March Goals, Recapped:

• Write for 20 minutes every day. This was a complete and utter fail. I managed it a few times at the beginning of the month, but fell apart towards the end. I don’t know why I’m struggling so much with fitting in my writing. Twenty minutes a day is not a long time. But I am. I’m struggling with finding the right idea, trying to calm the waves of doubts that rush over me every time I open a new document, finding my voice. I think I may start with just free writing for next month. Five minutes a day. Writing from my heart. I need to find my writing passion again.
• Get my eyes examined and order new contacts. Another fail. But! I did end up making a dentist appointment. It was the first time in four years I had gone to the dentist and while I ended up paying $60 out of pocket for more of a deep cleaning (and have to go again in 2 months for more of a general cleaning), I did get a referral to an oral surgeon to get my wisdom teeth removed (shooting to do this in late summer/fall) and I got my first doctor appointment out of the way. Yay! On tap for April: making an appointment to see a general practitioner where I can get some blood testing done and hopefully get a referral for a therapist.
• Make a weekly to-do list for home. Fail, fail, fail. I think I did this one week and then just stopped. The to-do list is great for helping me stay focused and motivated during my busy weeks so I need to get back to doing them.

February Goals, Recapped:

• Track my food daily. I would say I tracked my food about 50% this month. Definitely not where I wanted to be and I’m still not in the habit of tracking every day, even on those ugly days when I go over my allotted points by a lot. It’s something I still need to work on.
• Continue limiting soda. I am very pleased to say this goal is going amazing. I have finally put my foot down and told myself I cannot have any soda Monday – Saturday. Sunday is my cheat day so I’m being lenient on this day, but still want to limit my intake. In any event, I am doing so well at this goal, it makes me giddy. Since I’ve been slowly cutting it out of my life for a while now, I haven’t experienced any withdrawal symptoms, only some extreme cravings for carbonation. This one gets a big fat check mark and it may be the first time I’ve ever been able to do so.
• Start making to-do lists. Utter fail. I’m terrific at doing them at my job, not so much at home.
• Budget! I’ll mark this one as complete. I’ve been doing much better at budgeting. This month was a windfall of money with my tax refund and a surprise bonus from work so I was able to pay off my cruise deposit and book our excursions, as well as give an initial deposit for my second cruise in June. I’ve started using Jenny Blake’s Four-Step Budget Template, which works so well for my needs.

March Change: Track my food

Yes, this was my goal for February’s “12 Changes in 12 Months” but I decided it doesn’t make all that much sense to go forward with a new goal when this one is the cornerstone of what I need to work on. To lose weight, to learn to eat healthier, you must track what you eat. I’m not at the point in my journey when I can eat intuitively and since I’m carrying around an extra 30-odd pounds, this is a change I need to hammer into my skull.

Three Small Goals:

• Write for 20 minutes every day. I have fallen off any sort of writing routine these past few months. (Aside from my blog, of course!) For someone who wants to someday be a published novelist, leaving the words in my head isn’t helping matters. I need to force myself to create a routine and put my novel back on the forefront of my goals.
• Get my eyes examined and order new contacts! I’m a little overdue for my eye exam (and I love the eye doctor so this is one doctor appointment I am looking forward to!) and I’m ready to take the plunge back into the world of contacts. I wore them constantly all through high school and most of college until I got too poor to afford them. 🙂 And then I just enjoyed wearing glasses. But I’m getting to the point where I want to wear contacts again so this is one goal I’m looking forward to achieving!
• Make a weekly to-do list for home. Lauren had a great post about beating your Sunday night blues (SNAS? It’s a real thing.) One of her tips was to make out a to-do list for the week, things that aren’t pressing to complete but will give you that little nudge of satisfaction for getting them done during a busy week, as well as setting one intention for the week. I love this idea. I need something to keep me motivated to not turn into a sloth once 5:00 hits every night and this might be the perfect prescription for it!

