Words I have seen other people pick include things like:

• Dedication
• Progress
• Clarity
• Focus
• Thrive
• Fearless

My word does not fit in this list at all. But I am sure it is the exactly perfect word for me right now.

A lot of things came together for me that just made this snap into place.

I love how sometimes I read or learn things that don’t seem to make much difference at the time and yet later sometimes those things make a big impact.

• I’ve seen some different things people have said about the new year and goals in various places.
• I saw a couple of people asking about what others’ words for the year were.
• I got an email that mentioned that one thing people screw up when planning for the New Year is not making plans for how they will respond in a month or two or six when they lose motivation and don’t feel like working on their goals anymore.
• Another email mentioned how showing up is the most important part of habit formation.
• Then I read this story about a marathon runner from 5am Joel. If you want the rest of what I’m writing to make sense, you seriously have read the story. Sort of a sappy type of story but for whatever reason something about the concept of it resonated with me.

After reading that story something clicked in my brain and I decided that crawl would be my word.

One reason I like this concept is because of some of the challenges I’ve been facing

One of my big challenges is parenting a four year-old. I love my son and parenting is a high priority for me. It also takes a massive amount of time and energy and I do sometimes wish I had more left over to make progress on personal and career goals.

And sometimes I just don’t have the energy for things even when I have the time for them. Maybe some of this is the general level of stress from the last few years with a particular world wide health issue that shall not be named today. Maybe it’s reading too many stressful news stories and worrying about things I can’t control.

Other times I feel like I just don’t have the togetherness. Like if I had the right plan and the right motivation I could make x, y and z happen but seriously all I want to do is curl up with a good book.

SO while maybe I’d like to make MASSIVE PROGRESS or BIG CHANGES, the reality is that it’s just not going to happen right now. In the mean time, I can make small steps, little changes and slow progress. And maybe if I focus on that the changes, steps and progress will add up more quickly than I might think. Which leads me to a belief…

CRAWLING is a powerful step.

Crawling can have negative connotations. But I’m a parent. I watched my son as a baby. I watched him learn to crawl. He crawled all over the house, the yard, and anywhere else he was turned loose.

At first he was slow and awkward, but it didn’t take that long before he could seriously HAUL ASS while crawling.

It’s deceptive too. Because It’s not just crawling. It’s learning how to navigate, strengthening muscles and building a sense of confidence and agency. Crawling is literally the foundation to learning how to walk and to run.

So maybe in a figurative sense I can learn and grow by aiming to make slow progress on things. I can build habits of showing up and accomplishing small chunks that feel doable. I can trick my brain into getting started on things and then maybe discover that once I’m started continuing is easier.

The idea is to build easy habits that are so easy I don’t quit doing them because I don’t have the energy. I want to build in small things that I can really stick to. I want to make it OK to do 2 minutes of something and make a little progress and actually tell myself that’s a positive step instead of thinking about all that is left.

So now that my theory about this is out of the way, let’s hit on some of the specific ways I plan to apply this.

Specific daily habits I’m thinking about based on the CRAWL mentality

I thought I’d share a few examples of how I will incorporate this. One of those is working on little habits that are designed to help me make a little progress towards my most important goals.

• Writing for this site for 5 minutes a day. Blogging is one of those things that has fallen by the wayside since B was born. While I can say I want to do it, I don’t actually do it. Like having not been doing it has created inverse momentum. “An object at rest…” and all that. But surely I can manage 5 minutes a day.
• Eating a vegetable with a meal. In my habit app, I made this as three separate habits so that I can get an easy win with each meal of the day. I know that eating healthy is super important but that can be elusive. This gives me easy, concrete goals. (And a bit of an extra push to counteract the struggle of knowing that B won’t eat most veggies so why bother? Um… because they’re good for ME.)
• Doing two minutes of strength exercises in the morning. I can do anything for 2 minutes.
• Cleaning off my desk each morning. My whole house might not get cleaner, but at least I can have a space that is cleaner.
• Remembering to enjoy story time. This is a parenting goal for me. Sometimes by the time the worst of the bedtime routine (i.e. the tooth-brushing battle) is over I just feel grumpy and harassed and can’t wait to be done. But that’s not the sort of parent I want to be. I want to enjoy reading stories to my kiddo and take time to appreciate that time. Reading books is really one of my favoritest things that I want to share with my son.

There are a few other habits I haven’t mentioned here and perhaps I’ll add more throughout the year as these ones become a little more ingrained. But CRAWL is my word for my year, so I want it to be more than a few habits. I want to bring it to mind on a frequent basis to figure out how I can make just a little progress towards the things I want.

I hope to use this as a mantra to remind myself to just make small amounts of progress, to keep going when I don’t feel like it and to appreciate my little accomplishments.

The post Crawl appeared first on Live Hoppy.

31 days. 4 states. 200+ miles.

In July I did the 30 day ride challenge hosted by Trailforks and Anthill Films. The challenge was simple: ride each day, including at least one full trail as mapped on Trailforks.

Tijeras, New Mexico trails

My month started off with lots of rides close to home. Luckily, I live close to some of the best mountain biking trails in New Mexico.

I tried to ride some different trails and extend my reach a bit, but there were also a lot of days when I just rode my favorite loop.

While I still can’t ride one difficult section of my fave trail, by the end of the month, I did get to where I could ride the entirety of the rest of the trail which felt like a huge accomplishment.

One thing I’ve noted before about New Mexico is that our roads and our waterways tend to be one and the same. This means it’s a really good thing it doesn’t rain that often.

