I just wanted to give a quick shout-out post and welcome those of you who found me today by way of the MeYou Health blog!  I’m a major fan of the work they do and their small actions approach to health and fitness.  I’ve participated in the Daily Challenge for almost 13 months and love it! Thanks for stopping by to check out my blog!  I hope you like what you see and will stick around and subscribe via RSS feed or email (widget in my sidebar).

Until next time …

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Anyone who knows me well knows I’m definitely NOT a morning person.  I freely confess my night owl ways.  Accordingly, I’ve pretty much always worked out in the late afternoon or evening.  The only exceptions are pretty much on the weekends or when I’m on vacation and fit in morning workouts.

Earlier this week, Carla (a.k.a. the amazing MizFit) blogged an easy 4-step plan for becoming a morning exerciser.  I admit, I was intrigued.  Here’s the basics of her plan (check her website for full details if you’re interested in giving it a try!):

1. Make the decision and tell your accountability partners (AKA friends & family).
2. Plan and practice your workout routine.
3. Wake up and dont workout!
4. Go go go!

I know that I generally feel much better on the days when I’m able to workout in the morning.  I have more energy, my calorie burn throughout the day is higher, and I just generally seem to feel more peaceful and serene (thank you, endorphins!).

After I finished reading her post and watching her video that day, I tweeted about it mentioning I was tempted to try it despite my night owl ways.  Well, my Weight Watchers buddy Ginger called me on it!   We made a pact to give this a try together.

We pretty much covered step 1 by committing to each other to do this together.  Since I also consider all of you, my amazing readers, my accountability partners as well, I’m sharing it here, too.  As for step 2, Ginger and I committed to getting out of bed five minutes earlier every day this week and to check in with each other during to week to make sure we’re following through.  So far, so good! We’ll hit step  3 next week which means getting up 20 minutes earlier every day, but not working out.  For me, that means getting up at 5:25am.  (O.M.G. )  Doing this will be for just getting our bodies used to getting up earlier.  The following week will be step 4 which means the 5:15am torture morning workouts start.  I’ll keep you all posted on how it goes!

Woo Hoo!  As difficult as it is to believe, it’s time to start thinking about FitBloggin’ again!  Roni announced on the FitBloggin’ site yesterday that registration will open up next Wednesday, January 11.  The hotel is already accepting reservations, so I knocked that out yesterday.   Yeah, I may or may not be a little bit excited about this.   I had SUCH an amazing time last year that I knew it was definitely something I wanted to attend again this year.  Is it September yet?!

The assignment for today’s 30 Day Blog Challenge is to post a photo of an animal you’d like to raise as a pet.  This is an easy one for me.  I would *love* to have a bunny, especially a Mini Lop! I mean, seriously, how cute is that?!!

Until next time …

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*Whew*  I’ve finally got time to sit down and write part 2 of my New Year – New Start post.

This is the post where I finally get around to talking about goals.  No, I won’t be setting any grandiose goals or resolutions for the entire year.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve definitely come to realize that setting long-term goals isn’t a good thing for me.  If I find myself getting off track, I let it derail me completely.  These days I prefer to stick with more short-term goals because that just seems to work much better for me.

I have decided that I’m just going to take things eight weeks at a time.  I think a couple of months is a long enough time frame to let me set some decent goals without making them too far down the road.  It will also make it easier for me to track in week segments vs. two month segments because then I can tie my goals in with my weekly Weight Watchers meeting rather than whatever arbitrary day of the week the first of the new month would be starting.

Fortunately, my first eight week block times almost perfectly with our new challenge over at the Sisterhood.   There are categories for those shrinking as well as for those who are goal and not interested in weight loss.  I’m not sure if my eight week goal stints work in alignment with the Sisterhood challenges the whole year, but it’s working for now and I’m going with it.

