Adding some relaxation

Relaxing has been a major problem in my life. Everything I have been reading lately has stressed that you must de-stress in order to live a healthy lifestyle. It is also supposed to help with weightloss. Why do I have such a problem with this? I have no idea, except I do know that I think "if I don't do it, who will." So if I don't stay up late and wash the dishes or fold the laundry who will do it. In all reality the answer is "no one." I'm not saying my husband doesn't help out around the house, he does. In fact, I'm sure he loads the dishwasher more than I do but . . . in reality if we had guests over, a dirty disorganized house would reflect badly on me, not on him. Thank you very much American culture (sarcastic if you couldn't tell). So therefore the pressure is on me to keep a clean house. So anyway, part of my plan to add relaxation into my life is to cut back on television viewing time. When I look back at my day and wonder where the time went, of course most of it goes to my job, but then a good hour or two in the evenings goes to television. For my husband that is how he relaxes and that is fine. It just stresses me out to be truthful. I enjoy other relaxing things, such as reading and taking baths, preferably together. So I am going to set a specific limit to how much TV I can watch during the work week and see if that helps. Ok, here is goes: I will only watch one hour of TV a night. That seems pretty reasonable, doesn't it. I think I will start out slowly and the work up to possibly, no TV in the evenings. The only thing is, is that now I am "addicted" (although I don't watch them every week) to certain shows like Super Nanny. Some would say that is educational. Since the show is an hour long I would simply need to budget my time.

I am now budgeting my meals, too. My husband wants to get pizza for supper. Well, thanks dear for helping me out with my diet! :) Anyway, so I am going to really eat well all day (low calorie, high nutrition) so that I can enjoy a little piece of the pizza. Since I have started all of this I have been educating myself on how many calories fast food has in them. One slice of meat lovers stuff crust pizza is over 470 calories. Yikes! I have all of the charts printed and in my food/exercise journal if you ever want to browse the nutritional info of most fast food restaurants. Anyway, this is getting a bit rambly. Thank you to all (especially Mom for the articles and advice and to Andrew for eating all the veggies I put on his plate!!) for the support in this endeavor of becoming healthy. I think it is going to be a long road.