One week....being healthy is hard.

I apparently suck at making healthy changes.

I have been attempting to watch my calorie intake but have totally failed at recording my calories for each meal. I just do not have the time during the day to enter several separate items into a food tracker for each meal. If I had time to sit down and enter everything into my phone things would go smoother. I have yet to manage that however. It would be easier if I was eating processed and packaged items with bar codes. I could just scan those in very quickly. Eating homemade whole foods makes the process more difficult. I am attempting to come up with an alternative to tracking calories that still allows me to monitor my intake. If I come up with something brilliant I will be happy to share it with you all.

Exercising...yeah...not happening either. By the time I get done teaching the children I am flat out tired. I just want to sit down and relax not jump around the living room with weights. I need to work on that for sure. It would help if I could get up earlier in the morning and do my workout first thing. Problem is that I am still not sleeping. Getting up in the morning at a decent time when you did not manage to fall asleep till 3 am isn't easy.

Why is it so hard to sleep these days? I have resorted to over the counter sleeping pills to get any sleep at all. The problem with those is the "hangover" the next day. They leave me so sleepy the next day all I want to do is nap. I have been trying melatonin as well since it has received good reviews as being helpful with inducing sleep. I am not seeing anything yet but the box says to give it 60 days. If we could cut out the 5 episodes of night sweats a night I am sure that would be helpful as well.

I know I sound like a big whiny baby at this point with lots of excuses as to why things are not working. I am frustrating myself to no end. I think the turning point for me will if I can fix my sleeping issues. If I could go to sleep at a normal time and wake up early in the day feeling a bit spunkier than death warmed over I am sure things would progress smoother on the diet and exercise front. How to do it however is another matter. How do you get your brain to turn off? Mine always seems to be going a mile a minute. Would be different if I was working out the cure for cancer or how to institute world peace. Heck even working out how to keep my house clean would be helpful. I of course think about none of these things.

I remember years ago while preparing for the birth of our 5th child I purchased a set of hypnobabies CD's. The deal was that you listened to them at night when you were trying to fall asleep. They were supposed to hypnotize you into not filling pain during child birth.  I never made it through more than 10 minutes of the CD before I was out cold. I have to wonder if listening to those CD's would help me fall asleep now. Might be worth a try....they didn't help with childbirth but they might be great for getting to sleep!

This week we are "off" from school but still have several field trips and activities planned. I am determined to use this break from school to refill our freezer with healthy breakfast, lunches, and dinners. I am planning to calculate out the calorie count while I prepare them and then mark the bags with the information. That should make it easier to eat healthy and track the calories. I am also determined to start working out again this week so that I am able to get into the routine of doing so again.

I have lost a pound this week. So at least I am not continuing my climb upwards. I am taking that as a win for the week. I keep repeating to myself, "if this was easy everyone would do it." Helps a bit I guess. I need to remember that each day is a blessing from the Lord and a chance to live the life I want to live. I will get there. I just need to keep moving forward and trying each day to be the person I want to be.