Exercise, Energy, and an Experiment

Continuing on the thought of exercise, lifestyle, and eating, I have always wanted to be able to have enough energy to do activities with my kids.  That is one of the main motivators I have for losing weight and continuing to eat healthy.  Over the past two years I have had the mindset of "when I get to my goal weight, then I will be able to count cleaning, and playing with the kids as exercise.  But for now I need to make sure I do my official exercise and then any other activity is just bonus movement and maybe it will help me lose weight faster."  I am now beginning to think that I was wrong to think that way.  What I have been doing is when I am working towards losing weight I will work out like crazy, either doing zumba then swimming or doing body pump or body attack and I will walk out of the gym completely exhausted.  Then I have to go home and get the kids something to eat, and even thinking about cleaning the house makes me want to curl up in a corner sobbing.  I use up all my energy at the gym and I hardly have any energy left for the rest of the day.  Playing with the kids is hard, cleaning is hard.  Pretty much doing anything for the rest of the day is hard because I'm so tired.  Some days I just push myself through it.  Remember those days I was getting in 25,000 steps every day?  If I kept up that pace for a few days, usually Monday-Wednesday, I would then crash the rest of the week and not be able to move for three days.  On my good days I would try not to eat any additional food because I wanted to lose weight faster, and I believe that contributed to my binge eating because I would just get so hungry, and I would get so stressed and then I would crash and be tired and feel terrible about myself which lead to emotional eating and binges.  Obviously this is not a favorable way of life. 

Now I am interested in managing my energy levels and spreading out my activity better.  Instead of spending all my energy in the first half of the week, take my activity level down and then see if I have energy for the rest of the week.  Spread it out more.  Today I didn't exercise, and I almost always do on Mondays, in my old way of thinking I certainly would.  I spent the day playing with the kids and cleaning the house.  We went to a friend's house in the morning, and then played in the backyard.  After lunch the kids watched a movie while I swept and mopped the kitchen floors, and cleaned the downstairs bathroom and the kids bathroom.  Then we went to the park.  Afterwards I took a shower because I had decided not to exercise after all, played with the kids, made dinner, cleaned the kitchen, put Chloe to bed, played board games with Lily and then put her to bed.  It was still a very busy day and my fitibit gave me about 500 extra calories which I didn't use because it wasn't official exercise and I didn't feel like I needed to eat them (of course I way over ate the past four days so maybe that is why).  I didn't need to add an official exercise in today, although I would have if I was still focused on being good or being on plan.  No.  I need to find a better way of life.  I can't expect myself to exercise and clean and cook and play with the kids.  I can't do it all, and that is exactly what I have been expecting myself to do and I burned myself out very quickly.

So I am trying an experiment for the month of April.  I will weigh myself on April 1st and then on May 1st and I will take my measurements too for good measure.  I am not going to weigh myself in between those days and I am just going to focus on living my life and making good habits and changing bad habits.  It's changing habits that really makes this a way of life.  You can't diet forever.  Well I guess you could, but it makes maintaining really hard.  It's changing your habits and creating a new life for yourself that leads you to success in maintenance.  I never really understood that until now.  Since this post is starting to get lengthy I will be posting my habits I'm focusing on tomorrow.  Hopefully with some work I can get this figured out at long last and find peace so I don't feel like I am struggling so much and so I don't get so bent up with "I just wish I were done losing weight".  If I focus on living life, and changing my habits, hopefully weight loss will be the happy side effect.  My goal is same, only my methods are changing.  Heather from the half size me show always says "If you do the same thing over and over again, expect to get the same results.  If what you are doing is not working then you should try something else."  there is another quote by someone that goes along the lines of "Craziness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".  So I'm going to change, and the exercise I do with my kids will count as exercise.  I'm not going to try to overexert myself in order to speed up weight loss.  I am searching for a well balanced life.  I want to go into maintenance knowing that I can and will succeed because I have truly changed my habits, I have truly changed myself.  I don't want to always be dieting back down to my goal weight. 

Here are some happy pictures of Chloe drinking the green smoothie I made for lunch. 

Your kids watch what you do.  Will you teach them good habits or bad habits?  My kids are one of my biggest reasons why I want to live a healthy life.  I want to be able to teach them how to eat well, and live happy.