Don't reward yourself with food, you are not a dog.

I wish I could sit here and tell you that this weekend I made a plan and stuck to it but frankly that is just not the case.  Yes I ate under my allowed points and yes I probably lost weight but not due to my constant vigilance.  Somehow on Saturday I got some sort of stomach bug and have only eaten 2.5 meals in the last 56 hours.  I feel a bit better today but this did cause me to miss my scheduled workout yesterday.  I really wanted to get in a long run but that did not happen.  One perk, I slept for over 12 hours on Saturday night, which was glorious.  I definitely needed it.

So now to this week at hand.  My goals.

What I would like to do is add 30 minutes a day to each of my workouts, schedule permitting.  Maybe stay for part of the second class or get a quick 3 miler in before or after class each day.  I just want to do something to boost up the intensity for this week.  Obviously my other goal is to continue to focus on food.  One mistake people make is that they think just because they are working out more they can be more lax when it comes to eating.  Believe me, I still do that.  After a solid week of working out come Friday night I actually think to myself, "hey you have killed it this week working out, you deserve this extra slice of pizza, or three."  Unfortunately that is not the case.  I would say that there is about (on average) 300-400 calories to a piece of pizza.  Working out for one hour, intensely, you are lucky if you burn double that, real lucky.  So to reward yourself with food you may actually be causing yourself more damage when trying to lose weight, as you have just eaten all the calories you have just burned, if not more.  Someone once told me don't reward yourself with food, you are not a dog.  While this is a very blunt expression, I find it quite fitting.  We reward a dog with food for doing what he is told and he then knows that if he does what he is told again there may be a treat involved.  We humans, respond the same way.  The issue is that our reward is a healthier lifestyle and weight loss, not extra pizza on a Friday night.  Now, if we could only convince ourselves of that truth come the actual Friday night we may have a chance.  Thinking is the easy part, doing is what is hard.