LOOKING BACK

Tracking – I think I did a lot better with tracking than usual. I was super serious and super strict for about 3 weeks, tracking down my meals, exercising 4-5 times a week, and not going above my extra points. But now I feel so burned out from it all. I think I’m getting to the point where I just want to give up. This has happened to me so many times before that I’m trying to just ride this out, but it’s hard.

A Mess of Emotions – This month has been an eventful one emotionally. My emotions have been all over the place, making me feel like a crazy person. One moment I’m happy and giddy, the next I just want to punch out a wall. I don’t know what’s up with that, but I’m hoping that making more time to achieve all the goals I set for myself and less time to be lazy, it helps.

Running – I’ve fallen back in love with running this month. (But shh! Don’t tell my mom!) As I mentioned before, I’m running around 6am on Saturday mornings and 5:30am on Sunday mornings. And I. Love. It. It feels so good to run that early in the morning and the heat isn’t nearly as suffocating. While I’m not running a mile yet, I enjoying the (extremely) short distances I can run right now.

Quiet Time – I’ve actually managed to have a few days of quiet, Bible study time this month. Not as much as I need to, and not as consistent as I’d like to be, but it’s better than usual. Now that I’ve set out a specific bedtime pattern, it’s much easier to fit this in.

THIS JULY, I WILL…

Take a mini-vacation – If all goes according to plan, my mom and I will be taking a little mini-vacation to Orlando at the end of the month. We have season passes to Sea World and are hoping to check out my mom’s race path while we’re there, as well as spending a day at Disney World. I haven’t been to Disney World in forever! And I know I have a special blog friend who lives in Orlando! Meet-up?!

Get to bed at 9:30 most nights – I’m shooting for 5 nights a week, mainly on the days I have to wake up at 4:30-5am. I really love going to bed at a decent hour and getting a good, solid 7 hours of sleep. I’m still ridiculously tired during the day and I don’t know if it’s just not getting enough sleep at night, or an iron deficiency. I’m just hoping that getting more sleep at night will help me feel more energetic during the day. We shall see.

Be creative – As I mentioned yesterday, I’m taking on Ashley’s Creativity Challenge where I’m going to challenge myself to get serious about my novel. I can’t even call it a work in progress because all it’s been doing is sitting in a file folder for over a year. I haven’t put any effort into working on it so I’m excited to get started and start outlining my book.

Make a budget – My mom and I have talked so many times about creating a budget. And we have. We’ve created a few budgets but we never stick to them. And while I would love to go through Financial Peace University, it’s just not in the budget right now. (Oh, yeah. Pun totally intended.) I want to take some of his tips and tricks that I heard through other people who have been through FPU to get ourselves on track. (Anybody have any tips for me? Anybody been through FPU and want to help a girl out?!)

Learn Spanish – I have some books and audio tapes to pick up from the library to help me learn this language. I did take 3 years of it in middle school and high school so I’m hoping it’ll start coming back to me more and more as I start hearing it and dedicating myself to learning it again.

LOOKING BACK

Thirty-Day Shred: In May, I pledged to complete the 30-Day Shred challenge. And I did complete it, which is a miracle in itself. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun most days. But I’m so proud that I committed to this and completed this challenge. Every, single day was a tough, intense workout and while I didn’t lose as much weight as I hoped to, it was great to have 30 days of continuous exercise.

Quiet Time: This was a total fail. While I did manage to have my quiet time during my media fast, it didn’t happen at all in May and last week was a total fail as well. But one of these days, it’s going to sink in. Until then, this is my goal.

Cut down on little expenses: Uh. Well. Fail? During my media fast, I sat down and went through both my mom’s and my bank statements for the last 6 weeks. I separated everything into categories to see how much we were spending. And it was a little sickening. Since money issues are still a problem for us, I plan on blogging about them more regularly. We have to become more in control of our finances, because the fact that we’re struggling is just utterly ridiculous.

THIS JUNE, I WILL…

Become a better tracker. I have noticed that those weeks when I track my food effectively and set out an exercise plan, I do better. I feel better. Yet I’ve been lax on these two areas for the past two weeks. (Although I’ve still managed to lose weight, interestingly enough.) I bought a notebook to write down my goals for the week, track my food and exercise, and talk about how I’m feeling overall. I’m hoping by being more anal about what I am eating and the way I feel when I exercise, I can learn better eating habits and find this healthy lifestyle a little easier to handle.

Get our grocery bill under control. When I figured out where we were spending our money, this is what was the most out of control. Mom and I fell into the bad pattern of going to the store of a few times a week and buying things for a few days. You definitely spend twice as much this way. I want to start shopping smarter, only going to the grocery store once a week, and using coupons more effectively.

Commit to quiet time. I am determined to find time every day to be with God. I know I say this every month but after my media fast, I realized just how much I need and crave this time. I need to read my Bible more, pray more, and journal more. I’m going to find time to do this every day.

*Inspired by Kyla.

I’m keeping with my resolution theme again this month and also talking about how I did with my April challenges.

Resolution #1: Become a healthier person.
Last month, I challenged myself to go 30 days without drinking soda. I made it 46 hours. Truthfully, while going cold turkey sounds like a good idea, it’s not. Especially when you’re addicted to it as much as I am. I did fine on my first day but by the second day, it got a little crazy.

I’ve decided to stop taking things away from my diet because I don’t like deprivation. It doesn’t work for me. (Does it work for anyone?!) So I’m taking on The 30-Day Shred challenge. I am going to do Jillian’s kick-butt routine every day for 30 days. I won’t say I’m excited about this and I cringe thinking about how sore I’m going to be. But I want to show myself I can do this. And I think it’ll go a long way in helping me with my weight loss effort. As long as I stick to eating right.