Ok, so now that I’ve outlined how I’m planning to do things, let’s get down to some brass tacks!  Here are my goals for January 1 through February 26:

• Track all of my food in eTools – I’ve gotten pretty sloppy lately about tracking my food.  I know have much better success when I’m faithfully tracking.  I need to get back to this habit!
• Do some sort of intentional exercise four times per week – Exercise is a bit dicey for me right now with my knee injury.  There are some things I literally just can’t do right now.  That doesn’t mean I need to get lazy and not do anything!  There are plenty of ways I can get in some exercise that won’t bother my knee, so I need to just do it!
• Drink at least 64 oz of real water per day – Another area where I’ve gotten pretty lax is in drinking my water.  I think part of that comes from Weight Watchers changing their healthy guideline from “water” to “liquids” a while back.  I seem to rely far too much on flavoring my water with Mio, Crystal Light, etc.  I need to get back to some good old fashioned water.
• Try at least one new recipe every two weeks – I have a plethora of cookbooks (not to mention lots of recipes to try pinned on Pinterest)  in my personal library.  There’s no reason why I need to stick with eating the same things over and over all of the time.  I need to expand my repertoire by adding in some new recipes this year.

So, there you have it.  I think I’ll definitely have success if I stick with these goals over the next eight weeks.  What’s that?  Why yes, you ARE correct, there isn’t a weight loss number goal in there.  I’m not setting any of those this year.  My goal with my weight loss will be to try and fall within the recommendation of Weight Watchers and my personal physician of averaging between ½ to 2 pounds per week over time.  So, if all goes well, by this time next year I should be somewhere between 26 and 104 pounds lighter and I’m good with that.

I also mentioned in my previous post about a group venture I’m taking part in with several other members of the Sisterhood.  We’ve undertaken a group book project for the year following the principles outlined in this book:

Each week we’ll be focusing on implementing one of the changes in the book into our daily routine.  This week’s chapter is all about water which fits perfectly with one of my goals for the next eight weeks!  We’ve even got a group going over at The ‘Hood so we can encourage each other during the process.  The author even recognized our group on her website.  How cool is that?!  If you’re interested in joining us, and I hope you are, please head over to The ‘Hood and sign up.  You can also grab a copy of the book on Amazon.  If you have a Kindle, it’s available in Kindle format, too.  We’re all really excited to be doing this together during 2012.

Today’s assignment for the 30 Day Blog Challenge is to share your favorite store.  This one is a complete no brainer for me:  AMAZON!   I order from them so much that I think the property manager at my complex probably thinks I own stock in them.   If we’re talking a traditional brick and mortar store, then it would probably be Target.  I love me some Target!

In closing, I just wanted to take a moment to point out that you may have noticed the Google Friend Connect follow box has disappeared from my sidebar.  In an effort to consolidate some of their services, Google has made the decision to discontinue allowing GFC to be used on non-Blogger sites effective March 1, 2012.  Since it’s going away in a couple of months anyway, I just went on and removed it now.  If you would like to follow my blog, you can find several other options in my sidebar.  You can subscribe by email, RSS feed, or via NetworkedBlogs.  I hope you’ll choose at least once method so you can always know when I have new posts. Thanks!

Until next time …

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Ahhh, here we are.  A brand new year, all shiny, clean, and sparkling new.  Can’t you just smell the new all over it?  You know, kind of like the awesomeness of new car smell.  I just love the anticipation of a New Year.  Much like that new car smell, there’s just nothing else quite like it.

For me, this new year means making a new start.  As I mentioned in my post several days ago about Scale Reality & New Year Goals, I knew I was going to end this year at pretty much the same weight I started it.  I was feeling pretty down about myself about it initially, but then my wonderful friend Karen reminded me that there’s no shame in maintaining for a while.  After all, at least I’m not ending the year weighing MORE than when I started.

But, enough of the past!  This is 2012 and I’m all geared up for a NEW START to go with the new year.  Thankfully, my Weight Watchers center was open on New Year’s Day this year.  I can’t remember a time in the past where they’ve ever done that, so  I was thrilled that not only could I get to my regular Sunday meeting, I could get to one on January 1, too.  How awesome is that?!  So, I got myself up bright and early this morning and headed over to my Weight Watchers meeting, by way of Starbucks.   Sadly, the red holiday cups are gone for another, but at least I was still able to get a Skinny Peppermint Mocha still (4 PP for the Venti).

