Week 1 Done - Was it Fun or Should I Run (Away)?

GOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLL!

OK, no one is running around my house tooting on their vuvuzelas, but they should be! I set a few goals for the week and I met them. This is huge for me. If you remember last week, my goal was accountability, tracking everything I was eating, drinking and any exercise, and I must say it went well. Even my old friends on MyFitnessPal that have seen me come and go many times, are a bit impressed that I've tracked for a whole week. Mind you it's not always pretty, I mean when you are in the car for 4 straight hours, picking up and dropping off kid after kid, sometimes a Kit Kat bar is dinner.

Let me break this down a little better ala Clint Eastwood:

The Good: Tracking. If I ate it, I wrote it. The program made me see I needed to add more protein everyday, and the recipe section helped come up with yummy ways to do just that. This has been a huge help as the scale showed a 2.6 pound loss this morning!

The Bad: The above mentioned Kit Kat plus many late evening snack. On the bright side it was Orville's 94% fat free butter popcorn.

The Ugly: I blew the dust off my membership and headed back to the gym. Why is it no matter what treadmill I choose, Biff and Buffy marathon runners always get on the equipment next to me? Guess it's better than sweaty pastrami guy or way-too-much perfume girl. This workout was pathetic. What I used to do as a warm-up a year ago, now seems to be my top speed. How did I get here (oh yeah, chocolate)?

My goal for this week is to keep tracking and add in a minimum of 3 trips to the gym. Make that 3 workouts at the gym so I don't cheat and just stop in for a bottle of water :)  Nothing to lofty, just enough to get me going. 

Enough about fitness, on to fabulousness! I mentioned last week I was going to make a big change, and I did, I went back to school! This career change seems to be a perfect fit, but there is still a part of me fighting it, probably because my husband doesn't really support the idea. My first class is an introduction to the travel industry. It's meant to give you a broad taste of work in the airline and hotel industry, event planning and travel agencies. Plus, we have one of the top 10 travel agents in the country here in my hometown, and she is willing to bring me on upon completion of the class! Perfect lady to show me the ropes.

Once again, Mr. Eastwood:

The Good: Small class, there are only 10 of us. Because I've traveled a lot and had a relative with the airlines, everything that we talked about in the overview class made perfect sense to me. Heck, the other students even think I'm cool because I write for a Disney related blog. 

The Bad: Every other student could be my child. Yep, I am the oldest one. During break they were all talking about their favorite designers and where to go clubbing, while I'm writing a grocery list and making sure I have a backup driver in case class gets out too late to pick up my kids.

The Ugly: Airline codes!!! How in the heck can TYS be Knoxville, Tennessee or SDF be Louisville, Kentucky? I am lucky I can remember what I had for lunch, who can remember 3 little letters that don't correspond to anything? Give me an MEM anyday of the week.

I am looking forward to these challenges, and I'll get those codes memorized. Someone's gotta show these young whipper snappers how it's done.

Til next week...

Let's Get This Started

I'm having a belated mid-life crisis, although, maybe not that late. I certainly plan on living past 80 just to spite my father-in-law, and I'm sure he will make it to 110 just to spite me, but I digress...

I find myself staring down the big 5-0 while looking back, wondering where the fun, fit girl from the big 3-0 went. Oh, she went plenty of places; preschool play dates, PTA meetings, school field trips, grocery shopping, volleyball, softball & little league games and practices. She was well traveled. But she never did travel back to the office, and very rarely to the beauty salon for a haircut or manicure. Daily gym workouts had been replaced by carrying groceries and repeatedly climbing the stairs with baskets of  laundry. I'm sure many women can relate.

Would I trade a minute of it? No way, I'm glad I was there for my kids. But now that I have one heading off to college and two not far behind, I think I deserve a little me time. Here's the kicker, I'm just not sure who that "me" is anymore. That statement just scares me. I used to have a clear picture of what I wanted out of life, and now that I've lived a good chunk of it the picture is rather hazy. I'd like to say it's time to do some deep soul searching, but let's face it, I'm lucky I can remember what I had for dinner let alone do something so reflective.

A wise man once said "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing" and that's just what I'm doing. Thanks Walt! Instead of trying to do a complete overhaul, I've decided to implement one change each week. Most changes will be for getting fit (because that needs the most work) and a rather large change, that is already in the works, will be for getting fabulous, or finding out who I am now. More on that topic another day.

So, that being said, my first change...drumroll please...accountability! Keeping track of what goes in my mouth and how much I'm moving (or not). I like MyFitnessPal.com for this. It's FREE, it has thousands of food items and recipes in it's data base, and it has a community message board to ask questions or join groups. Did I mention it's FREE? And very user friendly. I will be logging; the good, the bad and the ugly of it, and hopefully learning from it. Care to join me?