FITNESS FRIDAY: BUNGLED PLANS

"Nothing's impossible I have found,
For when my chin is on the ground,

I pick myself up, Dust myself off,

Start all over again."

(From 1936 movie, Swing Time)

That little chorus from Swing Time pretty much sums up what I need to do this week, since last week's goals turned out to be a bit of a bust.

I started out with a great deal of enthusiasm, but on day two I woke up with a painfully swollen knee, and that was the end of my exercise resolution. And then I wasn't as careful as I had intended to be about not overeating because I tried to rationalize that if I had messed up in one area, I might as well just wait until my knee got better and then get back to the plan. Am I the only one who comes up with such lame excuses?

The one good thing that did come out of the week is that I did follow my goal of tracking how I spend my time, and it became very clear that if my most important priority is going to be time spent in the Word, then there are several other things that need to go. No use trying to figure out how to get around that. Twenty-four hours is written in stone. There's no way to stretch it, no how.

That made me consider my ongoing battle of the bulge. Seems like I'm always trying to figure out how I can continue eating everything I want and still lose weight. When will it finally dawn on me that I have to make a choice?

P.S. Hope nobody from our group read this post yet because I forgot to answer our assignment question about what tempts us and how we deal with it.

I am most tempted by things like potatoes soup, mashed potatoes, home fries, almost everything that has potato in it; artisan breads with butter and cheese; frozen yogurt. Nothing too healthy, as you can see. I try not to keep icecream or frozen yogurt in the house, and to buy regular bread instead of the artisan kind. Sometimes when I feel hungry, which seems to be almost all the time, I try getting a drink of water in case I'm really feeling thirsty instead of hungry. Other times I try to distract myself by taking a walk with the promise that if I'm still hungry when I get back I can eat, and most of the time the hunger passes before I get home.

I'm also tempted by just about anything that will give me an excuse for not exercising. And I really don't understand why that is, because once I get up and start doing it, it's not bad at all.