I started my new job this week, and hence my new schedule for my life and all things included - keeping house, keeping active and just keeping on this healthy journey!
It has and will take a great deal of planning, but I am still Determined, and yes, I capitalized it, because I really mean it. So how in the world will I keep up with the exercising, eating healthy, losing weight and do it within budget, keeping the house up all with a reasonable amount of sleep while working full time? Here's my plan.
1) Exercising - I will be running Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. Tuesdays & Thursdays I will do a quick weight routine in the morning. If I have energy and time on the weekends I will add additional workouts in. My work schedule allows me to come in at 8am on MWF, so I will be getting up at 5am to run on those days, and going in at 7am on Tuesday & Thursday so I can get home early on those days.
2) Eating healthy - I'm planning my menu for each week for dinners - complete with reminders to remove things from the freezer or time to get the crock pot in order in the morning. For lunches, I will be bringing in stuff to make peanut butter and jelly (Skippy all natural PB and whatever jelly I like on whole wheat bread) as well as spinach salad stuff (with feta cheese, craisins, etc.). I'll keep those in my office and can make my own lunch easily. There is a cheap lunch option ($1 a day) at work but the fried fish on Friday gave me the inkling that the food isn't going to be healthy most of the time. I'll also keep almonds and cheese sticks at work for my mid-afternoon hungries. I plan to eat out once a week or once every other week at the most.
3) Losing weight - If #s 1 and 2 are in order that will naturally occur!
4) Budget - When planning my meals, I am keeping a "freezer inventory" so I am not having to buy meat every week or two. I spent $68 at the store the other day and that was enough for meals for 7 days including lunches. I have created a monthly budget template that we've been sticking to for some years, and will be staying within those guidelines and using cash. It really works for us.
5) Keeping house - So I am not one of those people who goes crazy cleaning (those of you that know me know this well) but I want things to be orderly and not dirty. I spent about half of my "in between jobs" time (about 2 weeks) organizing and getting things really ready. I will have set chores to do during the week so that my Saturdays aren't stuck with everything. Laundry will likely be a Friday evening/Sat morning chore for us all. Elizabeth will be helping during the week - unpacking her lunch bag when she gets home from work and choosing her outfits for the week on Sunday evening. Dishes will be done nightly, directly after dinner. Then bath and bedtime for Elizabeth while Stephen holes up in the library.
PHEW! I've done alot of planning as you can see. But it is so important to me that my family not suffer with me being out of the house every single work day. I want to do better than when I worked out of the house before. It's amazing how work/life balance becomes such a priority to you later in life. I used to think nothing of leaving work at 6 or 7. That will happen sometimes for me, but for the most part, it will be 3:30 or 4:30 for me on a regular basis.
I had a great run this morning chasing my faster friend - she probably runs a 7 min mile so you can see why I was chasing her. :) It felt great - I'm getting faster and hoping it continues to get easier as time goes on and weight continues to drop.
Hoping to report more weight lost next week - my new goal is to be down 100 pounds by the end of 2010. I've got some work to do to meet that goal! Stay tuned!!!
~Clara
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