2014 has been the best year ever!!!!!!

Well, so far at least!

I have a plan.  My much awaited, much dreamed about plan.  It all materialized the other day.

Ready?

1. A daily walk of 30 minutes.  5 minutes to warm up, 5 minutes to cool down, 20 minutes of active walking.  I am tracking my distance for those 30 minutes.  At the end of January, I hope to have doubled the distance I did on the first day in the same amount of time.  This is where the magic happens:

Motivation to last me all year!

2. I start each morning with a fruit and veggie smoothie.  I got a Nutribullet for Christmas and it just might be the best gift ever!  I fill it up with two cups of spinach, one cup of fruit, some flax seed, hemp seed and almonds.  Sometimes a little vanilla protein powder.  Delicious!

3. For either lunch or dinner, I have a raw meal shake--it isn't the tastiest thing around but it's edible.

4. Have a reasonable lunch or dinner.

5. Track calories via the LoseIt app.

6. Track steps using my FitBit.  Aim for 10k per day.

It's been two days.  I feel great.  I am focusing on these 6 things.  I am fighting every urge I have to do it perfect.  I am trying to be reasonable and persistent and forget about the perfection.

Also, I forgot to post my weigh in yesterday.  Decided to start over--what was I thinking, trying to start losing weight before Christmas?  So stay tuned for next week--it will hopefully be evidence of all my hard work!

Tenacious Tuesday #1

Here we are!  Tenacious Tuesday, first installment.

I am not tenacious.  Tenacious is defined as tending to keep a firm hold of something; clinging or adhering closely.  I am resilient and enduring; I am not tenacious.

My daughter is tenacious.  When she wants to learn a new skill, she goes all out.  She wanted to learn how to swing so she did it without stopping until she figured it out and mastered it.  Same with learning to swim and dive.  She does not give up.  

I am not like her.  I am scared to fail so I rarely make progress towards my goals.  By not making progress, I haven't really failed, at least in my mind.  You can't fail if you never start!

Yes, I understand that is a terrible rationalization but it got me here so I guess I should be thankful?

Anyhow, this is how we got here.  A month into my year of progress with very little progress.  Tenacious Tuesday will be my way of keeping accountability to my goals.

Win: I met with a financial planner, twice now!  We put together a budget (I am now on a cash plan only).  She said my situation was not nearly as bad as I think it is.  We will meet again in a month to see how my first month of budgeting went.  

Win: Right after I went to the ATM to get my cash out for the week, I found 5 bucks in the snow!  Yay for me! 

Win: I am making homemade chicken noodle soup for my kids tonight! 

Win: I have been hard at work creating my goals for the next year for my life and business.

Fail: I logged my lowest amounts of steps this week.

Fail: I had to put my gym membership on hold due to the budget.

Fail: I still haven't cleared my driveway of all the snow.

Fail: I haven't worked out in quite some time. 

Well now, that wasn't so hard!  Feels good to have an equal number of wins and fails.

Tomorrow I will start Weigh In Wednesday.  Weight loss is a huge goal that has been holding me down for many years now.  I feel like if I could just conquer this obstacle, everything in my life will sparkle and be perfect!  So not true, but that is how it feels.  I am not one of those women who hopes to love herself once she loses weight.  I do love myself most of the time and just want my insides to match my outsides.  I do want someone to love me one day as far as a romantic partner goes and I would like to offer my best self.  

Speaking of that, I had a great idea for a coaching product: Best Life Yet.  So in order for me to coach authentically and not feel like a fraud, I need to get to MY best life yet.  As a coach I sell myself and clients will know if I am legit or not!

In the future I hope to set more mini goals for myself and then tie them to Tuesdays.  Hold me accountable!

yo, it's about that time....

KICK OFF! 

Today is the official kick off to the Year of Living Healthfully!  Thank you for joining me here!  

Last year, I decided my 35th year would be my best year ever!  It didn't quite pan out that way--it was a pretty good year but I didn't accomplish what I wanted.  It was a growing year and I wasn't ready to put the work in the way that I needed to. 

But my 36th year?  Going to rock the casbah on this one!  I am feeling better emotionally than I have in many years, which means I have the stamina to create the physical changes I have been longing for.

Goals for this year:
1. Lose weight, but in increments.  I will break this huge goal down into many small goals.
2. Create a spiritual discipline around prayer and devotion.  God has brought me through the most challenging season of my life!  
3. Get my financial house in order.
4. Grow my business!   

I will elaborate on these goals as time goes by and probably add new ones.  But for now, that's a start.

If you would like to join the closed Facebook group for the Year of Living Healthfully, click here.

Onward to my best year ever!  I'd love to hear what plans you have for your year!

off to dazzle the crowd

In 3 hours I will be at General Mills doing a presentation on balancing technology in our families.  My head hurts a little but I'm going to try to stay off the caffeine.  Hopefully the natural high I get from being in a big group of people will be enough to keep my sparkle going!

