Specifics on goals
1) To get off my blood pressure medication
It all started with blood pressure. Near the beginning of this year my blood pressure measured so high that my doctor sent me straight to a pharmacy with instructions to take a pill immediately and come right back the next day.
Not wanting to be on medication if I could help it, I started looking up what to do about high blood pressure. Of course almost all the suggestions I found were stuff that would be good for me anyway, but it was wanting to get off the meds (reinforced by some nasty side effects from the first med I tried) is what really got me kickstarted on geting healthier.
What I'm trying or plan to try:
*eat lower sodium & "Dash" food plan
I tackled these two right away. It took about a month to adjust to lower sodium (during which food tasted horrible) but I stuck with it. I also dived head first into the Dash eating plan.
I'm not sure I want to stay with Dash (and I've strayed from it the last couple weeks) but as well as lowering my blood pressure a little it also did me some good by eliminating most of the highly processed food from my life and thus (accidentally) getting rid of most of the things I binge on.
*lose weight
Even though I want the weight loss, this is a hard goal for me to embrace at times because it's hard to agree with the culture that I need to lose weight without also buying into alot of garbage and stereotypes about my worth as a fat person. Still, I've committed to it.
At my high point I weighed 255 and I'm down to 202 now. Some of that was a result of the way the Dash plan eliminated lots of my binge foods. Some of it was from learning to actually experience physical hunger before I ate. (That was an embarrassing lesson to learn, since it meant admitting that I hadn't been truly hungry in years.) Some of it was probably from starting to excercise.
The last week and this week I've stepped it up and been weighing and measuring my food. I can't say I like doing that, but I want a clearer idea of how much I eat and what my maintenance level is.
*aerobic excercise
Ok, this one is also part of the "exercise" goal so I'll cover it there.
2) To maintain and gradually increase my exercise level and integrate being more active into the rest of my life
I recently finished a 6 week goal of working out at least 3 times a week at the gym, and now I'm a little ways into a 6 week goal to do 5-6 workouts a week. It's not going too well, but then I had a friend die and just came out of being sick for a week, so I'm hoping things start clicking.
Ideally I'm doing resistance stuff about twice a week and using a heart rate monitor 2-3 times to do some at-the-gym aerobic routines my trainer has suggested.
I've switched from always taking the elevator in my building to almost always taking the stairs.
I also bought a bicycle for riding in the city. I'm a pretty big wimp about riding in city traffic so I've been focusing on taking short rides to get comfortable enough to do my shopping and errands by bike. I want to get to the point where I do most of my grocery shopping with my bicycle.
I want to keep trying new exercises and activities so I can find more that I like. My trainer recently showed me some TRX exercises that I want to try again and my gym has a yoga class that I want to try.
3) To continue to get a better handle on food
Right now I've quit bingeing by eliminating some foods and categories of foods completely from my kitchen and also never cooking stuff in big batches or too far in advance. It's working for the moment and it's a huge achievement, but I want to be able to cook ahead of time and I want to be able to keep some occasional splurge items on hand.
I also want to learn more about nutrition and to consider new ideas even when I think I already know the answers.
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