Of My April Goals & Getting Back to Basics (A&I Challenge: Look Here)

When someone asked me how this month is shaping up, my first instinct was to say, “Crazy!” But it seems like that answer is getting a bit redundant. Every month is crazy. In September, my husband came home from a deployment. We spent most of October on the road. In November, we were working on settling back in as a family unit, and we celebrated Thanksgiving. In December, the holidays took over, and we bought a house. In January, he was on the other side of the country while I nursed my mom through her recovery from major surgery. In February, he was still on the other side of the country, and I packed up all our belongings while navigating the final steps of the home-buying process (right up to closing). In March, we closed on the house, moved, and welcomed our first house-guests as we celebrated LittleDude’s birthday...before my husband left again. Now it’s April, I haven’t made any progress in my weight loss journey (unless you include reverse progress), and there are a million more things on the horizon. But at some point, the insanity has to stop (I just had a Susan Powter flashback). At some point, I have to take a deep breath, stop thinking of all the things about weight loss I just don’t feel like I can handle right now, and start tackling the things I CAN handle. So this month is about getting back to the basics.

The goals...

1. Stay within my nutritional ranges EVERY day. It’s going to be hard. There are more days than I’d like to admit when I realize we have no quick plan for lunch after errands took longer than expected. I’ll be visiting my parents, and that’s always a recipe for disaster when it comes to my willpower. And within that trip to see my parents, there’s going to be a trip to an indoor water part that will probably pummel my self-esteem into oblivion and put me at major risk for an emotional eating binge (or five). Which brings me to my next goal...

2. Think before I eat. Too often, I graze off Toby’s snack because the potato chips smell too good, or I reach for a cookie because I’m stressed out or depressed. Or I allow myself a second portion at dinner because my husband gets one and I’m darned jealous. I have to get in the habit of thinking before I eat and finding another way to deal with whatever is going on in my head.

3. Drink the water! I am so inconsistent with this one, and I KNOW it makes a huge difference. The good news is that I don’t replace the water with soda. (I do drink caff-free Diet Coke, but a 12-pack lasts me a month and a half to two months.) The bad news is that if I’m not drinking my water, I’m either not drinking anything at all or I’m racking up a bunch of calories with milk. And let’s face it, milk is a good thing...but the calories aren’t.

4. Move! I need to do some type of exercise EVERY day. There’s a graphic I’ve seen on Pinterest that has a Victorian woman sobbing with the caption that says “Didn’t make it to the gym today. That makes five years.” That is totally me. I hate the gym. I’ve tried to like it, but I don’t. I just don’t. I don’t, however, mind exercise on my own terms. I kind of like my treadmill at home, I have some fun DVDs, I love to take long (and hard) walks with one of my friends and our kids in their strollers, I’ve recently taken up disc golf, and I think I’d like Zumba and/or a dance class. I also don’t mind light strength training that I can fit in between my daily chores. The problem is that I’m terribly inconsistent. Some weeks, I’m doing something all the time. Other weeks, someone should put a shock collar on me to get me off the couch and away from the TV. So, whether it’s strength training, taking a walk, hopping on the treadmill, playing disc golf, learning Irish Step Dance, or whatever, I need to do SOMETHING every day.

5. Hang the pictures. This has nothing whatsoever to do with my weight loss journey. I just want to have the rest of the donations dropped off at Goodwill, all the moving boxes sent to the recycling center, and all the pictures hanging on the walls before my husband comes back home again.

Until next time...
Mel