Put the "I" Back in Your Vocabulary

Monday, August 13, 2012

I just finished reading the SparkPeople article called “Put the “I” Back in Your Vocabulary. It is part one of ten in the Mind Over Body series.

Boy, did this hit home. The article works on the premise that by using “I” as part of your vocabulary, you take ownership of your wellness, reminding you about the importance of putting your wellness higher up on your list of things to do.

The article gave a simple illustration and it was this illustration that opened my eyes. By using the “I” replacement strategy the statement “It was too cold to walk outside today” becomes “I decided I didn’t want to walk in the cold today”. Bingo! It was a choice. I decided not to exercise. The cold was the external excuse.

I look at my first blog entries and I see the “external” reasons:

My family does not eat healthy

There are too many household chores to do

Oh, I made it my problem all right. But, I didn’t take the responsibility.

This changes everything for me! I didn’t realize how self-sabotaging my thinking and vocabulary was. I walked around with a tremendous sense of pity (I’m not healthy anymore!) and guilt (I’m selfish if I take time to workout!). I worked against my own wellness without even realizing it.

Knowledge is power and I now have the knowledge to change my self-defeating thinking and empower myself with ownership and action. Tonight, I will workout before taking care of household chores. And, I won’t feel guilty about it!

I learned a big lesson the other day.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

I truly believed that I was a careful eater. I try to watch my portions and when dining out try to make the smart food choices. Well...

It seems that some of my "smart" choices were not so smart after all. I was at Joey's restaurant and like a good health conscious girl I ordered the charbroiled salmon with double mixed veg. Good start. They offered the desert menu but my husband and I declined. Instead, we thought we would go to Tim Horton's, a Canadian coffee/donut place. Rather than have a huge, decadent desert, we thought we made the "smart" choice of ordering 3 Timbits (donut holes) each. Smaller than an entire donut, and therefore must be lower in calories, right? WRONG!

When I got home I added the food to my nutrition tracker for the day and whoops! Why and how am I so over in calories? That's when I saw that the three tiny timbits came to well over 300 calories!!! So much for smart!

That got me thinking. I always thought that I was a very careful eater. This lesson made me realize that I was fooling myself by thinking this way. Smaller does not necessarily mean lower in fat or calories. All these years I thought that if the plate wasn't heaping or if I just had a tiny taste, it couldn't be bad for me. I couldn't be more wrong.

So, the up side? I am now aware of how easy it is to rack up the calories when I don't consciously consider what and how much I'm eating. I don't mind once in a while splurging on desert if I plan for it but I don't want to a timbit surprise ever again! What an eye opener!

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I got a surprise in the mail!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

I had a lovely surprise in the mail when I got home from work yesterday. I opened my parcel to find my copy of The Spark and the two Spark 10 minute workout DVDs. Woot!

I am especially excited about the DVDs right now because I really, really miss working out. As it has been a while, I thought the DVDs would help me get started.

I started off with monitoring my food and that has been going well for several weeks. Now I’m working on my water and getting used to running to the bathroom every five minutes! Now I’m ready to incorporate exercise. Thanks to the fabulous feedback on my previous blog post, I feel very motivated to get things done! You all rock! Also, thanks to my fabulous husband, we are making sure that time is scheduled for me to workout and continue with my yoga. I’ll let you know how things go!

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Finding time for me makes me feel selfish

Monday, September 13, 2010

If I ask my husband or my kids to do the dishes so I can actually work out, I feel selfish. Don't get me wrong, my family is great. It's my problem and why I lost my discipline. I so badly wanted to fit well in to the family when I got married, that I let myself become absorbed in to their lifestyle and eating habits. With my metabolism and body type, I have to be very careful with the food I eat and the amount of exercise. It was too easy to just eat what everyone else was eating. And then it was too easy to eat as much as they were eating. After a few years of being over-tired, over-worked and over-fed, I lost the lust for exercising.

And then there was the guilt. After several years of trying to be everything for everyone in the house I laid out a perfect little trap for myself. If I try to carve out some me time, I feel terribly guilty for it. I can't help but think about all of the cleaning and other running around I should be doing instead. I know it's not rational and yet...

But I know better and my clever little brain has disarmed all of those tricky little traps I set and won't let me get away with it anymore. I've started monitoring my eating, especially my portions. The next step is exercise. I'm getting really excited!

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