Walking from the kitchen in one building back to our cubes in another building this afternoon, A and I joked about how easy it would be to lose weight if we just had someone to cook for us.
Well, it's not so much of a joke. Between my sophomore and junior years of college I lived at home, The Mr. (who was not yet The Mr.) was in the Navy and my summer job was nearly an hour from home. Dad cooked for me every night, I walked two miles a day at a furious pace. I lost 30 lb. that summer. I was 9 lb. from my goal weight when I went back to school and started eating, well like a college student.
My new walking routine has resulted in a lower A1C, but no fewer pounds yet. Partly because I haven't changed my eating habits, but at least I'm seeing some sort of result from the near-daily walks.
One of the changes I've noticed that's helping in a number of ways is that I've changed my mandate that my family eat at home by 6 p.m. or we eat out. Working an hour from home and sometimes picking up three kids from two places and socializing with my mom (*big smile*) sometimes means we don't get home until 6 p.m. or later.
I've adjusted my expectation that we *must* eat dinner by a certain time. We spent so much time, energy and money on eating out because I was worried about my family's stomachs not being full at a certain time.
The kids got so used to eating out that it was no longer a treat. And I got really sick of fries, if you can believe that.
I've noticed lately that I'm more willing to go through the freezer searching for something to cook even if it means we don't eat dinner until nearly 7 p.m. It's not ideal, but it's also not fast food. We've switched our routine a little, too: showers before dinner instead of after.
As long as I remember to check my sugar after dinner, I'm seeing good results. Tonight's post-dinner reading was 96 mg/dL. Yeah I had to have some carbs before bed so I don't go low and so I'm at the right place to walk in the morning (which I'm already dreading getting out of bed for), but I'm confident that I won't have that delayed metabolism problem where I'm under 100 at bedtime and over 200 at 5 a.m.
Baby steps.
