I'm a Slug

Okay, I'm not really a slug, but I feel like one these days. I've put on more weight and I feel fat and slow - just like a slug. I know I need to exercise and eat better, and once I do I'll lose some weight and feel better and have more energy. The problem is, I just haven't been able to get motivated.

I know that the sooner I start the sooner I'll start feeling better, but that self-talk hasn't been working. And I know that instead of focusing on how much weight I need to lose, I should focus on small, acheivable steps to keep me motivated as I meet each goal. But it's still so hard to ignore how long it will take me to lose weight. I want it all off now! Yes, I also lack patience. I know I didn't get this way overnight. It took years to get to the point where I feel like a slug, so I can't expect a quick turnaround, but that's what I want. It just seems so overwhelming to think how long it will take, losing a pound here and there, to finally start noticing a difference. And then so much longer to reach my goal. And then I have to continue exercising and watching what I eat for the rest of my life so I don't just end up right back where I am. It's a life sentence. But, if I don't change my habits I won't have a long life, or a quality of life, so I know that I have to get myself motivated and just do it. Yeah, I "know" a lot, but knowing is different than doing. And I have to start "doing".

I am very goal oriented and get frustrated when I don't see measurable results. So, in an effort to get and stay motivated, I just bought a Polar F11 Heart Monitor. My hope is that it will be the next best thing to a personal trainer and will provide motivation through improvements in the various numbers the monitor will track: minutes spent exercising, heart rate, calories burned, etc. Hopefully if I can focus on improving my fitness I will get positive feedback and won't be discouraged by how many pounds I still have to lose. That's my theory anyway.

I spent last night setting everything up in the watch part that you wear while exercising. I had to enter my age, height, weight, etc. Then I did the fitness test and didn't like the results. I knew I wasn't in great shape, but I wasn't expecting my fitness level to come back as "low". Not Good, not Average, and not even Fair, but Low. So that's my first focus - climbing out of Low and getting to Fair and then at least Average. They recommend that you retest yourself monthly, so hopefully I'll see even a little improvement on June 1. Hopefully that will provide me motivation to exercise regularly this month, and if I do see improvement that will motivate me to continue exercising. Looks like I'm already being forced to break down my goals into one-month chunks of time.

The monitor also sets up an exercise program for you depending on your level of fitness and your goals. You can override the recommendations, but it suggested that since I have Low fitness I should start out at the Maintenance level and then build up from there. That was frustrating because it feels like I'm delaying things, but I suppose I should abide by the recommendation until I see some improvement in my fitness level. The maintenance program only has me exercising three times a week, for a total of an hour and forty-five minutes. That's more than I'm exercising now, so I shouldn't complain that it's only considered maintenance. The exercise programs are cool though because each session is of a different duration with different goals for calories burned and minutes spent in heart-rate zones of easy, moderate, and hard. The display gives you feedback as you exercise, and if your heart rate goes either too low or too high, it beeps until you bring it back into the proper zone. I have feeling that feedback will be very beneficial.

Wow - this was a lot longer than I thought it would be. I can sure ramble on at times. Hopefully this is the kick that I need and I'll have some good progress to report next month.  Wish me luck...