I want to take a few minutes every Friday morning to share with you a few things that are making me happy each week. I believe that focusing on the good things tells the universe to send more blessings our way. If you need a little help with consistently looking for the blessings, consider ordering The Five Minute Journal to start your day with a little gratitude.
5 Things That Are Making Me Happy:
Getting back to jujitsu class.
Finishing a good book.
Listening to vinyl with the Mister
Warmer temperatures for a few days.
Massage class tomorrow.
What’s making you smile this week? Take a moment to share with me in the comments.
If you read my 2018 goals earlier this week, then you know that I have a big weight loss goals for the year. As I said in that post, I’m not unhappy with my body right now, but I do want to turn around the slow creep of weight that I’ve been seeing over the last few years. So, I’ve set two January goals in relation to this: take my dogs for a walk every day and complete the January Whole30 challenge.
What is the January Whole30?
If you’re unfamiliar the Whole30 challenge, you can read more about it at www.whole30.com.
The high-level overview is that for 30 days, I am cutting sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, dairy and a number of preservatives out of my diet. During the challenge, I will be eating high-quality proteins, vegetables, fruit, and herbs & spices.
By participating in the January Whole30 challenge, I want to allow my body time to rest and reset from foods that have shown to cause reactions for other people. After 30 days, I slowly re-introduce these food categories one at a time, taking note of how my body responds so I know what foods don’t work well for my metabolism and health.
“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”
―Luciano Pavarotti
Why take the Whole30 challenge?
Last year, I started loosely following the Paleo diet, and I was really pleased with how my body responded to the changes in my food habits. I found that during my busiest season of the year, I had more energy and felt full longer. I was also seeing changes on the scale and in how my clothes fit. Then, the holidays happened, and I decided to relax my diet while traveling and spending time with family. Participating the January Whole30 challenge is a good way for me reset and get back to eating a Paleo diet afterward.
The Mister and I have decided to take this challenge together. For years we’ve been talking about how we need to eat at home more often. We know it will save us money, and we would make healthier choices. And since it’s easier to stay Whole30 compliant when eating at home, we’re using January to establish that habit.
I have a community. Several other bloggers that I follow and local friends are also taking their Whole30 challenge in January. It’s always nice when you have others to look to for inspiration and motivation.
My Whole30 Resources
The first tool might seem pretty obvious. I signed up for the Whole30 Newsletter. We also purchased the founder Melissa Hartwig’s daily field guide: Whole30 Day by Day because it’s good to have a journal to track our progress.
I use a meal-planning service. Planning ahead is key for Whole30 success. Luckily, we’ve been using Prep Dish by Allison Schaaf since November. Her meal plan is already gluten-free or Paleo, so it has been easy to adapt to our January Whole 30 challenge. I simply leave out the ingredients that aren’t compliant when possible. If the meal itself isn’t compliant, I just don’t make it.
I pulled out my Paleo cookbooks. Again, I don’t choose meals that aren’t compliant with Whole30, but many Paleo recipes work within the challenge. Since Prep Dish provides four dinners each week, there’s still room for a few other meals from my cookbooks. Currently, my two favorite cookbooks are Michelle Tam from Nom Nom Paleo’s Food for Humans and Ready or Not. (Michelle is also blogging every day this month at Nom Nom Paleo to support her readers taking the January Whole30 challenge.)
I totally fangirled all over when Michelle from NomNom Paleo commented on one of my Instagram posts last weekend.
Observations About the Challenge
Yesterday, marked our first week of the January Whole30 challenge, and this is what I’ve observed so far. Because we’re eating at home, staying compliant hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it would be.
I thought it would be difficult to give up creamer in my coffee, but it hasn’t been a big deal. I think this is because the Mister makes our coffee every morning via Chemex; the slow pour method brings out a lot of the coffee’s flavor.
For me, the hardest part is not having a glass of wine in the evenings after work. That’s definitely part of my process of unwinding at the end of the workday. (Not on jujitsu days, mind you.) It was especially hard on our date night. but we’ve been substituting kombucha and sparkling water for our “happy hour” treats.
The Mister has had a really hard time with snacking. He has a physically active job, and he snacks a lot during the day at work. He said that for the first week, he was hyper-aware of how much candy and sugar is around the shop.
