Long time no see! Sorry I've been off blogging lately. I'll explain why below:
I've begun a new journey in my life. I'm going to be frank: I've been down in the dumps since about 2012. Some wire in my brain came loose and I just lost track of me. I was a zombie; just eating, sleeping, and working. Absolutely no motivation; so I gained weight, half-assedly continued running, and really just didn't like myself very much - aside from knitting I really was not my usual self.
I struggled during the tail end of 2013 about what to do for me because I knew I couldn't go on like this. How could I rediscover my motivation that was so, so strong in 2010? Where did it go? Why did I let it go?! Ultimately, I need something to be excited about, and the only person who can make that excitement happen again is me. So I took myself by the shoulders, gave myself a good shake and stepped out from the shadows and back into the light of the living. No sense in wallowing in the "couldas" and "wouldas!"
Step one in my transformation was to get some goals in place. Without goals (which follow DAPPS: Dated, Achievable, Personal, Positive, and Specific), you can't really get anywhere in life. I prefer not to call what I'm doing "New Years Resolutions." Because they aren't. I'm not "resoluting" anything to myself. I'm setting goals, which I'm expected to fulfill! I won't get up on my "Resolution" soapbox for now.....but for me, know that it would be setting myself up for failure to term it thusly.
Step two was tracking my goals. This means I have to write them down, and be accountable Every.Single. Day. I had to track in such a way that I wouldn't want to shirk the responsibility. While watching a fellow knitter on her podcast I was inspired as she talked about her own goal tracking. I decided to run with this inspiration and run to Target on New Years Day and gather some nice pens, a cute binder, and some graph paper and come up with my own goal tracking system. I sat down that night and worked up my charts. They're colorful and beautiful and inspire me to look at them every day - and so I do, to be reminded of my goals and how I'm doing! Eight days of doing this so far and I'm still excited about the prospect of opening up my binder to color in my boxes as "complete!"
Step three is "let's get healthy." Since we last spoke a lot has changed. You know that I had lost 30 lbs, ran a 5K, but then I gained back 10 lbs, walked a half marathon, gained another 5 lbs, ran/walked a 10K....so you can see that my "healthy" life wasn't so healthy. Granted I'd love to lose weight, but honestly, I think that number on the scale has been what's holding me back all these years. If I gain, I get down, and I eat, then I gain again....etc. It's a vicious cycle. I'm breaking it! BAM!
Enter the 21-Day Sugar Detox by Dianne Sanfilippo. I've heard lots about this whole "Paleo" movement, and have been intrigued, but never motivated to actually try it for myself until now. While the Sugar Detox is a more extreme (though temporary) form of Paleo-style eating, for me: the more structured the better. Their Facebook page launched a new group starting just this Monday (Jan. 6), and I decided to embark upon this journey. So far, I've had minimal detox side-effects - I've been a little light headed, but it's nothing a tall, cool glass of water and sunflower seeds can't make subside. If I see improvement in my health at the end of the 21 days, I'm planning to fully embrace Paleo.
The beauty of this detox so far is that I haven't felt hungry! I can make it to the next meal with only a small snack in between. It makes it much easier to continue forward!
Step four is pay off credit card debt. This has been on my mind for some time. I was an idiot in my early 20's, many of us were. I'll just leave it at that. This year I pay off my car, freeing up a sizable chunk of change. I'm going to be employing the "Snowball" method of debt payment, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel early 2016. I plan on creating a tracking sheet for this as well, upon final payment of my car, and will keep this in my binder, too.
So that's me this year. I'm going to keep blogging updates (not as long as this one, I promise!). I'll see you all around the water cooler!
