Let's talk food.

So far, I've been talking mostly about exercise. It's definitely important, but at least as important, and likely more so, is diet.

I don't do Jenny Craig, I don't follow the Atkins Diet, I don't go to Weight Watchers meetings... you get the idea. I know people who have had great success with all these methods, and I'm certainly not knocking them. They just weren't for me. What did work for me was...













(drumroll please)













Eating sensibly and portion control.


That's it.

I bought myself a $6 food scale at Walmart and started reading labels. I actually measured out a tablespoon of peanut butter, instead of just eyeballing it. You know what I discovered? That an actual serving was less than I was using, but it was still enough.

But then food sort of overtook my life. It felt as thought I spent my day thinking about what I would eat next, watching the clock to figure out when I could eat it (trying to space out my 3 meals plus 3 snacks evenly)... it become too hard, and I got burnt out. Seems silly that eating "right" would be hard, but it was, at least for me.

So I need to get back to basics. Quite a while ago I bought a book called The Eat Clean Diet and never read it. I'm going to do that now.

I need to start stocking low-cal, healthy snacks again, so that I can just grab something without having to put a lot of thought into it. It's easy to do this with junk food, so I'm going to make it just as easy for me to grab healthier options.

I'm going to do more meal-planning. This will spill over into other areas of my life, as I will be lessed stressed and more organized come dinnertime, which will lead to a happier mommy and a more relaxed, earlier meal, leaving extra time to focus on the kids, instead of going from the dinner table to the tub to bed. Not to mention that by meal planning, and only going to the grocery store once per week, I'll cut down on gas and spend less on groceries, too. There are many benefits to this, now I just need to put it into practice.

I ordered a food journal, too. I've always just used a notebook, but it got too hard to keep up with writing everything down. Or else I would write the food down, but then not take the time to fill in the nutritional information. Maybe if I have an journal actually designed for this purpose, with the pages already labeled and just needing to be filled in, I will be more successful at this.

I'm seeing small changes in my body already, and it makes me want to stay on track and is keeping me motivated. I never did make it out for a run this weekend, but we got some much-overdue stuff done around the house so that was okay. The fact that I'm heading out of town for a girls-only getaway next weekend is keeping me on track, too -- I want to be bringing home new clothes in a smaller size!

Okay, I'm done now.