I love that nearly every evening the Mister and I are sitting down in the dining room for dinner. We’ve also been squeezing in a lot of lunch dates at home. It’s been a great way to spend some quality time with each other.
One of the rules of Whole30 is you aren’t allowed to weigh or measure yourself once you start the challenge, but I am seeing changes. My body definitely tells me when it’s time to eat. I’m noticing that my skin is clearer. My stomach looks flatter. And my energy levels have been high.
If you’re doing the January Whole30, let’s encourage each other. Drop me a comment and let me know how things are going for you. Share one non-scale victory and one difficulty. Let’s do this together.
I’m so glad you decided to visit today. Since it’s the first full week of the year, I thought we’d kick this Monday morning off by taking a look at my 2018 goals. Also, if you didn’t see my post last week about my word of the year, go check it out.
Setting year-long goals has been really helpful because I can then break them down into smaller quarterly and monthly goals. If you’d like to see what I’ve been working the last couple years, be sure to check out these posts:
I feel that part of the reason I’ve accomplished so much the last few years is that I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in that calendar year and writing my goals down. For 2018, I’m working toward the following goals:
Hire an employee in my business.
I’m fairly certain that this employee will start out part-time, but I am definitely at the point where I need help in my company. At this point, it’s a matter of finishing up some budget reviews and spending some time with my accountant to nail down my timetable. But I’m aiming to hire no later than the end of quarter 2.
Pass my massage/healing exam.
The Mister and I are currently taking a year-long massage/healing course through our martial arts school. The exam will be held at our dojo’s annual clinic in October.
I’m feeling really good about passing this course. Our class is actually moving ahead of schedule with the coursework, and a few of us have created a study group to meet twice a month from now until September.
Hit my goal weight of 135 pounds.
This is the big goal that I didn’t meet last year. In fact, I finished the year five pounds heavier than I started the year.
So, the weight loss goal is a tricky bird for me. I’m not unhappy with my current appearance, but there is a reality that women tend continue to put on weight as they get older. And let’s be real here, this year’s birthday will put me squarely into my late 30s. So, I want to turn that trend of putting weight around.
As far as how I arrived at my goal weight – that is simply about what I weighed the last time I felt really smoking hot and comfortable in my own skin. And I want to finish the year feeling smoking hot again.
Pay off our credit cards.
I’m a little embarrassed that I’m even writing this goal again. It feels like we’ve been working on our debt snowball for forever, but the Mister and I are committed to getting debt-free. And this has to happen.
I’ll talk more about what our current debt looks like, but let’s just say to be done with the credit cards will really require us to push really hard, and we’re going to do it.
Okay, there you have my 2018 goals. I want to hear about your goals and resolutions for this new year. Tell me if you set them and what you’re working on.
Since I left the office for our Christmas vacation, I’ve been rolling around the question of what my 2018 word of the year should be. In 2017, my word of the year was “Start.” And the year before that, I chose “Achieve” as my word for 2016.
For 2018, I had a concept in mind, but couldn’t quite pin down my word. After some thinking and reading cookbooks (strangely enough), I picked a word, but I wanted to test it aloud with some friends and my coach before sharing it here on the blog.
So, I talked it over when I had coffee with my friend Danielle the other day, and she liked it. Then I shared my potential word of the year with my business coach and the Mister; they both gave me a thumbs up. So, now I’m ready to share with y’all.
My 2018 Word of the Year: Clarify
For me, I’m using the cooking concept of clarifying to remove impurities. I’m clarifying down to essentials as my guiding principle for 2018. I want to put my energy into the things that are really important to me and discard the distractions from my life and schedule.
The longer that I have sat with “Clarify,” the more excited I am about it as my word of the year. I feel that this vision is a great extension of the work that my business coach and I did in 2017 to prioritize where I spend my time. I’ll be using the word Clarify to help me identify what to let go, where to put my energy and when to accept or decline new opportunities.
So far, I’ve identified these areas are essentials:
My Marriage & Family Relationships
Our Financials and our Debt-Free Journey
Self-Care and Work-Life Harmony
My Jujitsu and Healing Arts Practice
Nurturing My Creative Side
Staying in Touch with Friends
And these topics likely to be what I’ll be sharing on that blog this year. Also, be sure to check out how my word of the year helped me clarify my 2018 goals.
Talk to me about your intentions for the year. Have you picked a word? What are you planning to focus on?