Found this website today . . . Walk Score

You put in any address, and the site will tell you how walk-friendly the neighborhood is. It's good if you're looking for a new place to live (which I'm not doing at the moment). My neighborhood scored a 34 out of 100, which translates to "car dependent." Yeah, I kinda knew that.

Anyway, it's a fun distraction.

Well, I didn't do as well as I'd have liked during week 2, but I still managed to earn 20 points. I'm saving my reward for a while, until I decide exactly what I want from the craft store. This week I was a little ambitious. I didn't make many changes, but I tweaked the old 5 just a little.

1. Get out of bed before 8:00. I pushed this up yet another 1/2 hour. I think this is going to be hard to do, since I'm starting most of my classes this week, but it's something I need to do. I really don't like wasting half of my morning in bed.

2. Drink 1.5L of water. I have not been doing well with this one at all. I was hoping to increase this to 2L this week, but, since I almost never reached this goal last week, I had to keep it the same this week.

3. Wear pedometer and walk at least 4000 steps. I increased this quite a bit. I'm getting to a point where I'm working hard on my 5, and that's where I want to be.

4. Take medicine on time. I'm doing pretty well on this one and will most likely replace it with something else next week. Not sure what yet.

5. Walk the dog. This is the same every week, but the distance actually changes. We are walking pretty far now, over a mile, a lot of which is uphill. We'll get to a much longer distance at some point, but the increases aren't too big in order to fool myself into thinking I'm not walking that far. LOL

So I did really well during my first week of 5 for 5. I earned 22 points, though I haven't given myself my reward yet. Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with my progress. So this week I'm changed things up a little. Here are my 5:

1. Get out of bed before 8:30. This is almost the same as last week, except I pushed up the time 1/2 an hour. I'm try to get it to 7:00. Again, I know it makes me sound incredibly lazy, but, remember, the majority of my activity occurs at night time.

2. Drink 1.5L of water. My dietician made me add this, and she was right to do so. I have to admit that this was the thing I have been struggling with the most this week. And it's what I've always struggled with. As it nears my bedtime, I'm trying to figure out how to fit in another 1/2 L of water. *sigh*

3. Wear pedometer and walk at least 3000 steps. I increased my steps a little and will definitely increase them next week. I want to make it to 10,000 eventually.

4. Take medicine on time. OK, well, I replaced the snack item with this one. I still need to keep track of the snack thing, but I decided that the medicine thing is more important right now. And I'm doing pretty well with it. EXCEPT for the day that I didn't pick up my prescription from Target until mid-afternoon and then didn't get home until almost dinner. I guess I really need to order those refills a little earlier, don't I?

5. Walk the dog. No change here.

I'm always looking for ideas of how to keep myself on track with my health and how to keep myself motivated. So I thought this idea from a blogger on dLife was a really cool idea. The basic concept is that you choose just five things every week to focus on for five days of that week. Every day that you reach a goal, you give yourself a point, for a possible total of 25 points per week. The author rewards herself every time she reaches 20 points per week. She also had the idea to give herself a treat when she reaches 100 points.

I love this idea so much that I decided to try it myself. Today was my first day, and I think I did pretty well. My 5 for this week are:

1) Get up by 9am. I know, I know. It sounds funny. But between the working at night, the late night phone calls, and the insomnia, this is really hard for me to accomplish.

2) Test my blood sugar twice daily. I can usually manage once a day, but twice is hard for me, for some reason.

3) Wear my pedometer and walk at least 2500 steps per day. This is a two-in-one goal. I don't really mind wearing the pedometer; I just tend to forget to put it on in the morning. As for the second part, I guess I underestimated my activity level. I thought that reaching 2500 was hard for me (though the ultimate goal should be 10,000 steps), which is why I set it so low. Now that it's the end of the day, I see that I managed to reach almost twice that today. I'll reconsider my numbers next week.

4) No unauthorized snacks! This has been my nemesis these past few weeks. I have no idea why, but all of a sudden I became ravenous and craved salt. And it lasted for nearly a month. I snacked like crazy. Today that ended, right? :)

5) Walk the dog. I need it; he needs it. 'Nuff said.

I also made a list of reward for myself when I reach 20 points per week (scrapbook supplies that have nothing to do with birthday guild), 100 points (electronics of some sort--I have a list), and 1000 points (vacation of some sort--I have a list of destinations). We'll see how long it lasts.

So far I'm doing well, but as the day went on, I thought of 4 more future goals that I could very well have had for this week. It's just a reminder of how many things I need to keep track of with this diabetes thing. *sigh* Yeah, it's not a piece of cake--or even just avoiding cake.

I'll keep you updated. If this inspires you to join me, let me know. :)