First Month Down...

So, today marks the first month down of my journey. Five more months to go before the TM challenge and I have had a couple hits, misses, roadblocks, etc. First, I'm beginning to think vegetarians are not the healthiest people in the world. For all they say they aren't killing animals and therefore saving lives, etc., etc. in looking for healthy recipes online and in cookbooks, etc. I'm beginning to see that vegetarians are in LOVE with sugar and heavy cream in their recipes. It's slightly ridiculous. Vegetarianism and low-carb worship go hand in hand but even low-carb recipe books are full of unhealthy substitute - i.e. one called for 6 cups of heavy cream...wouldn't it make more sense just to use milk and call it a day?!

In seeing all of this its made me realize I really need to increase my nutritional knowledge. It's not even good enough to go to the doctor for advice because, in a ridiculous and sad twist of fate meets irony, doctors are not trained to be nutritionists or even know much about nutrition. As in all things counter-productive in order to learn about nutrition it's not enough to go to a health care professional. Instead you have to go to a specialist. A dietitian or nutritionist. So going into the second month of this, I'm going to be looking into nutrition classes in my local area as well as seeing if my insurance will cover a nutritionist for me...it should! It would make so much more sense to me for health insurance companies to keep dietitians/nutritionists on retainer so they can turn the tide of people's bad habits before they become major health issues.

Color me encouraged and equally frustrated after the first month because there's a lot I didn't do and a lot of excuses I made for not doing things. The one good thing about keeping track of myself was paying attention to my cravings for food (and my equally ineffective response to not give into them), my need to establish a workout plan that coincides with my daily work/social schedules as opposed to just working out when the mood strikes me (this made me do less effective work-outs and shorter work-outs even as I was getting in gym time), and finally, I need to expand my dining out options. I go out a lot for work, social activities, etc. and I need to expand my reference points for places to eat, etc. to find more places that offer a greater variety of healthy options.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't think this was going to be an overnight or easy thing to accomplish. But, I imagined that the resources out there - especially those coming from the vegetarian corner would have a much stronger grasp on truly healthy options or at least provide an idea as to good substitutes. My mother had to completely create a new diet plan for my dad after he was diagnosed with diabetes and they were able to reverse his diabetes to a manageable level (i.e. no need for medication/insulin) based on his diet and exercise plan. So I find myself calling her as my primary reference point because I'm becoming suspicious of a lot of the information out there that seems to offer solutions to "cheat" but not to actually make sustainable changes. Going into June, I know what I have to work on...so time to get started.