In Shape - The Journey — Pat Dryburgh

Over Christmas I put on a few extra pounds. Nothing too major, however it did get in the way of the progress I had been making with my weight goals. Since then I have tried really hard to stay on track, writing everything I eat in my journal, getting to the gym 2-3 times a week and getting enough sleep. So far things have been going good, but not great. I have almost overcome one of my greatest addictions (frozen yogurt), but still find myself eating late at night.

Last night Sara encouraged me to focus on the positives rather than the negatives, so here is a list of the positive changes I’ve made so far with my health:

Big Breakfast. Through reading some articles in Men’s Health magazine I learned that men should be eating around 620 calories for breakfast. Up until then, I had only been eating 200-300. I was finding that by night time I was still super hungry, would eat something, and then wouldn’t be hungry in the morning. I’ve worked hard to reverse this, by eating 2 eggs (protein), a Weight Watcher’s bagel with peanut butter (carbs and protein) and a glass of milk (calcium). This gets me to 588 cal, which is better than where I was.
Snacks. Just about every dietician I’ve read about has said to have 5-6 small meals a day. For a big guy like me, that’s about 400 cal a day (not really a snack!). Obviously there’s a need to spread calories out throughout the day, so I have started bringing small snacks to work every day. Apples, bananas, almonds, granola bars, All Bran bars and pudding cups are some of my staples. I usually eat a piece of fruit (fibre/potassium) and a bar of some sort (protein/carbs/fibre). Quite frankly I cannot get enough fibre in me. (I believe there’s a stat that says most Canadians get something like 20% of their daily intake of fibre every day. Hence the booming detox industry!)
Apples. I just have to say that over the past few months, I have really grown to love apples. I have gone from not having one in probably a few years to eating one or two every day. So good.
Journaling. Every day, I have kept a diary of my health. This diary includes not only my daily food intake, but also my workout, my sleep, and my water intake. This helps me see how well I’m doing. Yesterday I had a really bad night, but I know that I shouldn’t give up on myself because the rest of the week has been fairly good. It’s really encouraging to have physical evidence that I can do this.

So those are just a few of the things I’ve done over the past few weeks to really get things going again with my health. I need to get to the gym more often (went twice this week though!) and really crack down on eating late, but overall I’m actually quite pleased with how things are going.

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