Goals and priorities

Part of the reason I started this blog was to record my progress on my healthy living journey. In the past year I’ve had a lot of incremental milestones, such as going off dairy, consulting with a homeopathic chiropractor and then a holistic doctor, taking certain herbal supplements, ect. And if they don’t get written down somewhere, they get lost, blurred or forgotten.

For example, I had the vague idea that I’ve been dairy free for a year now, but I didn’t remember the date. I looked back on my facebook timeline (not the easiest thing to do) and found that my first dairy free day was Jan. 30. Of course, I had a couple of stumbles (I can eat pizza—wait, no, guess that was a bad idea. I’m sorry, clean laundry, my bad.) and it took a while for me to figure out label reading for dairy ingredients.

I also want to use my blog to work through my thoughts and form plans for the future. I want to keep moving forward toward even better health including honing my healthy cooking skills, overall general health and additional weight loss. I realized, to do that efficiently, I should pick a few goals to tackle before moving on to the next thing. That way I won’t get overwhelmed and not accomplish anything. To do this, I need to write down some of my goals and then prioritize them.

In no particular order, here’s a list of some of the things I’d like to do:

Clean a little bit every day.

* Add exercise. (I did use my Biggest Loser for the Wii for the first time on Jan. 24 and it was awesome. Sad that I bought it almost two years ago and never used it but moving on.)

Add raw food to every meal. (I think least once a day is a more reasonable place to start.)

* Make salad in a jar for the week. (Buy jars.) I tried this in one of my pyrex dishes with a lid and it worked fine with no jars. I just took my whole supply of salad fixing in on Monday and ate it most days for part of my lunch. Putting my salad dressing in the bottom didn’t work that great—need to experiment.

Make homemade whole wheat tortillas for the week. Healthier than store-bought tortillas.

Start making weekly menu plans? Plan to try one new thing a week.

Find a way to organize and keep new recipes.

Start shopping for groceries based on the week’s menu and what new recipes I want to try.

Start blogging lists of the food I eat every day. (I’ve been thinking since I first brainstormed my list and I think it’s a better idea if I do this old school—scribble it down in a paper food journal.)

Drink while I facebook. (I tried this and it lasted one day.)

* Increase water and tea intake.

Blog at healthy, happy Holly.

Take breaks at work to get up and walk around a bit. Walk up and down the stairs twice a day? (the building has three floors) Hmm, to be realistic, let’s say I do this specifically when I notice I’m sore from sitting still too long.

OK, I went back through and put a * next to the ones I want to focus on first. I still think most are important and goals I want to work on, but I have to start somewhere. All three are ones I have already been working on or started last week (exercise and the salad one) so I want to continue to reinforce and perfect those.

Refined list:

Continue to increase water and tea intake. I’m up to nearly three containers (thermoses) of tea per day at work. I need to measure, but I think that’s 16 ounces times three = 48 ounces. The next level is to get it up to 64 ounces by drinking two thermoses in the morning and two in the afternoon. I should also drink one glass of water right away every morning at home.

Add raw veggies to my daily diet by bringing salad fixings to work on Monday and eating it throughout the week.

Exercise. I’m going to start with 20 minutes three times a week and move up from there. My sister Katy and I are supporting each other by texting after we exercise. The non-exerciser can then A. congratulate and support the exerciser and B. feel appropriately guilty and motivated.