Journey of a Thousand Miles

When I came up with the idea for this new blog looking at transformation, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what this next stage of my life was going to look like. I was going to take 90 days to prep my body, mind and soul for this new adventure. However sometimes journeys are not what they appear on the surface.

Two weeks ago, after much prayer, thought and deep soul searching, my engagement and relationship of three years broke up.  I don’t intend to get into the details of it all here out of respect to the other party and also to the respect of the relationship that while ended was a huge important part of my life for so long. I will however say that while you might know what is happening is the best thing for everyone, it doesn’t make it hurt any less or be any harder.

I do fully thank God for giving me such an amazing support system. From my family who have open their arms so lovingly to me and been such a rock through this. To my amazing extend family of friends, who have let me have space but check in, reminded me of my strength and reminded me that my future is so much more then my past. This support system is and will continue to help me talk, cry, laugh or scream my way through this process.

So what is next for me? I have a new chapter really opening, over the course of the majority of my “adult” life, I have never been single. I can remember a couple months here and there but for the most part I have always been in a committed relationship. So here I am single, living in a studio apartment alone, working, going to school and still wanting to work on the same goals I did prior to this happening but with a new focus.

So what is my new journey about? It’s about claiming who I am as an individual, being a strong, motivate individual that loves me for me. It’s about finding out about the person I am as designed by the creator and being happen with who I am in this skin.

A tall task right? Yes but I think a very important one, one that I am finally giving myself permission to take. Self-growth isn’t always easy but it’s a worthy process for those who chose to take it. 

Timing is Everything

I know what I need to do to take care of myself, I mean especially when it comes to taking care of my physical body. Every week on some talk show, they talk about the need to work out and eat right to stay in shape and healthy. However knowing what to do and doing it are two very different things.

For me one of the biggest challenges is making the time for it. I am trying to really get my career going, also trying to stay in touch with my friends and family and on top of it all I am also trying to plan a wedding. That makes my free time almost nonexistent. But really we all have the same time, it is how we prioritize and use it that really matters. For me it meant really looking at what is important and why, because if I want to change my life I need to change the way I look at everything in my life.

This is where my major issue lies, looking at my schedule stuff for other people have taken over and leave little time for me, and the time I did have I was so exhausted that I couldn't do anything if I wanted to. So I realized that I needed to start making rules about what I put into my life. When looking at my weekly plan sheet, the first thing that I had to put in (for lack of a better word) was when I needed to be at my office, and trying to make sure it is a total of 35 hours only. I need to work to make money to live however I don’t need to drive myself in the ground. Then I needed to put to put in some me time, time for the gym, cooking, planning meals. Yes that means that I will be taking away time from other things but to get where I want to get with my own personal growth I need to put it before other things. Also if I am not taking care of myself, what use will I be to others? After that I needed to put in prayer time and personal growth time. If you look at my current two weeks (see below) you will notice I don’t have a lot of that. I am working towards it however!

Finally making sure I put in time for friends and family. That’s been a little hard, however really this is trying to get to the ideal and it might sometimes fall short. I needed to make a way to really look at what I am planning and why, filling out the sheet for the next two weeks really help me have a reality check on what I am doing with my time. It was a good lesson going forward.

Meal planning is another area that I have really committee myself too. Just like with my weekly plan sheet I also plan out meals for two weeks. One so when I go to the store I know what I need, also so I know if I have a big meal plan for the next day, I will start prepping my food the night before. I made a big deal out of this for another reason also, I saw when I didn't plan what to eat I am much more likely to grab for something fast and also normally very bad for me.

Another reason is that I have been really trying to switch to a more plant based diet, where I limit my gluten, dairy and meat intake. This comes from a area of really wanted to only put the best I can into my body and to also limit the amount of chemically I put in my body also. It is a lot easy to stick to this when I am planning ahead. This has also helped me get really creative with me meals also, trying to eat this way have made me really thing about what I am eating and also how what I eat affects my mood.

One of the major questions looking at my plan sheets is the fact that I really haven’t plotted out time for my two other areas, my real focus is on getting on track with my physically health. I decided to prioritize this first is because for me it was an emergency to start with. Because I am not in a healthy place and I need to really get better. However there is another reason, for me physically taking care of myself always puts me in a better place mentally also. I get energy, and a better mood. It’s not surprise but what we eat and what we do really effects are mood. So I know by focusing here, I will also get farther in my other goals also without even focusing on it. 

