You'd have thought with all my manic bouts of exercise that I'd be slim, taut and terrific. Unfortunately only the terrific part is true.

Hah! Not even that!

But, no. I am still carrying 8-10 kilos more than I'd like (and given that I did successfully get to an ideal weight just before I fell pregnant with #3, I know that a better weight is achievable post-babies. I also remember how much better I felt about myself back then.

My current weight comes in just above my supposed healthy weight range, so I really do have a health inducement to do something proactive.

But I've been deluding myself. Somehow I think that I SHOULD be able to eat and drink what I want IF I do all this mad exercise. But it's not working (probaby because it's not every day) and I'm really getting quite annoyed with myself, and my lack of willpower, when it comes to what I eat and drink.

It doesn't help that after I've done what amounts to a good exercise session - whether it be cycling a reasonable distance, or doing swimming training for one hour, then all I want to do is shovel ENERGY back into my body. Tasty, reward-type energy, if you know what I mean.

I also find it hard to go a night without a beer, or a glass of wine. I'd got to the point where I'd convinced myself that I really, really needed it to relax and wind down, and I'd never make it through dinner if I didn't have 'just one'. Even though I know all about Empty Calories when it comes to alcohol.

I'd whittled myself down to generally lite beer, and only one a night. (With the occasional wine - or two... the occasional following-day-headache had really been pretty rare.) But I couldn't even manage to get it down to every second night! How pathetic is that?

And the recalcitrant part of my mind kept saying surely I deserved it. "Come on! You've never exercised this consistently in your life! There must be some kickbacks to all this bike riding and stuff you've been doing?"

Sadly not. The scales have refused to budge, and despite the fact that I look "OK", my weight and figure is not befitting the cycling and swimming junkie within. And I don't look "OK" in clothes shop fitting rooms! And I don't have the range of choice of cycling clothes because the biggest standard women's sizes are touch and go for me. I have a jelly belly that is likely not-unrelated to the terms 'beer' and 'gut'.

Time to really do something about it. I have quite a few bad habits to change, but the easiest thing to do first is to cut the empty calories.

So, goodbye beer for starters. I thought I'd have to wean myself off it slowly - really try for the 'every other night' bit for starters, maybe?

But I have quite surprised myself this past week.

I'm up to 6 days straight without! As long as you don't count a few sips of Marc's wine on Thursday night. But I did decline a glass of my own, and I just drank water with the Thai meal we had out with a few others. So I reckon it counts.

Probably the two cans of coke that I drank because it was too damned hot at the school swimming carnival yesterday rather blot the copybook, but still.. I could have come home and had a couple of beers as well!

Except that I am SO not Catholic or religious, it did strike me as rather amusing that I decided to do this in the middle of Lent. (Like, isn't that where you give up things? For forty days or something? And if Easter is in a month, then it must be that Lent thing around now?)

The thing is, it's got to be a long term lifestyle thing, and secondly, I am hopeful that down the track I might still enjoy the odd beer or wine here and there. Particularly once I rein in some of my other bad eating habits.

I think I can do it this time.

Labels: Resolution