Out in the desert, we just drive in the arroyos which are normally dry and our towns and cities generally lack good flood planning so when it rains, the streets just flood. Now, I have come to realize that this might also apply to bike trails.

Pagosa Springs, Colorado

I also made a trip to visit an old friend and some family. So I took my bike along and made some people babysit B for me each day so I could go ride. Priorities, right?

Farmington, New Mexico

Farmington is my other hometown. My mom lives there and I went to college there. But I didn’t mountain bike when I lived there, so the excellent mountain bike trails were something of a surprise. A pleasant one.

I was out to ride early on the two days I went on these trails and the sunrises were amazing. Also, sweeping views and bushes that smell like home. And crazy fun bike trails. Not the gnarly, rocky, hardcore trails I’m used to. Smooth, flowy, trails with little bitty hills that are just big enough to be a ton of fun but not a ton of work to pedal up.

One of the joys of this challenge was biking in places I wouldn’t have otherwise tried. Most of the time when I travel, I leave my bike at home, but I may rethink that.

Aztec, New Mexico

I also went for one ride outside of Aztec, New Mexico: The Alien Run. It was a blast. I’m totally riding it again next time I’m in the area.

After my trip, I returned home for a few days and then it was off on another adventure. This time for work, but with a bicycle stop thrown in on the journey.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Texas

My last ride of the 30 day challenge was at Palo Duro Canyon, which has more pictures than it’s fair share for only one ride.

I have a thing for State Parks with cabins because I wish I lived in an RV and traveled everywhere, but I don’t actually have an RV right now so I need alternative accommodations.

I’m all for tents under some circumstances, but July in Texas is not a circumstance where I’m all for living without an AC and a shower. Also, business trips and tents don’t really go that well together.

Anyway, on this trip, I was staying at the Lighthouse cabin on the rim of the canyon which made me feel a sort of obligation to make it out to my cabin’s namesake and the park icon: The Lighthouse Formation.

I was at the trailhead for this ride before the sun was up. But it was still by far the hottest ride of the month. By nine in the morning, I was totally miserable. Still, my ride through the canyon was worth it for the cool views and the neat rocks.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

So after doing the 30 day challenge, I figured I was only 1 day away from riding every day in July. So I went out for the 31st day in Tulsa.

I loved discovering the Turkey Mountain wilderness area because it is a great pocket of nature in the city. But I felt sad I hadn’t discovered it sooner since I’ve been traveling to Tulsa for work for the past 12 or so years.

The only downside was that it was just so humid. I am not at all used to the humidity and I suffered from it, feeling all wet and sweaty and gross and also missing the cooling effect that happens when sweat can actually evaporate.

Miscellaneous

First off, a few real selfies:

Fitting in a ride every day was tough. Sometimes I rode at sunrise, other times at sunset. A lot of my rides ended up being mid-day because afternoon thunderstorms ruled out the afternoons and left the trails too wet in the morning. Riding during the hottest part of the day was not my idea of ideal. But it happened and I’m so proud I rode every day.

This challenge was amazing. My strength and endurance improved. I lost weight. I saw some amazing places. I pushed through the days that it was tough. And I’m super pleased with myself.

The post 31 Days of Mountain Biking in Pictures appeared first on Live Hoppy.

I think I do better with black and white than I do with moderation when it comes to some things. I sort of got back on track for a few days after I started feeling better and then gave in and had cheese and sour cream one night. Knowing that I hadn’t stuck to the plan 100% had been eating at me, even if I had a more than legit reason with the flu. (Even the insanely rigid Whole30 website has a post about being sick and mentions that if all you can hold down is a piece of toast, it’s OK as a last resort.)

So then I had a few more days sort of on plan, sort of off plan. I knew that it would bother me that I hadn’t completed it, so I decided to start over fresh.

Today is day 8 and I’m feeling good about this. There were a few days where I felt a little down about my ‘failure’. During my first few days this time around, I kept noticing how much easier it was than my first go at it.

My day one on January 1st was awful. I was coming off of eating too much sugar and carbs. I had an awful headache. This day one was easy. Sure, I’d eaten a few non-compliant things, but my diet had been much better for weeks so my body was already adapted to living without the sugar.

So I’m back in the groove and giving it another go. It will end up taking most of February, but that’s OK. I was a bit down about my ‘failure’, but now that I’m committed to trying again, I’m feeling better about it. Plus, because I at least gave it a good go in January, I ate way better than I would have otherwise.

I have noticed some benefits from eating better. One of the big ones is that I have more energy and more consistent energy throughout the day. I can also tell that my body has made the transition from running on sugar to running on fat. I’m less prone to feeling like I am starving if I go a few hours without eating. My cravings for sugar are somewhat reduced.

The way I think about food is different too. Things like nacho-flavored chips just seem so fake. Obsessively reading ingredients is one of the gifts of a Whole30. It’s also sort of a curse. It leaves you wondering things like, “Why does this company put sugar in my deli turkey? It’s for a sandwich not a cake or something.” Or “Why does my lemon juice need sulfites? Can’t they just put lemon juice in there?” Then there’s a whole ton of worse, weird, ingredients in things, many of which I totally don’t know what they are. Of course, most of those products are one’s whose labels I don’t even bother to read these days because I already know they’re not Whole30 compliant.

It makes me think of one of Michael Pollan’s food rules:

Avoid food products with ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.

This is one of the ‘resets’ that the Whole30 promises. Getting back to eating real food with real ingredients. Or better yet, things that are the ingredient like a steak or an apple.

