New Years Resolutions or Lack Thereof

My husband and I resolved early in our marriage to never do the same thing twice on New Years Eve.  While Christmas and other holidays in our family tend to be somewhat rooted in tradition, we have tried to keep this particular one tradition free.  Later on we expanded it to not making New Years Resolutions.  We used to make them.  One year I recall  putting them on paper in an envelope so that we could see if we actually kept them.  Now that I think about it, I bet we never even found the envelopes.

The idea behind the resolutions is a good one.  The idea of a new year is a fresh start.  Who wouldn’t want to start off with a clean slate?  I myself could really use a fresh start.  In years past when I have attempted said resolutions, the year got underway and by February those resolutions went by the wayside.

I’m not changing my mind about it.  It’s not that I don’t plan on making some changes.  Rather than resolutions I have instead set some goals.  Is that the same thing?  Perhaps, but by not calling the resolutions I may be more apt to stick with them.  And these are things that I have already started.  No sense in waiting for a new year to kick in.

Eat Healthier-I’ve been to the edge and back, baby.  With depression comes some crazy comfort food.  But one can only subsist on dark chocolate and sugar for so long.  What I really need is a spell.  I need to go all Harry Potter and somehow cast a spell upon myself that the health food I once consumed regularly is the best thing for me.  This week I have consumed more vegetables.  I always eat whole grains, that is a no brainer.  But this love affair with sweeteners both natural and artificial has to be put to a stop.  More veggies, more fresh fruit, less diet pop, less junk.  Consuming less of everything-it should be simple, right?

Move-As in getting moving, not as in moving to another town (though that would be nice).  Fatigue, cold weather, frustration with schedules, complaining children, and an uncooperative canine has made this not a priority to me.  I don’t have to do this to excess, simply getting back into walking some every day would be peachy.  I’ve done some yoga the last two days.  I’ve attempted to lift weights.  Last night my husband walked in the door and I walked out-not because I hate him, but because I needed to take a walk alone.  It’s less about losing the coffee cake top, more about just taking care of moi.

Attitude-The longer I’m unemployed, the more “losery” I feel.  Supposedly the state I live in has a great unemployment rate-and them proclaiming this just makes me feel that much worse.  Thanks, so glad everyone else is finding a job.  I have a feeling those numbers are greatly skewed.  I need to snap out of it and try to just feel better.  Whether or not I have a job shouldn’t define who I am.  What I do as a mom and wife should be more important.  I know, it’s all about that damn forest through the trees!  It’s hard to feel good when you’ve sent out over a hundred job applications and have had one interview, and then they took over a month to get back to you in an email.  For a cashier job.  At Lowes.

Honestly, is finding a part time job going to make me happy?  No, but being financially secure would be nice.  Can I make a job fall out of the sky?  No.  But I can try to control my attitude about it.  Take care of myself (you know, like showering and stuff).  Embrace the free time.  Appreciate what I have.  Play more with my kids.  Write more.  All the stuff I should have been doing all along.

So that’s what I’m working on, even if I don’t call them resolutions.  Be sure to laugh at me six months from now.

I’ve seen several alternatives to making resolutions online.  My favorite is a jar with little slips of paper.  Every time you find something good, write it down on a slip of paper and put it in the jar.  At the end of the year, wouldn’t that be great to open up and read all of the good things that happened? This of course would require effort and thinking on my part.  So it’s probably not going to happen…

I’ll wrap this up with my husband’s whole take on the resolution thing.  I know he wants to try to get back into shape as well, but I’m not sure if he’s really calling it a resolution.  We were talking about me writing this post last night.  He said “My resolution is to have a good looking wife and two kids and a dog.”  Hey, he called me good looking.  I’m willing to support that.

This post was written in part because I am a follower and want to be liked, or something like that.  Actually, I wanted to start participating in Theme Thursday over on Something Clever 2.0.  Jenn was nice enough to actually write about my blog this week.  She even was kind enough to point out how much I use poop and pee in my posts.  Please come on over there and read what other folks have to say on the matter, or other matters, and read Jenn’s blog too.  It’s a win win, no matter what you do.  Good stuff, Maynard.

Atlantamomofthree’s December Health and Fitness Challenge Week 1

“Run, Forrest, Run!” No one is running in this household. But we say this whenever we see someone running.

