Tag: yoga

February Is the New January.

This post has been marinating for a couple of days, and may have had a few edits.

So, we’ve reached the end of the first month of 2021, or the 13th month of 2020, depending on your perspective. I took stock of my “accomplishments” of January, and the use of quotation marks is deliberate.

We are at the end of the first month of the new year, and my diet and exercise situation is pretty dire. I have gained approximately 12 lbs. of quarantine/stress weight, nearly all of it since I began stress eating in the lead up to the election, followed by boredom/stress eating through my work days, and accompanied by only sporadic exercise.

This situation is now truly dire. This is Florida, and summer pretty much begins in March. NONE of my shorts fit. I haven’t tried on my “office” clothes yet, but the odds are I’ve eaten myself out of them too. Changes must happen.

Here’s the BIG thing: I will not snack all freaking day. I will drink tea all freaking day, but this wandering to the kitchen for a small handful of nuts or maybe a few crackers or WHATEVER must stop. I will track my food with Lose It! and I will get my butt out of my chair and walk daily, not sporadically. I will do some sort of yoga every day, even if it’s just a quickie 15 minute wake-up stretch. I’m back to waking up at 5:30 again, to ensure I have time for a large mug of coffee before I get moving. *Update*: I’m three whole days in, and I’ve done yoga every day for three days in a row. I’m aiming for 100 days. I’m really curious about what it will do for my body if I really do develop a daily practice.

All of this is non-negotiable, because summer will be here for real in about six weeks, give or take, (Punxsutawney Phil does not cover this zone) and all those shorts have to fit. They’re like new, they weren’t cheap, and I’ll be damned if I’ll go buy cheap “until I lose the weight” shorts to “get by”. Experience has taught me that I’ll be wearing the cheap, just for now shorts all summer if I don’t get my shit together NOW.

I will exercise, watch my calories, drink gallons of water and tea, and above all, quit the boredom/stress snacking, because yes, my work days are both boring and stressful. I have a stressful and challenging job, just what a brain aneurysm survivor a few years from retirement really wants! Yet, here I am.

Most days I am truly Lucy in the Chocolate Factory, responding to engineers and others with project updates (chocolates), except that all of the chocolates have to be reviewed and custom wrapped and routed to the proper customers with explanations. It’s Same Shit, Different Day, until someone calls me with their hair on fire about something I’ve never fucking heard of, and their emergency becomes mine. *Update* Today I actually got to give a random emergency to someone else. That has never happened before and it was truly a warm and fuzzy feeling.

So, what’s good? I’m knitting again! I’m knitting an easy-peasy, “TV and wine” skill level shawl, but I’ll take it. I’m also suddenly obsessed with growing succulents, and bought tiny clippings on Etsy and rooted them in this adorable wee planter. It’s a really skinny little thing and I’m using it as a succulent baby nursery, and it’s working out very well. Meanwhile, the original plants my daughter gave me in the owl planters are thriving, and a couple really could use larger pots, so I had to get bigger pots. These are really gorgeous and impressively heavy and well made. I might not be able to grow herbs for shit, but so far, succulents love it here. It’s nice that something does.

Happy 2020!

I’m excited to start a fresh decade, especially after the old one turned so spectacularly to shit in the last few years. I’ve avoided getting political here, but as we’re coming into the election of our lifetimes, I may have to change that a bit. But right now I’m focusing on improving my own life – that whole, “put on your own oxygen mask” thing is very real. I need to fix myself before I dare risk my brain again.

And on that note, I have plans! With no further ado, my plans for kicking off 2020:

Yoga with Adriene. I haven’t done yoga regularly for months, and none at all since Gidget came home. (At first it was because of constant mopping to keep up with the appearances of small, stealthy puddles, but that issue appears to be nearly resolved.) Now it’s just me, being lazy. I miss yoga. Yoga makes me feel great, and why I stop doing things that make me feel great is a subject for years of therapy, I’m sure.

Adriene always starts a one month special practice at the start of the year, and this year, I’m all in on Home. AS GAWD IS MAH WITNUSS, I’m going to do the entire program, and complete it within 35 days. I’m giving myself 5 days for the unexpected, but my real goal is to do it in 30, as designed.

Bullet Journaling. I still do it; it’s perhaps the longest running habit, next to drinking wine, that I’ve stuck with in the last decade. I don’t do a fancy, Instagrammable book, but I do have some small things that have worked for me over the years and I’ll have to share them one of these days.

WW Because I need structure to keep me honest, and – I know this is shocking – when I stick to it, it works.

And I need to get started on preparing for the Star Wars 5K in April. Yes, that’s a long way off, but I’ve been on my ass for months so I’m basically starting from zero here. I have a deeply held delusion that I’m still 35 and somehow trapped in this 61 year old body. I treasure this delusion, but yeah, it’s going to bite me in the ass.

And as part of all this healthy diet and exercise, I’m kicking off the year tomorrow with Dryuary. They had me at better sleep; but I also know wine (and stress, insomnia and overall laziness) is not good for me at this stage of my life. I’m 15-ish pounds from my goal weight (still), and that weight is largely in the form of chardonnay calories. A month off wine seems like a good place to start, so before the entire innerwebs and my 12 faithful readers, I do hereby declare January No Wining Month.

I don’t plan to stay up to see the new decade arrive, I trust it will start just fine without me. I do plan to get up tomorrow and go for a 5k walk sans dogs, do a dab of yoga, and assess my starting point. Grandma’s fitness kickoff begins January 1.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll blog about it. It could happen!