*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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Photo courtesy of photo8.org

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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As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been giving a lot of thought about making some major changes in my life.  Part of that comes from the realization that I’m only 2.5 years away from turning …. 50!  OMG, how the hell did THAT happen?!!  There’s just something about realizing you’re in the second half of your life that provides the motivation to do things I should have done years ago.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past week thinking about what I want to accomplish, what I need to do in order to reach my goals, and the time frame for meeting said goals.  I’ve decided to incorporate the same method my advisor at school uses for my degree program.  When we speak on the phone every other week, he gives me two small goals to work on until our next phone call.  Breaking things down into these small goals not only helps keep me from being overwhelmed, but makes the tasks more manageable.

With that in mind, I’ve come up with Operation Facing Fifty (OFF).  I’ve set three major goals for myself that I want to accomplish by my 50th birthday.  Since only one of these goals is health/fitness-related, I’m just considering these general life goals rather than weight loss journey goals.  Here they are:

1. Lose 100 pounds.  This doesn’t include the weight I’ve already lost.  This will be an additional 100 pounds from today.
2. Earn my B.S. in Information Technology.  This should actually be accomplished next year, if all goes well.  I plan to immediately start my M.B.A. in Information Technology Management upon completion of my B.S., but I don’t think there’s any way I can finish both by the time I turn 50.  I would like to completely my MBA before I turn 51 though, if possible.
3. Pay off my credit cards.  I was debt-free up until about 5 years ago, but then I gradually let balances start accumulating on my cards.  This was mostly due to traveling, which I don’t regret one little bit, but it’s time to get them paid off and get back to being debt-free.

In keeping with my idea of breaking these goals down into smaller units, I’ll be setting monthly goals for each one until they are each accomplished.  I have 30.5 months until I turn 50, so that gives me some good chunks of time to work on smaller short-term goals toward the overall larger goals.   Here are my kick-off goals for August:

• Lose 5 pounds.
• Take the final for my management class at school and get it knocked out of the way. (Scheduled for 11am on Aug. 5)
• Create a credit card snowball spreadsheet and work toward paying off the card with the lowest balance.

I also have some other shorter-term life goals that I want to work on as well.  They all have to do with having too much “stuff” in my home.  I would by no means consider myself a hoarder, but I just have stuff that I need to get either organize or just get rid of completely.  I actually hope to accomplish all of these by the end of 2011. Here are those goals:

1. Unpack boxes.  I need to go through the boxes in my spare bedroom that haven’t been unpacked yet since I moved … 11 months ago!  Seriously, if it’s not a book and I’ve haven’t used it in 11 months, I probably don’t need it.
2. Purge my book collection.  Speaking of books, I definitely need to trim down my collection.  I have Kindle versions now of many of the classic books I have owned for years.  My plan is to donate the physical books to the library or to Goodwill.  I also need to seriously trim down my cookbook collection.  I pretty much cook from the same 5 or 6 cookbooks all the time, so I could easily get rid of some of the others I don’t use any longer.  I probably have at least 50-60 cookbooks total.
3. Organize & purge my stitching stash.  I literally have hundreds of cross stitch patterns in my collection, many of which I know I’ll never get around to actually stitching.  I want to go through all my charts with a very serious eye and keep only those patterns I truly love and definitely want to stitch.  The rest will either be listed on the Bay of Evil (eBay,) given away, or donated.
4. Purge my closet.  I have clothes in my closet ranging from size 26/28 all the way down to a size 14/16.  Yes, that’s been my weight gain history over the past 6-7 years.  I kept holding on to the smaller sizes with the intention of losing the weight and getting back into them, but my closet is just completely out of control at this point.  I know this seems counter-intuitive to get rid of clothes given my earlier goal of losing 100 pounds, but I just can’t keep holding on to them.  Given how styles have I’ve aged and styles have changed over the past 7 years as well, I would likely end up just getting new clothes anyway when I’m into those sizes again, so it doesn’t make sense to keep holding on to them.  The only exceptions will probably be a couple of my formal dresses that are classic styles and can easily be worn still, but all the jeans and casual tops need to go!

So, there you have it.  That’ s my action plan for getting my life on track for facing 50.  I hope you’ll all stick around over the next couple of years to cheer me on and hold me accountable on my goals.

As for the letting go of the emotional things from my past, I’ll likely be shopping for a therapist soon, too.  Therapy was a great help to me in the past when I was dealing with some childhood traumas, so I know it would help me again in dealing with more recent issues as well.

Until next time …

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Yep, that’s my weight on my home scale this morning, January 1, 2011. I can’t wait to see where I am at the end of 2011! I’m feeling very excited about this new year and all that it holds for me. I just have a feeling this is going to be a really great year for me.