The topic for this week’s meeting was all about “believe” which goes hand-in-hand with their new ad campaign.  Have you see any of the new commercials?  If you were watching ABC’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve last night, you probably spotted one of them.  If you looked closely, you might’ve spotted the awesome @SuziStorm who blogs over at Ok, Just One More Beer.  She’s lost 91 pounds on Weight Watchers and looks amazeballs!!  If you want to see even more Weight Watchers videos, check our their YouTube channel!

Back to the meeting, we talked a lot about what things have caused us to stumble on our weight loss journey in the past.  We then brain-stormed about tools that we have available as Weight Watchers members that will help us overcome those old issues.  Using those tools will help us be successful and we can believe and have faith that we can reach our goals.  We even ended the meeting with an awesome quote seen in the photo which also includes my incredible leader, Jacki (can you believe she was once 100 pounds heavier?!!).  If you can’t read the quote, just click on the photo for a large version which should be easier to read.

As if the quote wasn’t inspiring enough on it’s own, I happened to glance to my left and see this poster hanging on the wall next to me.  It’s the cumulative total of all the weight loss at our center during 2011.  Amazing!!  Hopefully we can smash that total in 2012!

After I left the meeting, I headed over to the supermarket and stocked up on lots of healthy foods, including lots of fresh fruit & veggies.  When I got it home, I decided Jan. 1 would be a great day to get my kitchen all organized again as I was putting the food away.  I feel so ready to go with my healthy eating in 2012!  There’s just nothing quite like being organized to make sticking with a plan so much more manageable.

Once I had that done, I prepared myself a nice healthy lunch (sorry, no pic) and then settled in for an afternoon of relaxation which included a bit of stitching time.  My January 1 new stitching start for this year (yes, I do it one every year) was Royal Holiday from one of my favorite designers, Mirabilia.  I don’t have enough done yet to really post a photo, so I’ll do that in a few days after I have a bit more done.

I had planned on including my goals for the next two months in this post, but I think it’s long enough already.   I’ll save my goals for tomorrow’s post.   I’ll also be writing about an exciting year-long project I’ll be taking part in over at the Sisterhood, too.  I can’t wait to tell you all more about that!

I do have one last thing to share about before I go for today.  I’ve decided to take part in the 30 Day Blog Challenge hosted by Jamee over at A New Kind of Normal.  Since I’m really striving to blog on a daily basis again after merging my blogs, I thought this would be a great way to ensure it actually happens.   It will also give new readers to my blog (hello weight loss resolutioners ) a chance to learn a little bit more about me.  The challenge for today is to post a photo of yourself and description how your day went.  Since I’ve already posted about how my day went, I’ll just leave you with a photo of me taken recently with my sweet kitty, Brandi.

Until next time …

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Well, I did it.  I headed to a Weight Watchers meeting last night after work.  The image above pretty much sums up the reaction the scale had when I stepped on it.  My holiday over indulgences were screaming loud and clear.  I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I put on NINE pounds over the past two weeks of the holiday.  How is that even possible?!!

Well, I suppose it’s technically possible since that would work out to “only” taking in an extra 2250 calories above and beyond my BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) per day.  Given all of the high-calorie holiday fare out there, one could easily rake up a LOT of extra calories very quickly.  While I do admit to indulging, I didn’t indulge THAT much and I definitely didn’t indulge that much every day for two full weeks, that’s for sure!

So, why did the scale jump so much then?  There were a few things other than calorie consumption that contributed to the big jump at the scale.

1. I normally attend a Sunday morning meeting, but attended an evening meeting this week since the center was closed on Sunday for Christmas.  I generally weigh 2-3 pounds heavier in the evening than I do in the morning due to foods and fluids consumed during the day.
2. I normally weigh in wearing a pair of running capris and a t-shirt.  Since I went to the meeting straight from my office, I had on a pair of white jeans and a lightweight sweater tunic because I’d forgotten when I dressed yesterday morning that I would be weighing in last night.  That clothing difference was probably also good for another couple of pounds of the gain.
3. I was eating a lot more sodium-laden foods and drinking less water than I normally do over the holidays.  That’s a double whammy on the scale, for sure!

