Phase 1 - Day 2

Today was better than yesterday! I'm still a bit behind on my sleep, but I'll catch up.


Food 
Yesterday I ate reasonable portions, multiple times, but today I really kicked it into gear by following ALL 4 Golden Rules of eating. Now, something extraordinary happened during second lunch.

I was eating Tito's leftovers, which were ever so tasty, and instead of scarfing it up and licking the plate in under 2 minutes flat, I ate consciously... I even closed my eyes to better concentrate, and boy did that just make all the flavors come alive! I was only about 2/3 through my very reasonable portion when it began to happen. It went from each mouthful being this ecstatic symphony, to the next mouthful suddenly seeming less interesting. Well, maybe it was just a boring assortment of Mexican food bits, right? So, I slowly finished chewing and trying to savor it. Then I selected another bite, making sure there was cheese included for good measure. As I chewed this bite, within two seconds it from tasting pretty good to OK to I didn't want to be eating any more.

Let me be clear: it still tasted good, I wasn't stuffed (in fact I didn't even feel full), I wasn't grossed out or anything like that. I was just DONE! I have NEVER in my life lost my appetite in the middle of a perfectly yummy meal for no reason. So I stopped eating, even though I was concerned I might still be hungry, and went about my business. Later I realized I was apparently satisfied with my tiny meal because I didn't get hungry again until 2 1/2 hours later. Weird! And awesome! I'm not counting calories yet, and this gives me hope that maybe there's some built-in calorie sensor that has been broken down until now. Maybe all it took was paying attention to what I was wolfing down, cuz boy can I eat!

In summary: 4 small reasonably portioned meals; all in all less than half of what I normally eat in a day. I may be hungrier tomorrow, and I will eat accordingly.

Exercise
30 full minutes of gentle yoga from one of my favorite programs. Yoga Zone is available on Hulu for FREE, with only a few pesky commercial interruptions. I practiced episode #4, which is incredibly gentle. But I only did the first half before calling quits. No, not quits, DONE! As in "done for" since the final pose was Down Dog. Sheesh. Felt more like Dead Dog:P

I also decided to start wearing my pedometer again. As of the writing of this it looks like I only got about 7000 steps today, which is pretty low for me even when I'm housebound and being sedentary. During the summer while gardening I often average out to 15,000 to 20,000 steps a day. It will be interesting to monitor this, and see if my increasing fitness naturally translates to more spontaneous movement. So I'll include the daily average steps in my weekly check in.

Time for bed - I'm so excited about tomorrow!