Finding your critical moments

The first step to changing your habits is identifying your crucial moments. Crucial moments are the times when you find yourself most likely to perform bad habits or behaviors that you'd like to change. For instance, crucial moments for me are after dinner, when I'd like to eat ice cream and when my alarm goes off and I'd rather sleep.

What are your crucial moments? Is it when you eat lunch with coworkers? Is it when you get home from work and you're too tired to go to the gym? Identifying these moments are the key to to changing your unwanted behavior.

What do you do after you've identified those moments. That's when you put your strategies to work. For example, when I want to eat ice cream after dinner I avoid it by:

1. Not buying ice cream during the day
2. Telling my husband that I'm struggling so he can encourage me to make good choices.
3. Choose a healthier dessert. Some of my favorites are decaf coffee blended with cocoa powder, vanilla extract, cinnamon, coconut milk and a little bit of maple syrup, a square of dark chocolate with some almond butter, or frozen bananas blended with cocoa powder and almond milk.

I'll take any other suggestions you've got too. This week's training was a little slow to start because I haven't been feeling that well but I'm still on track to complete all the workouts for the week. My evening tonight is very exciting and filled with laundry, knitting a mitten (I need to finish the thumb on it) and reading. I know you're jealous.

What do you listen to?

What do you listen to when you're at the gym? Nothing, in your ears besides the sounds of weight machines? Music?

I listen to audiobooks. I realize that this is slightly unconventional but I'd get bored listen to the same music all the time and I don't have time to curate playlists. But, by listening to audiobooks I can combine two things I enjoy, exercising and reading. I've listened to dozens of books this way and I really enjoy it. Currently I'm listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I've read all of the Harry Potter books and seen all the movies multiple times so this is nothing new for me but I've heard that these are really well narrated and let's be real, you can't have too much Harry Potter in your life.

One of my favorite books to listen to at the gym? Tina Fey's Bossypants. Just be warned that it will make you laugh out loud and people might look at you weird. But, in Fey's words: "Who cares?"

Weekly Wrap-up

Don't I look pumped to start this workout?

This was my training partner. It's not a full Olympic weight bar yet, but I'll get there. 

Today's workout was definitely the hardest of the week. It felt good to be challenged though. I'll be sore tomorrow for sure. My eating has been better since the gluten-crazies but I can't say it's perfect yet. It's fine, I'm not going to beat myself up over it and it's been a really great week spending time with my husband and friends. 

The rest of my day included sharing a big breakfast with the hubby while trying out a new game we bought, a trip to Target (which took much self-control to not buy a new purse) and catching up on TV and blog reading. Here are some of the articles I enjoyed today that you might too:

Incredible Difference Makers

The Link Between Sleep and Your Weight

The Journey to Health

Good Choices and Bad Choice

Yesterday, I made a bad choice. I haven't willingly eaten gluten in a year because it makes me tired and super emotional which usually manifests as grumpiness. Last night I worked late and had a meeting at church so I decided to stop on the way home and get Chick-fil-a. I've gotten the grilled nuggets before but I don't really like them and I didn't feel like a salad so I chose to eat the regular nuggets and see what happened. The result was me completely overreacting this morning when I was convinced that my husband was passive aggressively cleaning the sink.

I just need to pause for a second and let that sink in.

Thankfully, it only took me about half an hour to realize that I was being irrational and apologized for being gluten-crazy. My bad.

I did, however, make a good choice this morning! After about 30 minutes of procrastinating and much prodding from my hubby (again, the gluten-crazy was hitting hard) I did make it to the gym for my workout. Even though it was snowing.

This is when I was leaving, it was still dark outside despite the light in this shot (it was a parking lot light). I was glad I went and I was rewarded with a good workout. It was a good reminder that even after making a bad choice you can always make the next one a good choice. 

Day One

Day one is here my friends! It's time to get movin' and shakin'. It's day one for me of Lift Weights Faster and the day that I will measure all of my stats from. My husband obligingly took before photos for me:

Sorry they're blurry. It would probably help if we had an actual camera. 