All things considered, I figure I probably actually put on about 4-5 pounds.  While that’s still not that great, at least it’s better than NINE!  Hopefully I’ll see a nice loss on Sunday after a few days back on my regular eating routine coupled with getting back to my morning meeting & usual weigh in attire.

I loved the topic we had at the meeting this week.  It was all about “Believe and Achieve!”  Jacki, my leader, pointed out that Spring is just a mere 12 weeks from now.  She had us all take a couple of minutes to think about where we’d like to be when Spring arrives and write out those goals.  She encouraged us to not think about the whole year of 2012 but to focus on more short-term goals.  In fact, she gave each of us a 3-Month Success Plan sheet to fill out with goals for just the next 12 weeks.  It was really helpful!  Here were some of the items included:

• What are some things you were doing the last time you felt successful at weight loss?
• Paint a picture of yourself in three (3) months:

• I will be wearing _____________________.
• I will be able to ______________________.
• I will weigh between ________ and _______.
• I will feel __________________________.

• Based on past success, I commit to use these tools in my weight loss journey:

• _________________________________
• _________________________________
• _________________________________

I love having this action plan to help me get my new year off to a great start!  I prefer having firm goals to work toward rather than all of the proverbial New Years’ Resolutions that so many people set.  I actually gave up on making resolutions several years ago because I realized that I rarely kept them because they weren’t specific enough and they had such a large scope that they become overwhelming.  Having huge yet nebulous resolutions never seemed to serve me well.  These days, I prefer setting smaller more short-term goals that are S.M.A.R.T.

• S pecific
• M easurable
• A ttainable
• R elevant
• T imely

By setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, I have created an environment where I can be successful by simply following my plan.  I no longer have to feel shame and/or guilt about not meeting a bunch of vague resolutions.  If I don’t meet my goals,  I just know I need to work my plan better the next time.

Speaking of which,  I didn’t do a very good job of setting goals in 2011 and it really shows now that the year is coming to a close.  My weight just kind of went up and down the same 10-15 pounds throughout the course of the year because I didn’t have a plan.  As a result, I’m finishing the year weighing basically what I did at the beginning of the year.  I definitely plan (pardon the pun) to do a much better job of setting and managing my goals in 2012!

If you follow me on Twitter, one of the things you probably know I believe in is taking small steps.  Being part of the Daily Challenge from the folks at Me You Health for the past year has been a great help in that area!  Every day they give one small task that we can all do to help create a healthier life.  It’s really helped reinforce the me the importance of focusing on taking small steps rather than looking at the big picture and getting overwhelmed.

Along the same thought line I have, they are encouraging people to skip the resolutions this year and join their anti-resolution campaign.  They are asking people to pledge to take small actions toward better health and well-being instead making resolutions.  I LOVE this concept!  They’ve even put together an app on the anti-resolution website to help people selection a small action that will help people meet their larger goals.  I took the pledge using the app and chose the small action of eating at least one green vegetable every day.  I can do that!

You can also check out this awesome video featuring some of the Me You Health staff sharing some of their own small steps (Hi Alicia & Christine!).  If you’re on Twitter and interested in health & fitness, you should follow them both.  Just sayin’ …  Oh, and you should follow @MeYouHealth, too! 

So, what are your plans for 2012? Will you be making resolutions, or like me and the good folks at Me You Health, will be you setting more realistic small actions to help you reach your health and fitness goals? Leave me a comment below to share your plans for 2012!

In closing, I’ll leave you with this quote from Albert Einstein:

“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”

Until next time …

P.S. – If you want to read even more of my thoughts on this topic, check out my post over at the Sisterhood on the Shrinking Jeans about Resolutions vs. Goals!

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