athousandwords

Good luck getting back on track with food! It's such a struggle to figure out what's working, especially when you've hit a plateau. Hopefully being more aware of your choices helps!

Awesome, TIL! Always nice to try something new and make your brain work a little bit.

Can you share? I love oatmeal and I have some ripe bananas in the freezer to use up! This is such a fun idea! I'm so guilty of those 3rd... 4th... cups of coffee. This would be a neat way to tack on some movement.

Mmm this sounds amazing. I treated myself to apple cider + prosecco yesterday while decorating the Christmas tree and would recommend that for some seasonal cheer as well!

I've missed quite a lot with you this week! I'm sorry for the surprise loss and the complicated emotions that follow from that, but I'm glad you're getting support at work, especially with Dave not around. I know how unmooring those feelings are and how it can help to have someone to talk to and caring for you. And I'm glad to hear you're progressing toward your weight loss goals and getting lots of reading done! As well as being kind to yourself and spending time on activities you love an delicious foods - we've made sourdough pancakes quite a bit and they're always good!

Oh that's so beautiful! I love the fall colors. I have no idea what that technique that you were trying out is, but it turned out great regardless!

Monday/Tuesday 🎁 Keep LoseIt streak alive: ✅✅ ☃️ Drink 6 cups of water every day : ❌❌ 🌟 Choose one fitness challenge to do every day : ❌ ✅ Well I clearly jinxed myself. On Monday my 3yo was sent home from daycare with a fever and today we got her in at the doctor to find out she has (a very mild case of) RSV. Fortunately she's feeling pretty well, unfortunately it's very contagious and she has to stay home the rest of the week. 😭 And while this is annoying, it's not particularly devastating. My work is really flexible and we're in a slow season with the end of the year anyway. I've been able to keep all my meetings today because she's been mostly entertaining herself with watercolors, toys, or her tablet. But my brain hasn't gotten the memo that we're not in flight or fight node and so I'm stressed and I've been struggling not to stress eat the last two days. I've kept my LoseIt streak up, but my calories and quality of food are pretty shitty (did I eat Cheetos for breakfast while packing them in my son's lunch? yes, yes I did.) I'm out of my routine so I haven't been drinking water, and the fitness challenge just completely slipped my mind on Monday. This is all fine, we're doing okay. I just need to keep reminding my brain that having a hard week is not permission to binge eat chocolate. On the plus side: I got a new French Press.... and then our coffee grinder stopped working. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Looks like good progress so far! I've been using LoseIt too - I love that you can set high calories days and adjust your plan!

Saturday/Sunday 🎁 Keep LoseIt streak alive: ✅✅ ☃️ Drink 6 cups of water every day : ✅✅ 🌟 Choose one fitness challenge to do every day : ✅ ✅ Still going strong! Had a good day with the kids yesterday after my husband left on Saturday. Now for the week ahead... 😅 And in terrible news, I broke my French Press this morning! 😭 I ran out and got Starbucks after I dropped my kids off at school to make myself feel better. I guess it'll be black tea tomorrow morning until I can get a new French Press.

Thursday/Friday 🎁 Keep LoseIt streak alive: ✅✅ ☃️ Drink 6 cups of water every day : ✅✅ 🌟 Choose one fitness challenge to do every day : ✅ ✅ Well I've inadvertently created a habit cue to do my fitness challenge at the kids' bedtime. Which isn't ideal, but hey, at least it's getting done. I may try to make it more intentional choice next week but no promises. My husband is leaving for Germany tonight, on a one week work trip. He'll be back next Saturday, so it's just me and the kids till then. He's out with them at a birthday party right now, so I'm trying to get my life in order to make the next week easier. Cleaning the house, catching up on laundry, putting together a meal plan. We're doing all easy meals this week, stuff I know the kids love and will eat, and I can cook in less than 30 minutes. Mostly, I'm just hoping everyone stays healthy and can keep going to school/daycare this week. I guess this is technically the end of week zero, and the real challenge begins tomorrow. I think I did pretty darn well for a zero week. I hit all my goals, and more or less kept to my calorie budget. Yesterday was a bit of a cheat day; a friend and I went out to a winery during the day and caught up over a bottle of wine and fancy bruschetta. Then after dinner, our family watched the Bake Off finale and, of course, ate some yummy baked goods. Because the best way to watch GBBO is with a baked treat. (Extra points if you make it yourself, but ours were bought from our local bakery.) And all of that was a really lovely way to end the week, 💕

Following along!

Welcome from a fellow freezing Virginian! 👋🏻🥶 Hope you recover quickly from the plague!

YASSSS I love this challenge! Following along happily to get to shower Bingo gifs on you!

