To get started, I decided I was going to see what a normal day was like for myself. After all, you can't improve if you don't know where you're starting from. I was going to walk normally, eat what I wanted, and try to at least track my food on MFP. I wasn't making any real changes as of yet, just getting a feel for where I was. I already knew that I probably ate on average 3000 calories or so a day. Like I said, I had some previous experience with MFP, so I knew what a "normal" day looked like. My steps however were a mystery to me. I knew I wasn't getting anywhere near the 10,000 recommended, but had no idea I was more in the 2000 range. The good thing about the Vivofit is it sees where you are, and then eases you up slowly. I was so jazzed the first time I hit my goal, even though it was only about 3000 steps.The next day, when I only needed a couple hundred more, I was like "cool, I've got this, easy".
Now I'll admit, in the following week or two, there were many days I still missed the goal, and one strange anomaly where I more then doubled it, but in time, I actually started making hitting that goal a priority, and I'm happy to say that if I keep it up, as of the 10th, I will have met or exceeded my steps goal for a full month, and expect to have gone from getting 2000 steps a day to nearly 8000. I still see 10,000 and think "never going to happen" but in fairness, I would have said that about 6000 when I started, and now that's a no brainer.
In addition to the steps, I did want to do something about my diet, not the "here's a list of all the things you can't have" kind of diet, just the scientific "what is this homosapien's diet like". I mean, all living creatures have a diet, but we humans like to turn diet into a verb rather then a noun, welp, not this human.
I still wanted to make veggies more of a priority, and start trying to get at least some handle on the calories, even though I wasn't ready for a full on commitment. MyFitnessPal recommends 1640 calories a day for me, not as bad as it could be, but man, when you can wipe out 1000 in one meal without even going that overboard, it takes a lot of careful thought to keep it under.
So in keeping with the small steps mentality, I decided I was going to try to go with an every other day pattern to prevent getting overwhelmed by the sudden change. I would have "healthy days" (As implied before, I hate the word diet... in fact, just forget that I used it before, k?) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and give myself permission to be "normal" on Tuesday, Wednesday, and the weekend.
Welp, that lasted all of about 2 days.
My new system was quickly trashed when our refrigerator died. I don't know about you, but when I'm trying to start something new, the stress planets must be aligned just right, or else. The freezer had been iced up for a month or more, and then our drawer styled door got stuck, not due to the ice, but something getting warped, which caused us to only be able to open it about 6 inches, and while we knew we were living on borrowed time, there was still no preparing for the whole thing to suddenly stop running giving us a mere 4 hours to get the contents of the fridge transferred... well, 4 hours if you don't open it, less once you have, but moving on...
So in a rapid coordinated attack, Mom, Dad, and I prepared and moved the entire contents of our fridge to the outdoor refrigerator, you know, the one that's been running for 20+ years, no problem. Thanks modern advances in appliance technology. We left the freezer closed for the time, as there was no way we were going to fit all of that in the already full outdoor freezer, and with all the ice in there, I figured we had more than the recommend 24 hours to play with. So with that, my family and I went to bed, trying not to think about the day ahead of us and what we were going to do about getting it repaired/replaced asap.
The next morning... the refrigerator was running again. Our theory is that the fan was icing up and after being off for a while, thawed out, and so on... I say it like that because this continued to be the pattern for another week or two. The fridge would come on, we'd slowly gain trust in it, move food back inside as we needed things, and it would die again, so we'd rush everything back outside once more. Needless to say, we were not bringing home many groceries and were doing our best to use things up in order to reduce the number of items being carted back and forth.
This was not very conducive to eating "healthy" and as such, I found myself happy if I got 1 "healthy day" a week. I actually think this was the best thing that could have happened to me. If I had tried to start with my 3 or 4 days a week approach, I may have well decided to give up by now. It may not seem it, but even a 50% solution, when you've basically been doing nothing, feels like an overwhelming shift. I needed small bites to move forward, and that's what this did for me. For a few weeks it was 1 HD per week(getting tired of all the healthy days in quotes, I'm sure you can follow) then 2, and for now I'm saying that I'm up to 3 a week, though I've actually hit 4 a couple of times, and unless things change, this week may be a 2 (Update: I pushed through and am getting my 3rd HD this week today! Woo!), but no one said there wouldn't be some setbacks in my not so plan of a plan. The important thing is I'm doing it, I'm not thinking about throwing in the towel because everyday is a new day. I don't wake up thinking "I can't go on like this, I want a doughnut" I just think, hey, I want a doughnut so I'll have one, and if I don't stay under my calorie goal today, I'll just try again tomorrow. No guilt for a cheat meal or day, because that doesn't exist, it's just a full effort day, vs a normal day. Sometimes a normal day becomes a healthy day on it's own, and sometimes a healthy day gets derailed by a big juicy cheeseburger which is ok too. For now, that's good enough, and good enough is great. It's what I need to keep going, and I can promise I'm eating a lot better now overall then I was 2 months ago, so for me, that's a win.
Conclusion Tomorrow!
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