I gave myself four goals for January. One was my big goal for Twelve Changes and the other three were smaller goals to work towards. A recap of how I did:

January Goals – Recapped:

• Drink less soda, more water. I’m not where I had hoped to be by the end of January, but I’m in a much better place than I was a month ago. I never buy it at the store to have at home and can only remember two instances (for the entire month) that I had it at work. For me, this is major progress. I would only have it when I went out to eat, although there were quite a few times I would stick with water. I’m not saying I went into this thinking I wouldn’t make it to where I hoped to be, but I knew this would require more than a month to “get”. But I’m moving more steps forward than back and I can’t see myself backsliding now.
• Set up an exercise calendar and stick to it. I consider this a major WIN. I’m already doing great with my exercise (a post about this is in the works!) and I think I’m doing well with keeping my workouts varied. Usually, I go for a run three times a week (using Jeff Galloway’s method) and then another 2-3 times a week, I’m at the gym doing some form of cardio (usually the stationary bike), the rowing machine, and then 20 minutes of strength training. I want to keep up an exercise calendar because it’s a good way to see my progress throughout the month and keep me motivated.
• Turn off all electronics by 9:30pm. Ehh? I wasn’t all that focused on this goal, to be honest. I have been better lately about getting to bed at a decent hour (read: before 10pm) which happens some nights and doesn’t on other nights. Still, I want to get better at this. Ideally, I want to start my bedtime routine (including quiet time!) at 8:30. I’m taking baby steps to get there.
• Set up all doctor appointments. Let’s see, the grand total of doctor appointments I set up this month? A big, fat zero. I had big plans to at least make an appointment with a general physician but that didn’t happen. Right now, my company has been trying to find a new insurance so I’m waiting in limbo until this is decided on.

My February Change: Tracking

I had a few options in mind for my February goal. I wanted to take the easy route if I’m going to be honest. Stick with budget or get into a better bedtime groove. But I knew I wanted to focus the beginning part of this year on my health. When I stop and think, put the fears behind me, and focus on what I want to get out of 2012, I knew there was only one option: tracking.

One of the biggest cornerstones of healthy living is knowing what you’re putting in your mouth. Tracking every single morsel of food you eat. I don’t think I’ve ever been in the habit of doing this and I can tell the weeks I am consistent with my tracking, I feel more in control, more stable, and my weight drops. When I don’t, I spend my week feeling guilty and filled with thoughts that I will never get to my goal. Isn’t it funny how we do things to ourselves that don’t make us feel good? But feelings of guilt are so normal for me that they feel more comfortable than good feelings. And therein lies the kicker. Guilt, fear, out of control. Those are terrible feelings. But those are the feelings I am more comfortable with. They are the ones I can wrap my arms around and hug close to my chest because they have been there for me*.

This month, it’s about tracking what I eat. I have a handy app on my iPhone where I can quickly input my food daily and know where I stand with my daily, weekly, and exercise points. (It even reminds me to track my breakfast, lunch, and dinner!) I know I can make this a habit, as long as I stop giving myself leeway when I don’t know the points value of a food or I overindulge at a meal. And I want to start seeing me use less and less of my weekly points because I tend to use them all up, and then start needing to use exercise points (which I don’t like to touch).

Three Smaller Goals

• Continue limiting soda. I’m doing much better at this goal, but I’m still not where I want to be. My ideal is to not drink any caffeinated soda and stick to light-colored liquids like Sprite when I do. My focus right now is to get to where I’m only having it when I go out to eat. I want to try to count up how many times I have it during the month and continue knocking down that number every month.
• Start making to-do lists. I can be very unmotivated to do much at home. Yes, I’m twenty-four and my mom still does most of the cleaning in our apartment. That’s ridiculous. Every Sunday night, I want to make a to-do list for the week to keep me from being the lazy slob I tend to be.
• Budget! Oh, money. I have no concept of what it means to save. Seriously. I need to get smarter about this. My goal for this month is to start using a budgeting spreadsheet (any recs?) and begin to save. I think if I get smarter about knowing where exactly my money is going and stop spending money willy-nilly, I will start feeling much more in control of my finances.

*That paragraph? I didn’t expect to write that. I just got to writing and the words came out. These words. I’ve been struggling to find these words for the longest time, to explain why I have gotten to this place of being overweight and overeating. There’s always a “why” and it isn’t because you just like food. I finally have the answer to the root of the problem. There is a freeing, overwhelming feeling in that. I’m going to go cry now. I have waited so long to find these words.

