Vacation! All I Ever Wanted....

As of Friday this is my home for the next week, a lovely cabin on a ship bound for Bermuda!  I am a lucky girl and I am so ready for a thoroughly relaxing week.

Cruising is infamously problematic for anyone trying to manage a healthy lifestyle though.  Endless buffets and 24 hour access to food and alcohol make dieting hard at best and impossible for most.

I am not for one second denying myself the wonderful food of my vacation, it is not going to happen, but I have set five rules to mitigate the calories:

No Snacking -- 3 huge meals a day is plenty of food.  I will not decline an afternoon cocktail though, it is vacation after all.

Eat Veggies -- A salad with every meal is not difficult to achieve with the great dining options on board, so filling up on greens might reduce portions of other things or at least provide some good nutrients.

Water, Water, Water -- Drinking plenty of water will keep me hydrated and feeling full.  Forcing water in between cocktails will keep the cocktail count down as well.

40 Days of Fitness -- I am sticking to 40 Days of Fitness and this trip allows for many opportunities to get in fun and different exercise.  The ship has lots of classes I could try, a promenade deck to walk faster than a promenade on and Bermuda presents nearly constant water-related exercise which I adore.

FitBit is Going Too -- the Fitbit arrived yesterday and has been set up and is coming along.  I won't have Wi-Fi but I found out it will store 7 days of stats so I can download it all when I get back.

I have planned for this vacation as part of my ongoing Challenge and my goal for July was to break even.  I am down a few pounds right now so if I can come back without gaining all of it back I will consider that a victory.

Any other tips for not spiraling out of control on vacation?

40 Days of Fitness

Happy Birthday, Me!  So here it is, 40.  So far so good.  The seventy minutes I have been awake have not been much different from yesterday. 

I have decided to use today as a springboard into a plan for the next year.   I am calling it #40Daysof...  With a little overlap I can complete 40 Days of 10 different things and hope to adopt some good habits for the 2nd half of my life.

I am going to begin with #40DaysofFitness where I will attempt to do intentional exercise every day for the next 40 days.  This is going to be harder than it sounds because for 7 of the next 40 days I am going to be on vacation.  I thought about waiting until I got back, but I am a sucker for occasion.

I used some of my birthday gift cash to order myself a FitBit and purchased a new pair of sneakers.  So, it is on!

If you have a fun exercise suggestion for this 40 Days or a challenging idea for a future 40 Days endeavor please leave a comment below.

Another Decade Down

I went to the DMV today.  It is kind of mean to have your driver's license expire on your birthday, no one wants to spend time around their festive day at the DMV, but there I was and I was remembering the last time I was there 10 years ago (Massachusetts let you renew on line every other 5 years, but forces you in for a new photo after 10 years).

So what have I done with the past ten years that I can remember so clearly the mundane task of going to the DMV?

I changed jobs and apartments.

I became an aunt.  Three times.

I chaired a national conference on Student Travel in Memphis, TN.

I led a tour group of over 30 through Moscow, St. Petersburg and Minsk, returning to Russia after many years.

But the one thing I have been doing the most for the past 10 years is being incredibly grateful.  The winter before my 30th birthday my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.  If you or someone you love has received a cancer diagnosis you know that beyond the months of treatment you count years of survival faithfully.  We celebrated 10 years of survival this year.  For the past decade the breast cancer community, particular those involved with the Susan G Komen 3 -Day have been a big part of my life.  I participated in eight 3 -Days and met so many incredible friends these past ten years.

When I think about how different the past decade could have been I am indescribably happy with how it went.

Challenges

The countdown is at a week.  One week to 40!  In the past couple of weeks though I have begun some positive habits:  I started work on a writing project and actually have a plan forward for it, I have settled some outstanding work loose ends and I started a health and wellness challenge.  Today's post is about the latter.

In the age of reality television, shows like The Biggest Loser have inspired lots of workplace and social media weight loss challenges.  America is simultaneously overweight and freakish about diet & exercise (you really have to work hard to achieve both).

I don't have the option for a work place challenge as I work at home, so I devised a long distance challenge with 4 friends (the 5 of us pictured above).  We live in 5 different states, we became friends on Twitter as the result of a common favorite TV show and we recently met face-to-face for the first time (the 21st century rocks).

