Living with the Plan

There are consequences to every decision. Intellectually we all know that. Sometimes we forget. I know I do.

So I'm re-energized. Can't describe what happened or changed, but I'm definitely back to my "old" self.

But I'm still committed to making some serious changes in my life:

1) I'll continue to stay on the Weight Watchers plan. The consequences of this decision are some planning time that goes into every meal. I have to think about what I'm going to eat. I generally cook every night which means planning what that meal will be and making sure I have the needed ingredients for that evening.

2) I'll continue to walk every weekday morning. Today I knew Ashley wasn't going to get up to walk, having gotten home extremely late last night. I set my alarm for 5:50 with every intention of getting up and doing my Pilates video by myself. But I didn't do it. I stayed in bed until after 7. Maybe that was part of the re-energizing that happened. Getting up at 5:50 means I HAVE to go to bed by 10:30 at the latest each night. That's lights off, TV off, book down at 10:30. The consequences of this are that I cannot watch TV all night long. Everything that needs to be done in the evenings needs to be done prior to 10:30.

In addition to those things I'd already started I plan to include a few others.

1) I'm going to not watch TV on weeknights. It's too easy for me to be tempted to watch before I'm ready for bed and after I'm ready for bed it's too tempting to just watch and watch. I need to be more targeted about the television I do watch. So I've picked two shows I really enjoy each week (Heroes and House). We have DVR so I can tape them and save them for the weekend. Any other things I want to watch will have to be done on the weekends.

2) I'm signing my kids up for swim lessons. This is actually overdue as they are now 5, but I'm actually signing them up tomorrow. The class is for the next two months on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7:15. The consequence of this is that I have to plan out what those Tuesday/Thursday meals will be and have them ready to eat at 6:15. I usually get home with the kids at 5:30 so that means pre-planning and possible prep work done the night before. This all goes into planning ahead.

3) I'm going to start shopping at the farmer's market on Saturday mornings. This means I need to know what ingredients for the next week I'll need prior to Saturday morning. I've generally procrastinated on meal planning until Sunday. I'll need to do it Friday night. But, since I'm not watching TV on the weeknights, this should be doable.

4) I'm going to pick back up my "habit" of reading material relevant to my field. This is something I actually enjoy doing but haven't for the past 6 months or so (more so). If I get everything done by 9:30 or so, that gives me an hour in the evening to read. Also, it means carrying my book with me so that I can read whenever I happen to have a minute to spare.

5) I'm going to learn Spanish. I've signed up for a free-trial of an online Spanish course in which they sent me 6 lessons. I did the first one and haven't done another since. I'm going to do that.

Check back with me in a month to see how well I did on these goals. It's all about the plan. Planning ahead and not procrastinating. I think I can do it. Especially if I'm energized.