Thursday's List

A friend of mine always posts a 'Thursday Thirteen' list on her blog. On my way home from my training session last night, this list came to my mind.

Thirteen things to let you know your quest to develop a healthy lifestyle (nutrition and exercise) is taking hold.

1. Some days, you actually look forward to stepping on the scale
2. You take a bite of what you think will be a really good (insert favorite fruite here) only to find it sour, woody, mushy, etc. You determine, even though its not horrible, you don't want to 'waste the calories' on it so you toss it in the trash
3. Your underwear and bras, and even your socks, start to not fit (too big) or fit differently
4. In your head, you can come up with 8-10 balanced meal ideas using only the food in your cupboard that will stay within your nutrition allotments (calories, fat, protein, carbs, sodium)
5. Calories, fat, protein, carbs, sodium: You know what they are and aren't afraid to use them
6. You know the order in which items are listed on a nutrition label
7. You can now 'eyeball' the weight or size of a portion and be very accurate (but you still pull out the food scale or measuring cups at home)
8. You may never like/love exercising but you begin to miss it if you skip a day or two
9. You start to know the schedules of other people who go to your gym
10. You have 'Googled' a restaurant to find out the nutritional information of the menu items before going out to eat.
11. After having been on an even stricter nutrition plan, you look forward to, or even crave, your regular healthy eating plan because you can eat whole bran muffins, steel cut oats, more fruit, and flax seed again.
12. You know what flax seed is, understand the benefits, and know how it incorporate it into a meal or snack
13. You no longer feel guilty for loosing your membership to the 'Clean Plate Club'