One of the other cool things is knowing that because I’m eating healthier I’m feeding healthier things to S and B. Certainly they both eat other stuff and I haven’t even tried to make either one of them Whole30 compliant, but I do most of the grocery shopping and cooking. I am no where near perfect with what I feed B, but I do try to feed him healthy-ish stuff and it gives me a special sense of satisfaction when I see him eat a plate of scrambled eggs with veggies. (I chop them up super small so he can’t pick them out.)

I do totally miss some foods like cheese and have other random cravings for things I’m not eating. Some of these foods I know don’t actually promote a healthy emotional/mental response for me anyway. It’s only for 30 days and eight of them are already over. Once the 30 days are over, I’m sure I won’t be as strict about what I eat, but I also want to keep my good food habits.

So most of February will be Whole30 take two for me. I am tackling a second big goal for February as well which is to be extra-productive at work. It’s not the most exciting goal, but I figure tackling it during the winter is a good time since in the spring and summer I want to be outside more.

The post My January Whole30 fail appeared first on Live Hoppy.

Later, I checked out one of his books on Overdrive from my library’s ebook collection. His books talk about steps to take to make your brain healthier (many of them also include making your body healthier). I didn’t actually read all that much of it, but one thing he mentioned stuck with me.

Know YOUR numbers

One of those numbers to know is your BMI or body mass index. This is calculated using your weight and height. It’s then used to classify people as underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. If you just Google ‘BMI’ an easy BMI calculator will come up.

I think he mentioned some other numbers as well, but they were based on lab tests that are harder to get without seeing a doctor. The one that stuck in my mind was BMI. (Knowing your numbers from lab tests and knowing that they mean is a good idea too.)

Being overweight is bad for your brain. Obese people actually have smaller brains. Yikes!

Knowing your BMI means you can’t lie to yourself about your weight. “Maybe I have an extra couple of pounds” becomes “Crap, I’m 30 pounds overweight.”

One argument you’ll hear from people if you mention BMI is that it’s not the most accurate measure of whether or not one is overweight. For example, muscle weighs more than fat and body builders can weigh more but still be healthy. Are you actually a body builder?  No. I didn’t think so. Then lets move on from the excuses.

Sure BMI might not be a perfect reflection of your health, but the weight ranges that are healthy for any given height are probably a good ballpark figure for most of us to aim for.

I’ll be the first to admit that when I calculated my BMI after reading this tip, I was not best pleased. I have a bit of ‘baby weight’ still hanging around.

The cool thing is that acknowledging a problem is the first step to fixing it.

I’m not totally onboard with all of the stuff Daniel Amen says, but I do think he makes some good points. I think knowing your numbers is an excellent tip that could be applied to anything from health to business to personal finance.

The post Know YOUR numbers appeared first on Live Hoppy.

I mentioned in my last post that this year I am focusing more on monthly goals than annual goals. The idea is that this condensed time frame will help me to focus more on one thing at a time and make real progress. We’ll see how it plays out in practice.

My goal for January is to complete a Whole30. I did one maybe four years ago and it really helped me out a lot, but it was definitely time for another.

What the Whole30 is (and isn’t)

The NO List

Sometimes it seems like the quick description of the Whole30 is just a list of NOs.

• NO sugar or sweeteners (artificial, natural or other)
• NO grains
• NO dairy
• NO legumes (beans, peanuts, soybeans to name a few.) I don’t know the correct pronunciation of the word legume.
• NO sulfites, carrageenan, or MSG
• NO recreations of junk foods using approved ingredients
• NO getting on the scale

The first time I heard about the Whole30 from my friend M, I just thought, “Yeah, NO thanks, wacko!” (And then a week or two later, I ended up jumping right on.)

While that list of NOs is accurate, I feel like the real meaning of the Whole30 has more to do with the YES list. There are rules to the Whole30, but there are also recommendations about what to eat. In my experience, these recommendations are what make for a successful Whole30.

The YES List

• YES meat, eggs, & seafood of all kinds. Preferably natural, organic, grass-fed, and/or sustainably sourced.
• YES vegetables.
• YES fruit (in moderation).
• YES healthy fats like coconut, avocado, olives, coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, ghee and coconut oil.
• YES eating lots of good, filling, tasty meals.
• YES carbs. Some people mistake this for a low carb diet because of the prohibition on grains, but carbs are fine in the form of fruits and vegetables (think sweet potatoes- a Whole30 staple).
• YES eating enough to be satiated.

Oh, and two more NOs that aren’t part of the official rules: NO going hungry. NO counting calories.

The goal of the Whole30 is NOT to be a diet. The purpose is NOT about losing weight (at least it’s not supposed to be about losing weight), although most people do lose at least a few pounds when they do it. Certainly many of us DO undertake it hoping to lose weight, but that’s not what the program was designed for.

So what is the purpose of the Whole30?

Everything is based on the idea that healthy foods should meet four standards. 1. Promote a healthy psychological response. 2. Promote a healthy hormonal response. 3. Support a healthy gut. 4. Support immune function and minimize inflammation.

The foods that are NOs on the Whole30 commonly fail at least one of those four standards for many people. So the Whole30 plan is about eliminating all of those foods for 30 days to get a baseline of feeling good from clean eating and then slowly testing them one at a time to see if you have bad reactions.

It’s about running an experiment to learn what your personal reactions are to foods that commonly cause problems for people. Many people discover that certain symptoms or issues they have had for years disappear on the Whole30 and they previously had no idea that it was food related.