Today's workout used Kettlebells. It was great. After that I walked for 25 minutes. Here's to day one!

Tomorrow is the day

I realize that January 19th is a strange day to begin a new year's resolution, and really it's been in process (prepping) for a while but I feel like tomorrow is the real start day. Beginning tomorrow I commit to completing Jen Sinkler's 12-week Lift Weights Faster program and to cut back on my sugar consumption. My diet is usually pretty good but sugar is m weakness. Chocolate, ice cream, chocolate ice cream, gets me every time; especially at the multiple social events we have every week. That's why I started this blog. I wanted to have some more accountability than I currently do because unlike my wonderful husband I am not very self motivated and easily distracted.

It's nice to start on a day off work because I don't have to wake up super early to go to the gym and I have a lot of time to meal prep. The bad part is one of our aforementioned social events begins anew for the semester tomorrow evening and pizza is on the menu. I love pizza and refuse to resist it so I'll be making my own gluten-free version. I just have to avoid the dessert, if there is any.

Not an exciting picture, I know, but those are my gym clothes, all ready to go. 

If you need some inspiration to get started today it's as easy as going for a walk, and I doubt you have any good excuses to not go for a walk. I read this interested post on the health benefits of walking the other day. Check it out. 

My Method

If you read my method tab you'll know that I believe that weight loss involves changing our behavior and using several different strategies to do that. So, how am I doing that? Let me tell you about it. It's all based on information you can read in Influencer by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. It should be noted that I am not a certified Influencer trainer and that I am not at all affiliated with the Vital Smarts group. I just read the book and took the training.

Personal Motivation: I am honestly not that broken up about my size. Sure, I'd like to be a bit smaller around the waist but I don't think about too often and when I do it's usually pretty quickly forgotten. I am also not obese and I do not have any medical problems (that I know of) which are a result of my weight. Yeah, yeah Veronica get to the point. Okay. I want to be stronger. I was never good at sports growing up.

True story. I tried all of them and I was bad at all of them. There was a small bright spot though, a weight lifting class in high school. I actually liked it and I saw progress in my lifting. It was fun. That was seriously the only time I had ever thought that in gym class. So I want that again. I want to be strong, push myself and be able to do a handstand. That's may not include losing all 20 lbs that I'd like to lose but I'd be happy if I make that goal and the numbers don't change much.

Personal Ability: I know what to do to eat well. I've got that down. I purchased Lift Weights Faster so that I would have a solid training program to follow so I don't just flounder around at the gym.

Social Motivation and Ability: I need others to motivate and enable me. That includes this blog (you, readers, are motivating me). I need my husband and friends to enable me. I need to feel like it's okay to not eat the treats they bring to Bible Study and when I say I want ice cream for dessert I need my husband to say, "Is that really what you want?".

Structural Motivation: Structural motivation is about rewards. The key is that they must be directly related to my behaviors of eating well and following my training schedule. So, if my reward is new workout clothes every month that I complete my training, I have to hold myself accountable and not get that reward unless I actually complete my training. By the way, that is my reward for myself. I love buying activewear. No idea why I prefer that to buying actual clothes but I do. I like to get it from Fabletics. Their clothes are high quality and so, stinking cute. Here's one of my favorite outfits from their site:

Structural Ability: I need to change my environment to make it easier to do my behaviors. I plan to do this in two ways. 1. Move my cell phone (alarm clock) to my dresser, not my nightstand. Then I have to get up out of bed to turn it off and then I'm less likely to get back in bed. 2. Not keep ice cream in the house. At night, when I want ice cream, I'm not usually willing to go out and get it but if it's already in my house you better believe I'm eating it. So, no ice cream in the house, that way if I have the occasional treat when we're with friends it won't completely ruin all the rest of my hard work.

So there you go, I'll be reporting at least a few times a week to keep you posted on my progress. Thanks for helping keep me motivated an accountable!