My friend Valerie over at Atlantamomofthree started a fitness challenge and invited people to join her.  Valerie has been an awesome friend to me over on the SparkPeople site-where I have an account and only go over there to moan and groan and feel sorry for myself and stuff.  I set the goal to be active for 30 minutes five days in the week.  I think I met the goal.  I certainly will try to keep better track this next week.

You see, I used to be awesomely fit.  Then I had kids.  I had a gym membership up until I became too poor to have one.  Since then I have REALLY gotten flabby and sad.  It’s not that I don’t have time to exercise.  I own all of the Jillian Michaels DVDs-you’d think that just seeing her would motivate me to do something, since I’m afraid she’s going to come to my house and eat me.  I also own a lot of the GAIAM stuff.  I have most of the Rodney Yee yoga DVDs, among others.  I just lose track of time and then by evening I’m too tired to do anything!  I have been somewhat ok at doing some home weight lifting using my old Abs Diet Routine. My main obstacles are two children who would rather do anything but go outside and a dog who is naughty.  I also have a husband who would rather play video games than do anything active.  I miss being active and doing stuff outside and all of that jazz!  Stories of my fitness woes-Memories of Fitness Past, When Mom Attempt to Exercise.

I even tried to have another blog for awhile that was supposed to focus on my exercise and eating, Aluminum Girl.  It FLOPPED.  Because I did NOTHING!

I’m just not sure how I could go from this:

Me six years ago. One kid. Gym membership.  And two fat cats.

To this.  But I did.  The person who would rather eat whole wheat vegan pizza rolls and drink Diet Sunkist Lemonade.  Now I eat what everyone else does because I have to.  That damn money thing again.

Two kids and I’m the only fat cat in the house now!

Anyhooooo-here is how I kind of did this week:

Monday:  Walked an hour-beautiful weather and semi cooperative canine and four year old.

Tuesday:  I lifted some.  It was probably a half hour.

Wednesday:  Walked a half hour with dog before choir practice.

Thursday:  Lifted some again.  Half hour.  My son had his choir concert that night.  My husband took a picture of the three of us and I literally almost THREW UP.  I look horrible!!!!  I need to stop eating and start exercising!

Friday:  An hour of walking-one walk with the dog and stroller and one BY MYSELF.  By the time bedtime rolled around it was pretty obvious that I was getting sick.  One side of my throat was so sore and swollen I couldn’t swallow.

Saturday: New dog collar for the dog!  30 min walk-AND HE BEHAVED.  It was amazing, especially since I felt like poop.

Sunday:  SICK. Did…nothing.

So there you are.  My week.  I actually ate pretty decently too, with the exception of the white chocolate incident.  This week I have made a meal plan, which will probably go all to hell since I have to go home for Christmas this next weekend!

No really…

Memories of Fitness Past

The Olympics can be a great motivator, sometimes.

No I won’t be training for any special events any time soon.  Watching all of those extremely fit people has, however, ramped up my motivation to exercise.  I wish I could say it was hampering my desire to eat-not as much.  I lost my resolve with the apple pie and the chocolate malt.  I can blame my husband for that-he brought the pies home from church and made the malts.

I used to be very fit.  I used to get up at the crack of dawn and walk an hour and a half almost every day.  I used to ride my bike from one town to the next.  I used to go to the gym and lift weights like crazy.  I used to be a vegan.  This is before I had kids, of course. I also used to subsist on next to nothing.  Now I don’t desire to ever be a size 0 again, but it would be nice to be able to find an exercise program and stick to it.  It also would be nice to regain the willpower I had all those years ago.  I could actually REFUSE things back then!

(By the way, not me.  I never owned legwarmers.)

I blame kids and chocolate.  This isn’t an accurate representation, because I don’t like to share my chocolate.

Right now I really need to go to the store to buy some healthy things to eat.  I can’t because my husband doesn’t get paid until tomorrow, and because I don’t want to drag the kids there.  So I’ve been eating what’s left in the house.  Lunch consisted of a microwave brown minute rice bowl (the rice was brown, not the bowl) that I found underneath the pantry shelves and three cherry tomatoes.  Later on I found half a red pepper in the freezer, so I ate that too.  You’re thinking “Hey that’s pretty healthy!”  Not really.  The handful of dark chocolate M&Ms didn’t help.  I’m starving to death and I don’t know what the heck I have left to eat that is actually good for me.