I was also actually pretty excited to see that I had already dropped just over 2 pounds of fluff since I weighed in at home on Wednesday for the start of the Power of One challenge. This made me VERY happy considering I ate Mexican food last night at the New Year’s Eve event I attended. My “official” weigh in for Weight Watchers was yesterday since meetings were canceled today due to the New Year holiday. I was down 0.2 there weighing in at 270.8. Of course, that was before the Mexican food.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve never really been big on making new year resolutions. The few times I did try, I just failed miserably because my resolutions were very nebulous with no real plan of attack on how to reach them. So, instead of calling these resolutions, I’m calling them goals because I have developed a plan to help me reach them rather than leaving things to chance.

On that note, I have to say that my Weight Watchers leader AmyLynn did an amazing job in the meeting yesterday helping us all understand the importance of having a plan to reach our goals. She used the example of a typical resolution of “I want to be healthier.” She broke it down by saying we should ask ourselves what our goals mean. Define what you mean by wanting to be healthier. She talked about making it be something more quantitative like, “I want to lower my blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, etc.” It really hit me very hard and I found myself on the verge of tears because they were all numbers that my mother has battled throughout her adult life. She also ended up having a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery nearly 10 years ago at the age of 58 and had to have a stent put in about a month ago because one of her bypasses had failed.

Thankfully, I’ve never had an issue with any of my blood work. My numbers have always been normal. However, the older I get, the more I see them slowly creeping upward. I really don’t want to have a repeat of what my mom went through with a heart attack in my 50′s. Given I’ll be turning 47 in a few weeks, it really hit home in a major way hearing AmyLynn talk about it. I actually started tearing up a bit during the meeting and was fighting back the tears pretty hard. So, the time really has come that I need to take care of my weight issue once and for all!

So, here are my goals and plans for reaching them for 2011:

Weight

I’ve thought about this one for a while since rejoining Weight Watchers back in September. My goal is to get down to at least 198.8 before January 1, 2012. The lowest weight I’ve been since my early 20′s was 198.9, I would really like to get below that point and be back into VFT (virgin fat territory). Based on my weight this morning, that means I need to lose 73 pounds during 2011 to reach my goal. That equates to basically 6 pounds per month which is a very reasonable rate of weight loss. My plan for reaching this goal:

• Attend my weekly Weight Watchers meeting unless I’m out of town or sick.
• Journal my food a minimum of five days per week. Ideally, I’ll track it every day, but I know there are times that I’ll just need a break here or there. Going for at minimum of five days per week is the compromise.

Exercise

Getting in my activity is definitely a challenge between work, commute, and school. I just have to commit to doing it and then DO IT! My goal for 2011 is going to be shooting for consistent exercise every week since I seem to be very hit and miss with it. My goal will be to get in a minimum of 30 minutes of intentional exercise at least five times per week. My plan for reaching this goal:

• Wear my pedometer every day as a reminder to get up and move around rather than just sitting in my office all day.
• Track my workouts on Daily Mile.
• Sign up and participate in a minimum of four races this year. I find that I’m always better about getting in my activity when I’m training for an event.
• If I can stay injury free, walk the Rock ‘n Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon in December as part of Team Foodie with Susan a.k.a. Foodie McBody.

Other Miscellaneous Goals

• Try a minimum of two new recipes per month to keep me from getting bored eating the same foods all the time. I initially posted on my Facebook page last week that I was going to shoot for five new recipes per month, but then realized that between working full-time and going to school full-time that I should cut myself a bit of slack so that my goals don’t end up stressing me out trying to meet them.
• Attend FitBloggin’ 11 in Baltimore in May. I’m already registered for it, so this one should be easy.
• Read and complete the writing exercises found in the book “100 Days of Weight Loss” by Linda Spangle. Even though the title says 100 Days, I’ll be doing this as a year-long project and plan to complete two assignments per week. This is far more realistic for me given my work and school schedule. I will blog about each chapter as I finish them.

So, that’s it. Those are my health & fitness goals for 2011. What about you? Have you set goals or resolutions? If so, what are they? If you blogged about them, please leave me a link in the comments so I can check them out and help cheer you on during the year.

Until next time …

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Jeanie in Singapore received the Halloween squares I stitched for her as part of the Fair & Square exchange, so I can share a picture of them now. The design is by Prairie Schooler from their Boo to You chart.

I received my squares from Jeanie last week. She choose a couple of small motifs from San-Man Originals. She did a great job. I think the squares are adorable. Thanks, Jeanie!

I also have another little finish to share. It’s actually a partial finish of an ultimate larger piece. It’s from the Sea to Shining Sea silk thread pack series from Little House Needleworks. The whole piece is made up of five regional squares and a border pack. Since they are each packaged separately, I’m counting each thread pack as a finish. So, here’s the West Coast:

I have one last picture to share before I finish this up. I’m a week late posting it, but here is my monthly photo of my orts jar for the Totally Useless SAL:

I also want to add a note for those of you who are following my weight loss journey. I registered a new domain name for that blog. The new URL is http://www.melgetsfit.com. If you have the old URL bookmarked, it will still continue to work. Edit: Turns out I was wrong, the old URL apparently doesn’t work any longer. It will get you to the site, but the blog entries are no longer displayed. I just ask that if you link that blog elsewhere that you please use the new URL. Thanks!

Ok, that’s it for now. Until next time …

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