Lots of talk and very little action -- that would describe accurately my efforts in the fitness department ever since my baby was born. I'd like to change that, but I think I need to start holding myself accountable for my choices if I'm going to have any success.
In the past I have shunned paying too much attention to numbers and quantifiable measures of progress. As I've told you before, I'm a person who goes to extremes, so if I start looking too closely at numbers, the danger is that I will soon begin to OBSESS over those numbers. I don't want to become that myopic about my health and lose sight of the big picture. But with my personality, trying not to obsess over numbers leads to the opposite extreme of ignoring them completely. I make a zillion excuses for why my weight is so high and my pants are so large and I exercise approximately zero times per week.
When I'm not being way too hard on myself, I'm being WAY TOO EASY on myself instead.
Until I get my bad habits under control and re-introduce self-discipline to my life, I'm going to have to monitor my progress in quantifiable ways. I enjoyed doing weekly updates during and just after pregnancy, so I'm going to try that again. On Sunday nights or Monday mornings, I will post a quick summary of my stats, including my weight and any loss/gain, my jeans size (the horror!), number of workouts, total running time/distance, longest run, and progress on whatever training program I'm using. Can you think of anything else I should monitor? Maybe my waist measurement, since that number can be a good indicator of risk for Type 2 Diabetes? I could also include how much sleep I get, since I need to work on consistently getting a healthy amount. All feedback is welcome!
My promise to myself is that I will use all of this information to motivate me to stop making excuses and make progress instead. I will NOT use it to berate myself over every little shortcoming and failure. I'm determined to find a happy medium here, and hold myself accountable without going to extremes!
No comments:
Post a Comment