Ok, I am really slacking! I could have sworn that I wrote this post....I'm telling you. I wrote it! Ok, maybe I wrote it in my head. But I just came online and was shocked to see it not here! I'm telling you.....
So about a week or so ago I had two things happen or rather brought to my attention that relate to my life and my healthy journey. They are doctors advice to lose weight and setting goals.
The first is doctors advice. I follow a channel on youtube. It is a guy and his wife is in the background and they banter back and forth. We never see the wife. HOWEVER, about a week ago we saw the wife in a very serious video. She is roughly my age (48) and she was out grocery shopping and felt pain. She had a suspected heart attack. She spent 4 days in the hospital and they are still running tests to find out what is happening. Their video was her story but very heavily into giving warning signs and advising people (women in particular) of heart issues. Women have different symptoms than men apparently....and women also at are higher risk when their estrogen is fluctuating wildly through perimenopause. I watched the video and I was like "dude...just another reason to get my weight under control".
But that still didn't spark me. A few nights later I was just feeling really really dizzy. I mentioned it to Jason and also mentioned that it had happened another evening (and I had a brief period of it since then for a third night). We immediately checked my blood pressure and a few other things, and everything was normal. But as I sat there worrying I was thinking, "My doctor is flat out going to have to put me on a different diet and whatnot in order to 'save my life" Dramatic? Yes.....very much so! But this came right after that video that I watched! But thinking that really made me think.......why am I not changing my diet NOW. Why am I waiting under a doctor tells me that I have to change or I will die?
The other thing...the goal. Someone, oddly enough the same person from the channel that posted that video that I mentioned earlier, commented on one of my videos. They were saying "set goals". I have resisted setting a weight loss goal. I have set them in the past. I set goals like "I will lose 25 pounds by the time I get married" (Yup...remember the 12 week challenge?? from this fall?) I've done those challenges to myself many time! And typically I start to slip up and as soon as I realize that I have no chance of making that goal, I feel like a failure and I give up. Yup, that's what I do! I give up and typically gain! But I started to think. I am not going to set any long term goal. I am not going to say "MaryFran, you can be at your goal weight by such and such date!" No! I am setting a goal of 1 pound a week. If I fail for that WEEK than I have the next week to try again!
So those are my deep thoughts! I have been doing ok with my weight loss efforts. I've had a few things slip in (Reece's cups.......darn them!) I have been able to maintain the clean fast for my intermittent fasting. I've been consistently fasting about 16-17 hours each day. I've talked about pushing it longer, but right now I'm hungry when that 16-17 hour mark comes around. So I'm just sitting back and relaxing with this for a while. I don't want to be ravenous when I break my fast, because I know what I will do (or rather what I am capable of eating)! So right now I'm just sitting right here at that 16 hour fast each day!