Liwovien

Today has been interesting. I woke up before 10am. I drove in the snow. And, the laundry is almost done and it isn’t even mid-week yet.

Let me digress to update you on my progress yesterday. As for what I needed to accomplish yesterday, I did better than average on most things and not so hot on a couple. For starters, I only drank 4 cups of water rather than the 8 recommended, but I know I will improve. Bedtime was supposed to be 10pm. I pushed it to 11pm since there was a really good movie on – Something About Mary – and I intended to go to bed right after, but I checked my email before shutting down my computer and had an issue that I had to respond to – well, it probably could have waited until morning -  pertaining to my Amazon Selling Account. I stayed off the computer pretty much the rest of the day minus my blog post. At least I was still in bed before 12am. I think the reason it snowed today is that I was in bed before midnight! Tonight I will shoot for 10pm again and we will see what happens.

So, about today. Waking up before 10am may not be a big deal to most people but for someone who likes to stay up late and get up late it is a big deal. There are morning people and there are night people and I most definitely am a night person. By noon, I had breakfast, checked my email, started laundry, and drove to the post office to ship a package  – in the snow mind you. I love snow but I do not like to drive in it. I have a 4-wheel drive vehicle but that still doesn’t help me in the snow and ice. My theory is that if I am sliding in a 4-wheel drive vehicle, I am no better off than most other vehicles. But, today, I thought I would boost my confidence and go out. Now, I only had to go about a mile and the whole way there I went less than the speed limit. I know the people behind me were so annoyed but I might have saved them from an accident, right?

Now onto the goals of The Challenge Day 2…

Scale Back

No caffeine. Check. Eating fruit instead of sugary foods. Peaches instead of a brownie with lunch. Check. Cow’s milk is recommended to be replaced with rice milk, but I usually drink soy milk so I will have to see what to do there. At this point today (about 5pm) I have drank the 4 cups of water that I did all day yesterday, so that is an improvement.

Tune Out

The goal is to keep TV watching, emailing, web surfing, and newspaper reading all to a minimum or as little as absolutely possible. I am usually technology immersed, but today I have been on email for only a couple minutes and watched one episode of Color Splash – one of my favorite HGTV design shows – on TV. Today has been a big day for laundry and making lunches so that I can eat the way I am supposed to this week.

Reflect

The questions for today are: Do you eat in response to stress or emotions? What types of foods do you crave? What, if anything, would you like to change about why or how you eat? As for stress and emotional eating, my experience is that I don’t eat. Calming myself down is the only answer. Only then can I actually hold food down. As for my changes on how I eat, I want to create structure on when I eat. The time I eat is usually pretty random and sometimes not at all for some meals – not good, not good at all. I was just talking with a friend two nights ago about how long it takes me to eat. It is a while – my grandmother taught me that. It is healthy and I am proud of it. Yes, I am left at the dinner table quite a bit, but when you are a slow eater, you shouldn’t expect others to hang around and wait – I don’t expect it – but sometimes people will hang around which is really cool.

Go Whole

I have to admit that I used minute brown rice today. I used up the whole wild rice in dinner for the next few days, so I had to improvise. The rice was still good and it was better than not eating it. Our dinner however will have lots of whole grains: wild rice and quinoa. It is the first time I have cooked quinoa before so we will see how it goes. If the recipe turns out well tonight, I will post it – a bean, rice, quinoa, and veggie soup.

Tune Into Yourself

I think I feel the detox already working. I have more energy today that I usually do. I accomplished so many things – maybe part of that is that I was not on the Internet – but I don’t want to discount my increased energy.

Conclusion

Rice, veggies, beans, fruit, water… this detox is so much better than others out there and I haven’t felt hungry yet. With the publishing of this post, I have already achieved one of my goals for week 1: blog at least twice a week. Yea! This is actually fun. To be writing about something that is not technical nor science or design related is an interesting experience. Until next time…