What a great article I found today. What a great blog I should say - but there was one entry I want to talk about here and put into practice soon.
I need to exercise!
I haven't exercised much since I started eating properly this time. I need to.
I want to exercise, because it will make me feel good and because it will help me lose weight and because it will help me to be healthy. Also, and very importantly, I am aware that almost all people who lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off, do exercise for at least an hour every day. I think this is important.
The National Weight Control Registry is an American research project which is tracking what's happening with more than 5,000 people who have lost significant amounts of weight, and kept it off over a long period of time. I can't think of more appropriate research than that, to help me find what things will be most useful for me to maintain whatever weight loss I achieve. There are a few things most of these people have in common, but one thing stands out as happening with the biggest percentage of them. A huge ninety percent of them exercise, on average about an hour a day.
So I reckon that means I need to.
When to exercise?
I was exercising quite a lot when I lost weight before but I never had a stable routine for achieving that. Finding the time for it was was always something I had to work at, no matter how motivated I was, or how much I was enjoying the exercise.
Repeatedly I said to myself that with the obligations I have, there was only one healthy way I could be sure I would get some of my exercise every day, reliably and automatically. I would need to wake up earlier and take time for it before the rest of the routines and efforts and events of the day began.
I was very much in a situation where eating well became a routine. (In fact it was bouncing out of that routine that started my problems - another story.) While it was working I would find that in difficult and stressful times my food routine was a support to me. It didn't stress me to eat well, it helped me. I believed that my exercise should be like that too. Exercising was something I found helped deal with stress - but sometimes, and often repeatedly, fitting it into a busy tiring day was just a bridge too far, and it didn't happen.
I didn't even think it would be good to make it a regular part of my after dinner routine. Immediately after eating, would be a problem because I'd be physically unable to get the exercise intensity I sometimes wanted. Food is best eaten after exercise not before.
Most of the evening, I wanted to have time available for things that might come up within the family, for the kind of relaxed fun that can come from having some uncommitted time, and for other obligations that came up from sometimes working as a teacher.
I didn't want to try to fit it in by making sure I did it before bed, no matter how late it was. Exercise helps good sleep, but not if it happens to close to bedtime. I believe that would be a recipe for insomnia. So sometimes I have exercised during the evening, but I thought that trying to make it a goal to always do it, would turn it into a turn off - something that would undermine my intention to make my changes stick.
How to wake up?
I've said before that I think for me to achieve a healthy weight I need to get enough sleep. Now I'm also saying, that I think I need to wake up early. So I've had this ongoing issue of thinking I really ought to start going to bed earlier, but I've never got anywhere with that. Also, on the odd occasion I have managed to wake up early enough but I haven't converted that into the beginning of exercise. Most often I find myself automatically and tenaciously clinging to my pillow as long as I can. I have had a lot of practice at going to bed late, knowing I need to get as much sleep time as I can, then being disturbed, and yet managing to stay in bed, sleeping, as long as possible, and that's what I do. I also seem never to have changed from the time when my children were babies and I developed the tendency to fall asleep at the drop of a hat regardless of my physical circumstances. I've had the odd night of bad sleep because I've had issues on my mind, but that's not the norm for me.
I have also, over the years, had other times when I've thought an early start would help me have a better life. I've tried more than once to just set an alarm and make myself respond to it. At one stage I booked automatic wake up phone calls to a phone in another room. I knew I would get up for them, because I would never be sure what they were until I did answer, and because a phone call early in the day tends to make my heart race a bit and wake me up. Yet, I repeatedly answered the phone and then fell asleep again.
Today, I read the most amazing article. I hadn't read Steve Pavlina's Self Development Blog at all before. Today I found it fairly early in the day and ended up glued in my seat reading.
One entry was just so relevant to this topic!! It's called How to get up right away when your alarm goes off. I was really intrigued to see the title and really excited to read the article. He says that to get up earlier, people usually try to use the two methods I've just described, (the ones I've tried to use myself) and that they both don't work. Wow. He didn't say I needed to be more disciplined. He said, that when you wake up your brain is all fussy and sleepy and isn't working properly and so it doesn't follow through on the good decision you made previously when your brain was working. I'm reading it going YES! That's me, that's what happens. That's exactly what I worked out!! But that doesn't mean I'm doomed. This guy says he was just the same, but he had worked out a way round it which he used and now he gets up early every day, no problem.
He reckons he practiced getting up straight away when the alarm went off, during the day. He did it over and over to condition himself into automatically responding to the alarm that way. It makes sense to me. I can't do it right away - I have two days work - but I AM going to do it. I think this is the missing idea I needed, to be able to make this change. I might need to make sure I'm not desperate for sleep when I start to try the daytime practice too!
Okay it might not work for me. I have a different lifestyle and different obligations ... but it might!!
Food was good again today. Very similar to yesterday. I got a bit antsy during the morning - perhaps I needed my mid morning snack - perhaps it was just an emotional thing because I thought I should do tons and tons of housework and I didn't want to do any. Whatever the reason, it turned out to be something I could wait out.
No comments:
Post a Comment