Out the Window!

At midnight the cookies, the wine my aunt brought over, sausage rolls, chips, and all other forms of junk will be thrown out the window and left behind in yesteryear. Hello 2014! I will honor you with good intentions taking shape. Yes, I will have failures but I will learn from each one of those failures so that I can be more successful! I will love myself, find spiritual peace and through that will succeed in areas that I've wanted so much but was to tired for.

Eating My Treats

My friends, changes are rarely made in a day. I am very hard on myself and am learning self-kindness. It's hard being a woman in a society that throws a mix of advertisements that include beautiful, tall, thin women with symmetrical faces along with images of overly processed junk foods. Really? What are we supposed to do with those messages?

The first step is awareness. I ditched T.V. and feel better for it. And still, advertisements are EVERYWHERE. They come in the mail, on the Internet, signs as I drive along minding my own business. I think that it doesn't affect me but yet, sometimes, I wish I were a few inches taller and a few pounds lighter. When I take a closer look at these ads I see clever marketing in which a lot of time, research, and money has been spent. 

I may be a bit pessimistic but I look at it like this: The ads are there to sell us things to adorn our bodies and images, telling us that we should look a certain way if we want to be popular within a specific type of group we think is cool, so then we get depressed and the junk food is there to make us feel so good that it washes our troubles away, then we get so sick that the pharmaceutical companies keep us alive by making us dependent on their drugs, and since life isn't perfect let's all just sit on our bums watch football and post stuff on Facebook. When all in stride, enjoying clothing, junk food, football, Facebook, etc. is great and everyone is entitled to their joys. Medications are meant to help very sick people and for that matter I respect it. What I am saying is be aware of allowing yourself to get caught in the psychological trap of finding happiness through things that don't really serve your true self.

Second, I work hard at finding what inspires me. I love God, my family, friends, people in general, art, food, and fitness. Yes, I love food! I've chosen to enjoy it rather than allowing it to control my life. I've learned that I can't control life by controlling my image, food, exercise, and even others. Every time I've tried to do something like that it backfires. Such as my teenage years and early 20's when I thought it was clever to eat very little food. I spent almost a decade being hungry and thinking only of food. My mind would get fuzzy from lack of sugars and my blood pressure went up. Then I spent the latter half of my 20's deciding I would never starve myself again so all I did was binge, developing high cholesterol while losing a lot of physical strength. 

Then I had kids and that straightened me up. I asked myself, am I as healthy as I need to be for them? What am I teaching them? Do I know better? The answers hit me in the face and there is no turning back.

Do I regress? Yes! What have I been eating this holiday season? Tons of crap!!! And I feel like crap. I am an average, American woman. I feel no shame in that but what I do feel is led to getting back on my path to health.

My current plan is to clean up my diet. Am I "going" on a diet? NO. A short term diet is a very bad idea. Here is the definition of diet, "the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.

"a vegetarian diet"". What I am talking about is changing my eating habits. The new year is as good of time as any to get started. Tomorrow is the last day of cookies, cream, sugars, white breads, crackers, chips, alcohol, and a ton of other overly processed foods. I am going to look for a good, healthy fast and see it through. It'll be a part of my daily journal. 

Today's Menu

Breakfast

Coffee with cream and honey

Toast with mayo, avocado, and egg

Lunch

Three cookies

Dinner

One homemade, organic beef meatball in red sauce. Tons of cookies and chips with cream cheese dips. 

Snacks and Drinks

Lemon water

Tea

Cookies

Grapes

Workout

Centurgy class

Cleaning the house and running around after three small children = Never sitting down during the day.

365 Days of Journaling: An Introduction and A Place to Start

365 Days of Journaling: An Introduction and A Place to Start

Let me introduce myself. I am a stay-at-home mom of three small boys and an artist on sabbatical. As a new mom of one little boy, I was able to juggle home and work by working from home. Then three years later came the twins. It hasn't been quite two years after the twins were born and I keep thinking of ways to explore my interests and creativity. What is the one thing every artist should do? Keep a journal. In fact, anyone looking to explore and reach for specific goals should be encouraged to journal. So here I am, devoting myself to one year of, every single day, journaling. 

I am not sure how my journaling will evolve but I will hit upon my favorite topics like health, nutrition, fitness, kids, and art. Since we are nearing the new year, I will start with the topic of nutrition. I am not one to devote myself to new year resolutions because I have a habit of being in a constant state of reflection. However, my gut is telling me all of the pizzas, burgers, chips, cream cheese, and cookies are not doing me any favors. My bum is a bit more dimply than usual and my muscle tone is lacking tone. It's time to clean up and begin clean eating and visiting the gym. Love it? I know, everyone wants to lose weight and have a hot body. I think it's easy to assume that's where I am going with this. I am.Yet, there is more to it than that for me. 

So to start, I'm going to put all my health, nutrition, and fitness ideas out there. I am going to create personal goals and keep a daily journal of those goals.

Starting tomorrow... I have one more day of gluttony and don't think I won't be eating cookies until then.