I’m not really setting any “resolutions” for 2018, but rather an intention to just Do Better. As much as I have going on with the move and job transition, I’m just going to do the best I can.
With that in mind, I’m going to set some goals each month so I can focus on small chunks of success that will help me do better in terms of my physical activity, my eating habits and my stress management. A friend got me this awesome book of lists and the first list was goals for the year:
(Isn’t this a pretty book?)
List making is a definitely a nice stress reliever for me. I’m going to adapt this book a bit and use the first list of each month in addition to whatever the assigned list topic is (this is divided with different topics each week) to write out my goals for the month. For January:
– Track my food. Tracking always gets me in a better mind space about food choices.
– Don’t eat french fries (really my only restriction, but they appear to be my gateway food for just throwing all healthy choices out).
– No drinking at home. I’ve been leaning on alcohol more than exercise for stress management, which is not the best idea. I can have a drink with dinner when I’m out at happy hour, but I’m going to cut out the glass of wine at home at night (not that I was doing this every day!). It disrupts my sleep to drink before bed and I should rely on healthier stress management.
– Walk/run 42 miles. I’m part of a team gathering 2018 miles in 2018. If I’m going to pull my weight, I need to contribute 504.5 miles over the year, which is 42 miles a month. The miles will mostly be walking, but I’ll get them done this month!
There will be plenty of snowblowing miles, I’m sure.
– Have date nights with Darrell where we talk about things other than the move!
– Remember that this is a blessing, not a burden.
Interestingly, there will be no weight loss goal because my scale is already packed away in storage. We got it out of the way when we cleaned up the house here to go on the market, without thinking through the fact that everything we put in storage would be essentially inaccessible for 3 months. Oops! Know what I’m doing instead to track myself? Waist circumference, which is a very important measure of health (see here). I measured January 3rd and will measure again every couple of weeks to see how these small changes are adding up. I will say that I already feel better just with tracking, because it makes me feel like I’m back to my normal healthy lifestyle – and reminds me that this was my “normal” for several years. It absolutely can be again!
What are your goals for January?