Thursday, January 5, 2012

Funny how some things I can do every day and other things I simply can't

I'm looking at my life this past year and I find some interesting patterns. And then I realize I have had these patterns before, but with "bad habits".

First, food. I am totally fine with eating the same breakfast and the same lunch and similar snacks every single day.

Typically for breakfast I have a piece of fruit and a nutrition/protein bar. My current favorite fruit is grapefruit. For lunch, almost every single day I eat an apple doused with cinnamon and 3 tablespoons of peanut butter. I miss it when I don't have it. Once in a great moon I will fix eggs and bacon or sausage, but that is rare. And then for snacks I either grab a couple cheese sticks or another protein bar. The same, day after day. Befor I started eating healthier, I would eat bread with peanut butter and a fruit spread for breakfast and something like Cheetos every day for lunch and for snacks either ice cream or a candy bar or the like. So, for two meals a day and for snacks, before and now, I was very consistent with what I ate and chose the same foods day after day,

Now, if were to do that with dinner, I would go batty. Eating something more than two to three days in a row for dinner is beyond enough. I rotate meats and beans and grains and veggies. I try to eat seasonally too, but always with variety. So why can I tolerate the same thing every day with all other eating, but not dinner? Is it cultural? Or something more?

And then there is exercise. There is no way I could do the same exercise every day. Absolutely no way. I get bored very quickly. I even get bored going to the gym every day even if it's different classes. I need to mix it up with bike riding outside, or walking, or gardening or heavy duty cleaning. One of the reasons I don't think I could ever become an exclusive runner. It would start to bore me.

So, with that in mind, I set up alarms on my iPhone last night to remind me to sign up for classes. This is what I have scheduled: (with the alarm going off 25 hours in advance to sign up):

Monday - spinning
Tuesday - yoga 1
Wednesday - express BodyPump followed by express BodyStep (45 min each instead of 60 each)
Thursday - yoga 1
Friday - BodyStep
Saturday - BodyPump
Sunday - spinning

Plan is to get to 5 days a week. Most likely day to skip is Sunday as that class is early and I have obligations the rest of Sunday morning and early afternoon. If I skip another day, it will probably be another spinning class or one of the yoga classes. I'll try to keep the rest as its a good mix of classes. And yoga is a big if as of yet as I've never taken a yoga class beforee, but i figure it would be good for me to add it in.

But I look at this and wonder, "when will I get bored of this?" because I know I will. And then what? Do I throw in some walking around the neighborhood? More bike riding? When the weather gets better, gardening? Some workout videos in the basement?

Why can't I stay satisfied with one exercise? It would make it easier to stick to it I think, but even that boredom isn't that strange, I suppose. I know a lot of people who vary what they do and I don't think it's so much because they think it's better for them, but because they need that variety.

Anyway... Recognizing my patterns was interesting today. Tonight's exercise is spinning as I failed to get into the yoga class because I didn't sign up early enough (which led to the suggestion of setting of alarms to remind myself to sign up for classes).

Stats for 1/5/12:

Highest weight: 275. Now: 182.6
Total hours exercised in 2012: 2/250

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