It is Tuesday October 9th. I know that seems like a weird day for starting a month of improvement, but I’ve always thought the idea of ‘the diet starting Monday’ was dumb. When you decide you want to make a change, why wait? So, here I am on a random Tuesday making a commitment to the world. Ha, world. Yeah right. More like a commitment to the 75 people that may read this post.

Lately I have felt like a ‘light’ version of myself. And, let me tell you, I do not mean ‘light’ as in ‘skinny’. I mean like I am not living my full life to all it’s potential. I am here to break the cycle!

The point of all this is to try and do 30 days of the ‘best me’ that I can be. I will lay out my goals and ideas below. But first I want to lay down the ground rules/details. The end of my 30 days will be on Thursday November 8th. At that point I can go back to my old ways of procrastination, binge drinking, and stuffing my face with bread! I also committ to full-disclosure. I cannot promise I will perfect during this time- that is just crazy. But I can promise to be honest.

Full-Disclosure– I am eating a fun-size Snicker candy bar as I am writing this. 🙂

Here are my improvements for myself:

1. Diet: My diet has been a night-mare lately. Football season and a little extra stress has really taken a toll on my eating. I am getting back on the wagon (or is it off the wagon, I can never remember).

  • One soda per week- tops!
  • Big time decrease in carbs. I don’t support a no-carb diet, but I support everyone eating less of them than I do.
  • No bingeing on Sundays during football. Now this doesn’t mean I will not eat wings or spinach dip, it just means I’ll eat a helluva-lot less.
  • Stop eating when full. This will need to be something I remind myself of every night at dinner. I love to cook and I love to eat what I cook. I need to somehow convince myself that I will be satisfied with the dinner even if I don’t make myself sick by eating too much.

2. No drinking: Yes, you heard me correctly. No drinking. This will be very hard for me! Now normally I don’t think there is a problem with drinking a glass of wine every night, or having a couple drinks on the weeked. The reason I decided to do this is…

  • I am trying to lose weight and booze is full of empty calories
  • I am more likely to eat junk when I am drinking (i.e. the cheese puffs that disappeared on Saturday night; and again back to football Sundays)
  • I am less likely to work out if I drink. Hangovers really put a damper on my work out plans

3. Exercise: I will work out 3X per week! I had a little anxiety while I typed that. This will be very hard for me; I am pretty good at getting in 2 but 3 will be tough. I don’t have a gym membership, I have a full-time job, I have 2 kids, and it is getting cold outside. These are not excuses, these I hope will help prove the point that anyone can find time to workout. Or, I’ll crash and burn and give every woman in America the excuse they are looking for.

  • I want to try to run a 5k in the next 30 days, but haven’t figured out the logistics. Also, I really hate being cold.

4. Organization: I did not want to say something vague here like, “I will become more organized” because that literally means jack shit. I wanted to make it a measurable, actionable goal. So, I decided that I will organize 1 thing per week. Here is my schedule:

  • Week 1- Bedroom (My room is so crazy right now, I would literally not let my mother in there)
  • Week 2- Mail/papers/newspaper/coupon clutter. This is kind of spread out every where and will suck!

Full-disclosure: I started typing ‘furnace room’ which is our catch-all room, it’s like a big closet but it sounded way too hard and I don’t want to do it so I deleted it. Don’t judge, baby steps.

  • Week 3-Junk drawers (puke!)
  • Week 4- Kids rooms

5. Reading: I don’t know why I always fall of the horse when it comes to reading. I LOVE to read and I usually have a couple books waiting on my Kindle for me. I guess I get lazy and it’s easier to fall asleep to a re-run of Big Bang Theory than to pick up a book and use my brain. In the next 30 days I will finish the 2 books I am currently reading, and finish 1 more. I haven’t picked it yet but it will be a non-fiction based on my rotation system (I do Novel- Personal/Professional Development- Nonfiction).

6. Giving Back: This is really important to me and it makes me feel so good when I do it, but I lose track of it all the time. I want to really try to make a difference in other peoples lives over the next month. I don’t know what I am going to do yet for follow up weeks, but this week I am going to go through all of our shoes and pick some to donate. My work is doing a shoe drive right now and I want to get involved. I figure a household with 4 people should be able to easily donate 6 pairs of shoes.

Wom, I’m getting tired just thinking about that list! My goal is to post weekly on this topic. It will be like the format below.

Date: October 9th

Weight: 150 (I said full-disclosure, I still can’t believe I am sharing that but that’s how you make a change)

Thoughts/Opinions: I am half pumped to get moving and get improving, and I am half terrified I am going to fail miserably. I am half excited to share this with those of you who read this blog regularly and I am half worried that this topic will bore you.

Successes/Challenges: The challenges at this point are obvious. The success right now is that I am willing to address my weaknesses and that I am brave enough to share them with all of you. Yikes.