Progress Report

Okay, so here's what I'm doing:

1. I drink warm water (distilled) when I wake up in the morning and eat a nutritious breakfast within 1/2 hour of arising. Okay, within 1 hour, or 2, but I'm shooting for the ideal. My body does not work well in the a.m.
2. I write down everything I eat and drink, including water (of which I try to drink enough). Very tedious.
3. I also record every time I do significant exercise, one half hour BEFORE I do it. In ink. I am actually 13 minutes into my next exercise period at the moment, but I'll just cross it out and write "blogged instead" and then write "exercise" again for 12:30. This is not yet a perfect process. I try to be motivated, not humiliated. I have this lovely Nordic Glider (thanks to KT/JLW for leaving it behind!) and one of those old-people's exercise chairs I bought for ... someone else. I try (don't push me here; try is a perfectly good word) to use each of them at least once a day.
4. I have dusted off the pedometer, and pretty soon I'll get back to the 10,000 steps a day. When it gets warmer and the air clears. It's hard to go that far indoors, unless you're SEST, love your treadmill, and live in Alaska. At least I'm no longer experiencing twice-weekly dismay from the pitiful number of steps involved in the excruciating hike from the parking lot below up to the Maeser Building.
5. I eat "small" amounts of food every three hours or so, and consume MUFAs with every meal or snack—olive oil, avocados, walnuts, almonds, dark chocolate. (Obviously, this is not a burden.) See here for more MUFA examples. (Except I DO NOT eat canola oil. It is poison.) Quantity control is the key for this one. (I admit that sometimes, so far, I only write down what I eat, not how much.)
6. I make and eat kefir, about a quart a day. See here and here. I love this stuff. Thanks to the Taylors for supplying the kefir grains (probably direct descendants of those used by ancient, long-lived steppe-dwellers ... I mean the kefir grains, not the Taylors), to Carolina and Todd for helping me decide what I'm doing, and to my beloved kefir-drinking KTW always and ever for example and inspiration.
7. I go to bed at a "decent hour," i.e. before midnight. I must admit that, so far, this one is entirely in the realm of the theoretical, but I'll probably keep trying. My liver supposedly needs my body to be sleeping between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. so that it can recharge or something. How does my liver know which time zone it's in? And there are apparently some fat-hormone and stress issues with not sleeping enough. Non-sleepers die young. Stuff like that. Anyway, I'm trying to get enough sleep for the first time in my life. Let's leave it at that.

I know that this could seem like goal-setting, but it isn't. It's only similar. I have always made grocery lists. Not part of a plan, exactly. Just so I'll remember. That's all this is. Just so I'll remember.

I started this remembering on January 31, and I have lost four pounds in four days. Of course there was a Fast Sunday in the middle there. I'll keep you posted on my progress. .... That's funny.

Okay, nine minutes till exercise time. Just enough time to think of a title for this post.

Okay, I gave up thinking of a title and crossed out 12:30 to write "thinking of title and editing blog." Then I wrote 1:00 Exercise. Best get to it.