It’s also about some other things like getting hormones involved with eating and blood sugar reset to a healthy pattern. It’s about developing a new relationship with food- eating for health and nourishment rather than because you’re craving sugar or another unhealthy food.

It’s about what the program terms NSVs or Non Scale Victories – paying attention to how you feel when you change your diet. Looking for results like more energy, better sleep, more consistent mood, etc.

The Meal Template

One of the things that I found most helpful on my first Whole30 was the meal template. It provides a guideline for how much protein, fat and vegetables to include with each meal. It’s not a rule. It’s a tool to help people as they are switching over to this type of eating.

The goal is to get to where you’re eating three solid meals a day and not snacking much, but snacks are not prohibited if one is really hungry. The idea is that if you can’t make it between meals without needing a snack, you should eat more at each meal. It does take some time to figure out how much is enough. (There’s an additional pre-workout meal and post-workout meal for people that are working out.)

Technically, you could eat nothing but fruit smoothies and fruit and nut bars and you would be doing a Whole30, but you would entirely miss the essence of what it’s supposed to be about. I feel like including at least some protein, fat and vegetables in each meal should be a Whole30 rule. I certainly try to treat it as one, although some of my meals definitely include more or less of each category than others.

It Starts with Food

It Starts with Food is the name of the first book published by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig about the Whole30. It goes in depth outlining the science behind why some foods are prohibited on a Whole30 and why others aren’t.

Maybe it’s just my personality type wanting to know the sciency details, but I thought it was a great read. I think understanding the why behind something is important and adds motivation and conviction when the going gets tough.

It made a lot of things about the less-than-optimal state of my health make sense. I read it once before my first Whole30 and I’m in the process of reading it again. So much that I had forgotten!

At the time of my first Whole30, it was the only book they had out. In the mean time, they’ve published several other Whole30 books, but It Starts with Food is still the one I’d recommend to anybody looking for in depth information on the program.

That said, you don’t need to buy anything to do the program (other than food, of course). Plenty of information for it is freely available online.

Free Whole30 Resources

The master resource is the official Whole30 Website*. Of particular interest there are the Whole30 Program Rules, the downloads page where you can find a meal template, shopping lists, a guide to common preservatives and more, and the forum where you can get support or just browse the posts.

There are also tons of great Whole30 recipes available online. A couple of good sites to start with are Nom Nom Paleo and Well Fed.

Notes on products and marketing

*I have to note that the official website seems like it has so many things on it to try to get you to buy something now. You don’t need any of those things to do a Whole30. Some of them may be useful or helpful, but others almost seem like they detract from the program to me. Like the meal planning. If you don’t know how to make a shopping list and do a little meal planning, now is the perfect time to learn. Don’t pay for their plan.

Part of the experience of a Whole30 should be trying new foods, getting hands on, picking fruits and vegetables, using a knife and a pan in the kitchen, starting with whole foods and turning them into a meal.

They now have Whole30 approved Walmart brand frozen TV dinners. Which mostly I just feel is completely wrong. Throwing some tasteless meal out of a cardboard box into the microwave and then chowing down is not the goal here. It’s crazy to see how this has taken off and become a marketed, money-making thing.

On the flip side, some little bitty piece of me feels like it’s progress. If you’re going to be eating a frozen meal anyway, at least pick one without a bunch of nasty crap in it. And it goes to show just how many people have made this effort to improve their health is cool.

Plus, I do understand that whatever one’s best intentions, it’s sometimes really hard to plan and cook for every meal. Maybe a backup for traveling or some catastrophic day is OK. On the flip side, by the time you’re shopping at Walmart, you could just buy say a bag of almonds and a few bananas to tide you over.

The good news is that one can just ignore all of that stuff and do a Whole30 old-school style. Which brings me to some memories from my first Whole30.

My First Whole30

I’ve been thinking back to what I remember about my first Whole30. I learned so much for it. I really had no idea how to cook any type of meat before then, so I had a learning curve there. But I pushed myself to be adventurous. With a bit of help from the internet, I learned how to cook shrimp, chicken, ground beef, steak, and salmon.

This is embarrassing to admit, but I wasn’t even really sure what sweet potatoes looked like the first time I went looking for them in the produce aisle. I was only familiar with the type that come out of a can.

My first Whole30 was at a time when there were just starting to be brands that were putting out products aimed at being OK to have on a Whole30. So making your own mayo or ranch dressing or ghee was just a part of the program for many people.

I remember making my own mayonnaise for the first time and how cool it was. Also, I had a few fails where it didn’t work right and was a gross mess. I tried my hand at making my own pickles. Although since I don’t remember eating them, I suspect something went wrong with that experiment. I made my own ghee too.

Then I found specialty avocado oil mayonnaise with only approved ingredients and this amazing ghee on Amazon and now I don’t make them anymore. But it’s still important to me that I went through the process of learning how.

I also remember people complementing me on how I looked, saying that I looked like I was glowing or that I looked good. That’s always a nice thing to hear.

Also, I lost 8 pounds while eating huge meals and not working out at all.

Things changed for me after that. I kept eating mostly Whole30 stuff for a long time. I read ingredients on the stuff I bought a lot more often. I cooked more. I ate eggs and vegetables for breakfast every morning.

Eventually, I did start to slide back to old habits a bit. Then when I got pregnant and felt sick all the time, there were so few foods that I could tolerate and none of them were that healthy. B was born and my sleep was so messed up and my hormones and my eating habits weren’t the best. Now, I want to get back to what worked so well for me.