Since I did get the smartphone that I’m not sure I needed or deserved, I downloaded a couple of apps recently. One was an app that supposedly helped you keep track of your calorie intake.  What it really does is make you feel really bad that you can’t subsist on 1200 calories a day.  I did pretty well at first (not at subsisting at 1200 calories but at just remembering to enter in everything I ate) but then just kind of forgot about it.  I also downloaded an app that supposedly tracked how far you walked and posted your route, time, etc on a nice little map.  Noooooo, not quite.  Apparently I live too far our to get a good GPS signal.  The first time I used it I was really excited because it said I walked over 5 miles!  That was because everywhere I went it showed me walking in and out of the cornfield by our house about 50 times on the almost hour walk, adding about 3 miles on to my route.  I was pretty bummed when  I realized that.

I tend to do fairly well until the afternoon snack.  Then it’s all downhill from there.  Dinner is frustrating.  I would much rather make myself a small pan of pasta with tomatoes and a little cheese and that would make me perfectly happy.  Instead I must make everyone else happy.  My husband thinks that meat is the key to happiness.  Everything must have gobs of meat.  Meat meat meat.  Heaven forbid if I make a meatless meal.  AND CHEESE.  I have a problem with lactose, so I try to avoid putting a lot of cheese on things.  He will insist on using a whole package of cheese in a meal.  Vegetables?  I make them and he avoids them like they are radioactive.  Add to all of that the fact that he has to put down the computer to come eat, many nights he eats way after we do (we are horrible people because we do not have a dining room or a dining room table, but the kids eat AT a little table.)  And don’t even get me started on the kids.  My son would be perfectly happy eating hot dogs and chicken nuggets every day for the rest of his life.  He hates pasta, he hates rice.  My daughter likes a variety of foods, but when it comes to supper it’s hit or miss.

So often I end up eating most of the stuff that I made to make the other people happy because they didn’t eat it.  Or didn’t eat much of it.  I hate wasting food, and no one in this house seems to understand the concept of leftovers being anything other than a decoration for the inside of the refrigerator.  Often I eat too much at dinner to try to avoid having leftovers.  Sometimes instead of a healthy lunch I eat the leftovers.

Don’t tell me to make less food.  I’ve tried that.  My husband acts like I am trying to kill him.  Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t!

This weekend while watching the Olympics I started going through all of my old Women’s Health magazines and cutting out the 15 minute workouts.  I did one of the ab ones yesterday.  Ok, I did the exercises that I could do.  I couldn’t do any of the ones that consisted of balancing yourself on a stability ball with your hands (come on, NO ONE can do those!)  Today I resolve to pick up one of those workouts at some point and do it.  Eventually.  Maybe after my nap.  I’ve already tried to nap once and the four year old came in the room every two minutes with a different question.  I’ll have to try that again while they are watching their shows.  Then maybe I’ll try to exercise.  I DID get up and do a 57 minute walk this morning.  Then I went back to bed-come on it was EARLY!

ADD people can be very hypersensitive.  Thanks to that and just being an incredible wuss I can’t stand any kind of heat.  Or cold.  So right now during one of the hottest summers since, well a really long time, in order to get it done I have to do it very early.  My husband leave for work at 5:45 so I must exercise before that if I want to do something that involves leaving the house.  He doesn’t really get it-“You know we have a treadmill” he tells me often.  Oh shut up and go to your damn gym where you get to work out without children constantly interrupting you or staring at you…

Did I mention I’m jealous of his gym membership?

I guess it could be worse.  I’m not even considered overweight by most standards, I am a size medium.  I do have love handles and a spare tire that looks like I have a sausage or a life preserver wrapped around me at all times, but at least I can hide it with clothes. Despite the bit of cellulite, varicose veins, and bruises, I think my legs aren’t all that bad.  And despite two children I lack the one problem that many women have, which is hips because I have none.

The real nice thing about being larger than I used to is that my boobs are HUGE.  At least I have SOMETHING I can flaunt nowadays.  The bad thing is that my daughter is obsessed with them “Mommy I love your booooooooooooobs”, she says quite often.  She can’t wait until she has boobs too.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Now I’m getting too hungry to think.  Must find something substantial to eat, then maybe I can find the willpower to do one of those 15 minute workouts.  Or maybe try again to take that nap.