Weekly Update: 1/29/2012

So not a good week, but oh well! I'll update anyway.

WRITING:

Yeaaaaaaaah. That thing. I didn't get to do any of the posts I was planning on! But I'm trying to get back to it. Just way too busy this week.

FOOD:

Ate terribly. Tons of junk food. Probably from being busy and my self-justification. "I have a migraine, so I deserve this donut." Or, "I had to write a paper today, so I deserve all the food in the house." Still no soda, though! Which was really hard this weekend  since I had a tournament, and soda is the easiest thing to fuel up on. But I resistedddd, woo! Also, ate horribly at the tournament, but that's pretty much a given when 98% of the "good" food you can get on-campus on such short notice is filled with gluten. One of my new teammates introduced me to veggie wraps at sandwich places, though! Lettuce, avocado, turkey, mozzarella cheese, and olives. It was pretty good, despite never really having eaten avocado before. Though I'm pretty sure mozzarella still isn't good for you, haha.

Drank less water, too. A lot of it was from losing my water cup, though. If I have a straw I can down water, so when I had a reusable cup with one that I could bring places it was easy. But I think I left it at Daniel's house, so I cut back a lot. Found a reusable water bottle with an opening that's almost as easy as the straw for me to drink mindlessly, so that helped. Not sure why I'm so picky about how I drink water, but if it's just in a normal cup I'll only take a couple sips of it. I forgot my water bottle when I went to the tournament though, but I did run to the water fountains a ton when I got thirsty.

FITNESS:

Hahaha, funny. Didn't really do anything to focus on  Though, tournaments are much more physically demanding than you'd think. Running up and down stairs trying to find rooms, power walking across campuses to get to your round on time, standing all of prep time so you can sprint back and forth between prep "camps," straight out sprinting to use the bathroom so you can be back to the room before they announce topic, plus all the adrenaline getting you hyped up the whole time. And personally, I put on music and dance all around our prep room before rounds to wake myself up (IT'S SUPER SEXY GUYS) (ESPECIALLY SINCE I WAS IN FRONT OF FOUR BRAND NEW MEMBERS WHO DON'T KNOW ME YET) (#FirstImpressions). And all of it in heels.

I'm not sure how physically stressful it sounds to others, but everyone I know who's gone to their first tournament was surprised by how much harder it was on them than they expected. "You just talk, right?" turns into "holy crap how the hell do you do this for three days straight my mind is dead and my legs are falling off." It's kind of funny to watch the people who laughed at me for claiming tournaments are exhausting basically die at the end of a two-day tournament that they only have one event in. Average for me are three-day tournaments with at least three events. Very little sleep, not much food, constantly on my feet or running around. The only time you really get to sit is during a debate when it's not your turn to speak, but then you're furiously writing and thinking of all the arguments you're going to have to put back against things like the brink of economic collapse, or the likelihood of Assad following through with his missile threats, or if we should negotiate with the Taliban in Qatar, or all these other world interactions.

WEEKLY CHALLENGES:
1. Successfully brought lunch to school every day for two weeks. Woo! And now that I've found the joy of veggie wraps I might start doing that to have something more substantial than a random assortment of snacks (hard to pack easy gluten-free meals, since so much of it needs to be cooked or refrigerated).

2. Didn't really get much of a schedule going, since this week was so weird. But I think it'll get easier over the next couple weeks.

3. Still no soda!

NEW CHALLENGE:
Get back on track? After such a useless resolution week, I should probably just focus on getting back to where I'm supposed to be.

Even though I had a pretty off week, I don't care too much. I've been doing well until now, and I'm sure I can get back into what I'm supposed to be doing. 

Best boyfriend ever!

So as I've been talking about on every single post so far, I'm working on fitness resolutions.

But it's haaaaaaaaaard.

Now, this is probably me being a baby, but I liked laying in bed all day and eating all the chocolate in the house. It was awesome. And trying to change that is difficult. And I'm taking on a fairly large amount of goals as far as this goes:

1. Cutting out fast food
2. Weekly challenges (no soda this week)
3. Tracking everything I eat (only way I can be aware of what I put in my body. Otherwise back to 100% chocolate, haha)
4. Lose 1lb per week
5. Generally eat healthier
6. Exercise more!!! Every day, even if it's just jumping jacks or a walk or something. Just get moving.

So it's a lot of lifestyle changes. And I really do want to get them in my life for good, but aaaah it's hard to resist temptations.

But what I realize about myself is that I do much better when I know that people are suffering working on the same exact things I am. So I thought I'd see if anyone I knew would be willing to match me on this. And guess which sweet, amazing person loves me enough to do this with me for a while? Best boyfriend ever.

 I'm not sure how long he's going to stick with it, but he promised to do it for a while to help me get used to the changes. It made me very happy.

