90 day Glow Up Challenge!

 

Get it? Do you "get" the photo? It's the word UP and it is glowing... Glow-Up. 

I am feeling better. It's been about 23 years or so since I have not felt like hot garbage on death's door. I do not know why I got so sick. I have a maybe hypothesis as to why I am feeling better but it is just a guess. One thing is I had my gallbladder removed, and decades of symptoms have gone away. Yes, I said DECADES. The second thing I have done is, I increased my salt intake. I am not telling you that you should increase your salt intake. I am just sharing with you the fact that I increased it, and now I am feeling better. I only use Redmond's Real Salt. I eat butter on my toast and real cow's milk in my coffee. So far the only food that I have noticed that tries to kill me when I eat it is peanut-butter. Not all peanut butter brands, just some peanut-butter brands.

Back to my glow up.

I have decided that since I no longer feel like hot garbage on death's door, that I would go back to trying to make an effort in my life. Self improvement is hard when you can barely move and you are dealing with many health issues.

I have spent the morning creating my game plan outline. It includes how much weight I wish to have dropped by the end of 90 days. It's a big goal that will remain private. I will be getting out to walk, doing traditional Chinese medicine movement for flexibility, toning, and weight loss. I will be drinking a gallon of water per day, eating healthy, whole food, and tracking my calories. I shall be utilizing the information of how to make a Tiffany plate. 

It can be easy to guess at how many calories are in food and get that number wrong. If you wish to lose weight, you must track snack calories and calories from mindless eating while working or watching t.v..  I have seen people struggle with this concept. They will snack on say... cheese balls all day and then want 3 full meals and other snacks. When I mention they have eaten X number of calories and can now only have this small amount of food they are shocked. One ounce of Utz cheese balls has 150 calories. That is 32 cheese balls. When you wish to truly lose weight, you must measure every calorie you eat from condiments; butter, mayo, mustard, ketchup, salad dressing, etc. to snacks. there is no, "oh these calories do not count because...". Every calorie counts. It will either be used for fuel or stored for fat.  On top of all of the calorie awareness, you have the exercise awareness. it takes quite alot of movement to burn calories. It's a good idea to look at your calories like a budget. You must pay your important bills first; rent, car, insurance, utilities credit cards first and then you can buy other things. It's the same with budgeting calories. Pick low calorie dense nutrition foods. Save your main calories for meals. You can add the little things after you have fulfilled your main nutritional caloric needs. You eat 1 or 2 sweet dates instead of 10-20. That way you have calories for your meat, eggs, dairy and whatever fruits and vegetables you wish to eat. 

Be sure to keep up with electrolites and any supplements you need especially if you are pregnant, or nursing. check with your doctor before starting a weight loss program especially if you are pregnant, nursing or have a health condition that might be negatively affected by a calorie deficit such as hypoglycemia. 

I see too many women letting themselves go, getting a divorce and then doing a post divorce glow up. Why not do your glow up now? While you sit and plan your 90 day challenge, maybe purchase a new make up palette or a lipstick or a hair care product as incentive/motivation? You can do this!

Keep coming back for updates. 

 

On learning a skill until it becomes part of you... it's not just for artists and athletes

 

    There is a great difference between knowing how to do a thing, and having done it so often that it becomes part of one’s very manner of living. In our time, many are content with the first, and never arrive at the second. We learn enough to manage, enough to get by, enough to avoid inconvenience, and then we turn our attention elsewhere. Yet there is a deeper satisfaction reserved for those who remain with a task long enough that the hands grow sure, the mind grows calm, and the work itself becomes a kind of second nature.

Every true skill begins in awkwardness. The first loaf is uneven, the first stitches uncertain, the first attempts at any craft marked by hesitation and doubt. This is as it should be, for nothing worth keeping is learned in a moment. But if a person continues, returning again and again to the same labor, something quiet begins to change. The motions grow smoother, the eye more discerning, the judgment more trustworthy. What once required effort becomes habit, and what was habit becomes ease.

It is at this point that the work begins to give pleasure. Not the quick pleasure of novelty, but the steady pleasure of competence. One no longer asks at every step what must be done next, but moves forward with confidence, knowing by experience what is required. The mind is freed from confusion, and the hands are free to do their work well.

Such mastery need not belong only to artists or craftsmen by trade. It may be found in the kitchen, in the garden, at the writing desk, in the workshop, or in the daily keeping of a home. Wherever a task is done faithfully, day after day, with the desire to improve rather than merely to finish, there skill takes root.

Our age often praises speed and variety, yet the finest things are usually the result of repetition. The cook who prepares the same dish a hundred times learns more than the one who attempts a hundred dishes once. The seamstress who mends carefully grows more capable than the one who replaces what is worn without thought. The homemaker who keeps her rooms in order each day lives more peacefully than the one who waits for disorder to become unbearable.

To learn a skill until it becomes part of you is not a burden, but a privilege. It means that your days are not wasted in confusion, but shaped by practice, and strengthened by patience. And in the end, the work itself becomes a companion, familiar and steady, asking only that you continue.