Healthy Living Weekly Post: October Goals Update

In my Healthy Living Weekly Post at the beginning of October, I set some exercise and nutrition goals for this month. Here's a restatement of those goals and an update on how I'm doing at the halfway point.

October Exercise Goals:
30 minute strength training routine 3 times a week (Mon,Wed,Fri)
30 minute stationary bike ride 5 times a week (Mon,Tues,Wed,Thurs,Fri)
30 minute walk 1 time a week (Sat)

I have completed my 30 minute strength training routine every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I've ridden the stationary bike every weekday except the day we went to the Texas State Fair (five hours of walking around looking at exhibits and enjoying the beautiful weather) and the day I worked on some landscaping projects in the front yard (two and a half hours of trimming, hauling, digging, moving stones, and cleaning up). I have not taken a walk on Saturday as I had hoped, however one Saturday I did ride the stationary bike. The other Saturday I was at a retreat and spent a few hours after the retreat ended helping a friend catch up with grading papers.

I've very pleased with how I'm doing on the exercise front. I can definitely feel my body getting stronger and even see a little definition in some of my muscles! I also feel good about the days I chose not to push myself to get in a workout when I'd already been pretty active or when I had the opportunity to help someone else.

October Nutrition Goals:
1. Log everything I eat
2. Drink at least 3 bottles (48 ounces) of water each day
3. Healthy breakfast, lunch & dinner
4. More fruits & vegetables
5. Less fatty & sweet foods

I have logged all my food and drink intake for the past 11 days. Cheri is using MyFitnessPal.com which is a free website with tools to track the foods you eat and the calories for each food. I checked out the site this week and it definitely looks like a great way to track what you're eating, however right now I am simply writing everything down in a sprial notebook that stays on the kitchen counter. I've found the simpler things are, the more likely I will keep it up. Having the spiral in the kitchen where I prepare my food makes it easy to write down what and how much of each item I am putting on my plate. (Next week I'll share with you how and what I'm tracking in this spiral.) Once I get in the habit of recording my food, I may sign up for My Fitness Pal and then pick a time each day to enter my food. (Thanks Cheri for sharing about this site!!)

I am drinking at least 48 ounces of water each day and overall eating fairly healthy. At home, we are preparing very healthy well balanced meals, and we are visiting our local farmer's market once a week to pick up fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables. We are not keeping sweet foods on hand, so the few high calorie sweets I've had were a few of the oatmeal raisin cookies I made to bring to my Bible Study meeting and the chocolate covered strawberries and Dippin' Dots Robbie and I split at the Texas State Fair. I still need to add more fruits and nonstarchy vegetables to my meals each day and cut down on the starchy carbs so that I have more of a balance, however I feel good about my eating over the past two weeks.

I also gave up one of the true loves of my life as I am changing to a healthier lifestyle. I'm working on a layout about that true love and hope to share it and the story about my reason for giving it up soon.