Healthy 5 to Stay Alive

Maintaining a healthy weight and doing lots of healthy exercise are both important goals. Meanwhile, we are bombarded with temptations to stray, and self-control is difficult. I’ve analyzed some of my efforts to be more healthy, and offer the following.

I write lots of New Year’s Resolutions (15 for 2014) and always include an exercise goal (“Work out 6 days/week, strive for 10 Hrs./week”), as well as a weight goal (“Keep weight under 120”). This year I threw in a healthy-eating goal (“Eat organic/heart healthy/bone healthy/high fiber foods”). And I also included “Keep up journal”, and put my resolutions in the front of the journal for periodic review.

I’ve tracked my daily exercise stats for years, using a quick and easy method as shown below. If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen. This keeps me from skipping too many days, and provides a weekly comparison with my goal.


I start each day with a weigh-in. Also, in the past whenever I was trying to lose weight, I would make a chart of my progress. However, I just realized that these particular habits of mine probably have nothing to do with maintaining a healthy weight. Rather, my daily weigh-in is just something that I’m afraid to stop doing, and charting never really worked to help me lose weight. Interesting.

I attempt to resist buying unhealthy food (who doesn’t?), and right now my house is pretty clean. I even took a pic of my fridge to show how empty it is, but then I realized that’s pathetic. It only illustrates that I’ve eaten everything including the maraschino cherries and I’m due to go to the grocery store. It’s only temporary that things like ice cream and peanut butter (guaranteed weight-gain diet-breakers for me) are not in my house. What is it that makes the mind capable of insidious conflicting desires – wanting to stop eating/diet/lose weight and at the very same time thinking of things that would be really yummy to eat NOW? I continue to struggle with this.

In order to make some progress towards good health, here’s something I just thought of:  I should try to be more diligent about exercising — that is, exercising more self-control!