The long and winding road to fitness,day 45

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Another wild and crazy work day has come and gone.  Yesterday I felt like I accomplished a lot.  Today I felt like I didn’t finish a single project that I started.It was just one of those days where someone was needing something every five minutes.  Then I’d find myself wondering what I’d been doing before I had to go show this person how to do something, or that person where something was, or answer a phone call about an application…and so on and so on all day long.  But the day is over, I did the best that I could, and that’s just going to have to be good enough.

I was much more successful with my eating than I was with getting any work done.  Once again, I totally followed my eating plan, didn’t eat any candy or anything from the vending machine, and didn’t have a soda of any kind.  And no headaches from caffeine withdrawal.  Of course, having iced tea helps with that.  I read a fabulous blog about how the sweetener in diet soft drinks can cause symptoms similar to MS and lupus (there’s a link to it on my previous blog)…now if that’s not enough to scare me and keep me from drinking a diet Pepsi, I don’t know what will be.  I pretty much ate the same things that I ate yesterday.  I do that frequently.  I know all the experts say to vary your diet, but when you live by yourself, it’s hard to cook just enough for one meal.  So I always have leftovers to take to work for a few days.  I don’t mind, it makes meal prep quick and easy.

I walked for 45 minutes today, no strength training.  But I did do a lot of ladder climbing once again.  See, there are health advantages to my job.  Yes, I know, the stress is a disadvantage, but I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job of coping with it lately.  At least I haven’t been using food to relieve the stress.  Now there’s some progress!  Speaking of progress, I forgot to mention that I lost another pound last week…total of 13 pounds dropped since I’ve been doing this little fitness blog.

 I do a lot of walking, lifting, and ladder climbing for my job.  I tend to view it as extra  exercise, not my real workout. What kind of exercise do you get in your every day life…exercise that most people don’t think about when they think of exercise?

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Kicking addictions to the curb

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I’ve been pretty fortunate in my life as far as addictions are concerned.  I’ve never been addicted to alcohol or drugs (legal or illegal).  I’ve never smoked cigarettes (unless you count the one puff I took when I was a little kid…just about made me sick).  I have, however, been addicted to caffeine, particularly in the form of diet Pepsi.  See, I don’t really consider a moderate intake of caffeine to necessarily be a bad thing.  What is problematic is ingesting large amounts of diet Pepsi, which has no nutritive value at all and contains chemicals that can actually be detrimental to your health.  I have given up diet Pepsi twice in probably the past two years and eventually went back to it just like so many of us women keep returning to the bad boys…we know they’re not good for us, but the attraction is there and hard to resist.

The last time I was at the grocery store, I made a conscious decision not to buy diet Pepsi.  Today I drank the last one in the house.  I figure this is as good a time as any to give it up for good.  I made tea to take to work tomorrow in place of the diet Pepsi.  Yes, tea has caffeine, but it also has antioxidants so is somewhat better for you than a beverage that is nothing but chemicals mixed with water.

I think I realized many years ago that I had an addiction to diet Pepsi.  I drank a lot of it every day, couldn’t wait to get home from work and feel myself relax as soon as I pulled that tab and heard that beautiful fizzy sound.  Kind of sounds like an alcoholic, doesn’t it?  I knew there was an addiction, but I didn’t make the choice to do something about it until much later.  Reading about the chemicals in diet soft drinks (and in soft drinks in general) opened my eyes to what I was putting into my body every day.  It doesn’t do a lot of good to try to eat clean if I continue to drink diet soft drinks. 

So, this is the next step in my quest for a healthy lifestyle.  It may not seem like a big step to a lot of people, but it’s huge to me.  Like they say, third time’s a charm…I’m going to succeed!

Do you have (or have you had) any addictions?  How do you deal with them?

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