Thursday, July 1, 2010

July 1st--Today is the Start of a Few New Things

There's a few new things happening today, July 1st, including:
  • A new banking regulation goes into affect beginning today where you need to opt in or out of overdraft protection. On a side note, a reader pointed out that banks are now looking at ending free checking in order to generate more revenue.
  • If you were born in Puerto Rico, a new law goes into affect today where you need to apply for a new tamper-proof birth certificate.
  • While I am not much of a Suze Orman fan, I saw this article where she tells everyone to start paying cash for everything and wanted to give her a high five!
  • Finally, I choose today as the start for my new diet/exercise program. I am slowly chipping away at my goal list and decided to make a doctor's appointment for my complete physical which I haven't done in about three years. The reason I haven't done this? I am chubby :( For most of my life I have been a size 2 or 4 but since I switched from working out three to four hours a day first as a gymnast then as a dancer, to a pretty non-active career of sitting in meetings and hacking away at my computer for hours on end, the weight has been slowly creeping up on me. Now my size 8 pants are tight and while most people wouldn't think that's a problem, I do. And the reason for all of this is my lack of exercise and crappy diet. So my doctor's appointment is 47 days away and my challenge is to exercise two hours a day and eat only healthy food for 47 days. In the past I have tried to change my diet and the amount of exercise I get but always became side-tracked either by a crazy schedule or the fact that the changes were going to be forever. Forever is a long time! So this time I figured with a set deadline, I can certainly keep up with these two changes for 47 days (and hopefully by then a new habit of healthiness will have set in). I will record my progress then post it as one complete blog post at the end of my challenge so as not to bore all of you with daily postings of what I ate and how many minutes I did on the treadmill.

3 comments:

  1. 2 hours a day! Wowsers. How long do you exercise for now?

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  2. Hey, I just posted my eating plan changes a few days ago. Maybe you could follow it too. It's not a diet, just moderate changes in eating habits during the workweek, then complete freedom on the weekends.

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  3. YM--thanks for the list. I just checked it out on your website and it pretty much matches what I am doing (I guess I should have added 'no fried food' to my list of rules but I already have stopped having my frap everyday so small steps...).
    DP--I try to exercise some everyday. Now that my goal is to exercise atleast two hours a day I have switched from the "hop on treadmill for an hour" type exercise to activities that will make me exercise for an extended period of time such as Volksmarching a 10k each Saturday (which takes about two hours). I will also be kayaking tomorrow (5 hours) and taking two yoga classes on Thursday (2 hours total). Fortunately I have lots of time this month, some months I am so busy with work I can barely squeeze in a walk at lunch!

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