Experiences in Eating Healthy...

There’s something to this eating healthy thing. I don’t know if it may be all just in my head—and Lord knows there are quite a few voices going on up there. But it seems as though I’ve had a little more energy this last week. I’ve given up the diet soda and anything else with artificial sweeteners in them. I’ve been trying to eat more natural and added fresh fruits to my diet. I’ve put myself on a diet of eating between 1400 to 1500 calories a day and trying to make those few calories as healthy as I can. I know that some of you will comment that this is too few calories but I’m really focusing on making sure these are healthy and well balanced meals that I’m eating. I’m also really hoping to reach my goal of losing 10 lbs in 10 weeks for my Perfect 10 goal too.

It’s been a week since I’ve given up the diet colas, and I’m rather surprised that I don’t have more cravings for it. I always thought that it was the carbonation that I craved when I was drinking it. But it seems as though I really haven’t had that much craving for carbonation. I bought four bottles of sparkling mineral water for my carbonation fix. I’ve only touched 1 out of the four bottles.

Now for the fruit report— I surprised myself. I ate ALL of the bananas and will probably have the last kiwi with my dinner tonight. I still have a fair amount of the dried fruit left. I’ve noticed that they really taste almost excessively sweet after eating real fruit. I think that’s probably a good sign. Now if I could just give up on some of the other sweets--- like the homemade mint chocolate chip pecan chocolate cookies that my Mom sent in a care package to me this week. GONE in ONE night! OUCH! BUT in my defense they were SO GOOD. YUM! There’s just something about homemade cookies made with love from your Mom that proves irresistible.

Now for a negative experience for eating healthy… I was trying to increase the size of my breakfast and make it as nutritious as possible. I was hoping to make it larger and trying to make my evening meals smaller to make a more positive step towards some weight loss. Well, I went for it this last Friday morning. It was a hearty bowl of oatmeal, two pieces of wholesome sunflower honey wheat toast, a banana, a cup of joe and some water. OMG!!! It was like feeling a rock land in my gut! AND then the rock moved through my system the REST of the day. OMG! Much of that day, all I wanted to do was drink water, and then it was like my whole of my intestines felt like it was on bloat over drive. I did NOT even want to think about the end result. I took a preemptive step and took a laxative prior to the end. Thank GOD!

As a result, I’ve opted to back off a little from making the large breakfast thing. I’m now trying to balance out my lunch and dinner, and just take it easy with the breakfast thing. But now I need to go to the store and see about some more healthy food. I’ve noticed with fresh food there’s a correlation of shopping more often. Freezer foods have a tendency to last quite a bit longer. So off to the store I must go…

First Test Run and Healthy Eats...

This morning I did my first run in the new running shoes. The first test run! It almost felt like Christmas morning as I double knotted the shoe laces and headed to the gym. I was curious to see how they would do, and kind of hoping that they would make me a better/faster runner. As if shoes could make me lighter than air and I could run the speed of light? Hello! I don't think so...

So on to the treadmill, I went. I warmed up with my usual fast paced walk for .2 mile and then picked up the speed. Gradually building up to 5.8 mph for a while. Was it my imagination but it seemed that my feet did feel a little lighter? It seemed like it but I'm never quite a wake at 5:30AM so my mind could have been having a running dream. My feet still felt good as I reached the 30 min. mark and I decided to run till I almost reached the 3.5 mile mark. Twelve minutes later and I walked off of the treadmill and my feet felt fairly good. Cool!

I went food shopping this last weekend. I have recently decided to cut out artificial sweeteners out of my diet and am going to try to eat more healthy. Part of the reason for this decision was a post by a fellow blogger who talked about how artifical sweeteners could affect our bodies with symptons that was similiar to MS. This got me to thinking about how I want to try to be more healthy and good to my body. I made the decision to cut out diet soda right off the bat. Then, I thought about how I need to add more fruits and veggies to my diet.

With that in mind, I found myself at the grocery store on Sunday afternoon shopping. I choose sparkling mineral water instead of the diet soda, and I actually picked up some fresh fruit. Wow! That’s amazing for me! As I was talking with a very good friend on Sunday evening I was telling her what was in my fridge. She was like… " wait a minute this is YOUR Fridge? That doesn’t sound like stuff that would be found in your fridge. You are really looking at my fridge aren't you? You ARE pulling my leg?" "Nope! It's really what's in my fridge, honest." I told her as I laughed. I called my mom later and she laughed at me too. Gee, was I really THAT bad?

I’m thinking to myself that I’m even amazed and very curious to see if I can stick with this healthy eating before the fresh fruit go bad. I will admit that I’ve purchased fresh fruit before and I never touched it and in the garbage bin it went. So with that in mind, I bought the greenest bananas that I could find. I also only purchased 4 kiwis hoping that I would use them up before they went bad. I, also, splurged on a larger container of organic salad mix that I should have no trouble finishing off. Then, I purchased low fat yogurts that had sugar instead of the artificial sweeteners. Then, I purchased 4 different packages of dried fruits—tropical mix, cranberries, bananas, and pineapple. Now for the progress report of 4 days later...

3 out of 5 bananas- GONE!

2 out of 4 kiwis- GONE!

WOW! So far so good!

But hey I'll keep you posted if any of this fruit ends up dying a gruesome brown smelly death...