bad habits...

They're harder to shake than a crazed interweb stalker!

I'm staying on track this week with all my planned fitness activities. That included a lunch time swim at the pool today. I don't think I've tried swimming laps since I was a child and in swimming lessons. My mom would take my brother and I to Oak Bay Rec every weekend for years. We finally stopped when both of us reached the "maroon" level. If it was the same as what I'm finding online now, that would have been "for children who can swim 25 yards unassisted and have mastered the skills in the White group. They will learn: intermediate stroke mechanics of freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke, standing dive, basic dolphin kick, and butterfly arms."

(My lil' cousin Brooke at her swimming lesson, January 2009)

I'm sure I was 10 or younger when we stopped, so that means I've been out of the pool for longer than I was in it. I still swim - love being in the lake in the summer - but it's very different from doing laps, back and forth. I think it took me about half and hour to swim 600m, so that gives you an idea of my speed - slow.

But back to the bad habit... as soon as I sat back down at my desk, the thought went through my head "now you've earned a few pints and a pub food dinner at the Beagle tonight". Wha??? Did I seriously just tell myself that because I just finished an exercise that likely burned 350 calories, I could indulge and consume 1000 cal or more at the pub? Those don't cancel each other out! And the whole point of working out (for me at least) isn't to be able to reward myself with crap food - it's to get rid of the damage that crap food has done to me in the past.

But at least I caught myself before I believed it. While I am still planning on meeting my friends at the pub, it's not an excuse to eat a deep-fried dinner. I'm sure there will be some great salad or meat & veggie dinners on the menu that I can have. I'm not "owed" a reward for doing something healthy. Food like this actually appeals to me.

  It's not like it's a hardship to eat yummy fresh veggies and lean cuts of meat!

We do a lot of damage to ourselves in our minds... it's nice when we can realize what's happening, and work to change our patterns. It's the first step it making good habits that enforce a new life style.