I got on the scale this morning just for fun--down 3 pounds!  If I could knock out 10 pounds on this program, I would be very happy.  That would feel like a great head start for me.

The start of something....amazing?

Today I started a 21 day cleanse/detox program.  Normally I don't go for stuff like this but decided to give it a try for several reasons.  First, you don't eat fake food and shakes--you eat real food that you cook and prepare yourself.  Second, many of the reviews I read said it taught them how to shop and cook whole, clean foods.  I need help with that.  Third, I am quite certain that if I don't shake things up now, I will end up in this exact same place next year, looking at my 37th (!!!) birthday looming and wondering what happened to my good intentions.

For breakfast, I had a big bowl of oatmeal.  I was supposed to have yogurt and blueberries with it but had not hit the grocery store yet so I just stuck with the oatmeal.  Not hungry, even 4 hours later.

Have not had soda or tea.  Just drinking water.  No headache.

I am cooking a batch of chicken right now because I need some for my salad at lunch.  I plan to eat mostly the same meals each day for this first week.  Too much flexibility makes me have a hard time.

I hit the grocery store and spent $95 on food.  That kind of hurts but I'm guessing that if I really examine my credit card bill (which I don't because I am feeling stressed about money right now) I would find that I probably spend twice that each week on eating out!

Send encouraging thoughts my way please!

18 days!

My birthday is fast approaching on November 18th!  The official kickoff for the year of living healthfully. 

I've decided to try an outrageous eating plan for 21 days--I will be starting it before the official kickoff so I can be done by Thanksgiving.  :)  Nothing crazy about it, unless you could eating whole foods and nothing processed for 21 days crazy.  I kinda do!

I will talk more about it when it begins. 

No kids this weekend so I am going to spend some time making my goals more specific.  Need to make a plan.  Or as much of a plan as this adaptable girl can make.  :)

useless perfectionism

I found out this summer that my immobility and failure to act at times is a symptom of perfectionism.  Whhhaaa?

I have always been one to hold myself back from trying new things.  Even as a kid, I didn't want to play sports because I didn't want to not be great from the get go.  I see this trait in my son--help me Rhonda.

I tended to gravitate towards activities where I wouldn't let people down if I failed--skiing, biking, camping, etc.  I hate to do something if I'm not sure I can be great.

I found out a few years ago that one of my top strengths is Maximizer.  Maximizers strive for excellence and are disappointed with anything less.  Yes, I believe that describes me!  However, instead of pushing myself to bigger and better things, I hold myself back because I don't believe I can achieve excellence.  Clearly not using this strength as well as I could.

This useless perfectionism needs to go.  I've let go of a lot of bad habits and patterns of behavior over the last few years as a result of my divorce.  Every day I am thankful that I was given a second chance to create a life that matters.  I think I am rising to the pursuit of excellence in a number of key areas--but the one glaring hole is my health. 

How do I break the cycle of inaction and finally get to where I want to be?  This blog definitely helps.  I think the next big thing to tackle is food.  I don't remember how to eat right.  Even when I was eating right back in my skinny days (before sweet Olivia got here), I was mainly eating fake food but just less food in general so I lost weight.  Now I feel this need to be healthy and not eat crap but I don't really know how to do it so I am stuck in crappy eating and self loathing.

Any suggestions?

now what?

I seemed to have sparked something with my little Facebook post.  Apparently there are quite a few people out there just like me--completely fed up but somehow not making any progress.

I'm a pretty open person--I don't really care if people think I am cool or not.  I want people to like me, sure, because I have Woo in my Top 5 and enjoy making connections.  But I have no problem putting my grossness out there.  Not entirely sure why.  When I was younger a move like this would have mortified me.  Perhaps this is a result of being closer than ever to 40?

If you have decided to walk alongside me for this year of living healthfully, welcome!  So glad you made it.  I am not going to pretend I have a grand plan or any answers at all.  All I know is that I have tried and failed a hundred times and I don't want to do it any more.

I don't see this year as the year of a diet.  I really don't.  Obviously eating will be a big part of weight loss.  But I have learned that I don't do well with "you can't have this" diets.  Does anyone?  I need flexibility and I need something that is sustainable in the long run.  I don't want to live in constant fear that if I stop eating according to a diet plan that I will plump up again.

Today I started my morning off with a multivitamin.  Small step to be sure, but one that I needed to take.  I neglect my body quite often.  Taking care of two kids as a single mom tends to be quite a bit of work at times (which I wouldn't trade for anything!).  When I do have downtime I am usually comatose on the couch.  I don't take very good care of me.  It's almost like when I have time to do something healthy for myself, I fear taking action as though expending too much energy on life will be the thing that sends this whole thing into chaos.  I think this is a remnant of living in a constant state of stress when I was married.  I am actually a hard worker with a huge capacity to get stuff done.  But for a long time I was in survival mode and there really wasn't much energy left at the end of the day.  I get to change that now.

So today I swallowed a pill that will help fill in the gaps in my nutrition.  And now I am going to have a cup of tea!