I sacrificed exercise for beauty

Tonight I headed to the gym for Body Balance. I was in a bit of a rush so I raced into the gym, got changed and went to buy some water on my way into class. As I breezed through the lady behind the desk asked me if I was going to attend the personal style session that the gym had organised. I explained that I'd been really tempted to do this but had decided that I needed the stretching from Body Balance. That's when I was offered the carrot - if I came to the style session, they'd use me for the makeup demonstration.

Well, talk about a pushover! I struggled feebly on the hook for all of five seconds before caving. I made it look good though, as I checked to see if there was a Body Balance class on over the weekend. I've done a deal with myself to get to it on Sunday.

The personal style consultant was excellent and I am pretty sure that I'll book myself a package. It will involve three sessions - a wardrobe consultation and organisation, personal shopping and hair & makeup advice / wardrobe consolidation. It looks like I'll have to do it during normal business hours so I'll have to check at work to find out if they think they can manage without me for a few hours! I'm sure they'll be fine.

As it happens, it's probably just as well that I didn't do much exercise today, as I'm a little sore from yesterday. I keep reminding myself that rest days are an important part of the program but I don't tend to plan them in. They seem to occur without effort. (This is where a blushing smiley would look appropriate but I'm too lazy to work out how to do one. You'd never know I was a programmer.)

Andrew, the chocolate frog started out as a joke. A little over twelve months ago, one of my project teams needed something done that was outside of their control. Various attempts to make it happen had run into the "you're the contractors, we're the client, we'll do what we like" attitude that seems to regularly get in the way of partnering arrangements. I told them I'd make it happen and was jokingly offered a chocolate frog as a reward. I saw it as just part of my job (that's what managers do after all) but the people around me thought I was working a miracle. I laughed at them one day when they were discussing whether or not I'd earn the frog and told them to "make sure you frame it before you give it to me". I didn't think anything more about it but when their project was successfully delivered I was awarded a framed chocolate frog. It took pride of place on my desk until I changed jobs and was a useful reminder to the team and myself that we could get the seemingly impossible done when we needed it to happen. Now it's on display in my loungeroom.

While I'm posting on a non-exercise day (I'm not counting the little bit of walking I did today as exercise) I thought I'd give you all an update on how my new approach to my health goals was going. My eating was completely out of control - I'd be so good on weekdays during the day but would then blow all my effort in the evenings or on weekends. To tell the truth, I didn't think my new approach would do much more than stop me feeling so miserable about it, but the difference has been amazing.

For example, even though I was "trying hard" I'd buy myself snack food at the supermarket that I kidded myself that I wasn't going to eat all at once. Since setting the new goals I find myself uninterested in buying snack foods. After all, corn chips don't meet the "quality food" goal as a general rule - too many calories, too much salt. I'm not feeling as compulsive about snacking. Earlier this evening I found myself thinking about eating, decided I'd eat strawberries rather than biscuits, then looked at the time and chose not to eat them so close to bed time.

I was pleased for a few reasons - first of all, I had bought fruit (that's the food group I struggle to eat), secondly, I recognised that I was looking for something to eat out of habit rather than hunger, thirdly, I hadn't felt like snacking all evening, and fourthly, I managed to meet my goal of not eating within two hours of bedtime.

This evening I decided to go for a bit of a browse through blogland. I love following the links from your various pages. Tonight, I revisited some of Kathryn's links and I came across a new website, 43 Things. It looks like it might be fun. With all my talking about goal setting lately, it was a good link for me to discover.