CAUTION: Woman In Progress

Okay, so here's the part where I tell you that I am completely backslidden and putting the goals on hold. I honestly, well and truly thought that setting clear goals would help me stick to something but...well, LIFE. It happens. I am still not recovered from whatever I did to my knee back in the spring/early summer. In fact, it's worse now than it was. Ice and Advil help, but only temporarily and not for very long at that. Standing. Sitting. Laying down. It all hurts after more than a few minutes. I'm constantly in some sort of pain from it and FORGET doing any form of formal exercise. May as well shoot me. And the lattes...oh! the lattes! I was doing SO WELL for so long and then...I'd blame my friends but they're just the instigators. Not as if they put guns to my head and force me to partake. But do you know how difficult it is to walk to Starbucks and walk out with nothing ?? Painfully impossible, that's how difficult it is. Unfortunately, it's not ju...

Ya'll, I've been putting this off because, well, June kicked my goals' butts and sent them cryin' to their mama. June was fun, but June was the month it all fell apart. Health and Wellness: While waiting for my knee to get back to pre-injury aerobic walking condition, I had taken to strolling around campus in the afternoons. In June, that habit bit the dust. It was too dang hot and just am not into sweating.  Because of this--and my stellar lack of self control--I regained every. stinking. pound. that it had taken me four months to lose. Yep, folks. I'm officially back to my January starting weight. Well, maybe three pounds away from it. I can't remember exactly what my starting weight was back in January but this is pretty close. I really let my hair down in June. I quit counting calories. I ceased all forms of exercise--I didn't even DANCE in June. What the fluff? And I basically just gave up, I think. Even though I told myself I hadn't, in rea...

Well, we're now entering the halfway mark of the year and I wish I could say the future is so bright I need shades. Unfortunately...grrr...May marked the beginning of some serious setbacks, health wise. As you know, my pesky knee knocked me out of my daily aerobic walks with Denise and Leslie. Worse, just when I thought I may be able to ease my way back into it next week, BAM! I sorta re-injured it. *sigh* I was *gasp!* walking outside yesterday afternoon with E and as we were walking the narrow sidewalk against the library, my left foot snagged hard on a raised portion of the sidewalk and while I didn't fall, the whole left side of my body was jarred pretty hard. How I managed to not fall flat on my face is only by the Grace of God, I assure you. But the knee? Well, it took the jarring pretty hard. I'm not quite back to hobbling, but it's sore and achy again and, well, I just don't want to rush putting any extra pressure on it. Just further confirms what I...

The win: Ya'll, it's terrible the things I have to do to keep myself on track. All the many ways I must trick myself away from all the crazy habits I fall into. I'm ashamed annoyed to admit that I'd developed this insane habit of traipsing across the street to the vending machines for a Coke and a snack. Yes, I would leave the library , cross the street to another building just to get to snacks because the library doesn't have vending machines and the bagel shop is closed for the month. For some reason, by mid-afternoon I develop this insatiable need for something salty and a Coke. I don't know why just that it is what it is. And some days the cravings are so bad that if I don't indulge I end up in a heck of a fowl mood. Like, you-don't-even-want-to-know-me fowl. Seriously. So to save myself and everyone around me, I've been spending two to three dollars a few times a week in vending machine snacks and Cokes. This is bad for two reasons. ...

April started out well and truly strong. I felt good. I was doing good. I made progress on a couple of fronts. It was going smoothly and happily along. Until... Dun, dun, dun... Last week. Last week I completely derailed from all my goals. I spent more. I ate more. I walked less. I skipped church. Granted, I was sick most of the week and we've already covered that it was a weird week. But why is it that when you feel bad (sick) you give yourself so much permission to behave badly? Exhibit A:  I drank no less than four lattes last week . Four. I justified them because my throat was sore from all the coughing and sinus drainage junk. But honestly, I have tea bags at work. And hot tea would have been just as soothing. But because I was siiiiiicckkk (that's me whining) I needed the comfort of a sweet, hot, high calorie and expensive latte.  Justified? Nope. But it happened so I'm owning it. No sense denying it or pretending it never happened.  And if four l...