My Second Whole30

Today I am almost done with day 9 of my second Whole30. That means I’m 30% through it. First and foremost, I can’t wait to see what the scale reads in 22 days. Which, of course, is not supposed to be the point. I’m not actually normally obsessed about weighing myself, but I’m just curious to see what the results are.

This time around, it’s easier in some ways. I already have a repertoire of recipes that I like and know how to make. I know what sort of ingredients I’m looking for. I know of products I like that have approved ingredients. Despite my long absence, it feels like returning to a town I’m familiar with or putting on a favorite sweater.

In other ways, it’s been an adjustment. Coming off of sugar and flour and all that other stuff is not entirely easy. Day 2 I had awful headaches. Sometimes I’ve felt sleepy. I am maybe only now getting to where I can do just 3 meals a day instead of needing a snack in there somewhere. I felt very jealous yesterday when S poured Parmesan cheese on top of his zoodles (zucchini noodles).

But I’m noticing improvements too. Maybe my pants are a little looser, I have a little more energy, my skin is a bit clearer. Also, for the longest time, I’ve had this irritated spot on one of my fingers where it was like the skin just wasn’t thick enough and it is suddenly better in the last few days. Which is one of those things that one might wonder if it’s really due to the dietary changes, but I’m fairly certain that it is.

Whole30 and the family

The first thing recommended on the Whole30 site is to clear out everything that’s not approved from your fridge and pantry. My first go around, I mostly did that. This time around, I haven’t done that at all. S can still eat whatever he wants. He’s an adult. Some couples jump in and do the Whole30 together, but that’s not really our style.

And for B? I have enough on my plate with making sure that my Whole30 is successful, I’m not aiming at a Whole30 for him. Plus, he likes to drink his milk. By default though since I’m cooking a bunch of Whole30 stuff, he’s eating a lot more of it too. In fact, S eats a lot of it too.

My decisions for my health also end up affecting the health of the people around me. Pretty powerful stuff.

It turns out B likes scrambled eggs with sweet potatoes. He likes zoodles too, just not for eating.

Are you thinking about doing a Whole30, but also think it sounds a little crazy?

As I mentioned above, the first time I heard about the Whole30 I thought it was crazy too. My friend M had so many good things to say about it though. I am so glad that I gave it a shot. It really was an amazing experience. (It must have been, I’m doing it again!)

I read something in Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project. One of the best ways to predict how happy you will be if you do something is to see how happy somebody else who has done it is. Does your friend gush about the new workout class they go to? Give it a try. Does some random blogger gush about this life-changing diet? Give it a try. It’s only 30 days. You have nothing to lose and perhaps quite a lot to gain.

The post Whole30 mega-post appeared first on Live Hoppy.

I do have a practice of reviewing the previous year as I’m working on my goals for the next year, and it’s always a valuable experience.  I take time to write down my accomplishments in the same categories I used to make my list of goals at the beginning of the year (health, relationships, finances, work, creative pursuits, fun, etc.)  I also make a list of things I am grateful for from the year. 

When I really take the time to review the year there are always areas where I also had progress and accomplishments I never would have imagined.  For example, at the start of this year my house in Socorro had been on the market for months while we were renting a place in Albuquerque.  Our rental was not meant to be a permanent place.  The most ambitious I could get with my goals was to ‘Do something with my Socorro house.’  For various reasons, the whole situation felt overwhelming and complicated. 

Now we’ve been living in my dream house for months.  We’ve settled in.  Last night, I was sitting in the living room thinking how it felt like home. 

While I think it’s important to contemplate our goals, dreams, hopes and intentions for each year, we also have to accept that we’re only part of the equation.  Life happens.  The universe does it’s thing.  We have to be fluid. 

Even if it’s hard, it’s also important to take time to reflect on those areas where you didn’t see the progress that you wanted.  Are they things that just really aren’t that important to you?  Did you pick a strategy that wasn’t going to work?  Did you have too much on your plate?  Do you want to drop the goal entirely or make tweaks so that you’re more successful with it next year?  Were there things you learned from your attempts? 

I started this post to say: there is more than a month left in 2018.  It’s the perfect time to review your goals from January and see where you can make a bit of extra progress as the year winds down.  Finish strong.  Think about what you can do now to kick-start your success for next year. 

Related posts: New Year’s Reflections and 2018 Goals.

The post It’s still 2018 appeared first on Live Hoppy.

Yesterday I woke up with a list of things I wanted to do over the weekend.

One of those things was painting my old toy box for baby B.  It’s a nice toybox- solid, unfinished wood.  My dad gave it to me when I was young with the intention of painting it.  Twenty-five years later, it is still not painted.

When baby B was born, I swore I’d have it painted for him before his first birthday.  My deadline is quickly approaching.

Still, come Saturday morning, I felt like I should tackle other things on the list first like doing the laundry or mopping the floors.

Then I thought, “If I don’t have time on a Saturday morning to work on the project that I want to do, when will I ever have time for it?”

So I spent the morning working on the toy box.  Mostly this involved taking things out to the shop for it and organizing my workspace a bit.

I did get work on the actual toy box started though.  I filled in some of the holes with wood filler and started the sanding on it.  The years have not exactly been kind to it and it needs some prep work before the fun part of painting it can start.

It felt amazing spending a bit of time working on this.  I’m actually really excited to see how it turns out.  I have a few other pieces of furniture in need of some refinishing too, so I think this is going to be my new hobby for a bit.  I love hands-on work.  It feels so grounding.