I was actually half-joking when I asked him about it. I thought he'd say no since he has no real reason to do any of it (besides the generic "being healthier is good" thing) and it would be pretty hard to convince me to change my whole lifestyle to help someone else. But as soon as I asked, he said he'd do it with me to help me.

Such a sweetheart. I love him.

So that made me pretty happy. And it's really motivating to have someone else to both rely on and be accountable to. Also, it's just so sweet of him. I feel like I can work a lot harder, knowing he's there for me.

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Anyway. Done with being mushy now. In other news...

Picnic tomorrow! (errr, later today, technically). Super excited. My plan is to bike to Safeway in the morning to get the food I'm bringing, then bike back home to make it. Then depending on how much of a pain it is to haul everything I need, I'll either bike or drive to the green. Then hours of hanging out with people! 

Today was good, too. Hanging out at the green with people was really nice. It was so hot for January! But it's been a while since we hung out there. Kinda reminded me of high school, actually. It was really fun. I need to get out of the house more, I forget how much I love being outside.

Maybe I'll try to go jogging in Foothills or something soon. The hardest part is just making myself go. Once I'm there, I love it. It's just impossible to remember that when I'm lying around the house. 

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Anyway, again. Writer's block sucks. I started a story, but can't figure out quite how to write it. We'll see where it goes.

2AM, I'm gonna try to sleep now. Sorry this isn't too interesting, but it made me happy, so I wanted to post about it. I'll try to have something interesting one of these days, haha. Night, people.

Tracking Progress and Fitness Goals

So, I know I won't ever do anything ever unless I have schedules. "Oh, tomorrow will be fine," is too tempting for me. So here's what I think I should do:

Monday/Thursday: Regular blog posts, if I don't already have two that week.

No-debate-tournament Sundays: Progress stuff. Because I should probably work on that, and public posts are more motivating than telling myself I should do more. This will mainly be me talking about:
1. How hard/easy blogging was this week.
2. If I have story ideas to work off of or not.
3. How fitness stuff is going (spoiler: probably not well, haha)
4. Any other goals I decide to play with.

Fitness stuff:

• Stop snacking, mostly. Like I said on the first post. 
•  I'd say "eat healthier" should be a goal too, but we both know that isn't going to happen, so I'm not going to lie to you. Let's go with "drink more water," which I also know won't happen, but we can pretend.
• I want to eventually be able to do 20 pushups. Because right now I can do 0. Seriously. I can't do a single push-up. I've never been able to. But how do you start doing more when you can't even do one to build up to it??? Ahhhhh. #patheticIknow
• Planking might help? Though I can only stay up for like 2 seconds before collapsing...
• Get outside more. I'm in my room aaaaaall day. Once I'm out I like it, but I always forget how nice it is to get a bit active when I'm lazing around in my bed.
• Promise myself "just five minutes." If I get outside at all I'll stay longer than that. Just have to convince myself to get out in the first place.
• Get out of bed within 30 minutes of waking up! If I'm up all day, I'll be more active. But I have a habit of waking up then staying in bed for hours and hours and hours, and I never do anything. I should probably stop that.
• Also, don't get up then lay back down as a loophole. Once I'm up, no sitting in my bed.

On a related note, I keep forgetting how much I love riding my bike. It's so fun! And I can do it for a fairly good amount of time without my body getting too beat up, as long as I take migraine pills right when I'm done. Which is annoying (I feel like I take so many pills, ugh), but manageable.

On a related-in-my-mind note, I love hashtagging things. I don't use twitter, but it's fun to label stuff. Usually I use a forward slash, though, not sure why.

ALSO. Went on Rachelle's Tumblr. Found a short film called The Strange Thing About the Johnsons. Really disturbing (thaaaanks Rachelle), but pretty good if you can make it all the way through. Link.

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll have a normal post tomorrow. Might go to the lake or something, so should be fun.

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EDIT: Since this is a Sunday, I'll do some progress stuff now.

Blogging: Got three posts last week, which is good! Had a hard time after the first post, but the random writing was fun, so I'll just do that when I can't think of a real story to do. I'll have to work on writing real stuff, though. Much harder than my "non-fiction" posts.

Fitness: Uhhhhh. Drank some water. Rode my bike for like 20 minutes. Jogged in place for like 5 minutes then got bored. Tried to do a push-up and fell on my face repeatedly.

General: Changed our facebook resolution group from Blogging to 2012 Resolutions, and added in the other people who made resolutions at Rachelle's party. I think it's better that way. Everyone can get involved, and we can help each other with all of our goals. From blogging to sewing to self-esteem, hopefully it'll help keep all of us on track!

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EDIT 2:
Weekly goals on Sundays, too! Just small things to try to accomplish each week. Exercise for 10 minutes a day, don't eat out, blog every day, or any other small thing. I'll announce them on Sundays, then have Mon-Sat to do them.