I reached a financial victory today that warrants me sharing a little mid-month check in.  Unfortunately this victory has nothing to do with scales or fitness miles. HOWEVER, being that there are other equally important goals at play here, I feel the need to celebrate those, too. Just to sort of explain things a bit first, I know I'm weird but my monthly budget actually starts on the 15th of each month because I am paid on the 15th and the 30th of each month--or if those dates fall on a weekend, we get paid on the Friday before. Meaning, of course, that today is payday and starts a new fiscal month. I know I'm weird because everyone else I know thinks of the 30th paycheck as the first of the month paycheck. For me it's easier to keep up with my bills the way I do, making THIS the first paycheck of the month. My brain just doesn't work like everyone else's, I guess. Whatever. So long as it works, right? ANYWAY, point being, yesterday finished out the March/April ...

Another month gone from 2012. Three months gone and so far for the most part, things are going well(ish). At the moment I'm still a little excited about my goals. I think this is the first time in my life that I had goals with actual plans of action. Not some lofty, "lose 30 pounds." "Save more money." Maybe that's why I've not abandoned them or gotten really discouraged yet. I have clear cut, manageable goals this time around. I do hafta keep tellin' myself that I don't have to be in a rush. I've got MONTHS to play with. MONTHS to build towards my goals. I need to pace myself. In regards to my fitness goal of walking the fast three mile belly busting walk, I am a little frustrated. I thought I'd be a little further along with this by now. I still haven't yet conquered the two mile "brisk" walk and if I can't conquer that , there's no hope for the three mile belly buster. But I hafta remind myself. It's only ...

...I don't talk about my weight loss/dietary and activity goals with some people. You lucky ducks and sometimes Sis2 are it, as far as my blabbing about that goes. The reason? Mama has said several times lately (about her co-workers, not me), "I'm so sick of hearing about everyone's diet." You see, everyone in her office is on some sort of diet. Three are doing Weight Watchers, one is doing a fad diet I can't recall, and the other is just always on some diet or another. So me? I just don't talk about it. If I eat an extra cookie (or a Coke and a Mr. Goodbar like yesterday *facepalm*) I just pull up my (thankfully) baggy britches and get on with it. Maybe confess it here on my blog where anyone who doesn't want to know about it doesn't have to read it. As far as Mama knows I'm just being me.  I've mentioned that I'm walking with DVD's and I figure she can guess why but I just don't talk about it. For one, I don't want to ...

* Last night was interesting. At church council I got rail roaded into elected to be in charge of the church cemetery. Not my idea of a good time because, you know, I don't have enough going on with work and stuff. Everyone else pulled the "I'm old card" though, so my being the youngest adult member in our church worked against me. I'm leaving it in God's hands, though. I only have to do it until September when I rotate off the Council so ya'll pray nobody dies and no disasters happen to the cemetery before then. *I didn't walk yesterday afternoon because I knew I had to be at church by 6:30 and I didn't want to be sweaty and grody. I'm okay with that skip because it was necessary. What I'm not okay with is the BLT dip and pita chips I polished off after I got home at 9:15pm. Stress eating. Blech. *Speaking of BLT dip, why do I have such enabling people in my life? I don't get it. Even my mother, who has been a healthy eating diabe...

It's almost cliche now to say that one doesn't make resolutions. Just about every blogger I read has said that and just about everyone I know has said it. Heck, I've said it in past years. But always in the back of my mind was something that I wanted to change about myself in each new year. Usually to do with weight loss and finances. But then, those too seem to be cliched responses to the New Year's resolution question. I thought about the whole resolution thing for a while leading up to and a while after New Year's but it just seemed so silly to me. I, like nearly everyone else in the world, never keep my resolutions.  But for 2012 I thought maybe a short list of goals might be a better way to keep my "Progress" progressing. I've already put most of these in motion and have a PLAN to git-r-done. So here they are, for better or worse. Warning : I get very wordy verbose after the underlined portions of the list. So if this post puts you to slee...