Get over the feeling that I will fail at any health/fitness goal I set

I am still ambivalent about exercise, but working on it. Where I am gaining some confidence is through using SparkPeople to track my food, so I’m seeing (in chart form! The joy!) the calories I take in every day. This simple action has spurred me to changes in how much I eat – and I’ve lost six pounds so far! Yippee! Some pants I didn’t want to wear a month ago are comfortable again today. That’s the best, because you all know how I hate to waste money ;) Unless, of course, it’s because I need to buy all new smaller pants.

Still need to focus on the exercise thing. I think I might try a different tack than psyching myself up to go to the gym (which hasn’t happened). Rather than that, I might start calling up my friends and inviting them to do activities, like skating or swimming or waterparking or Rollerdoming or walking around a lake or biking. I don’t have a problem exercising a LOT if I’m having fun, but the drudgery of the gym is what gets me down . . . unfortunately this probably can’t be the be all and end all of my exercise strategy because you can only have exciting, activity-filled outings with friends so many days a week. But it would be a start.

I have been faithfully entering my food consumption and exercise minutes on SparkPeople.com and I did three times my goal for exercise last week. (The site sets the number of calories you’re supposed to burn according to your weight loss goal). This is good because every day I exceeded the recommended number of calories, but not by much, so hopefully those small overages were countered by the extra exercise. And I didn’t even try that hard, just did my normal walks and did watch my eating a little more closely (passed on junk at work, etc.), so it looks like maybe I can do this after all!!

I am going to try going for a swim this week. I am going to “practice” at getting a swimming routine going. I used to “practice” riding the bus – that was when it took a lot of planning, etc. to make it happen. But now, I can look up the times online and go jump on the bus . . . I want to get to that point with workout swims. I will know the open times, the cost, have my bags ready to go, have the routine worked out so that I can actually go do it.

I want to go in the mornings, but it will be tight. If I swim for 30 minutes, I’ll be getting out of the pool at 7:00 (pool doesn’t open until 6:30). That leaves me 30 minutes to swim, dress, drive home and eat breakfast before leaving for work. I only live five minutes away so if I’m quick in the shower I think it will work out. I can also grab a bowl of oatmeal at work since the morning is usually low-key. The evenings are just too packed – by the time we run an errand or two, make it home after work, eat dinner, walk the dog, kick back for a while, it’s gone before we know it. So I think for workouts to work it’s going to have to be in the morning.

I think of myself as a successful person overall, but I have some diet and exercise things to work on, like most of the US. However, I have tried, like most people I know, to change my eating habits or get going on exercise and it feels like it never works. Now, in my rational mind, I can point to several successes – I walk my dog daily, I buy little junk food, I eat a lot of fiber (ok, I’m obsessed with fiber). But in my “feeling” mind, I just get sad even thinking about success with exercise, because it feels like it can never be for me. I’m realizing more and more that what I have accomplished, while good, is not enough and that I don’t want to carry this spare tire around my middle forever. Women in my family are built like this and I want to take care of it before it gets to where some of my beloved older relatives are at, because they are not happy and I can see why! I put up an obstacle for myself before I even start, though, because of this weird feeling that I can’t do it. Before I can succeed I need to be able to believe in success!!

Any tips would be appreciated ;)