Progress In Recreating A Healthy Lifestyle

Today is my 26th day off of appreciable levels of caffeine. I did have some chocolate which started with chocolate chip cookies on the Solana Beach Presbyterian Church Men's Retreat the weekend before last. I understand that the caffeine level in chocolate is not that high compared to say, Diet Coke, and I will check that out. This is my 15th day of no appreciable levels of the big artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet, Splenda, and Saccharine. I started again with no processed sugar yesterday, so this is day 2.

I am now using a pedometer and starting last Thursday I registered this number of steps - 4132. The other days are as follows: Friday 4716, Saturday 6743, Sunday 5729, Monday 6571.

I slept straight through from a little before 11 last night to a little before 5 and got up and walked the dog for 2422 steps before 5:30! I spoke with one of the top exercise physiologists, Richard Cotton, who happens to go to my church, and he said that doing one healthy thing at a time and adding one thing a week is a good way to go. That way, you're not trying to quit or start everything all at once. Richard Cotton is the founder of MyExercisePlan.com and he's available as a coach through RichardCotton.com.

Personally, I do find that having at least one pretty long "streak" going encourages me to keep moving ahead and I don't want to break that streak. I compromised when I was on retreat, but I didn't go back to square one on everything.

Click on the title of today's post to see what I wrote about caffeine affecting your mood.