Day Six – Good & bad habits, and Zumba

Guys…I did something bad.

Not like, “totally ruin your diet” bad, but it definitely wasn’t good.

I had Chinese food for lunch today. From a restaurant.

Ok, certain Chinese food meals ARE actually on the meal plan. Especially if you get steamed white rice and steamed vegetables with it, which I did. However, I’m pretty sure the chicken they had in mind was homemade orange or lemon chicken, not Sesame chicken. I couldn’t help it, I MISSED regular food. Not even a week in and I snapped.

I’m really not proud. In fact, I feel pretty ashamed. I mean come on, I couldn’t even make it a week! What kind of willpower is that?!

Here’s the ironic part: I shamefully ate my fortune cookie, and I kid you not, this was my fortune:

Is this not the perfect advice to give someone who’s trying to diet and exercise?! It’s exactly what I needed to hear, exactly what I’ve been trying to do the past six days. It was like the fortune cookie Gods were watching me shame-eat my lunch today and knew this was the fortune for me. I’m not really that superstitious, but this was just too coincidental.

The thing is, I HAVE been trying to “get my mind set” but it’s so tiring thinking about my diet every day. I miss when I could just eat what I wanted and not think about whether or not this fit into my meal plan, or how many calories I was consuming. I never used to care about all this stuff, and I think I was happier for it, for the most part. Except, I think I knew deep down I’d have to make a change eventually.

My mother, in her infinite wisdom, left this comment on my blog post from yesterday:

“Try to focus on other things. And that will get easier as this ‘eating healthy and working out’ becomes more routine and you don’t have to make it a part of your every waking thought. Instead of being a person on a diet/workout plan you will just become a person who likes to eat good food and go to the gym.”

And that’s really what I need to work towards, eventually becoming a person who just eats good food and goes to the gym without thinking twice about it. Instead I’m a person who thinks about how much I want “regular” food all the time. I think about how I feel pretty unfulfilled most of the day.

I also think about how following this regimen is making me want to rebel against it SO badly. It’s like some sort of repressed teenage angst, a rebel streak I never really fulfilled as an adolescent (well, at least in MY opinion, I don’t know what my parents would say). Hey, I didn’t get any weird piercings or tattoos so they should consider themselves lucky. Anyway, having to follow these rules makes me want to scream YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO and go get McDonald’s or an entire chocolate cake, just for the sake of taking back control of my own eating habits.

Pinterest, in its own infinite wisdom, gave me this today:

Motivation to be healthier and get fit again and lose weight and look hot in a bathing suit is what started all this. Now I just need to stick to what I’m doing and form that damn habit.

According to the first article I found after Googling “how long does it take to develop a habit,” the average time it takes to start doing things without thinking about it is 21-28 days. That’s only a month!

Of course, there are some disclaimers:

• Missing a single day did not reduce the chance of forming a habit. (Good news!)
• A sub-group took much longer than the others to form their habits, perhaps suggesting some people are ‘habit-resistant’.
• Other types of habits may well take much longer.

I’m really praying that I’m not one of those “habit-resistant” people but I can be quite stubborn, so it’s a possibility. I’ll admit, the thought of doing this for a month seems like a REALLY long time at this point, but I think the point is that after a month, I won’t even think about it.

So breakfast this morning was yet again a Cliff bar. Lunch, as I mentioned, was the Chinese food. Ugh. Dinner tonight was Egg and Cheese on Toast again, with fruit and cottage cheese.

I actually got a picture of it before it was half devoured this time. I was really craving an egg for dinner for some reason.

I’ll admit, this meal didn’t really fill me up today. After dinner I still feel pretty hungry. I think I’ll snack on some almonds to try and stave off any cravings for junk food.

My workout today was supposed to be 15 minutes on the elliptical, but I was invited to participate in a Zumba toning class tonight with one of our local instructors, Lynn Friebel. After interviewing her for work and taking some pictures, I took the class.

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN.

I’ve done Zumba before, but never in a class with a bunch of people. The class lasted an hour and it was super intense, we were moving and shaking the entire time, but I barely even noticed how hard I was working. Normally on the treadmill or elliptical machine I’m sucking air and sweating like a pig…which I’m sure I still was while doing Zumba, but I didn’t notice it. And Lynn said doing Zumba burns around 500 to up to 1,000 calories, which is AWESOME.

Plus, the Zumba gear is super fun and cute.

This is Lynn, she was awesome! She’s wearing one of the belly dancing sash things that jingled a lot when you moved your hips. I wore a purple one!

This is a Zumba gear I got to keep:

By the way, I’m still wearing this because it jingles when I type. Too much fun.

I am definitely going back to the classes regularly. It’s so much fun to do Zumba in a group, and this is the kind of workout I’ve been looking for – having fun while sweating my butt off. Plus I feel like I got much more of a workout than my treadmill and elliptical workouts.

Thoughts after day six:

1. Here’s hoping one slip up of Chinese food isn’t going to ruin my progress. I promise I will try to do better from now on!

2. I’m impatient for healthy eating to become a habit I don’t have to think about, because thinking about every meal of every day is getting tedious and annoying.

3. Incorporating working out into my schedule is going to be much easier than the eating. I’m really enjoying doing physical activity every day.

4. Zumba is absolutely my new favorite workout, and I highly encourage everyone to try it at least once in their life!