How do you spend your Saturday mornings?  Is there a time during the week that you set aside for the things that you want to do? 

The post How do you spend your Saturday mornings? appeared first on Live Hoppy.

Pick a long period of time to consider.  My time for this exercise is 50 years. I’m almost 30, so in 50 years, I would be 80.  Depending on your age, your time frame might be different. Even someone who is 80 could live another 20 years.  A lot can be accomplished in 20 years!

For this example, I’ll use 50 years, but substitute your own time frame and questions.

Just think, what if I wrote every day for 50 years?  Could I publish a book? 5 books? 10 books? 50 books?  

What if I made just one trip every two years to a different country?   

What if I volunteered one day a month to a cause I care about?

What if I saved $100 a month?

Here’s some quick answers to ponder:

• At just 500 words a day, I’d have 9,125,000 words.  The average novel is somewhere around 100,000 words.  So that adds up to 91 books.
• I’d end up visiting 25 different countries.
• In 50 years, I would have volunteered 600 days.
• At a 7% interest rate, I’d end up with about a half a million dollars.

Think about long-term goals!

Take time to consider how much you could accomplish in 5 or 10 or 50 years.

Long term goals can be hard because we tend to think that we just don’t know what our lives will look like in 20 years, so how are we supposed to plan for it?

While it’s true that we don’t have total control over the future, often times we have more control than we think.  We are capable of so much over a long span of time- raising kids that in turn have their own kids, having a whole career or many careers, creating a life’s body of work, becoming the top expert in a field.  The list goes on and on.

Dream a little.  Expand your thinking.

I’ve had a practice for a long time of reviewing my goals for each year.  I felt my mind expand when I thought about this.

Do you have any really long-term goals?  Have you pondered what you could accomplish in 50 years before?

The post What can you accomplish in 50 years? appeared first on Live Hoppy.

In some ways the changes from it have proven to be more gradual than I expected.  In other ways, the changes have proven to be much deeper and far-reaching than I expected.

I figured that not buying sugar would quickly equate to not having sugar in the house.  I didn’t take into account exactly how much we had to start with.

When I say that we finally ran out, I mean that we finally used up the small bag of refined white sugar we had that was actually labeled ‘sugar’.  We still have some sugar-containing things.

Remaining are two jars of honey, three(!) bags of powdered sugar, half a jar of molasses, a little bit of a jug of syrup, part of a bottle of chocolate syrup and part of  a small box of sugar cubes.

I don’t know why there are so many bags of powdered sugar.  It’s not even something that I use that often.  Although perhaps that is exactly why. At this rate, it may be a few more months until the house is really empty of sugar.  Or some things, like the powdered sugar, may just hang around for the whole year.

It can be so hard to pass up sugary things at restaurants.  And despite my goal, a few times I have gotten things with sugar anyway. 

I intended for this to be something that I stuck to 100%.  But it just hasn’t turned out that way.  There have been a few times that for whatever reason, I just went for a sugary thing.  There was the blueberry scone that I just couldn’t resist one morning at the coffee shop and a handful of other incidents.

I guess by saying that I couldn’t resist it, I am selling myself short.  Surely I could have resisted.  But I didn’t.

It seems best not to dwell over-much on my few slips and to instead take it as a point of knowledge making me aware of how much sugar is out there and the incredible pull that it can have on my brain.

Speaking of awareness, I am so much more aware of the amount of sugar in so many of the foods available.

Now that I am looking for it, it seems to be absolutely everywhere.  Cake, cookies, ice cream, cheese cake, soda, muffins, syrup on pancakes, jam, and all sorts of other things.  Then there are the things that we don’t even think of as sweet foods: yogurts, salad dressings, spaghetti sauce, lunch meat, breads, bacon, most of the supposedly ‘healthy’ breakfast cereals, et cetera.

It’s sick to realize how saturated our food is with the stuff.

Since I’ve been reading ingredient lists obsessively, I’ve also become disgusted by many of the other ingredients that are listed.

I read the ingredients that were in a bottle of ranch dressing I had hanging around and when I really thought about what was in there, well, the ranch ended up chunked in the trash.  No thanks.

The cereal aisle is packed with cereal all the way down the aisle, with nothing but cereal from the floor to the tippy top of the shelf.  There are dozens of types of cereal.  The only two boxes I could find without sugar as an ingredient were Grape Nuts and shredded mini-wheats.  Even some of the things that seemed hopeful like the plain cheerios and the corn flakes had sugar.

Crackers were the same way.  The only ones I could find without sugar were Triscuits.  I don’t even really like Triscuits, but I bought them anyway.  Perhaps I don’t like them because they don’t have sugar, but I think it has to do with their strange woven texture.  Maybe they’ll grow on me though.

Ironically, after searching for sugar-free cereal, I would then take it home and sprinkle sugar on it.  This will have to stop now that I’m actually really out of sugar.  But I’m not sure I can imagine cereal without it.  I may just go without eating cereal at all from here on out.

Even putting sugar on things like Grape Nuts feels better than buying cereals already loaded with it because I am in control of how much goes on there… even if I put on too much. 

Despite the remaining bits of sugary things in the house here and there, my overall level of sugar consumption has dropped a lot.  No more Costco sized cheesecakes.  No more Eggos with syrup.  No more ice cream or boxes of sweet breakfast cereals.  Other than the few slips, I order things like omelettes instead of things like french toast when we eat out and I don’t get desert.

