Falling off the bandwagon

Lately, P and I have fallen off the healthiness bandwagon.  Patrick changed jobs, I stayed lazy, we went on a trip, we had a couple dinners with friends, you know how it is.  So, I haven't been to the gym lately, and I've not eaten very nutritional foods either.  This week I decided to hop back on the healthy train, but to be honest it hasn't been very successful.  So I'm going to outline my game plan here, and together we can find ways to be motivated to lead healthier lives.

The first step of my evil plan is to keep only healthy foods in the house.  This has been a huge help to us in our quest to eat better, more natural things, and I would encourage anybody who wants to do the same to really, really only keep healthy, guilt-free foods in your home.  For us, since we have absolutely no self control, this almost always includes not having any processed snacks, sugary desserty things, or alcohol.  Just don't even keep them around.  On the flip side, keep plenty of  veggies around to munch if you're feeling snacky.  I like celery sticks, and since they burn more calories digesting than you consume eating them, I can eat as many as I like.  If I'm craving sweet things, I eat baby carrots.  You do have to sometimes give yourself some leeway and Lord knows we've bought more than one package of Oreos in the last six months, so try not to let yourself feel like you have to go super craycray all the time, but generally yeah, stick with super craycray.

The second step is exercising somehow, someway, three times a week at bare minimum, and not for only like, ten minutes and then you give up.  That's dumb.  At least go for a walk or something.  I love walking, so the lovely fall weather that's finally starting to show up around here is very exciting to me.  We also have a gym membership and I've found that I enjoy walking on the treadmill (running sucks and I hate it, so that's not really something I do) or doing the elliptical or sometimes biking.  Really, when you're a lazybutt like me, you just have to find what you like (or at least tolerate) and keep doing it, and then on those particularly optimistic days where you're just barely feeling brave enough to do something new, you have to do it.  I struggle to do any one thing for longer than 20 minutes, because I get bored, but if I find some music to listen to or a podcast or if I get a treadmill that has a television, that helps me to focus on something other than "Oh, I'm exercising and exercise sucks and is boring and lame and okay I'm getting off this thing now!"

So, I'm going to exercise tomorrow after Patrick gets off work.  For like, 30 or 40 minutes.  I'm saying it really definitively because that way if I don't do it I can't act like I wasn't really sure so nobody can blame me.  I'll feel nice and guilty if I don't go.  Step three I guess is to just tell yourself you're going to do things absolutely and set out a block of time to do it and plan everything else around it.  This is a good strategy for lots of life things, actually.

Step four is a step I often end up forgetting to do, but it's to keep a journal of your foods.  Even if you write them down on the back of an old receipt or something, it helps to keep track of what all you've eaten so that you're actually putting some conscious thought into your meals and snacks.  I have often stopped when I was about to grab a munchie bad food because I knew I'd have to write it down, and it made me want it a whole lot less.  I have heard some people say that journaling their food helps them see patterns of when they usually overeat or crave certain things, but I have never been consistent enough to notice any patterns except that I love sugar and carbs every day always and forever.  Try it out though.  It's seriously helpful.

Pretty innovative, right?  Ha.  No.  Nothing about my 4-step plan to being an awesome and healthy person is very different or interesting, and it's probably downright ineffective at times. Sometimes I don't follow my own plan and beat myself up for it.  But really, tomorrow is a new day and you've got a new opportunity to succeed at your goals.  Forget that today you ate three bowls of sugary cereal and nothing else for your meals, and do better tomorrow.  Be aware of your habits, and form better ones in their place.

Good luck to anybody else who is trying to be awesome and healthy, and comment if you have any other things that help you stay motivated!

Yay budgeting!

My husband and I are big Dave Ramsey fans.  If you haven't listened to Dave's radio show or read his books, he is a financial guru who focuses big on getting rid of and avoiding debt.  A big thing he advises is using what he calls "the envelope system," where you budget your monthly expenses and pay for them exclusively with cash, which you store in an envelope.  You have an envelope for each category, like groceries, entertainment, personal purchases, etc.

We tend to do okay with our budget, but when we've tried to use the envelope system it usually kind of falls apart.  I find it to be a little inconvenient to use cash and to have it all sorted out into the exact right amounts all the time, and having to frantically find the right category at the checkout, and I never know what to do with coins, and most of the time we forget to go get cash at the beginning of the month anyway.  But today I came across a variation of the envelope system that I think could work pretty well for us.  I found it on Just Sweet and Simple while I was looking for fun printables, and I'm excited to try it.

Rather than using the envelopes (she has some cute ones you can print and glue together for free, but I ended up designing some of my own) to keep your cash and then dish it out when you're at the store, you use your debit card like a normal person, and then store your receipts in the envelopes and log the purchase on the envelope, like a check register.  Not a particularly ground-breaking system, really, but it's a far cry from swiping the card every time I feel like making a purchase.  Plus, finding a new way to do something tends to make me a lot more excited to do it at all, so all of a sudden budgeting doesn't sound so bad.

A blurry picture of the envelopes I designed

How do you keep track of your budget?

Here we go again.

I don't know how many times I've tried to be a blogger.  It's a lot.  This may become another failed attempt, practically over before it's begun, but lately I've thought a lot about how I'd like to share some of my life adventures, how I'd like to learn alongside other people who are smarter and probably also cooler than me, and how I really enjoy attention and if I get famous from a blog that'd be pretty cool.  So, here I am.  Typing away.  Not sure how to get from this subject to the next one.  Hrm.

What I really want to write about is healthy living and being more conscious of what goes into my body, what chemicals are in my home, what waste I am putting out into the world, and ways I can be a better steward of my life, possessions, health, and money.  That sounds suuuuuuuper boring though, and I don't want anybody, including myself, to think of this like a health and wellness blog or anything like that.  I am not good at being healthy or well, because:

1. I love eating more than enough of carby, sugary, fatty foods.
2. I love sitting and watching shows for hours.
3. I love researching things and then never doing anything about it except filing it away in the part of my brain that houses "fun facts."
4. I love giving up when things are kinda a little hardish.
5. I don't like complicated things that will require trial and error.
6. I hate cleaning stuff and being organized.
7. I like to buy new things that I don't need.
8. I usually believe that things labeled "eco-friendly" or similar are a lie.

And other stuff.

So basically, I'm normal.

This is really a blog about a super normal person fumbling her way to a healthier, more environmentally conscious lifestyle.  Sometimes I fail, like this week when I bought two new pairs of jeans from a store that I know probably makes their clothes in sweat shops.  Whoops.  Sorry, kids in China.  I'd like to say I'll make it up to you, but I probably won't because I don't really know how.

If you're like that too, then read on.  It'll be an adventure, probably.

Mara