Okay, it's high time. I HAVE to start making changes and I feel like I'm starting to be ready. I am kind of appalled at how much I have let myself go in the last year and a half, even before my daughter's death.
I just got the blood test results back from my physical last week. My total cholesterol is still way too high; it's at 241. And the LDL is high too. I am supposed to do a diet change and stop eating so much saturated fats. It's also a heredity thing. I am kind of glad I have this goal that I need to implement in my life. Living in Madrid is great, but it is a community known for excessive drinking and doing whatever and eating whatever and I am afraid I have taken it to heart, no pun intended. At least I haven't started smoking again. I want to enjoy things still, but to not so much excess. Instead of going to the tavern 4 or 5 times a week I would like to reduce that to maybe 2 or 3 times. It's a bit too much wine on a weekly basis, and it gets very expensive!
So here is what I am doing ~ now that my foot is mostly healed, I am getting back to walking and hiking. I am going to do it every day, and not just the quick walk on the relatively flat terrain in the mornings. I have three specific places to hike around here that have good, steep elevation that I am adding to my repertoire. I have done two of them in the last two days (oh boy, my calves are feeling the burn)! So I am actively ramping up my physical activity, but in my mind I refuse to think of the end result, like the way I used to view exercise as a way to sculpt my body. I KNOW I will get the end results (getting stronger and hopefully losing a few pounds) IF I just have the motivation to do it every day. It's more like just being present in the moment of hiking and seeing what is around the bend, having fun exploring the terrain, distracting my mind from my grief and staying away from the bar at Happy Hour.
I feel like I have aged so much in the past few months. My body doesn't bounce back the way it used to. I am also currently in physical therapy due to some lower back and hip issues that have been plaguing me. In addition, I have the whole wrist issue and that surgery in the future. The things I can control are my diet (which has gotten a bit to lax) and my daily exercise. I told my boyfriend that I am going to be changing my diet and he is welcome to try it with me, but no longer am I going to eat meat six days a week like we've been doing. I need to go back to the way I ate when I lived in Michigan and worked at Wholefoods. I only ate meat about twice a week then and the rest was all vegetarian stuff. I am going to go back to the things I used to cook and cook at home more. Somehow I got into this thing where I would buy pre-made stuff because it is so much easier. It is hard to keep a well-stocked cupboard here when I live so far from grocery stores and go into town only about two days per week but all it requires is a bit more planning, and if I stay out of the bar I will HAVE more time for cooking and planning!
Anyway, just rambling at this point but I feel motivated now which is good; last week I had a few days were I was feeling quite depressed about everything and have been worried about myself wondering if I was going to slide further down mentally. I just do not want to go down any further in my mind, and a good way to alleviate those despairing feelings is to get out in the sunshine and get my body moving and have a good project to focus on - my health.