I feel notably less crazed for sugar.  I don’t have intense cravings any more and my brain just feels calmer about it. 

If I think about cheesecake, it certainly still sounds good.  It doesn’t make me feel like I need it though.  Walking past the cheesecake section at Costco doesn’t evoke a feeling of longing.  The thoughts of cheesecake don’t even show up all that often anymore.

Unfortunately, I will still eat too much sugar given the opportunity.  Especially if I’m hungry. 

At a recent celebration, there was a selection of cupcakes, cookies and brownies.  I felt the need to try one of each and then go back for a second of some of them.  I do think this may have been as much about the fact that I hadn’t had dinner as it was about wanting the sugar.

I also ate half a dozen donuts one day when my sister invited me to the donut shop.  This was not justified by hunger.  It simply had to do with binging on donuts.

When I do eat too much sugar, my sugar cravings start to come back very rapidly. 

The day after eating the donuts, I definitely wanted more donuts.  After eating the cupcakes, I wanted more cupcakes.  I might have even eaten a few more if nobody had been there to see!

It’s crazy just how addictive sugar really is.

My focus on sugar has led me to start learning more about the effects of sugar and about more general food-related topics.

I read some articles online about quitting sugar and all of the scary things that sugar does to one’s health.  Then I read a library book about it. (I’m not trying to convert anybody, so I have no plans on discussing the ‘evils of sugar’ here.  My own desire to have way less of it in my life is motivated more by my experience craving sugar than by any of the proven health risks.)

Then one day when I was searching for books on sugar, Michael Pollan’s name came up.  I had heard it before a few times, but never read any of his writing.  He mentions sugar quite a bit, but his books cover a much wider variety of food topics than sugar.  I won’t go into the details here other than to say that I would highly recommend any of his books and ‘Cooked’ has been one of the most fascinating things I’ve read lately.

This focus on food in general has started me searching for more wholesome foods and becoming more involved in what I eat.

I’ve been baking bread.  After learning about the things Michael Pollan had to say about flour and baking bread, I tracked down a five gallon bucket of fresh ground whole wheat to start using in my bread.  (The flour has it’s own story which may have to go in another post.)

I decided I wanted to get back to eating fresh, local eggs.  I remembered an experience I had quite some time back.  Somebody I knew with chickens had given me a few fresh eggs.  I made scrambled eggs with a couple of the fresh eggs and a couple of store bought eggs.

Looking at them side by side in the pan, the difference was striking.  The yolks of the fresh eggs were a rich yellowish orange color.  The yolks of the store eggs were pastel washed-out yellow color in comparison.  I felt sure that the fresh eggs were eggs as they were meant to be.  The store eggs were a pale comparison, probably lacking in vitamins and nutrients.

(Interestingly, store eggs often boast of their chickens being vegetarian fed like it’s a good thing.  Chickens are supposed to be omnivores.  They like to roam around and eat bugs.)

Anyway, I started looking online to figure out where I could get fresh eggs in Albuquerque and somebody had posted that they got theirs at the DeSmet dairy.  I had once heard this dairy mentioned in a conversation, but hadn’t given it much thought at the time.

Researching the eggs led to a trip to the local dairy to see the cows and stock up on fresh eggs, fresh milk (both raw and pasteurized) and fresh yogurt.  I cannot remember ever having raw milk before.

I met the lady that owns the dairy with her husband.  I met the cows.  I saw the cows being milked.  I saw the field where the cows eat real grass instead of grain feed.

OK, cows are a little gross and it felt a little weird to watch the process.  Milk is one of those things that most of us would rather not think too much about.

Maybe our food is something that we should think about.  If we’re not comfortable with the whole process that it has gone through to get to us, maybe we shouldn’t eat it.  

I’m a lot more comfortable thinking about the milk from the happy, local cows than from the cows at the giant dairies where they’re crammed in together, given antibiotics, fed things cows aren’t meant to eat with who knows what else happening that I don’t want to know about.

The post Yesterday we finally ran out of regular sugar… and a bunch of other thoughts on sugar and food appeared first on Live Hoppy.

It’s important to have powerful reasons for pursuing a goal.  So, I’ll start with my reasons:  

• My sugar addiction was taking over.  I was constantly craving sugar.  I felt obsessed.
• Eating way too many Costco cheesecakes, donuts, sweet cereal, and tons of other sweet stuff.
• Not losing the baby weight.
• Knowing that how I eat affects the people around me too- baby B directly as he’s breastfeeding, but also as he sees my behavior.  And S directly too as I do almost all of the grocery shopping.
• Becoming increasingly aware of research showing the bad effects of eating sugar- heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and lots of other yucky stuff.  (I won’t get into details or siting research here: you can Google about it if you want.)
• The first several months of motherhood have been absolutely amazing in many ways, but the effects on my diet is not one of those ways.  After baby B was born, my sleep schedule was crazy, my hormones were out of whack, and I felt extremely hungry due to the caloric requirements of breastfeeding.  I was turning to sweet snacks at all hours.  (Sleep plays a huge part in food cravings.)
• Knowing that eating sugar causes spikes in blood sugar, insulin production to counter those strikes followed by a drop in blood sugar and more sugar cravings.  Basically one awful cycle.
• Striving for a healthy diet can be difficult.  There is little agreement even in what is healthy.  Processed sugar is not recommended as healthy by any of the different camps.  It has no nutrients and no nutritional benefits.  So it seems like the perfect place to start (or the perfect thing to end) in pursuing healthier eating.

