THE HART SERIES: PRE-flection

My wife was watching me take pictures of my salad last night .. with the ingredients and the final product. She first asked me WHY I was taking pictures of my dinner, and I told her my reasons. She then asked me if I planned to take pictures of my dinner every night?

Hmmm … That’s a good idea!

Really, I am documenting what I eat everyday … following the weight watcher diet (counting points) … to help myself and discipline to keep it up,. Hopefully .. readers who are also looking to lose a few pounds can see that it’s really not WHAT you eat . its your eating habits. My plan is to eat healthy, but I know there will be times that I will not always be eating healthy (unless you call a Double Mozza Burger from A&W healthy!).

* THAT’S OKAY .. as long as I count ALL of the points and DO NOT exceed my daily point count that I’ve assigned myself (32 points) plus the weekly splurge points available (35 points).

I’m not documenting all the water I drink during the day (I have a water cooler in my home office here) .. nor will I be documenting any exercise or lack of exercise that I will be doing on a daily basis, but it’s all part of this process .. I’m not going to be a couch potato, and I will be trying to meet my water, fruit and vegetable, oil and even excercise goals each day. And, speaking of oils .. it’s important to mention that I sometimes add a cap of Olive Oil onto my salad directly to give it that extra taste, and get my daily oil as well, because the Superstore “Blue Menu” dressings that we use kind of lack the oils I should be getting.

Another thing too .. that I haven’t really been following that well this week, but conscious and trying. It’s also important to eat regularly and snack all the time. If you don’t eat regularly, your metabolism goes into sleep mode and doesn’t burn off the energy or fat it normally does when you eat. That’s the hardest thing for me to accept and my biggest challenge. Rather than eating 3 squares a day – I should be eating 3 smaller portioned meals and many snacks all day.

As for the pictures .. I think that’s a great idea to take a picture of the final product of what I’m putting into my body .. it helps keep me focused. If I do it everyday .. it would force me to do it everyday. I wouldn’t want to well .. skip a day of taking pictures the day I splurged and ate an entire Chocolate Moose Double Fudge Cake (hypothetically speaking of course) and mislead myself (and everybody else following my progress).

So .. I hope I can look back after a year and give a good “RE”flection of how my plan worked .. and can only hope that this “PRE”flection helps keep me on track.