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General Weight Loss Tips

Resound11 Prompt 01: One Word

What is one word to describe your 2011? Why does that word sum up your year? (We’ll be writing about our one word for 2012 later, so just focus on this year!)

(follow along here)

I couldn’t resist following along with the blog girls. These questions are difficult for me  to answer. All the more reason to participate.

The word for 2011 would be: Mistakes. I don’t mean for that to sound negative  as I’m a firm believer in making lots of mistakes. I believe that mistakes are essential to growth and knowledge. I learned a lot this year.

I made a lot of mistakes this year. A lot. I had lots of failed ideas. I started way too many projects. I didn’t  have a plan. I stopped and started so many times. I got people involved in my big ideas. I said yes when I should have said no. I trusted way too easily. I said more than I should have on more than one occasion. I let go of my privacy.  I let my ideals and virtues slide. I took shortcuts and skipped steps. I put my self-worth in the hands of others. I let anger and hurt linger too long. I can’t think of another recent year where I’ve made more mistakes and I’m thankful that I can see them for what they are. I’m forgiving myself.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Making December Count



I have already started to see the emails and blogs posts and even new stories about New Years Resolutions for next year. Very sad, we live for today and already supposed to look at a month or 13 from now?

Anyway, by my watch there are still a few weeks left in the year, actually 24 days if we start from tomorrow. Plenty of time yet to finish the year with a bang.

Making December Count

Making December Count

So this is my plan and I hope you try it out too. I know that it is easier to succeed if there is a finite time than a huge time limit, so maybe this is our time to jumpstart before the new year even gets here.

Here is the plan for Making December Count

1. Look over your goals from the beginning of the year or try to remember back if you did not write them down. Are they relevant? Did you achieve any of them?

I like to start with this look back because in 11 months lots may have changed in your life.

2. So where are you now? Is there anything that has bee gnawing at you that you have been not quite finishing? Have you resigned yourself to waiting until the end of the year before you start anything?

3. So if you look at those first two questions and are really honest with yourself then your head and your heart should be in a great place to move forward. Your head may be saying “Wait, next year is almost here” and your heart may be saying “Lets simplify and get some of these old things out of the way”

Whenever you can get your feelings and emotions as well as your tactics in place you can achieve anything. If you don’t have these aligned then you will find you spin your wheels.

Since we are just going to try to drive some results out of the next 24 days I want you to looks at a couple things that are important. Maybe, like in my case improve my health, and organize my home and work life. You will notice that these are not real goals. Who gives a crap about real goals when we only have December to worry about anyway. So we are just going to pick off issues one at a time.

4. Make a list  all the things that you want to do in these two areas of your life and just to help you out I want to suggest that you break the things down into chunks that you can get done in a day or during a day. Here are my examples:

Improve my health – Do cardio, eat less refined foods, do weights, cut down on coffee, increase food intake, get better quality sleep.

Organize my home and worklife – Get critical tasks done before noon, spend two hours an evening with the computer off, read with the kids, take my wife out for lunch, Get the day planned the night before.

Again these are just directions, not the goals that I will be hammering on in a few weeks time but the goal of all this is to make some change in your life and to institute change.

5. Get these lists on a piece of paper that you can carry with your or tape up or even put on your fridge put this list in front of you. The idea behind this is that while you are working on structuring your day better today with one thing on the list you can also see the other parts in your life to work on in the rest of the list.

If this process seems tough then you are doing it all wrong. For all the tough parts of making changes in your life there should be at least a balance off of satisfaction and a better quality to your days.

Let me know how this works out for you. I have just started this December adjustment in protest to setting resolutions and giving up on 2011 and we can refine it as we move forward over the next few weeks before starting goal setting in earnest for 2012.

  • Making December Count


Making December Count

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Categories
General Weight Loss Tips

I Will Wear Anything

The day started with an Insanity workout, which was insane. I skipped Thursday’s workout meaning that I will have to exercise tomorrow, my usual day off , to make up for it. I’ve learned that morning exercise is the way to go for me, especially in the winter and Thursday just didn’t happen.

Insanity Workout Review

I drank tons of water and made a mental note to carry my water bottle with me where ever I went today.

 

I made a fruit smoothie for breakfast. Granola was an amazing addition.

And then I got dressed for the day and realized something that I need to share: I will wear anything. Even if I probably shouldn’t. I’m  sure there is some rule book out there for big girls in their late 20’s. You know the one about not wearing puffy vests, and bright colors? I laugh in the face of fashion rules! This is why I should never give fashion advice. I will try my darnedest to “make it work”. For real. Too old? no! too fat? no! too bright? no! Bring it! This is also why you should never take me clothing shopping with you. I will encourage you to buy anything that makes your heart pitter patter, even if fashion says otherwise. I will encourage and celebrate headbands on grown women, false eye lashes for the office and sparkly shoes that were trendy seven years ago. You’ve been warned.

Lunch was a big giant salad that I’m calling “fall salad”, because of the cranberries, of course. It was filled with other yummy things like goat cheese, pecans and ginger dressing. And then I hemmed and hawed over having baked spaghetti. Would the salad be enough? Do I really need the spaghetti? Will the salad keep me full? So I did was any rational person would do and ate the spaghetti. The cream cheese baked spaghetti that my bff Jasmine told me that I needed to “omg make right now!” because it was on pinterest and it’s delicious. So I made it with whole wheat noodles and vodka sauce and I’ll be darned if that didn’t come out to 530 calories per serving. That’s what happens when you put a whole block of cream cheese into your spaghetti. You won’t regret it. Luckily, I portioned everything out into single serving freezer cups to prevent it from tempting me too much.

creamcheesebakedspaghetti

For a mid-afternood treat I drank a mug of Tazo passion tea, unsweetened.

For dinner I made the most popular Fenn household dish. Are you ready? Vegetable and peanut stir fry! Not kidding, it’s the very best thing that I make. We both love it, it’s easy, it’s quick, it’s healthy, it’s bulky, it’s vegetables, it’s cheap, it’s everything I could hope for.

It’s so easy and fail proof, just vegetables, garlic, sesame oil, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, peanuts, rice vinegar, water and honey.

I had another tea right after dinner. This time it was caramel black tea with a little milk and sugar.

And then I succumbed to an after-after dinner treat while re-watching Mad Men. I really went back and forth on this. I rationalized heating a little cookie dough in the microwave. I really truly did. It wasn’t much, and I ate it slowly. Did I need it? no. Did it derail my day? no. Did I end up eating more? no. So I’m okay with that. I did have a real moment with myself when I wanted more, because I will always want more in that, more wouldn’t taste any different and would make me sick. I’ve been there. I just wanted a little. But, I’ve been here before with “just a taste” which has turned into a weeks worth of calories. I’m realizing that eating more of anything when I’m full is never fulfilling, I just need to keep reminding myself of that every day.

Stuff I liked about today: I had a plan with food, exercise and even my work. I got a lot done today and I feel good for that. I also feel good that I drank lots of water and had servings of fruit and vegetables at each meal. I net about 1,600 calories.

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