my pinched nerve issue. :( But just walking around the block a couple of times does nothing for me it seems, plus I'm very self concious about how I look. You know others think "Wow look at that fat ass out there walking like that's going to make them lose weight" and I won't even go there running.

So I guess let's revisit my goals:

1) For every bottle of dew I drink I must immediately refill it with water and not drink another dew until that water is done.
2) Eat in for dinner 5 days out of 7 per week. I already generally eat lunch at home. Generally.
3) Exercise more. I'm going to start small and work up, I guess 3 days a week, 20 minutes per day is ok. Walking to work yeah that doesn't count. The 5 minutes to walk to work I'm already accustomed to.

What say ye?