Challenges

What are your challenges?

For me it is finding the motivation to work out and stay on a fitness routine and also combating food cravings.

With a relatively sedentary job, I get little to no physical activity each day. There's no more running up and down stairs and movie theatre hallways all day.

Since exercise isn't normally incorporated into my day, I need to establish a routine and BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE for it. That is the key.

Does anyone want to check in with me regularly to make sure I am working out??

Also, does anyone have any solutions to combating food cravings? I LOVE to eat and I love to eat good, tasty, yummy things that are often on the unhealthy side.

Suggestions are welcome!

Those are my major challenges. What about yours??

Food for Thought

Something to think about as we close the Special K Diet: Cereal may help ward off hypertension. Good thing I love cereal already!

With Love, Carin

Meatless Mondays

Hey Family! I have an idea: I learned today that during WWI, Herbert Hoover implemented "Meatless Mondays" as a voluntary ration to keep prices down, and I remember reading about how going meatless just one day a week can not only improve your health, but can also save you money and reduce your carbon footprint! Turns out, there's an entire Meatless Monday movement and a site (meatlessmonday.com) dedicated to it, which has some interesting recipes and links to great food blogs with vegetarian (or meatless monday) posts. What do you say, fam? Want to get on board?

With Love, Carin

Special K Diet

This week was all about control. Our family tried to preview the Special K diet, which meant only one "real" meal a day, with the rest of our food intake consisting of cereal, protein bars, and fruits and veggies.

Was the mini-preview successful? Well, perhaps a little. I know that if I kept at it, I'd probably see much better results (in fact, I did this once before and lost three pounds in ten days!). But despite the fact that the scale only moved a tiny notch, I am really glad I did it. For one, it helped me discipline myself. When I say I was pigging out the week before, I was pigging out. No danish from ABP was safe from my sticky fingers, no cupcake from Starbucks failed to entice me. I would eat right after I had just eaten. Go out for drinks with friends and follow it up with greasy college food. It was bad. Both on my health and my budget. And so for five days, the Special K diet kept me from indulging in my sweets, grease, and even the huge serving of Thai food I usually grab for lunch in SoHo. Instead of a danish, I grabbed a banana; instead of pizza, I chomped on a protein bar. As a result, I probably saved about $30, lost 1 pound, and reversed the habit of indulgence that I was quickly falling into. I also reconnected with fruits and veggies... a relationship that college life clearly squashed. All and all, I'd call that winning.

With Love, Carin