As you can see from the photo we are all different shapes and sizes, so we needed to customize a challenge that worked for all of us.  Here are the simple guidelines:

1. By Monday July 7th we all recorded a goal on our phones note pad that is date stamped.  The goal can be whatever we want it to be, a # of lbs, a % of body weight, a dress size, a 5K, eating only organic veggies -- whatever we want to achieve by our show's Finale in mid-November.

2.  Through the 5 months we take pics as evidence of our accomplishments (weight on the scale, 2 pieces of clothing in different sizes, food porn of awesome veggie dishes) and hold on to them until November.

3.  We each commit to sending 1 encouragement gift of approx. $10 per person, so a $50 commitment (but everyone will get 5 gifts), we can each pick a month to send the gifts.  The gift can be anything encouraging or pampering as long as it does not sabotage our goals (no boxes of Godivas :) ) Could be a book, a pair of awesome socks, nail polish for a pretty pedi, ITunes gift cards for music, stuff like that.

4.We continue to send encouraging and fun Tweets and Texts and FB posts, etc. (NOTE: We started a private FB page so we could chat with abandon -- a great suggestion from another friend).  We are going to run clever hashtag contests on Twitter with ITunes tracks as prizes and bring in more ideas from social media.

5.  If we are lucky enough to be together for the Finale we bring all the evidence of our accomplishments and if we are sadly not together we can do a virtual reveal.

 

 

There are lots of cool ways to utilize social media for health and wellness.  Do you have any cool ideas?  Would love to hear them!

Are You an Adult?

So, 40 is around the corner and I recently had a discussion about how I really do not feel like an adult.  Clearly I am, as I am almost 40, but what truly makes us adults.

Here are the adult-like things I do: 

• I work a full-time job with benefits and a 401k.
• I live alone in an apartment I pay the rent for myself.
• I pay bills, taxes, student loans regularly.
• I vote.
• I engage in adult activities like drinking and sex (and only giggle about it a little).

Here are the adult things that are completely foreign to me:

• I do not own a home or a car or really anything other than some furniture.
• I do not have a long term partner of the husband variety.
• No kids.
• No pets.

Ultimately I think adulthood is defined by our responsibilities and the weight of them.  I do have responsibilities: I support myself and my yarn habit, I have a plant that might still be alive.  My friends with kids seem so much more grown up than I am though, the weight of their responsibilities in life so much greater.

At the same time, I know there are plenty of irresponsible parents out there, so it isn't solely procreation.

Maybe living alone for this long has desensitized me to age.  While my knees hurt a little more than they used to and I have to dye my hair more frequently I live in a  bit of a timeless bubble (I always knew I would end up like Miss Havisham), which is why the 40 candles on the cake this year is kind of shocking.  Sure I see other people's kids growing like weeds around me, but they aren't my kids, and I don't feel older.

What do you think?  What makes a person grown up?

Hello July!

 

If you know me, or read my last blog, you know I have great affection for the month of July.  What's not to like?  July is the month of fireworks, beach chairs, umbrella drinks and birthday cake.  It is 31 days of non-stop fun.

When you stop going to school, summer loses a little bit of its mystique and a lot of its free-time, so in a concession to adulthood many years ago I decided to make July my summer.  I have tried to do something fun everyday of July for the past 17 years or so.

This year July ushers in the next decade of my life, so in addition to having fun I am trying to cultivate some good habits this July.  I want to make an effort to focus on these three things:  Activity, Reading and Writing.

Activity
Between all the fun things I want to get 60 minutes of activity a day, even if it is just rushing from one fun thing to another.  The NFL supports the "60 Minutes of Play a Day" initiative and that is what I am striving for.  If I think of it as Activity instead of Exercise maybe it won't seem like such a chore.  This may result in me dancing around the living room while watching the Daily Show every night to make my quota!

Reading
This is the no brainer of the list.  I love to read and I really love to read in the summer.  In addition to actually reading I intend to do a better job of logging my reading on Goodreads and writing reviews of what I read so I can reflect on it instead of moving on to the next thing.

Writing
This is the one that always gets shoved aside.  I want to carve an hour out of every day to write.  It can be a blog post or a really clever letter to a loved one.  I could spend that hour on a new piece of fiction or dusting off an old one.  I could focus on the memoir I am trying to write or some just-for-fun brainstorming, something like this.  Writing begets writing and every little bit helps to craft form and style, so I am going to make time to practice my craft.

I have read that it takes 21 days to cultivate a good habit, so if I start now I could master these 3 things just in time for my birthday!  Want to join me in my July of fun and self-improvement?  What would you like to focus on? Maybe we can support one another.  Cheers!