I have very specific rules for my goal.  The reason for this is that it’s much easier to have goals with very well-defined guidelines.  This means that there is no gray area about what is OK or not.  There are no decisions to be made because you already know whether or not something is OK.

What’s Out (Lots of obvious stuff)

• Refined sugar in all it’s forms: honey, syrup, high fructose corn syrup, brown sugar.
• Products that contain the above, with a few exceptions listed below.
• Sweets: cheesecake, ice cream, donuts, cake, pie, cinnamon rolls, etc.
• Jellies and jams
• Cereal with any amount of sugar in it

What’s In (Sugar is pervasive in our culture and many items that don’t seem like they should have sugar do.  I am not looking to make this super hard on myself, so some things that aren’t really intended to be sweets but commonly have some sugar in them are OK.  So bagels are fine, but cinnamon raisin bagels that are intended to be sweet aren’t.)

• Bread, tortillas, bagels
• Tomato sauce
• Bacon and lunch meat
• Fruit

What’s Grey

Grey areas are BAD when it comes to making good goals.  But fruit juice is the one thing that is still in a grey area for me.  It’s not out-right banned, but I don’t want to buy and drink lots of juice just because it’s delicious and sweet and everything else is out.

The main rule is simple: no buying this stuff on the what’s out list or ordering it at restaurants.  This isn’t meant to be about having to use lots of will power or to make my life more complicated.

But there are a few fine details:

It’s OK for me to buy sugar for others.  if I’m buying and somebody else orders a soda at lunch, it’s OK for me to buy their soda.  This isn’t about forcing my decisions on others or being socially weird.

It’s OK to eat the sugar that is already in the house.  And there is a surprising amount of it – syrup, honey, powdered sugar, chocolate syrup, a couple of half-eaten dark chocolate bars, some sugar cubes, and a little bit of good old-fashioned refined white sugar.   The sugar that is in the house will slowly disappear and it won’t be replaced.  (The brown sugar is already all gone, the syrup bottle doesn’t have much left, the chocolate syrup is on the decline.  Mmmm… chocolate milk.)

It’s OK to eat sugar that is provided at other people’s houses.  If I go to eat at somebody’s else’s house and desert is served, I’m under no obligation to decline.

There are also six special occasions that are exempt: three birthdays and three other special occasions.  This is not about depriving baby B of cake when he turns one.

The design

I have very carefully chosen all of the rules for this.  I have had different goals throughout my life and I’ve tried to pay lots of attention to which strategies work for me and which don’t.  It’s important to keep in mind that different strategies work for different people.  Maybe some of my strategies would work for you and maybe not.  What I want to convey to you, my reader, is that it’s important to tailor your goals to the strategies that work for you and experiment with different strategies if you don’t know what works for you.

I know that my will power is limited.  I have a lot going on in my life and I don’t want to be spending my will power on my diet choices multiple times a day.  By deciding to not buy sugar, the times when will power is required are limited to when I’m at the store or at a restaurant.

What I buy is the single biggest influence on my diet.  If I’m looking in the fridge for a snack, I can’t eat something that isn’t there.

I need something that is a slow, meaningful, long-term change. I did a Whole30 a few years back and it left me feeling amazing. (In a nutshell- no sugar, no dairy, no grains, no preservatives.  Lots of veggies, meat, eggs, fish, healthy fat and a little fruit.  No cheating.  30 days.)  It did change the way I thought about food and the way I ate for  along time.  But sugar slowly crept back into my diet and eventually took over again.  I know other people that have done Whole30s and once the 30 days is up, the sugar starts creeping back in for them too.

I don’t need something like a 30 day reset.  I need something much longer.  Maybe even more than a year, but we’ll see how things are at the end of the year.  Hopefully my habits have changed enough by then that I just sort of continue on with much-reduced sugar consumption in my life.  Maybe I’ll continue on with these same rules after the year is up.

One month in

This first month has been less of an extreme change than I expected, largely due to the large amount of sugar products lurking around the house.  It has been a gradual change.  There is still a lot of sugar in my diet, but as we use up the sweet things around the house, it is decreasing.

I have already noticed some subtle differences.  When I do eat sugar, I am more mindful about eating it, savoring it and really enjoying it.  There was a small bottle of root beer in the fridge that S and I split the other day.  I poured it into a couple of glasses with ice for us.  I really enjoyed drinking it.  It felt like a healthy way to have sugar: a small amount that I consciously savored.  It was very different than compulsively eating three giant pieces of cheesecake in a day.

I had too much sugar and not enough real food at a birthday party a couple of weeks ago, and it left me feeling sick.  I took this as a healthy sign that my body is adjusting to less sugar.

One of the special occasions that is exempt was yesterday.  I bought a cheesecake for it the day before.  S and I did not completely devour the cheesecake in two days.  We did each have a slice of it the day I bought it rather than waiting for the day it was for.  I have not had more than one slice in a day.  It is a distractingly tempting thing to have in the fridge and I’d like to have a piece for breakfast.  I’ll have some sort of real food instead though because I am being more mindful of my sugar consumption.  Once it’s gone, I will be unreasonably sad but also relieved.

For now, I am off to have not-cheesecake for breakfast.   Some time in the next year, I’ll try to provide an update on how this is going.  In the mean time, I hope that I’ve encouraged you to think carefully about what sorts of strategies work for you when you make goals.

The post No Buying Sugar for a Year – Plus Thoughts on Designing Goals appeared first on Live Hoppy.