Numbers

I seem to have decided that 2009 will be the year when I finally get a handle on my weight problem. We all know how diets work - they don't usually. But I'm not really on a diet. I'm not eating anything different, really (although I did substitute wheat bread for white on my lunch sandwiches at work). I'm still eating chips. I haven't had any chocolate, but only because I don't have any (and I can't be trusted not to eat a whole bag of it if I do have it).

No, instead I found this website called sparkpeople, where I can track my food and exercise every day. And I like it. I like it a lot. Tracking every morsel of food that enters my mouth feeds some compulsive side of me. I like figuring out how many calories I'm going to be eating at work, and how much I'll have left to eat at night when I get home. I like to plan my dinners, so that I know if I can afford to have a small bag of chips or a piece of bread and butter afterwards.

It satisfies me, somehow. The act of entering all of my food items for the day fills the part of me that would otherwise be looking for junk food to snack on, even though I'm not hungry and don't need it. It may sound weird, but it's working.

Will I stick with it? Will I have the flat belly I dream of in some reasonable time frame? Heck, there are almost 9 months before the end of the year. Will I be at goal before 2010 gets here? I have no idea.

But for now, I'm enjoying tracking my numbers; the number of calories I eat, which have to be within the range I can eat and still lose weight and be healthy; the number of minutes I spend walking to and from lunch at work; the number of minutes I spend on J's exercise bike at night. So many numbers. I like them.

It's fun to have a new (healthy) thing over which to obsess.