I’m not the only one who benefits when I take care of myself. Twice this week I came home at lunch time to make something healthy and relax a bit – and Paco got to go for a surprise mid-day walk each time. I’ll remember that the next time I’m at work and thinking about how much easier it would be to eat at my desk! There’s a little furry wagging tail awaiting me if I can just hop on my bike and go home.

This afternoon I decided to bike up to the 24Hour Fitness near my office and register my new membership. My first impression is that it’s a huge gym, fully equipped, and in reasonably good order. The strange thing is that the average age is about 20 years younger than me, so I feel like a bit of an old man there. I guess the office-building fitness club I’ve been using attracts only sedate older bureaucrats. It hurts my ego to see all those young fit bodies strutting about, whereas at the other place the only hot guy ever there was me!

But now that I’m signed up, I can go to any club I want, and maybe that will be the little push that I need to start working out a bit more. It’s weird, but I love exploring new gyms. I like “discovering” the equipment and learning about the classes, and getting the lay of the land. And if that’s enough to get me going back a few times, well so be it.

……………..

Tomorrow morning is my official monthly weigh-in. Based on what my scale at home says, it won’t be the best news ever. It’s not that I’m gaining weight, it’s that my eating and exercise habits have been erratic and so I’m not quite as close to my goal weight as I want to be.

When I look over my food journal for the past week, it’s full of clues as to what’s going on. The most obvious trend is junky late night eating. Some days I eat as much as a third of my daily calories AFTER 10 p.m. I know from past experience that this isn’t a particularly helpful habit for me. Maybe if I taught myself to only eat salad and carrots after 9:30 …?

Another clue is that I’ve eliminated almost all snacking during working hours. While on the face of it that seems like a good thing to do, I think the downside is that I’m arriving home at the end of the day both hungry AND feeling entitled. That’s probably behind the late night eating as much as anything else. Maybe a mid-afternoon snack this coming week? Couldn’t hurt to try, anyway.

Whatever the results, I’ll keep you posted.