I mentioned last week that I was having problems with keeping my food & exercise diary and was looking for some kind of solution. The one I came up with was to make up a customised notebook and carry it around with me to record everything (I guess a more formalised version of what I've been doing the last few weeks).
Well, I can't be bothered doing even that! I'm just over the whole thing!
Yeah, I know! Losing weight isn't supposed to be easy. It takes years and lots of patience and work. Yet at the same time, the changes you're supposed to make to your lifestyle in order for them to become permanent need to be streamlined and appealing, or else they won't stick. I'm so confused!
What I'd really like is for eating healthy to become a habit. Then I don't even have to think about it. It's the fashion at the moment for people to say: if you do something every day for 3 weeks, then it becomes a habit. I read recently an addition to that: that you need to do something continuously for 6 months for it to truly become a lifestyle change. I've been drinking a bottle of water every day for long enough to become a lifestyle change, and now it seems natural to me.
In my experience though, it's more than that. It has to be something you enjoy doing, or at the very least, the benefits outweigh the pain-in-the-arse factor. I went to the gym 4 times a week for 9 months. Long enough for it to be a lifestyle change. But then I realised that I was no longer enjoying it, so I stopped. The novelty had worn off and I was over it. So you see, there needs to be more.
I'm still thinking about it!
In related news, the preliminary results of my little elimination diet experiment are back - I felt sick on Saturday morning after I'd had 2 glasses of wine the night before. Having eaten exactly the same meal on Saturday night, but no alcohol, on Sunday morning I felt perfectly fine. Aside, of course, from the sinking feeling that I may need to give up the pleasant pasttime and grand tradition of drinking wine! But you know what they say about experiments - they need to be repeatable. So I will just have to try it again a few times before I can be sure. ;)
