Elliptical and MyFitnessPal in Weight just a moment!

I’ve read that it’s easier to make or change a habit during a time of upheaval in your life. That’s why Target markets so heavily to expectant and new parents – not just that they need the baby business, but they can establish the habit of shopping at Target during that time of baby-driven upheaval and acquire regular shoppers for years to come. (And many parents of newborns are too exhausted to go to multiple stores, so they’ll be willing to get their groceries while they’re at Target, another habit that can persist.)

I’m trying to take advantage of that and use this baby time to create some beneficial habits for myself. For one thing, I just eat more healthfully at home than I do at work – I’m hoping that a month of being at home can get me more fully into that groove and I can take some of that healthier eating back to work with me.

I’ve seen a couple people on here refer to MyFitnessPal, and I decided to give it a shot. I have to give them credit, it’s by far the easiest meal-tracking app I’ve found, which is helping me get back into the habit. I especially like the ability to use the phone’s camera as a barcode scanner and just snap the barcode of anything you’re about to eat and add it to your food list. I’ve been tracking with that for nearly a week now, and while some of my “meeting the calorie goal” is because I punched in the walk that we took after dinner, that’s fair game – it is exercise, even if light. Meal-tracking by itself gets me a lot of the way there, because just being aware of the sheer number of calories in whatever I eat makes me eat more mindfully. (In other words, if we’re planning to go to Dairy Queen after dinner, I know to go light the rest of the day so things come out reasonably!)

If you’re also a MFP user, feel free to leave me an e-mail address (in a private note, I’d suggest) and I’ll add you as a friend. Accountability is helpful.

And – finally! – the elliptical is in place. It was scheduled to be on Tuesday: delivery between 12-4 would leave it on the porch, and the assembler would arrive at 4 to bring it in, assemble it, and be done by 6 PM. Delivery happened as scheduled, around 2:30. They even brought it in, though they weren’t supposed to, because it was raining.

Then, at 4:15, the assembler’s scheduling person called and said they wouldn’t be able to make it today, and would next be in our area on 2/12. I asked the scheduler, “So you’re telling me I’m supposed to just ignore a box so heavy I can’t move it, sitting in my living room and partially blocking my front door, for a week and a half?” “Well, I know it sounds bad when you put it that way…” “(interrupts) I don’t see any other way you could put it. This is not acceptable.” I told him that I understood he wasn’t the one who had cancelled or the one who had made it so late to begin with, but that I expected him to involve managers and find a better answer, whether that’s a different assembler or whatever. If they needed to reschedule, they needed to do that before delivery. Once it’s in my house, the clock is running.

I also e-mailed the customer service person from the treadmill company who had been handling this, on an e-mail thread that also included someone from the assembly company. They got me rebooked with a different assembly tech, who called us the next day and booked us for Saturday afternoon at 2 PM. He actually showed up at 3 PM, and it took him four hours to put the thing together, but by Saturday night we had an elliptical. Somewhat miraculously, it fit in the space we’d allocated for it on the mat we’d bought from Amazon. (I was amazed at the dimensions listed on the site, they seemed so big, but they do appear to be accurate. And good thing, too, as there’s literally about two inches of clearance!)

Didn’t get to actually do a good workout until Sunday afternoon, when I loaded up a Law & Order: SVU episode on my laptop and spent a good 45 minutes on it. That felt good. My whole chest and back had suddenly clenched up late last week, and my shoulder was hurting a lot – a good round of exercise loosened that up a lot, though I now have very sore calves. That will pass.

Today, my bikes are in the shop to move some of the hardware, including my softer seat. Hopefully when I’m back to work, I’ll be ready to take the new bike a couple days per week.

All told, I’m down to 216 pounds. It’s not a huge shift, but it’s at least real movement in the right direction. So long as I can avoid doing anything too crazy, I’m hoping to be under 200 pounds by the end of April, and maybe back to my post-20/20 weight later in the year. This finally seems like a feasible goal again.

Last updated February 10, 2015