Trainer Evaluation

This past Saturday, I had my first meeting with a Personal Trainer at my gym. It was just the initial assessment, and it went exactly as I expected. My cholesterol's great, my blood pressure and heart rate are good, my BMI is way too high, and my flexibility sucks. All exactly as I predicted. Oh, except I've lost 3 lbs. No, not 3 real lbs, their scale is just 3 lbs under my home scale. I hadn't really lost anything - I had weighed myself at home before I went and I was steady with my previous weigh in. 

During our consultation, he tried to pin me down to measurable goals. I explained to him that I'm focused on increasing strength, balance and flexibility and not a particular weight. I explained to him that I wanted to lose about 40 more pounds, but I wasn't concerned if it took me a year or two years to do it in. All I am concerned with is making sure it's the last time I lose this "last" 40 lbs.  He still tried to pin me down to a specific amount of lbs in a specific period of time, but I'm not falling into that trap...for the same exact reason that I'm not making a new resolution. 

No New Resolution

The past few days have gone well food-wise for me. I've managed to avoid binging. There's still chocolate in my office...all 10 POUNDS of it, but every time it calls my name I've had a plan. 

I've noticed that my biggest binge time is actually AFTER a meal. I'm not hungry, but I still want to eat. After lunch is the worst. So, in order to combat the urge, I do what I did last Friday. I allow myself one small piece, and then put another small piece in a coffee cup and use it to make coffee. This allows me to consume the chocolate flavor slowly, and gives my stomach time to tell my brain it's no longer hungry. So far, this is working. I don't know how long it will work for, and I may need to eventually add more tools to my arsenal, but for right now, it's working, and I'm thankful for that. 

Well, another year has passed, and another year without making a new resolution. Typically, I would make some kind of diet or exercise resolution, but that's never worked for me before and as I now see my health as something I'm going to continue to have to work on for the rest of my life, I don't see the point in making a resolution. 

The idea of a new resolution has lost it's impact over time. Resolution is a firm decision to do or not to do something. It comes with the connotation that if you break the resolution, then all is lost. For me, it's just not a realistic way to look at eating habits and exercise. I'm human. I'm going to make poor eating choices, and I'm going to have days where I'm too tired to workout.  When these days happen, I want to forgive myself, move on, and try again...the very next meal/day. I don't want to wait a year to make a new resolution. I'm in this for the long haul.