Journey or Destination – You Choose!

We all have heard that is it the journey, not the destination. Is your goal the destination of losing weight or is it about the journey to a healthy lifestyle?  How are you doing with your goals, resolutions, gifts, or whatever you called them, that you set for yourself for the New Year? This is about the time that many of us start to lose the focus and perhaps even give up.  One thing I learned about goal setting a long time ago, a thing that many of us DON’T do, is we have to re-evaluate the goal and see if there are more tools that we need to gather to make it successful.  

Did we get derailed or distracted on the journey? 
Did we take a wrong turn and get a little lost?  

I did.  That is what I spent some of my weekend doing.  Re-evaluating the steps I am taking on this journey.  My goals that I set for myself actually started last year and this year was to learn more.  Learning to eat healthier, without as much reliance on processed food, and to improve my self-care, started with my garden last year.  It was an experiment.  I had a fairly good size lot tilled, chose my seeds, planted them in cups, and put them in the ground.  It was the things I learned over those months, that will help me this year when I take it more seriously. That journey led me to decide a few things that I want for myself and a few things that didn’t work.  28 pumpkins and 13 squash plants is NOT what I want this year! Didn’t know what to do with ALL of that and had no idea how much one plant produced!  LOL



The garden and the pleasure of seeing things grow each day, the wonderful taste of going from dirt to plate was incredible, and it made me EXCITED about learning to eat healthier and learning to cook. It led me on a path to try new things, one each week, in regards to food.


I started WW at the end of September solely to get support, to learn more things about eating healthy, and to take action of moving out of my comfort zone of the computer, when it came to my weight loss efforts.  I knew, for me, I need to SHOW UP.  But around November, December I started to get derailed.   I started to focus more on the points, the exercise, and yes, even for me, the weigh-ins.  I have been conflicted since just before the holidays about whether or not to continue with WW.  It goes against my own value of It’s the Attitude, not the Scale.  I don’t like how much I have to fight with myself and seemed to focus more on the point source, which isn’t solely based on unprocessed foods.   So it was back to square one.  Look at the original goal and change some of the STEPS not the goal.  

The original goal was to get back to basics and learn to eat healthier, learn to cook, and add exercise to my day.  The focus needs to be on that. So what tools do I need to support that goal.  For me, it’s about learning the basics.  Yes, I need to plan, track, count, but mainly, I need to learn more.  WW e-tools and Spark People are two of the popular forum sites that help with support and learning.  But do you know about www.MyPyramid.gov? It has some awesome tools that go back to the basic food groups not just calories or points.  

Ask yourself, “What is a healthy diet?”  Dietary guidelines describes it as one that:

• Emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products;
• Includes lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts; and
• Is low in saturated fats, trans fats, cholesterol, salt (sodium), and added sugars
  

That’s it!  Simple, right? Now, I need to learn how much, how little, what fits into each of those groups, then I can measure it by points or calories.  I will still be attending WW because of the support and accountability for me but my FOCUS will be the pyramid.  Below, I listed several links to things within the pyramid and a couple other government sites about nutrition.

Challenge yourself!  At least take the pyramid challenge and see how much of the basic food groups you know about.  After years of diets and someone else’s opinions, we may have forgotten a piece of the journey because we were too focused on the destination!  And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for Monday Morning Stretch!   

My Pyramid Challenge
Fruits and Veggies Matter
My Pyramid
My Food-a-pedia
My Pyramid Tracker
My Pyramid Plan
Inside the Pyramid
Analyze my Plate
How Much Should I Eat
Portion Distortion