Facing Reality

Every July my friend Angela and I spend a day together setting goals for the following year and reflect on how the previous year went.  Its a powerful process.  It started in July of 2009 when we both got tired of complaining about the same issues in our lives every time we got together and never making progress.  We wrote letters to ourselves with goals and dreams for the next twelve months then hid those letters away with the promise to return in one year and read our letters together and see how we did.  The act of sharing openly and honestly your failures, your fears, your hopes and your dreams is incredibly freeing and powerful.  Its an act of facing reality.  This facing reality can not be done alone-when alone you can tweak reality to fit what you think it should be.  You can lie to yourself too easily.  Choose carefully a partner in the facing reality endeavor.  Angela and I have been friends for more than fifteen years.  We have a strong history of honesty, openness and a foundation of unyielding trust.  We have seen each other at our worst and at our best.  She was in the hospital room with me when I gave birth to my beloved son (along with my two sisters...my baby daddy was not there, I'm a single mother so the people I chose to be with me throughout the birthing process were beyond important).  I officiated her wedding.  Our friendship and yearly goal setting days are not things we take lightly.  As time has passed we have see each other go through incredible challenges and survive with grace, dignity and humor.  Yesterday we took the time to look over the last few years' worth of letters to ourselves.  Since this is the fourth year we have gathered to face reality, we were able to truly think about how far we have come in some areas and how far we still need to go with some struggles.  In the past we have done more dreaming in our time together than actual goal setting.  Because we only met once a year, it was easy to forget the dreams and fall back into the regular rut of habits.  This year, we decided to take things to a new level.  We simplified our goals and made them actual goals.  Yes, we wrote down some dreams and hopes for the next year but we went far beyond that my choosing to focus on one thing we both have struggled with for all four years of our meetings-health and weight.  We broke it down and decided that we are going to get together every six weeks to adjust and evaluate our progress on these goals.  Today is day one...and for me...it did not go so well.

The first goal we made is to develop and maintain a cardio exercise routine of 30 minutes per day five days a week.  To meet that goal, we broke it down into subgoals.  Subgoal A is to track our exercise on myfitnesspal.com-wtih that we can provide encouragement to each other and its a super easy (and free) way to track fitness goals online and support each other.  Secondly, we acknowledged that we need to adjust our daily schedules to make sure we are using time wisely and creating healthy habits so, we committed to getting up at the time same time every day and going to bed at the same time every night.  I need to get up before Caleb to give myself time to work out, make breakfast, shower and get ready for the day in calm and peace.  Being a high school teacher, that means getting up at 5:30am.  Whew.   Subtract eight hours to ensure enough sleep...and that means in bed by 9:30pm.  This is going to be a HUGE challenge for me who, by nature, is a night owl.  This morning did not go well....last night I did not get to bed until about midnight.  And I am working with my lovely boy on getting him to sleep in his own bed, so we had a midnight battle over where to sleep along with another battle around 2am.  this made mommy not get up until 7:30am...when lovely Caleb came in to ask for yogurt.

The second goal we made is to stay within www.myfitnesspal.com's calorie limits 5/7 days per week or  70% of the time.  When I saw Michelle Obama on The View (who's shapely, strong arms I envy) she was talking about her cookbook and the White House garden.  The ladies of The View asked her how she encourages her kids to eat well, and whether she ever indulges in treats like ice cream and birthday cake.  She said, if you eat well 80% of the time, you don't have to worry about indulging 20% of the time.  So thats where I got the numbers.  We are starting out with 70% with the goal of moving up slowly as our habits change.  I love the food tracking on myfitnesspal.com.  You put in your weight and height and your goal weight and it calculates how many calories you should eat every day to meet that goal.  The super nice thing is that it goes beyond just calories and also tracks fat, fiber, sugar, protein  and other nutrients of your choice.  By entering my daily food choices I can see what foods really are the empty calorie and fat foods that simply do nothing for me nutritionally and I can see what foods provide what I need.  I also added three subgoals for the eating part of our goal.  Subgoal A is to plan weekly meals every Sunday.  Sundays are usually pretty chill days in our world so I should be able to plan the meals for the week and do a grocery run as needed.  The planning day might switch...depending on how things go.  Subgoal B is to eat dinner at the table with Caleb at least five nights a week.  This was also a New Year's resolution for me.  We have developed the very bad habits of pulling out whatever is easiest from the fridge and kind of snacking all evening rather than creating a healthy meal and enjoying it together at the table.  The final subgoal is to eat breakfast first thing every morning-even if its just a cup of yogurt.  Gotta get the engines going with some good food right away.

This year is the year we will do it!  Our dreams have evolved into real goals with strong action plans and motivation to become the women we were created to be-energetic, happy, successful, active women.  I'm going to use this blog as a way to track my progress and thoughts....join me on the journey if you'd like.  :)