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The winner to my giveaway of Night Swim is AMBER! Amber, I have your address and I’ll be sending it off today so be on the lookout for the book!

My word for 2012 is health. While that encompasses more than just my physical health, I want to spend the first few months of 2012 focusing on that. To be honest, even though 2011 was a great year for me, I ended it very disappointed in myself for not being able to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. I was disappointed because I know I can do better. I know I have what it takes to step away from my unhealthy habits but it’s a hard thing to do, to completely change your lifestyle. And since I don’t want to end 2012 on that same disappointing note, I’m taking this year to focus solely on this. Not because I think I need to be skinny to be happy, but because I know I need to be healthy to be happy.

I’m also participating in “12 Changes in 2012” where each month, we focus on one thing in our life we want to change. It can be something big or something small, anything you want. There is no judgment, no condemnation. We’re all in this together and we want to encourage and strengthen everyone else. For my first change, I was originally going to choose to cut out soda from my diet. I know I drink way too much of it and it’s terrible for me, but I think there’s more that needs to happen than just “quitting Coke”. I need to get to a point in my life where food and soda is not my sole reason for happiness. I can actually go into a funk and get very moody if I have a day where I’m not going to drink Coke or the only thing I packed in my lunch are healthy options. (For the record, I know this partly has to do with not finding healthy options that excite me. Hopefully one day they will but right now? Greek yogurt and fruit and salad are very meh to me.)

I do want to limit my soda intake (ideally 1-2 times per week) but more so than that, I want to drink more water and train my mind that soda isn’t the pathway to happiness. I have days when I don’t drink any water at all, which is a terrible thing, especially as it relates to my diet, my skin, and my exercise routine. I know based on your weight and exercise routine, there’s a specific amount of water we should shoot for every day but I don’t want to give myself a number. I just want to begin to drink water more than I drink soda. I want to end my addiction to Coke and the best way for me to do that is slowly working it out of my life.

I know I can hit this goal with no issue – as long as I don’t drink soda at the rate I have been drinking it. And I know I need to stop buying it while grocery shopping or having change on me to get a soda while at work. I know once I start limiting the number of times I have soda a week, the cravings will decrease and my body will start craving water. And I think it will do wonders for my energy levels and skin. And since goals work best if they’re specific and measurable, I’ve broken this change into 4 weeks:

Week 1: Drink only water at work. Sodas at dinner time, if goal is met.

Week 2: Two days a week without any soda at all.

Week 3: Four days a week without any soda at all.

Week 4: Drink soda only twice a week, at most.

(I also want to briefly mention that I do have a little tumbler with a straw that I use at work to drink water. I know this is a popular tip to give anyone who wants to drink more water, so any other tips would be greatly appreciated!)

Along with my “12 Changes” goal (which is a big one!), I also want to set some other intentions for January:

• Set up an exercise calendar and stick with it. Although I’m doing awesome at exercising 4-5 times a week, I know I need to amp up the intensity of my workouts to see more results. As such, I think penciling in what I want to do during the week for exercise will be very beneficial to this goal.
• Turn all electronics off by 9:30pm. This is a tough goal for me, but I really want to work on shutting off the TV, powering down my laptop, and putting away my iPhone by 9:00 to develop a better bedtime routine and make sure I’m getting to sleep at a decent hour. Ideally, I want to do this by 9:00, but baby steps.
• Set up all doctor appointments. Now that I have my insurance cards, I have no need to wait! I need to set up an appointment to get my eyes checked (& order new contacts! I haven’t used contacts solely for a few years now and I think I’m ready for them again!), to see a gynecologist (dun, dun, DUN!), to see the dentist (2008 was my last appointment. Um. Oops?), and to see a general practitioner who can then hopefully set me up to get blood work because I’ve never had blood work done and I want to make sure everything is ok in my body.

So that’s January for me. It’s a brand new month of a brand new year, and although I know we can make changes any time of the year, there’s nothing like a fresh start of a new year. I want 2012 to be the year I focus on my health and I think all my goals for January are leading me to that.

Do you have any goals for January? Are you participating in “12 Changes”? What is your big change for this month?