2013 Dream Board

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Birthdays, Books, Cooking, Design, Dreams, Edibles, Get in shape girl, Goals, Health, Me, New Years Resolutions, Party Planning, Positive Thinking, Recipes, Sewing

A few months ago, Nikki suggested I create a Dream Board to help get me back on track. At the time, I was feeling pretty blue and lacking motivation. This idea really appealed to me but I didn’t act on it. It was a difficult year and I just couldn’t see a way out of the sadness I was feeling. Early December I finally found my happy again. I felt hopeful and excited about a few new prospects. All of this has spilled over into this new year and I think this is the perfect time to create my Dream Board.

Here are a few goals for the up coming year:

Try a new recipe each week

Finish redecorating the guest room

Finish Project Basement and my studio space

Start an Etsy store

Walk jog run 500 miles

Participate in the Cap City Half Marathon

Plan and host a Lalaloopsy themed birthday party

Read 100 books

And the BIG one…

Register for the 2014 Disney Half Marathon and save for a family vacation

What I wore today… {Coral and khaki}

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Accountability, Beauty, Fashion, Fitness, Get in shape girl, Health, Me, Nail Polish, Pinterest, Shoes, Style, Target, Thrift Store

I had an interview today for a part-time, seasonal position so I hit my style board on Pinterest for a little inspiration…

Nail polish ~ Fast Track by China Glaze & Tangerine Crush by L’Oreal
Braided belt ~ Apt. 9 from Kohl’s, Clearance
Coral ruffled blouse ~ Target
White cardigan ~ The Limited, Thrifted
Khaki pencil skirt ~ Target, Clothing swap
Black & white striped ballet flats with tan bow ~ JustFab.com
Silver drop earrings ~ Maurice’s
Assorted bangle bracelets ~ Tiffany, Forever 21, Maurice’s

The interview went well and my fingers are crossed. I like the idea of working part-time to help fill the holes in the budget yet still having time with Lil’ A during the day.

I really need to get back into the habit of blogging daily. Missing a day or several makes me sad and filled with guilt. I think I’ve been avoiding posting because I feel I should be more accountable of my fitness goals here. Maybe I’ll join Nikki in posting a Fitness Friday entry even if this was a bad week. Fortunately, I’ve simply maintained my weight loss from the last two weeks. Sigh.

Weighing in

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Fitness, Get in shape girl, Health

It’s been just over a week since I started on Nikki’s Boot Camp for Beth. My main focus during this time has been to change my eating habits and kick start my metabolism. I have a tendency to just not eat. My main issue isn’t what I eat (all though I doid need to cut a few things) but the frequency. It’s been a huge challenge for me to eat 6 times a day and I’m not always successful. It seems off to me to eat even when I’m not hungry but I have been doing it anyway.

So what has 6 meals a day, LOTS of water, and some walking done for me? -8lbs

Tomorrow I start Jillian Michael’s 30-Day Shred.

Get Fit {Thinking Positive}

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Dreams, Family, Fitness, Friends, Get in shape girl, Inspiration, Me, Positive Thinking, Strength

Positive thinking goal 3 of 5 is already underway. For the first time, I really do feel positive about getting my eating and exercising on track. In March of 2011, I started seeing an acupuncturist and nutritionist. There were many wonderful things about my 6 months under his care but it was incredibly frustrated. Part of my treatment required me to keep a food log in an effort toward a clean diet. I was to cut wheat and sugar due to an intolerance and switch to all natural, all organic everything. Every week I was chastised about something. Don’t eat this. Don’t eat that. Things I thought would be on the approved list were bad and vice versa. By the time I got it all figured out I was almost afraid to eat anything.

My super clean diet and exercise did help me lose 25 lbs and feel better than I ever have as an adult but there was nothing positive about the process. I was miserable and once a few huge stresses entered my life, everything I had worked on fell apart.

So now I am committed to…

Get Fit!

I’m making better choices and moving and seeing results far quicker than before. I’m not hungry all the time like I was and I don’t feel as if I’m sacrificing everything I love to eat. I’m learning about portion sizes and eating snacks. But the major difference is that I have the support of a good friend to get me through the tough parts. Plus K is also making the same changes and we are able to encourage each other.

I know that getting fit will help me with my other goals by giving me the confidence and energy to face each challenge head on!

Tomorrow… I think positive about getting involved.

Screw hard work

Tags

Dreams, Get in shape girl, Inspiration, Me

Image by Studio Mela

Let me begin this post by saying that I am a skeptic by nature. I take almost nothing at face value or just on faith. I question everything. I read the fine print. I seek out the evidence. If it sounds to good to be true, it always is. Period.