That's awesome that you have a workout buddy (even if it takes weeks to schedule something - sigh, #adultlife). It feels like you always get a better workout in when you have someone with you to push you forward. And congrats on the date! I'm glad you had a nice time and hopefully you get a chance to go out again and have fun! ❤️

So true! I've managed to stack a bunch of things into my nighttime routine because I'm right there at the sink - take vitamins, floss, brush teeth, 9-step korean skin care routine (ok 2 step) - you know? But it's harder for things like exercise because you really have to plan out. Am I wearing the right clothes? Do I have time to shower? Etc and it's so easy to put off. Last year I had good success getting dressed in workout clothes and going for a run immediately after I drop my son off at the bus stop, so I'll probably try to stick with that again. But it's cooollllldddd at 7am so I really have to motivate myself. 😅

This is what happens when you're not on the 'Tok, you completely miss out on what all the cool kids are wearing! 😭

My husband forgets even when I do tell him... yesterday he made me coffee with whipped cream on top, and like, it's sweet but I just wish he wouldn't. Not that whipped cream even adds that many calories! It's just that little treats like that are unpredictable. Still, it was lovely that he was thinking of you to make a charcuterie board, especially on an important Bake Off Finale! No spoilers - we don't get the next episode here until Friday! Ugh jealous. #6amWakeUpClub over here... 😭 There's a really good/funny/informative episode of The Maintenance Phase about keto, if you're ever interesting in learning more!

🎁 Keep LoseIt streak alive: ✅ ☃️ Drink 6 cups of water every day : ✅ 🌟 Choose one fitness challenge to do every day : ✅ Yesterday's fitness challenge was 15 calf raises and I almost forgot to do them. Like, I was putting my oldest to bed and then realized I didn't do my challenge today and quickly picked an easy one to squeeze in. In Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about starting small: just 2 minutes of the new habit. And I think, without quite realizing it, that's how I designed this fitness challenge. Most of these can be done in 2 minutes or less, which makes them perfect for building a habit base. But I have to build the structure of the habit too. Establish the cue, craving, response, and reward.* Right now I'm just winging it, fitting these small fitness challenges in whenever I have time - but that's not going to carry through to building a better fitness habit in January. So this week I'm going to experiment a bit with the cue part in particular: when is a good moment to fit in these exercises that can stack with a longer fitness habit later. Speaking of January... I think I need to start running again. Let me backup. Last March I ran my second half marathon with my family - it's a big tradition on my husband's side to run the Shamrock Race in Virginia Beach together over St. Patrick's Day weekend. Last year I did the 10k with my father-in-law and my husband's aunts, and then ran the half with my brother-in-law the next day. But the previous November I also started having problems with plantar fasciitis in one foot, and training for the half was brutal. I pushed through, but as soon as the race in March was done, I stopped running completely. This year I'm only signed up to do the 10k again (not crazy enough to take on the half with no training) but I realize that running 6 miles without any training doesn't sound very sane either. So I'm going to have to start running again if I don't want to kill myself in March. (And that probably means aggravating my PF again, which really hasn't gotten better, but also hasn't been treated in any way because I hate making medical appointments.) That means one of my goals for January needs to be some light running to work up to that 6 miles. Next year the second challenge runs conveniently through March 17, which is the race date, so I can build up more miles during the next 5 weeks. Anyway, none of that really matters right now, but looking ahead, it seems like January will be an exercise-heavy challenge, so getting those habits established now is only going to help me later. *Is this just an excuse to talk about my favorite self-improvement book? Yes, yes it is.

I'm gonna go ahead and blame the second baby at the start of lockdown... even though she's 3.5 years old now and I've run two half marathons in that time. (Okay, I think I've just been neglecting strength work. 🙈😬 )

The more the merrier! I'll go check out your challenge and follow along too!

Adding to the handwriting convo - a while back I decided I wanted to improve my cursive, so I would just write sheets of cursive handwriting. Song lyrics, random journal entries, copying books, whatever. Have a bujo challenge is actually a great way to improve your handwriting since you know you'll be writing every day.

Sounds like an awesome start to the challenge - you're killing it! I love the idea of starting work early and getting to leave early. Especially this time of year when it gets dark so early, leaving at 5pm makes it feel like your day is completely over.

🎁 Keep LoseIt streak alive: ✅ ☃️ Drink 6 cups of water every day : ✅ 🌟 Choose one fitness challenge to do every day : ✅ First day was off to a good start! My scale is a little up following the post-Thanksgiving feast (and subsequent leftovers) but I think drinking water and keeping an eye on calories will help. Yesterday I did the 30 second plank, which originally I kind of scoffed at - of course I can do 30 seconds, easy peasy. And then it was actually kind of hard... 😅 So yeah, I probably need to focus on strength training in the new year. But at least this is helping me figure out where I need work!

Oh my gosh there are new Valdemar books?!?!?! I haven't read that series in a decade or more, I didn't realize she was still writing them! Be still my beating heart! I may just have to do a read-along with you!