Changing up my fitness approach and goals

[sarahmichigan]

Expanded from a comment I made over at fathletes:



I'd been tracking my activity on a daily and weekly basis and my fruit/veggie intake on a similar schedule since last November, via joesgoals.com and then posting a summary over here on my LJ.

In some ways, this was really good for me:
-I exercise largely because of the mental health benefits and not for any weight-loss reasons, and I find I get achy, cranky, and moody when I'm not getting enough activity. Tracking daily/weekly cardio activity helped me stay on track with at least a minimum level of exercise for optimal mental health.
-Tracking fruit and veggie consumption helped me develop the habit of getting in at least half a serving of fruit for breakfast and one full serving of fruit and one of veggies minimum at lunch each weekday. I've always had a pretty good diet in terms of fruit/veggie consumption, but the tracking has helped me be more consistent.
-The tracking also helped me identify trends- such as when I overdo it with exercise one week, I tend to have to recover and go easier than normal the next week. I also notice that I bite my cuticles and nails less when I'm doing a consistent level of exercise and other "self-care" activities.

But, I found that tracking these things closely also pushed some of my negative buttons from years of weight-loss dieting, too:
-For instance, I can't just go out for a walk or a bike ride without thinking about how many "points" this will be toward my daily or weekly goal.
-Tracking fruits and veggies sometimes puts me back in that old "good food/bad food" mentality that often accompanies weight-loss dieting. I feel righteous when I've had my 5+ servings, and feel like I'm "bad" when I have an off day.

I gave myself off the last 10 or so days of August to stop doing my tracking and to let up on the workouts. I was still walking and biking and stretching and doing some situps and push-ups, but not really doing structured "workouts" the way I had been. I started back to a new gym on Saturday, and I'm glad to be active again. However, I've also simultaneously cleared out and deleted my old joesgoals.com log. I feel it's time for a fresh start. I want to continue to track activity in some way, but now that I've pretty much established my fruit/veggie habits, I don't feel the need to track that as closely any more.

I think I want to continue to track the number of days per week that I get some kind of structured exercise/activity, but I also need to find room to acknowledge non-traditional exercise and activity, like mowing the lawn (with our hilly lawn and old beater of a mower, believe me when I say that this is a low-grade cardio workout) or leisurely non-cardio walking. I also think that if I'm going to be taking some classes that combine cardio and weights and flexibility exercises, then the format I was using before isn't going to work as well for me anymore.

I'll probably be ruminating on this once or twice more until I figure out a tracking system that works for me. I'm also open to hearing what has worked for those of my readers who track fitness/health goals, if anyone wants to share.

Comments

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

That is so awesome, Jenny- good work. don't you find that regardless of weight loss/lost inches, regular exercise helps you feel more relaxed and loose and so on? It does for me, I know.

Sometimes I start feeling achy and realize it's not because I've "overdone it" but because I have been slacking off and my body wants to move MORE.

[rossja.livejournal.com]

Yeah I definitely find that I feel better when I move in a given day. Some days it's hard to get started, but I'm always happy after I start and when I finish. Mostly I'm happy that the incidents of my stomach hurting are less and less. It was starting to get to a point last year to where it was worrying me. I'm also finding that I crave sweets a bit less. Not that I don't still eat them, but it's not an overwhelming craving and I don't eat as much more often than not. So I'd call that success. Throw in a loss of 45 more lbs and I'll be very happy. That sort of puts me back to my happy goal weight. Not a size 6, but I've never wanted to be a size 6.

Although I'm still kind of stressing out this week and no amount of movement is going to help that. *sigh*