Here come the holidays again.  We are right at the cusp, November 1 is upon us and I hope we have all thrown away any Halloween candy that malingers.  I know that I need a plan.  I have lots of stressful things going on in my life right now in addition to all of the normal holiday hullabaloo.  I work best with a plan.  It is my security blanket.  It gives me somewhere to go to, something to hold on to, a shred of normalcy in my otherwise hectic life.

Here’s what I am thinking - stress already has me sleeping poorly so I need to deal with that.  When I sleep poorly my body and my brain scream for horrible things to eat and then I use the fact that I’m tired as a potential justification for allowing horrible things to pass through my lips.  Things like the cookie, or candy, or chip word.  So how am I handling this sleep issue?

• Step one - I will wear my BodyMedia Fit armband starting tonight to track my sleep and get a week’s worth of data to work from. 
• Step two - I will call and make an appointment with the awesome sleep specialist that is a part of my bariatric surgeon’s practice and discuss this with him.
• Step three - Without my normal resistance I will do what he says and will achieve resolution
• Step four - While that is all in process I will cut out caffeine in all forms by 10 am, work out daily, get in my fluids before 7 pm, use my sleep mask and aromatherapy and relaxation techniques when I go to bed each night.

Next issue up for consideration is exercise.  Oh, you all know me well enough to know that I get a minimum of 45 minutes per day in the gym and I work hard when I am there.  Perhaps that is just not enough.  I don’t mean that I need to increase and step up my work outs.  I mean I just need to get more steps in every day.  I need to move more.  My average day has me sitting in front of the computer and when I get home I do my share of sitting in front of the TV.  That stops…… well, as soon as I am done with this blog.

• Step one - I will wear my BodyMedia Fit armband and log my steps daily.  My first goal will be 7500 steps per day.  When I achieve that for 3 consecutive days, my next goal will be 10, 000 steps per day.  I will get there by getting up every hour and walking for 10 minutes.  That’s 50 minutes of working, 10 minutes of walking.  Easy to do, good for my body, and my steps will be measured and let me know when I was walking and if it was enough when I review my daily progress.
• Step two - I will make sure that the 45 minutes at the gym is good for burning at least 500 calories.  My armband will tell me that as well.
• Step three - I will up the ante as necessary so that by mid November 500 calories burn in the gym and 10,000 steps per day will be the norm.

OK, now we are at the inescapable food choices.  You know, will I have cottage cheese or chips, yogurt or cookies, salmon or ????  How do I deal with this?  How do I keep myself from strolling across the parking lot and making a bad choice?  Here’s my plan:

• Step one - create a full menu for the week, day by day.
• Step two - Bring all the food for breakfast and lunch into the office with NO EXCEPTIONS
• Step three - log every meal, every snack on my Body Media fit log so I can take a quick look on my phone and know how many calories and how much protein I have consumed so far each day and how much I have left.
• Step four - STOP eating when I have reached my day’s total allotment.  If tempted to eat more go for a walk, clean out a closet, brush my cat, do a load of laundry, call a friend, look at my before pics, anything besides going into the kitchen.

Now the last piece is the mental game.  For me that means staying in the moment, being aware of what I am doing and why.  If I feel upset or stressed just give myself the permission to feel it, breathe through it and then move on.

The key here for me is the documenting of the sleep, the exercise and the food.  I need a way to do this in order to keep myself accountable.  I have my BodyMedia Fit Link so the exercise and sleep records itself and I can easily enter the food data.  I now have a report to bring with me when I make that doctor’s appointment, whether it is with my bariatric surgeon, the sleep specialist, the dietician or my PCP. 

How do you keep track of all of this info?