Year of MORE/LESS: January Wrap-Up

It's been a whole month of living my Year of MORE/LESS and so far....not bad. My January goals were mostly fitness and food-related. I was inspired by the awesome scrapbooker/designer/blogger/funny woman, Cathy Zielske and her goal to Move More and Eat Less. Every month she faithfully takes a full-body picture of herself in the mirror and posts it next to the same picture taken the day she started. The stark contrast is amazing and inspiring. (A side note: I will not be posting such pictures. Blame it on pride, shame, vanity, or other personality flaws if you want to, but it ain't happenin'.) She also journals about what went right, what went wrong and how she's feeling about the whole thing. I appreciate her honesty when some months are sucky and celebrate with her when she has a great month.

My specific goals in January were:

1. Food journal every day. This means everything I eat gets written down every day.

2. Run at least 10 miles per week and do some other type of work-out on non-running days.


My January results were:

1. I wrote down every single morsel of food that went in my mouth and doing so helped me better control my eating habits. (Another side note: Four years ago I joined Weight Watchers, bought all the materials and fully followed the program. Every food item is worth a certain number of points and you get a specific points budget for the day/week, so keeping track of what you eat is of the utmost importance. I still have all those materials and even though the WW program is changed, right now I'm following the old program.) I found that it made me smile to write down words like apple, carrots and Brussels sprouts. Words like candy bar, and doughnut were indeed tougher to bear. Because I wanted to eat healthier (and thus write down happier words) I tried out some new recipes in the kitchen, which helped achieve another one of my goals to Experiment in the Kitchen MORE/Make same-old, same-old LESS.

2. I met my running goal and really noticed an improvement in how fast (well actually, less slow) I can run and how my endurance increased. I ran some 5ks last year and have decided to run two 5ks this year and one 10k. I'm going to need a lot more endurance to get in that distance. I was inspired by my running friend, Harmony, to set running goals. (Only her goal is to run a MARATHON and mine is to survive a 10k.) On my non-running days I spent some time doing this:

And whoooooo-boy did Jillian kick my hiney. But in a good way. I had to schedule time to do this workout either before work on week days, or carve out some time during normal laundry/clean/channel-surf-time on Saturdays, but it's been totally worth it. On the days I do the work-out before work, I definitely feel better and make wiser food decisions.

The net result of January has been overall positive. I've lost a few pounds, gained some energy and feel pretty good. I think I've got good momentum and definitely want to keep it up in February.

Speaking of February, it's a new month, and thus some new plans. I want to continue with the Move MORE/Eat LESS (aka exercise regularly and make wise food choices) but increase my weekly running distance from 10 miles to 11 miles. I'll also add another February-specific (not fitness related) challenge. Stick around. I'll post more on that in a couple days.