My Big Goal: A Promise

This month, I'm participating in Chalene Johnson's 30 Day Challenge. Thanks to Sally for making me aware of it. We were actually going to participate together in March but I was too late signing up.

Starting off, I wasn't sure if I was going to like it. Chalene reminds me a bit of the pretty and perfect people that make me stabby. I realize this is due to my own insecurity and a tendency to make someone else the weirdo in order to make myself feel better.

Anyways, the past few days have been about recognizing our values and defining our goals. We made a list of ten life goals, which seemed kind of huge at first, especially only a few days into the program. Still, it was interesting to look at my list. The first five or six came easily. The last few, I struggled to define. We're actually supposed to write a new list of goals each week, without looking back, to see what consistencies emerge.

Once that list is together, we are supposed to define a "push" goal. That's the one goal on the list that makes all the others possible. It was interesting, because rather than be overwhelmed by focusing on all ten (well, I was really only going to focus on the first five or six), it allows you to focus on just the one goal that will help the others fall into place.

She suggested that we make a promise not just to ourselves but to others that we would make that goal. She then recommended posting it very publicly, using Twitter, Facebook, blogs, whatever was at our disposal. And while I realize this isn't the most fascinating post in the world, I haven't been coming up with much of ANY posts lately so I might as well.

My promise to myself and everyone around me is to improve my health. Primarily, this is about my weight. For me, anxiety meant medication meant weight gain meant depression. Suddenly I find myself feeling miserable about my body and it's destroying all of my self-confidence, which is really keeping me from all of those other goals.

It was suggested by a friend that I could focus on building self-confidence and accepting myself as I am now. I'm working on that too, but I also feel like regardless of my body image issues, my health is at stake. Maybe I can kill two birds with one stone, focusing on the problem rather than placating the symptoms, which is what it feels like to me if I convince myself that it's okay to be so overweight.

So there's my promise. How am I going to get there? Since I'm not working an 8-5, I'm trying to turn myself into a bit of a gym rat. My goal is four hours of elliptical per week (which equates to four GOOD days on the elliptical). On days I don't make it to the gym, I try to spend about an hour on my recumbent bike. One day off per week. I'm also drinking a lot more water, taking my vitamins each day, and being more mindful of my calorie intake.

Not rocket science. Just doing the things we all know we should do anyways. And committing to making a difference. Encouragement welcome! Anyone out there looking for an accountability partner, let me know!