So I’m lounging in bed enjoying a little time with Pinterest, when K bounds in all a twitter about something he was watching. He couldn’t remember what it was called but I just had to hear him out (because he knows I’ll be rolling my eyes in about 90 seconds). This show was all about the secret to the universe and how by simply thinking positively I could attain anything I wanted. The universe would sense it and the laws of attraction would just make it so. He was gaga over this concept. I was laughing and rolling my eyes.

Me: “Is this show called The Secret?”

Him: “Yeah! Yeah, that’s it!”

Me: “This was on Oprah like 5 years ago and everyone wanted to check the book out from the library.”

Him: “It’s amazing stuff! Do you think you could do it? Imagine what it is you really want over the next 6 weeks. Think positively without letting in the negative. Could you do it?”

Me: “So screw hard work and just think positive?”

Him: “YES! Essentially, yes. Could you do it?”

Could I?

Forget that I find all this to be a giant crock of shit… Could I think 100% positively over the next 6 weeks about something I truly wanted?

I want to say that I could. I really do. However, while I am essentially a happy person, I am also internally a very negative person by nature and nurture. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I plan for the inevitable disappointments and betrayals. I try to have a back-up plan. My successes have been because I worked my ass off not due to some misguided belief in luck. I am such a Capricorn.

By approaching life this way am I just setting my self up for eventual failure or protecting myself from the way of the world? Am I doing it wrong? Should it be about more than just hard work?

While discussing my new get healthy goals, Nikki mentioned that something she did was to create a dream board of goals she wanted to reach by the end of the year. I like the idea and it might make me change my mindset to be more positive and more positive in HOW I accomplish my goals.

So my new challenge is to establish 5 goals I want to focus on and think positive about over the next 6 months. Over the next 5 days I will blog about each goal and what I hope to accomplish. Positive thinking AND hard work… NOT looking behind my back for the next zombie attack… Being conscious of how my actions effect those around me while reaching my goals…

The last 7 months have been brutal and I’ve been standing in my way of moving forward. Recently, I’ve made some baby steps toward emotional healing but I have a long way to go. I hope this effort toward positive thinking will help me begin to mend my spirit.

P.S. I still think it’s baloney that universe would just hand you what you want just because you packaged the thoughts with rainbows and kittens.

Nikki’s Boot Camp

Tags

Accountability, Fitness, Friends, Get in shape girl, Health

I looked in the mirror yesterday and I did not like what I saw. It’s been building for a few weeks, as my clothes have stopped fitting properly. And for a girl who is a huge fan of clothing and fashion, to not have her closet be on her side is a major issue. Then the tipping point came last night. K asked me to purchase a bathroom scale. Enough said.

The number that appeared shocked and horrified me. I simply can’t believe I have let myself get to this point. Of course there are a billion “reasons” as to the HOW I got here… depression over horrific accidents and job loss, medications that cause weight gain, blah blah blah. The truth is I’ve been complacent. I’ve let all the shit define me for the last year and it’s time to knock it off.

So how do I get started?

Call Nikki!

Nikki is truly an inspiration (read her blog!) and as a real friend she has zero problem being brutally honest with me about the changes I need to make. Plus she’s been there.

For the first time I feel like I have a clear plan to attack this problem. I lost a lot of weight last year but getting there was a confusing struggle that was laced in shame because I wasn’t quite meeting the goals the nutritionist and acupuncturist felt I should be meeting.

Beginning today I change my eating habits by actually eating.

Breakfast… Snack… Lunch… Snack… Dinner… Snack…

That is a lot of food in my mind but for someone who doesn’t always even eat 2 meals a day, it would seem that way.

I will be keep a food diary, drinking a minimum of 8 glasses of water, and moving my ass more.

Here I go!

Rethinking the budget

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Budget, Family, Get in shape girl, Home, Inspiration, Library, Me, Money Matters

K would say I should have done this months ago but better late than never, right? I’ve been scouring the interwebs for ideas on ways to save pennies. Here are the steps we have taken so far…

Cut the cable – We talked about this one months ago but I was passive aggressively avoid it. I love me some tv watchin’ and just didn’t want to give it up. After doing a bit of research I feel much more comfortable with this decision and turned in the cable box on Tuesday.

  

We have had Netflix for over a year and have really loved it, especially for Lil’ A (great kids shows and no commercials!). It is an excellent source for past seasons of tv shows, documentaries, and some movies. We have the instant streaming option for $7.99 a month.

