Steptember Lessons

I had a few goals for Steptember, and now that it's over, I thought I'd reflect on what I've learned. My guidelines were:

-10,000 steps per day, no matter how
-Own my food choices
-Make Mondays better

I went very well on the step count. I had only 2 days out of 30 where I missed my 10,000 target. My average step count over the 30 days was 11,319. This is almost double my average daily step count as at June 30, so I'm really happy with that. To be honest, it really hasn't been that hard. Sometimes just 20-30 minutes stepping on the spot while watching TV was all it took to bump me up to the 10,000. Incidental exercise also helped - taking the long way to the loo at work, parking a bit further away at the shops. I also didn't care that I looked like an idiot on morning and afternoon breaks at work, marching on the spot while chatting to a colleague who refused to walk up and down the street in her killer heels. The price some people pay for fashion is ridiculous. I swear I will never understand it.

Owning my food choices is still a struggle. I am consciously making decisions I know are not the best, but I make them anyway. I talk myself out of the best choices constantly, and I DO NOT KNOW WHY. I am proud of one small achievement though. I don't know if I've mentioned my fundraising efforts for my big walk, but we've ordered 800 or so Cadbury chockies to sell. I've currently got about 500 of them at my desk, in boxes, out on display during business hours. In the past, with fundraising chocolates, I buy most of them myself and eat them. Probably between 5 and 7 a day, because you've gotta have one of every flavour and you can't decide on just one so you eat them all. WELL. I made a decision when they arrived that I was eating just the ones that melted in the car during pickup. I ate three of them in one go and felt awfully sick, so I threw the rest out (about 20 of them!) to avoid further self-destruction. That still left me with 500 various goodies to tempt me. I'm allowing myself ONE per day.

The part that I'm proud of is that there has not been one day that I have gone over quota. Today, I didn't even have one! Sure, there've been other slips and mishaps along the way (namely with other treats and the irresistible pull of the cafe across the road), but my big downfall, chocolate, is beginning to come under control. I will never be cured, and I will never NOT eat it, but I do want to get a handle on my uncontrollable mindless gorging.

Realising that I don't eat because I am hungry has also been a lesson. I joked that I eat because my mouth is empty, and it's not really that funny. It's scary. I've begun to look into Overeaters Anonymous and am seriously considering trying to find a meeting. The only hesitation I have is that they ask you to surrender to the fact that another power is in control (God, whatever higher power you believe in) and I struggle with that concept. I am so far refusing to accept that I am not in control, despite evidence to the contrary. I want to own my choices, not surrender to someone else. I feel like that might make it easier to blame someone other than myself. I don't know... it's all so confusing...

Mondays have been better - although still not perfect. I'm not stopping at Macca's at 10pm just because I feel like it. If I'm not hungry, I don't go. That's a bonus!

Choctober is a bust. There is no way I can go without chocolate. So let's set some realistic guidelines for October. The step thing really worked in September. I want to up my average step count again. I also need to adjust my food - instead of having a hard and fast calorie target, I'm going to have a target range of net calories. For those of you who don't know, net calories are whatever you eat minus whatever you exercise. My Fitbit gives me a rough estimate of what I have burned, so with accurate food logging this is very possible.

The numbers:
-12,000 average daily step count for the month of October.
-Net calories between 1500 and 1700 daily.

How can I get the numbers to work?
-Get stepping. Make a concerted effort to get to the gym or to the beach, EVERY day.
-Stop eating once I hit 1700 calories for the day. Regardless of when it is. If I want chocolate, I eat it until there are no calories left. I'll soon learn that dinner is more important than instant gratification. Or I'll actually know what it feels like to be hungry.

What do you think? Can I do it?