Now that Ellie is old enough to sleep through the night, most nights anyway, I’ve started trying to get back into shape. I’ve never been a fantastic athlete, but in college I was able to diet and exercise enough to get into (should that be “get in to” or “get in” or “get into”) pretty good shape. That fell apart as I slipped into my mid-30s, but about 18 months prior to her arrival I got into weightlifting quite a bit. I went from not being flexible enough to even do a body-weight squat to pushing about 100 pounds. That’s really not much to my younger self, but it felt pretty good at 34!
Now that I’m trying to get back in to it, I’m noticing that my sleep patterns have changed significantly. I can no longer lift heavy, eat tons of protein, and just zonk out for 9 hours. Despite the improvements in Ellie’s sleep cycles, I’m lucky to get 6 consecutive hours of rest now. That means I’ve got to watch my diet more closely than ever.
For me, portion control and grazing is more important than avoiding junk food. I frikken love Mountain Dew, but that’s probably my only vice. I’m working hard on cutting that out completely. I can cut out beer with nary a thought, I don’t binge on candy or chips… but I know that I like to snack constantly. Eating healthy is great, but eating an entire bag of grapes is still a lot of sugar/carbohydrates. I tell myself, “it’s healthy so it’s okay.”
I read this cool article about the psychological reasons for eating It’s not because you’re hungry. I’m sure you can read the article, but I’ll talk about myself here.
Jen and I really don’t eat out much. I’m basically the only person at work that brings a lunch each day (my boss literally gasped when I get some Taco Bell last week), I specifically use smaller plates at home to make my portions look bigger than they are, we make almost everything we eat from scratch (okay I still don’t zest my own lemons, sigh, but that’s just because of the ongoing debate in our house about whether or not I really need a zester), but none of that stops me from snacking on healthy stuff.
I should probably put that tally thing on the refrigerator and next to the fruit bowl. Adulting means putting some fruit in a bowl so when someone comes over I can say, “sorry, let me move this” while it looks like I’m a functioning grown-up.