I know that I’m not a diet and fitness guru.  I know I’m not a fitness junkie.  I know there are people out in the world who will read those two lines and yell, “I call Bullshit and Shenanigans!”

I guess I know a few things this morning.  Good for me!  How exciting is it that my brain isn’t completely lost to an allergy mental fog today?

I had to buckle down.  The previous month, month and a half, found me stressing out and when I stress out – I eat.  I also don’t stay well-hydrated and that makes me crave sugar and alcohol is a quick ‘n easy way to get that sugar.  I was starting to feel “blah” because of all the extra food… well, let’s not call it “food” so much as I was sugaring the gas tank.  My system wasn’t getting completely gummed up, but it was starting to show the effects of too much “not fuel”.

I made a few rules for myself to help combat the stress and in essence, my bad eating and drinking habits:

1. Follow the Ayurvedic recommendation of drinking two to three 8 oz glasses of warm/hot water first thing in the morning before eating to “wake up” the digestive tract.
2. If I want a cocktail at the end of the day, I need to drink a minimum of eight 8 oz. glasses of water prior to consumption.  Not enough water – no cocktail.
3. Cut back to five cocktails a week, preferably not all in one sitting.
3. Cut back on the sugary sweets; if baking treats myself, try to make them “Paleo“.
4. Get in fitness activity of some form, daily.
5. Restart the daily weigh-in and balance test on the Wii console.
6. Continue to track food/calories.

So how have I fared?  The Ayurvedic recommendation of drinking the warm or hot water every morning is surprisingly very easy, and really does prime the system for the day.  I have a large purple drinking glass that holds 20 oz of water.  One glass right after I brush teeth and boom!  Done.

Hydration before cocktails?  Also, working very well.  I think it was just an easy rule to create and enact.  I’ve found that by the end of the evening, if I have to get in one more 8-oz serving of water, my craving for a cocktail disappears because my stomach is full.  I’ve actually been getting up to around ten 8-oz glasses of water a day.

Cutting back on the sweets.  This has been an interesting rule to put into place, as I don’t normally crave sweets.  However, I’ve been finding that my mind is thinking of sweets as a “get around” for the alcohol.  “Ohhh, I need to drink more water, but I really want a bit of something sweet?  Okay, cookies it is!”  So, when I noticed that, that’s when I started to look more in earnest at the Paleo cooking and baking.  High fiber coconut flour and rich almond flour are the picks for Paleo along with a variety of other good-for-you “real” foods to sweeten and bind, like raw honey and dates.

Daily activity is usually pretty easy though I still have days where my mind crosses it’s arms and stomps it feet shouting, “I don’t wanna work out!”  Of course, I try to coax it with a little, “You’ll feel better once you’ve gotten in a little activity.  You can do at least 10 minutes.”  Little Rex and I have a mental dual and usually I win.  Sometimes I have to bribe Little Rex with a cookie, and then drink a big glass of water to make myself too full to really WANT the bribed cookie.  Little Rex is going to catch on to that one.

The daily weigh-in.  I know, fitness experts are going to say “Don’t DO IT!  You should weigh-in no more than once a week!”  I know.  Believe me, I really know.  The thing is, if I don’t fire up the Wii Fit Plus daily, I’ve gone over a month before checking in and then it becomes a “chore” instead of part of the daily routine.  Now, with having what I consider limited time after work when we get home, hopping on the Wii board is part of the morning ritual.

Lastly, calorie counting.  People can say all they want about how I’m being too hard on myself, but believe me when I say that calorie counting can be a good thing.  When I look back on days I know I was really stressing – I notice a pattern with my eating habits.  That’s also how I came up with some of my rules – just by looking at what I was eating over the past weeks and seeing when there were problems.

So, Readers, do you have any rules that you apply to your life on a daily basis?  

Have you made rules that didn’t stick?  

Have you come up with guidelines that you’ve been following for years because they work?  

How much fitness activity do you get in on a daily basis?