Episode 77: 60 days

60 days ago, AM challenged me to a walking challenge.  Today, I have completed the challenge.  Because I messed up my knee (something about bursitis), my doctor recommended that I walk for 20 minutes a day, as just light exercise to get the knee going and work out some of the muscles.  AM said that if we created a routine, a daily regime of walking, I could buy myself one small fitness item that will help me continue to get healthier.  That item is a FitBit.

I have been trying to track my steps, exercise and diet on my phone, but I am beginning to find that it drains my battery pretty quickly and it's not really all that constant. I have to have the phone with me, it can't be on the charger, if I want to track the steps that I take.  While they have apps for it, there are no really good apps to track your sleep patterns and sleep quality.  The Fitbit promises to do all that.  It's a gadgety thing that goes in a wristband that you keep on you at all times and tracks everything you do and then syncs wirelessly to your phone or computer or whatever to help you track.  And I get this neat little gadget probably tomorrow (if I can find money in my budget for it) because I kept a goal and I stuck to it for 60 days.

They say that it takes 27 times of doing something in the same way to create a habit.  60 seems excessive, but it works for me. I feel wrong if I don't do my walking every night now.  In the last 60 days, I have walked.  Sometimes I walked during the morning, sometimes I walked in the evenings. Sometimes, after coming home from gaming or a movie or just hanging out with our friends, we have walked past midnight.  The track that we take is simply around our apartment complex, two laps, which equals roughly between 2/5 and 1/2 a mile.  I didn't always walk in the apartment complex. Sometimes on rainy days I would walk the same approximate distance twice around the grocery store from the produce section to the bakery section and back.  Most of my random zombie walks down to the market and back counted for my walk for the day. Some days I exceeded my half mile by a lot, and sometimes I barely made it, either because of injury or illness (when you can't breathe for coughing, it may not be the best time to walk).  But I made it.

I finished my challenge tonight with one last walk past the mostly brightly lit windows around the apartment complex.  Inside, families and friends were going about their business, most of them watching television, or gathered in some other fashion. Some were using computers, and some were cooking a late meal.  Over the last 60 days, I have gotten to know some of these people. The gentleman in the balcony on the opposite building always smiles and tells us to have a nice evening.  A young mother yesterday told us that she felt it was a strange day when she didn't get a chance to say hello to us.  Though we don't know names, only faces and location, our walks have helped us get to know our neighbors and our neighborhood better.

My next challenge is not to end the walks, but to continue them and add some more to them. Another lap perhaps, or some weight training that my doctor recommends for weight loss.  Perhaps I will do both, but I know that I can create and maintain a habit for 60 days, and I plan on making more plans to become even healthier.

What do you plan to do with the next 60 days?

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 50: A Review

Wow.. has it been 50 posts so far?  Ok. I admit, I have been really lax at posting for the last week or so, mostly because of my complete lack of internet connection.  I am currently sitting and soaking up the warmth, the coffee and the ambiance of Noah's bagels... and stealing their internet.  I won't get mine back until the seventh.

I didn't weigh in this week (mostly because they were closed on Christmas day), so I don't know my current weight loss situation, but I have lost over 15 pounds so far, but that isn't far enough, and I'm pretty sure with the holiday gluttony I have probably gained some back.  I have to get back on track for a few reasons.  I may  have a fairly strong heart, but I want to give it as much of a chance as I can to live and be strong.  I want to be the girl that I see when think of myself in fantasy.  I also just want to be healthier.  So, that is what I'm going to do.

When I think of 15 pounds in the grand scheme of how much I have to lose, it doesn't seem like a whole lot, but at least it's a step in the right direction.  If I put three bags of sugar together, that's how much weight I've lost. I've lost 15 packs of butter from my body.  I've lost 32 8oz filet mignons.. and I'm only bound to lose more. When I put it like that.. it makes me feel like I can do anything!

In the week without internet, I have moved into a new apartment and started a new life.  I'm spending today finishing cleaning out the old apartment and getting everything out of it, even if it kills me.  I know I can do this. I am strong enough to do this. It requires that I clean out my car first, and throw away some of the boxes that I have in my current apartment to make room for the stuff coming in.  I'm almost done packing and I'm only going to give the old place a sort of cursory cleaning, hoping to get my deposit back.  As I have my rent paid up for next month, and a few other things, I may take a small part of that deposit and get my bass guitar kit and then put the rest on the credit card to pay back the exorbitant amount of money that I put on it in the moving expenses.

This new year will be a new start for me.  I think back on my last few years, and I think about EH and AM and everything that has come and gone from my life this year.  My family and my friends all say that the divorce was a long time coming and probably should have been done sooner.  I guess I just needed a catalyst.  I regret hurting my husband, who has taken care of me in the past, but in taking care of me, he stunted me as well.  I am 35 and I'm just learning how to balance a check book, how to pay attention and pay my bills and how to eat correctly and healthfully.  These are all things I should have been doing my entire adult life, but that I have neglected because I thought that someone else would take care of me.

Now, as I begin to grow up, I eat my vegetables (Brussel sprouts ARE palatable when roasted with garlic and olive oil!), I pay my bills, I have my own place and I am rediscovering my creativity again.  I am rededicating myself to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and I am hoping to rediscover my creative self and finish a damned novel.  I only have 283 days left to get it finished and I hope.. publishable. I start on Sunday... a new year.. a finished novel... a new love.. a new life... all in my new apartment.

I have to become a better teacher too, but with living on my own and everything, I think I will have plenty of time to work on grading and lesson planning and being the best teacher and writer and poet and singer and artist (and bass player) that I can be.

Anyway, I have about a mile to walk back home (it's .91 miles from home to Noah's), and then unpack and clean out my car and go move everything in my old life in order to start my new.  I hate moving.  I hate looking at the old memories.  I think back to the good times, and I know that I will miss them, but I also know that I am making the right choice for myself.  I can't go on living like I did, because I just kept getting more and more miserable.  I have been posting my emocubes (or emorbs as the case may be) on Facebook. I've been tracking those for about six months now.  My little emo chart had been going steadily down, with a few up spikes every once in a while for a while.  Once I made the decision to change my life.. the line on the chart has been going steadily up, with a few little dips here and there.

I know that I can make it on my own.  I know that I am strong enough to do this, and that my life can be anything I want it to be.  Life is what you make of it.  Today, I am making it my own.

Love, hugs.. and Chiiiii

ToryLynn