#DDP_A_Day 1/31

• I’m not a very disciplined blogger—except for the month of August when I do one entry per day for RPG A Day. This month in October I want to follow that spirit and blog each day in what I’m calling DDP A Day.
  
  For my nearly one dozen followers, if you’ve been around, you know that I am overweight and almost every year I’ll start a campaign, but for reasons it falls apart before any tangible results are seen. One of the problems is that I am a teacher—and an overseas one at that. Each year I get several breaks and during those breaks I tend to eat too much and and exercise far too little. I’ve blown a year of progress in the two summer break months only to start again—usually around this time of year—and make progress until the winter break at which point I blow it again. Over and over this has been the cycle for around seven years at least.
  
  Why will this time be different? I think it will be different with DDP Yoga because I’ve seen results already and I’ve only been “ishing” it so far. I was doing great with the program from about April to June of this year—only working out not embracing the diet plan—but then we had to make the  big move  to China, so true to pattern I fell off the exercise program and back into the overeating program. My excuses this time may be legitimate, but excuses and reasons don’t change facts.
  
  China Month One: We’re finally settling down in China, although I’m afraid I’m in well over my head on the job, I’m once again able to exercise and only one month in I can see improvement. I’m also getting the benefit of China being more of a walking environment than the UAE and the USA have ever been. The humidity makes for a lot of sweat and I have to walk five flights of stairs at least once per workday in addition to generally walking around campus and staying on my feet in the classroom.
  
  The set up: Continue the DDP yoga beginner routine which I started last month.
  
  From today until Halloween I’ll be attempting to avoid the following:
  
  
• Sodas of all kinds
• Sweets of all kinds—fruit is permitted
• Fast Food—may make exceptions for “meat” but no bread or pasta
• No Gluten—see above with the no bread or pasta
• No Dairy—cheese and milk will be off until Halloween
  
  I will be reporting every day success or fail. I won’t list everything that I eat as it gets annoying—unless I blow it and then I’ll shamefully let the twelve of you know. The hope is that by writing something everyday—more than the checkmark on my workout calendar—will help me to stay focused. A lot of times I’ll stuff food in my mouth without even thinking about it or buy something that I shouldn’t eat when it would be easy to avoid it if it weren’t in the house. 

Challenges: Portion control. On DDP’s program you can have all the vegetables that you want. No limit…but that’s a trick because nobody wants vegetables. I’ll need to be careful with the meat even though it is allowed because you really can’t eat it to one’s hearts content—or discontent as the case may be. Also, preparation of food as it shouldn’t be fried and the sauces and dressings have to be moderated or else the salad will have more calories than a pizza. Fruit and fruit juice also has to be moderated because the natural sugar is still sugar. Being in China—and in fact maybe vacationing in HK over the next few days—where the noodles are so good may prove to be the downfall of the no gluten. In point of fact, I am only cutting the gluten to see if it makes me feel noticeably better. The “detox” seems to take thirty days to kick in. Then there’s my five year old. Now, I don’t want her getting fat like me, so I am planning to limit her exposure to a lot of the bad foods, but she’s still young. If she wants ice cream or McDonald’s, I’ll let her have it. Unfortunately, that tempts me. There’s already a Pizza Hut visit in the works for this Saturday. Fortunately, they serve steak and salad at the China Pizza Hut, so I should be okay. At least there’s a better chance of being okay here than there would have been on such a visit to the States…but that pizza do….

Full Disclosure: For purposes of monitoring this stuff over the next thirty days for real results I must point out that appearances to the contrary, I have been doing regular exercise off and on for seven years, and of late have just finished the first month of DDP Yoga beginner’s program—doing more than what was suggested. It should also be re-noted that the new Chinese lifestyle that I am adjusting to involves a lot more walking than the UAE or USA previously. So I’m not starting the experiment completely cold and my exercise program is not exclusively DDP Yoga—it’s just the only “intentional” exercise program that I’ll be doing. This one was a long one, but I’m sure the rest will be quite short.