The negotiation

Do you negotiate with yourself?  Inside I mean, not out loud.  Out loud would make people think that you're talking to your alter ego or something. 

I do.

Today it was this:  I can have the breaded pork sandwich IF I have the salad instead of fries.
And:  I can have a birthday cookie IF I use the stairs the rest of the day instead of the elevator.

I suppose you could say that if you ever reward yourself for your healthiness journey you do a bit of negotiation.  I'm doing that too.

I can buy new clothes IF I lose 15 pounds by my birthday on 3/22.

I started off this post thinking that negotiation was a bad thing.  Something that I used to justify my bad eating.  And while it may be just that, it's a good thing too.  In order for it to be good (according to my definition) it needs to be non food related.  For now.  I think there will come a time when a workout will mean that I can reward myself with a piece of cake and be ok with it.  But for now, the rewards that I negotiate with myself have to be non food related.

*******
I was working out with my trainer this morning at the Y.  Often times she will ask me to check my heart rate on my Polar F40 Heart Rate Monitor.  Then she laughs.  No really.  Sometimes I read her the number and she laughs.  I have yet to figure out if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  Anyway, today she asked me how many calories I'm burning when I do the circuit weight training with her for an hour and how many I burn when I do it again by myself later in the week.  I told her that I didn't think it was right and that I needed to get the platform to hook it up to the computer and enter more information about me.

She again asked me how many I was burning.  I told her 450-600 calories.  She looked me dead in the eyes and said, "That's right."  I was shocked.  The watch often says about 500 calories and anywhere 17%-23% fat burned.  I kept thinking that it was way wrong because, well I don't know why, but I thought it was way wrong.

So with this knowledge comes two thoughts.  Hell, I can work out like that every day and look how much weight I'd lose.  Or Hell I can work out that way every day and eat a whole lot! 

Neither of which I'm going to do.