Day One

Alright we are here at day one of the transformation! Yesterday, I talked a bit about why I choice to do this over 90 days. One of the reasons was because I had a couple of areas of my life I wanted to work on, and I knew that I wouldn’t able to give them all the focus all at once. I am not someone who believes in multitasking however I also believe very strongly in mapping out as much as possible ahead of time so that you are able to fit in all the pieces of your life.

Note I said believe, practically I will admit that this hasn’t been something I am very strong at. I let my commitments take over my life and then find very little energy or desire to put the effort into other areas of my life, the biggest area this is true for…Exercise! This is the first thing I push off my plate when times get busy and like anyone who has done their research about stress, those are the times I really need it the most. So I thought this might be one of the best places to start on my journey.

First, because it’s an area I have already started to try and focus on in my life. As I stated before, I have gained a good amount of weight over the last couple months and battling my weight is not all that new to me. It has been something that I started to struggle with in middle school. For me personally, many times the weight starts to come on without me even paying attention to it. I can remember not even realizing it in middle school until I developed (yes this was back before digital cameras!) a roll of film of myself and found a picture of me sitting on my couch at home with what look like a tire wrapped around my stomach. To say I was shocked, embarrassed and upset is an understatement.  

This time around I had a bit of a better idea, mostly because my clothes started to fit rather tightly and I couldn’t fit into some of my smaller sized clothing. The most upsetting part of me was when I attempted to fit into a dress I bought for Seminar (more on that in later post) and wasn’t able to wear it or any other gown in my closet.

Starting this journey I knew how important it would be to create goals for myself. My preferred method for goal setting is called setting a SMART goal. For those that haven’t heard about it, it’s a little way to not only set a goal but make sure you are able to reach and achieve it. It goes as such. For today I will use it to focus on my physical goals.

Specific. Instead of setting a general goal like wanting to lose weight, I wanted to take a real look at what my needs were in this area. Was it really to lose weight? Well no. My goal was to create a lifestyle change that would be healthier for me. Now it would be impossible for me to expect myself to work out 4 hours a day, eat nothing but a paleo diet and devote my every waking moment to creating a lifestyle. So I need to really look at what I wanted to accomplish over the 90 days and what my resources are. For me, it’s to lose the weight I have put on over the past couple months and to integrate a more balanced diet by following the guidelines of the 24 day challenge.

Measurable. My weight is a very easy thing to measure, because I have access to a scale. I also will follow my measurements and I am looking into finding someone to do my body fat percentage. My measurements and weight I have already started to track. As far as the diet goes, every day it’s looking at my fitness pal app and seeing if I am eating and following what I said I would.  I highly recommend this app because it gives you one place to store all your information.

Attainable. Can I really reach this goal? This also means looking at the time and energy I have to devote to it and see if it’s something that I can do. For me it wouldn’t be attainable to run a 5k in a month because I never have ran before really in my life. However it is attainable for me to lose 20lbs in 90 days and to expect myself to work out at least 4 times a week.

Realistic. Again, is this something that I can do in the timeframe I gave myself, that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be hard. It will be it means really honoring this commitment to myself and to my health and to also realize that it means giving up some stuff also. There is no sense in lying to yourself by setting the bar too high or impossible.

Timely. I have built in timing however it’s also important to set smaller goals that will lead to this bigger goal. For me I am lucky I had a check in at day 10 of the challenge and will have another one on day 24. I will then make my own check in points and set smaller goals. So for example my goal for the first ten days was to lose 10 pounds. Guess what, it didn’t happen, I only lost eight but that just means I have to work harder to meet my goal of losing a total of 15 by the end of day 24.  Meaning that you should try aiming for a certain target at different points, it also helps the goal to see less overwhelming.

So there is my first SMART goal for my physical transformation, now it’s about using that for my personal motivation in my daily life. And with this goal that means scheduling and planning ahead of time.

So that is major personal task for today, to map out and plan the next two weeks in a way that I can truly stick to and while being honest but still challenging myself of what I am capable of doing.  This also means fitting in this planning between two major projects at work right now, I am prepping for our Summer Junior High Intensive Program for faith formation which will run August 12^th-16^th and getting all the final paper work into the diocese for NCYC in November. All this while going to a conference this weekend, and cheering on my friends as they run their first official Miss America local pageant Saturday…oh and did I forget to mention that I leave for Dallas on Sunday! Super excited but it means that I am super tight on time also. 

But life and personal growth isn’t always easy but it’s worth it and if we don’t start today we might never!