challenges, celebrations and goals - January 11

I've started reading "The Spark" by Chris Downie who founded SparkPeople and working through the supplementary exericses on his website for each chapter. The lesson that's stuck with me so far this first week is that if you make a committment to make small (I mean - even teeny tiny) positive changes and stick with them sort of as a minimum agreement with yourself for the day that they really start to build momentum and improve confidence eventually snowballing into bigger and better things.
I used to take time every Monday to review the previous week - see what worked for me and what didn't - celebrate the little things and tweak my plans for the upcoming week to try to keep improving. I haven't done that in awhile, but am thinking I might revive the habit. Sometimes you just need to give yourself a little shout out and appreciate how small, slow changes have become bigger lifestyle changes.

Overall Positive Changes in 2009: Getting professional help for my anxiety; keeping the house MUCH cleaner and more organized; preparing soups, salads and sprouts for the upcoming week ahead of time; starting yoga; trying to start prayer; settting very specific goals for myself; making some 'green' changes like using cloth napkins, washing on the cold cycle and using reusable bags and water bottles; paying more attention to hair, makeup and professional attire; finding online support communities (like you!) :)

Weekly Celebrations: wrote in food and exercise journal about half the time; saved receipts to track spending; reduced mindless TV time; cleaned the house and cars; worked on major goal-setting with Ryan and committed to start working together to make a more comprehensive 'mission statement'; slept enough; made the bed consistently; started taking multi-vitamin; used Neti Pot for allergies; flossed every day; kept thermostat down; kept fridge and pantry organized to avoid unnecessary purchases; didn't avoid social activity

Wow! I'm so glad I did that. I was feeling like a bit of a loser since I didn't do too well with diet and exercise this week and didn't lose any weight, but I really did a lot of positive things last week and am glad I just took the time to list them out instead of focusing only on my (ever-expanding) waistline. That's another lesson I'm learning from reading The Spark - positive changes in one area of my life will eventually spill over and start to give fuel to positive changes in other areas....so, theoretically if I'm working on improving my anxiety and allergies, keeping my environment organized and being more social it should get easier for me to achieve any other goal, including weight loss.

Weekly Challenges: did some impulsive and unhealthy eating and spending; was a bit snippy with Ryan; didn't stay consistent with exercise; allowed myself to get thrown off track by too much sleep; didn't make any progress on Spanish or online professional development I'd scheduled

Goals for the coming week:
1) Focus on smaller, achievable goals to build feelings of success, confidence and momentum. We made a sticker chart (hey - I'm an elementary school teacher - that's how we do things here :) ) with 5 goals on it - 1) exercise 10 minutes a day, 2) eat a fruit or veggie with every meal, 3) drink 8 c. water/day, 4) get 7 hours sleep/night, 5) straighten up before bed. We're challenging ourselves to build streaks and see how many days in a row we can stick with each of these - we'll think of rewards for every week and then month we can do it.

2) work on our overall mission statement and discuss ultimate value, goals and beliefs so that we can build greater motivation in WHY exactly we're braving 15 degree temps to head to the gym and NOT eating Chunky Monkey.

I'm off to do 20 minutes of Spanish lessons and maybe 1 PD activity to start this day off productively. Adios!