Moving Forward

Ok, let;s start with this, I lost 3 pounds! Yes I am happy, it feels a little bittersweet though as I lost those three already and I have 3 more to go to be actually losing new weight. Yes, still licking my wounds of a 6 pound gain in two weeks. That said I do feel good, and I have a plan.
My plan is to clean up my eating even more and too exercise even more, I expect more than I have to do more. The eating part of my plan is my war on salt, as I said last week, I have really done some reading though and boy I was pretty clueless about just how prevalent the role salt plays in my diet! I have been feeling like I am a pretty clean eater and that I have reduced the amount of processed foods I eat and I have but I see that I need to step that up as well. The FDA has put out new recommendations and they say that 1500 mg of sodium is what is recommended and a typical American diet contains twice as much if not more. I do not consider my daily diet typical, so that gives me some relief, but I did decided to explore this on one of my favorite sites the American Heart Association. I like that site as I come from a family of Cardiac problems my dad died when I was nine after suffering three major heart attacks, and now later in life my mom has had her issues. Siblings as well as myself have had our scares, I even have had a Catherization and trust me as happy as I was that there was no blockages the idea of a needle every being threaded through my thigh again, keeps me in line! So here is an article I read on salt and they have a quiz at the end that I encourage you to take, I took it and got 5 out of 8 right, of one of the ones I answered wrong, about chips and tomatoes juice, I was blown away. I hope as I learn more and explore salt less options I can share them with you.
In August of last year I had another heart scare as told here and the end result was I was 100% cleared for exercise and I have and I feel great about that, but yup, I have a plan for that as well. I am putting it in writing, almost like a contract with myself in front of everyone to up the ante. Yesterday I went to the gym with my daughter and she eloquently pointed out that while working out my heart rate was better than hers, she is a very fit girl but lacking cardio in the winter months, but what I also realized was, I kind of sort of, like the gym. " When did that happen??" not only the gym but the Elliptical Trainer that I have been so afraid of, I was liking the rhythm I was falling into, liking the sweat beading up under my hairline at my neck and more importantly liking how strong I was feeling! These realizations will keep me moving forward and give me a better sense of direction as to where I should be focusing with my eating and an exercising and I will lose the next three pounds again ( sigh) but I will also get beyond that number as Onederland awaits me...........