Smile-breaks
Speaking of good intentions
Good intentions got me here. Right here. I'm going to do some medi/health speak now, which is totally against the grain for me, but bear with me and we'll get to the fun stuff.
"Here" is me teetering on the wrong side of the bloodlines—the line that separates those with too much cholesterol from those with just the right amount and also the line that separates those with too much sweet stuff, a.k.a. sugar, in their blood from those with the recommended—lower, of course—sugar count.
My good intentions were to exercise more, to start eating lots of icky vegetables—I don't even like salads—and last and worst, to stop with the sweets and cholesterol-laden foods like cheeses and Dairy Queen cones and butter and all that good stuff. Oh yes, more fish, too. I've never been addicted to steaks and burgers so I'm okay on the red meat thing.
So that's the medi/health speak. When I saw the blood test results I knew I had to man up. My good intentions had been lying around, waiting for a good kick in the rear. This was it. Time for action. And that calls for a plan.
The plan was obvious—see the good intentions above—but to stick to a plan, you have to have motivation. I like to make a good impression on people so the best motivation would come from outside. And being goal-oriented—until I retired and gave all that up—I would need a goal so I set myself a target date of three months, with a blood test at the end to grade the results.
Asking my doctor for the blood test took care of the outside motivation. His nurse, Diane, was happy to schedule it for me, so that's two people to motivate me. Plus you guys, of course. Somehow I'm gonna have to come to love vegetables. And exercise. And fish. And hate sweets? Not likely. . .
Today is the—wow! It's been a week and a half. Time flies when you're—um, having fun? So far I've discovered that salmon isn't half bad and the garlicky string beans at Applebee's are pretty darn tasty. Sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, lightly salted, make a good snack. I used to like peas cold out of the can and lucky for me, I still do. There are more fish on the menus than I ever paid attention to, and walking around and around the pool in the backyard to the tune of a five-minute timer isn't a bad way to enjoy an evening under the stars or a cool morning before the heat rises.
The five-minute timer gets a workout because I keep re-setting it to keep me going. Somehow that little beeper going off after five minutes makes me feel accomplished and I reset it. Just five more minutes, I say. I can do that. Another five minutes, I can do that. . . I've even been spending a little time with the weights that have been sitting idle, waiting for some action.
I've met Mars and Jupiter in my nighttime walks around the pool. The moon is probably laughing at me and I'm ever so glad for the fence around the yard that keeps my neighbors from seeing me going round and round. With all this, an unexpected benefit greets me from the scale—I'm losing a few of those pounds I've been trying to get rid of for years.
Good intentions. . . got me nowhere. The plan. . . we'll see.