Hulu Plus is what sent us over the edge. Current seasons of almost all the shows I love to watch appear here within a day or so. No need to program the DVR or worry about storage. This is a great option for $7.99 a month. My only sadness is that all the Bravo shows I love so much are just not available here (or anywhere else for the most part). Guess I’ll have to learn to live without the Real Housewives. *Sniff*

Both Netflix and Hulu Plus are available on all of our devices – laptops, PS3, and Wii providing us with more viewing options than we had with cable.

Many networks also offer full episodes on their websites which will round out my tv watching (except for Bravo).

For movies we plan to continue using our local library which offers popular titles on Blu-Ray (I have Captain American and Thor waiting for me on reserve right now). If we are unable to score a movie via the library, Amazon offers the option to rent movies via the PS3 for much less than the OnDemand option our cable provider charged.

Savings: $70 a month

Cut the home phone – We haven’t used our home phone in years. This was an easy decision since we have exclusively been using our cell phones.

Savings: $25 a month

Thrifty shopping – Hitting up the thrift stores for clothing and other home items has been so much fun. The best buys I have found are on clothing for Lil’ A. Our local Goodwill sells kids clothing for $1.09 a piece. We live in an upper middle class suburb of Columbus so the clothing is generally name brand and in excellent condition.  She will only wear dresses which makes it challenging to outfit her with variety. I have been able to fill her summer wardrobe with cute, well made clothing for next to nothing!

Savings: approximately $75 a month

Menu planning – I usually do some sort of menu planning but now I’m taking a different approach. Inspired by the “No spend month” posted by Rachel Meeks over at Small Notebook, I’m trying to plan delicious, filling meals with this approach in mind. The first week I used this method I was able to keep my overall grocery bill to less than $50!

Savings: $200 a month!

Freeze the gym membership – It’s summertime and there are lots of options for outdoor exercise. We are so fortunate to live within walking distance to a park with walking paths. Plus my lovely friend Nikki has been posting great exercise tips and routines over at her blog that can be done at home.

If I reinstate before the end of the year I will get credit for the $10.50 I’ve been paying monthly toward the membership dues which can also be used to pay for the cancelation fees.

Savings: $28 a month

Host a yard sale – For years we have talked about having a yard sale and finally we are going to do it! We have boxes and boxes of stuff that was never unpacked when we moved in 6 years ago. Time to let go. Using the garage as a staging area, I have emptied out ALL of the boxes that were stored in our garage (probably about a dozen) and cleaned out the cabinets in my kitchen. It is so nice not to feel so crowded with stuff we never use. Next up the basement!

While this doesn’t save us money, it might make us a little bit of paper to help pay for some up coming events. More info to come if you live in Central Ohio and are interested in making my junk your junk! Actually my junk is really nice.

It’s a start. If you have any tips for saving money, leave them in the comment section!

Get in shape girl!

Tags

Accountability, Fitness, Get in shape girl, Health

Do you remember that “toy” from the 80′s that encouraged young girls to exercise? My cousin had it but then she was spoiled and had everything, even one of the first American Girl dolls. For some reason I can’t get the song or the images out of my head and because I am a giver, I’m gonna plant the image in your head too!

There really is a point to all this… I’ve been reading about my girls and their journeys to eat healthy and get in shape and I am feeling inspired. Nikki is the ultimate example of this! I wish I had an ounce of her motivation. She has worked her ass off, literally! Amy and Jac are making great choices and sharing their progress. So I need to get off my ass and start moving it!

Last year at this time I made a major lifestyle change that saw me cut wheat and sugar completely from my diet. I felt better than I had in years and lost almost 25 lbs. It was amazing. It lasted for about 6 months and then an amazingly traumatic event happened and I found myself struggling with everything. I drifted away from my diet plan and back to eating everything and not working out. It’s time to get my life back on track and stop wallowing in the bullshit of the last 6 months (I can’t even begin to detail everything that has happened to me in this timeframe but trust me when I say that it’s enough to have caused anyone to start drinking).

My plan is to slowly start cutting out wheat. I will try to keep my intake to one meal a day or less. Also, begin to eliminate soda which I really don’t drink much of contrary to my very vocal love of McD’s coke on twitter. So I downloaded the MyFitnessPal app to my iPhone and will track my daily 1200 calories.

This app seems user friendly which is good because this is not something I want to stress over on my journey to eating healthier. My focus needs to be on making good choices and feeling great. And just like my girls I plan to track my overall progress here to help increase accountability.

So cheer me on! Share your stories! Together we can “Get in shape girl!”