This week's challenge: No soda! I've been meaning to cut down on soda, so let's see how a week without it goes. Dr. Pepper is the only soda I drink, but I get horrible cravings for it. Usually I drink one a day...ick. Hopefully I'll get through this week without giving in, and maybe that'll help me cut down in general.


Anyone think I'm taking on too much here? I just feel so motivated right now! It'll probably wear off, but might as well set goals while I feel inspired. I can always edit them if I have to, but it'd be great if I could stick to them. And with the public posts and our resolution "support network," hopefully I'll be able to uphold most of the promises I make. Here's to doing this together, everyone! Good luck on all your plans for this year.

New Year's Resolutions

Hi people.

So this year my friends came up with resolutions in the best way ever. We put people without them up on a chair, had them state general areas they wanted to improve, and together the whole room of people shouted things out and edited suggestions until we found one that worked for everyone. (We should make that a regular thing, guys! So much more fun than just thinking of some random stuff on my own.) So anyway, that leads me to this blog.

It's kind of awkward writing like Anthony, Rachelle, and Adam aren't the only ones reading this, by the way, haha.

So anyway, here are my resolutions. Two that we came up with as a group, then one I thought I should add to this.


RESOLUTION 1: Writing

• What it is: This blog. I'm supposed to do two or more posts a week. Ideally one creative post, and one whatever-the-hell-I-want post.
• How I'll do it: I should probably pick two set days to always have one. Right now I think Mondays and Thursdays might work best, but I'll change it if those days don't work once school starts.
• Help me by: Commenting on my posts will keep me motivated, since I'll feel like this isn't worthless and abandoned. And bother me if I don't post all week! 
• Why: I like writing, I should do it more. It's fun, maybe it'll be good stress relief, and secretly I think I'm kind of good at it so we'll see if that's true or not.
  

RESOLUTION 2: Pole dancing

• What it is: Not sexual pole dancing, awesome athletic amazingness. I'll post a video of what got me hooked on wanting to do it at the bottom.
• How I'll do it: Well, the straightforward way is taking lessons. But if those are too far away/too expensive, I'll work on getting in shape enough to start up once I can. Especially in the Fall semester, when I'm (hopefully) in either Portland or Boston: If I can do enough to get my arms, legs, and core strong enough to even attempt to get on the pole, it will make my life easier later.
• Help me by: Uhmmmm. Bother me to work out? Yeah, push me to keep actually doing stuff to get in shape I guess, haha.
• Why: Because LOOK AT THIS WOMAN (awesomeness starts at 1:20). Do you know how awesome she is? I mean, I don't think I could ever do what she does, but I'm sure I could eventually learn some of that stuff and then I would be awesome too. Also, it really does get you in shape, so that's a good side effect. But mostly the awesomeness.

RESOLUTION 3: Fix an eating habit

• What it is: If I'm at home, I eat 24/7. I think I do it when I'm bored. And it's always junk food.
• How I'll do it: Be more aware of when and why I'm eating. Try to only eat when I'm actually hungry. Drink a glass of water before I eat anything. Promise to cook myself awesome dinner if I don't just scavenge snacks until I go to bed. 
• Help me by: If you notice it, mention it? I always forget anything related to restricting food, since I just pick it up the second I want it, so bringing it to my attention would help!
• Why: Can't have New Years without at least one health-related goal, right? Also, I think this is a good one. If I make a meal, I eat moderately healthy (and delicious) food. But as is, I just kinda snack all day. Probably not a good plan.

RESOLUTION 4: BE SUCCESSFUL WOOOOO

• Sit down and map out everything that works for me to keep my other resolutions going. And keep updating it. If I plan it all out, it'll be easier to do. 

So there they are! Let me know if there's anything else that you think of that would help me with these.

I have more stuff to talk about, but I feel like I'm boring you guys, haha. Oh well, I guess you can stop reading whenever you feel like, so it doesn't matter.

I'm torn on what I think I'll like more on this blog. I like creative writing a lot, I just haven't done it in a while. But I also like talking about my life and ideas and social change and all that jazz. I'm going to try to keep it split 50/50, so we'll see where that goes. Bug me if I've been neglecting the creative writing, though! If I'm not posting about political/social/whatever issues, I'm debating and talking about them. But if I'm not posting creative writing, I'm not doing it.

I should also probably have updates about how my other goals are going? Eating and working out. It might help keep me motivated with those, too. I won't make that a priority for the blog, but hopefully I'll be able to post my progress every once in a while to keep myself going.

As for some non-resolutional stuff:

I think this was my first New Year's with friends, ever. When I was little we went to a family friend's party down the street, which was fine with me since I was a kid. And once I got older we were always gone for Christmas and New Year's, so I never got to see anyone. It was great getting to be with you guys! 

So anyway, I think that's enough for now. I'll try to have a story on here soon. Good luck on your resolutions, everyone!