Resolution #2: Become a godlier woman.
Since I knew how hectic my schedule would be in April, I charged myself with only conversating with God in April. I didn’t do this as much as I wanted to and sometimes it felt more like an afterthought than anything. I think it’s because I wasn’t really involved with God. He’s been a big afterthought for a while.

So my challenge for this month is to have quiet time with God five times a week. Luckily, my life will be a lot less hectic and busy and it will be much easier to find time to have this quiet time with God. And I hope to make an easy, everyday part of my life that I need. And I’m starting a new Bible study that the lovely Kyla Roma recommended to me! This makes me super excited to start.

Resolution #3: Get in control of my finances.
I resolved to start tracking my spending this month and I have done that. I still want to sit down and make some sort of chart of where all my money went and make a budget from that. Unfortunately, the bulk of my money I make in May is going towards tuition so I really don’t have any big plans with my credit cards because of that.

Basically, my goal for this month is to cut down on those little expenses. The two times I get paid this month, I’ll take $30 out of the bank to have for any expenditures. I can use this for shopping, food, or whatever I feel led to buy. I really want to get into this habit monthly while I’m trying to get control over my credit card debt so we’ll see how this month goes.

(Also happening this month: a new phone! I’ll be able to shop around for a new phone on May 25th and I cannot wait. I’ve been using my mom’s awful Blackberry since I lost my phone in November and I hate it. So I’m going to get a new phone then, when I can get a nice one for cheap.)

I’ve been writing down monthly goals for the past few months now, though I did forget to do them for March. I usually make about five big goals that I want to attain that month and usually end up completing 2-3 of them. So I want to focus on making smaller goals and also bring in my New Years resolutions to them. If you remember, I made three resolutions and all pretty big ones. But I figured that if I can get these three areas of my life squared away, it will have been a successful 2010.

Resolution: Become a healthier person.
While I’m well on my way to this resolution, I do employ a lot of unhealthy habits in my daily life. My goal for my first month of Weight Watchers was to simply eat within my Points range, track, exercise regularly, and drink more water. And I did that. So now it’s time to focus on what I’m eating – and drinking. And what I’m drinking is a whole lot of soda. I’ve talked before about my soda addiction. It’s gotten a whole lot better since I started Weight Watchers but I really want to kick this addiction!

Even though we’re not Catholic, my mom gave up cookies, brownies, and cake for Lent. And she succeeded! She did awesome, even when faced with tons and tons of temptation – and tons of bad days where baking cookies would “make her feel better.” (But would it?) She wanted to do another challenge so she’s going to give up Diet Coke for 30 days, from April 8th-May 8th. I decided to join her.

So I will be giving up Coke for 30 days. While I’m hoping this will help me lose a little extra poundage, I really want to see if I can do this. It’s going to be so tough but with both of us doing it, I think we’ll succeed. I’m going to have to find other drinks to have. I don’t like tea and there are very few fruit juices I can handle. Honestly, the only one is orange juice. I don’t want something too sugary. Do you guys have any suggestions for what to drink? (Obviously, I’ll be drinking a whole lot of water but I need other options as that can get old fast!)

Resolution: Become a godlier woman.
I have to be honest: I haven’t done much prayer-wise, Bible reading-wise, or worship-wise. The only time I open my Bible is for church. I only pray when I need something from God. I talk a big game, but don’t do much about it. I want to change that. I want God to be a more active part of my life and I know the reason I feel like my life is so out-of-control 95% of the time is because God is not the center of it. I’m not laying all my stress and troubles at God’s feet.

I don’t have time to do quiet time for a long time every day. My days are so go-go-go and are going to become even more so during this last month of school that it’s just not physically possible. My goal for this month is that I start conversating with God more. I start making Him a bigger part of my life that’s more than just a “God help me” when life gets too stressful. I want to pray to God and feel His presence in my life. I don’t right now. Once school is over with, I’ll have more time to devote to establishing a quiet time and better prayer life. Right now, I just want to have an active prayer life.

Resolution: Get in control of my finances.
While my finances are still in quite a mess, I have managed to pay over my minimum amount for two of my credit cards and aside from two times where I had to use them (At Subway, when my debit card wasn’t going through for some reason.) I haven’t used them at all. I’m about $200 away from paying off Target completely, and then I’m getting rid of it. I’m hoping to get this one done with by late June. My second card, which is my bank credit card, is the one I want to keep. It has a $500 limit, which is the perfect amount for me.

The one I’ve been conveniently forgetting about it my Old Navy credit card, which is now with a collection agency. It makes me cringe to even think about that! But I need to call this company and set something up. Because I need to get serious about paying this off.

But that’s not my resolution. My resolution this month is one of my “101” goals which is to start tracking my spending. I really don’t drop a lot of cash in one place. It’s just a whole lot of little things adding up to a lot. I want to start to see where my money is going. I also need to figure out how much money I do have a month to devote to paying off my credit cards. Aside from little things here and there, I don’t have any bills to pay for. Since we downsized, my mom has been able to pay all our bills – and still have money left over! (What a concept!)

So, those are my goals. Just three small things that will hopefully add up to achieving my resolutions at the end of the year. It’ll be interesting to see how I do, especially with the crazy month that’s ahead of me. The good news is, I’m in the home stretch! This insane semester is almost over with – now we just have to see if I pass all my classes. 😉