Progress is Success

My poor, neglected blog!

I'm trying not to beat myself up too much for not updating sooner.  "Bittersweet" is the only way to describe this past week.  I have accomplished many goals and made myself so incredibly proud, but life has a funny way of balancing itself out.  My uncle-by-choice passed away early yesterday morning after a 9-month battle against leukemia.  I'm processing this loss in other outlets (i.e., my private journal), but in sum, we all know how much death sucks.  I don't think it's hit me yet.

This past week, I met or exceeded most of my goals.  Here's an itemized re-cap of last week:

• Got in 110 fitness minutes!
• Averaged 80-100 ounces of water every day!
• Made overall healthy food choices every day!
• Practiced mindful eating with only one transgression -- Just one little doughnut!
• Re-activated my Spark People account! -- Follow me here:  PALEPHOENIX
• Only journaled once, but that's better than nothing.
• Only got about 6-7 hours of sleep each night.
• Didn't get in much mantra or meditation.

I'm digging the weekly breakdown!  Think I'll stick with it in coming weeks.

I don't think I'm going to force eight goals upon myself this week... in retrospect, that's probably a lot to take on at once.  I have to remember -- baby steps, baby steps.  Here are my goals for this week:

1 -- Perform 100+ minutes of exercise/physical activity.

2 -- Drink 64+ ounces of water every day.

3 -- Stay in my calorie range on at least 5 days.

4 -- Make a genuine effort to get 8 hours of sleep on at least 5 days.

5 -- Continue to journal and work on blog pages.

As always, I'm eager to push myself, but I also need to be cautious of burnout and injury.  Unfortunately, I've been having some problems with my right knee  and both shins--I think these are exercise-related "injuries."  I've self-diagnosed my shin problems as shin splints (thank you, WebMD) but I still need to look into home care for the pain.

I've never been a runner before, and I imagine that I probably have horrible form.  It doesn't help that I'm carrying around so much extra weight, and that I'm a huge klutz anyways.  This weekend I'm going to look into arch support insoles for my running shoes to see if that helps.  I also plan on incorporating a warm up/cool down segment to my workouts.  It's something I should have been doing all along, really.

Most importantly, this week, I'm going to be kind to myself.  If I'm in a lot of pain, I might not get in all of my fitness minutes... or it might be a steady walk instead of a walk/run.  I'm going to be okay with whatever I'm capable of, and know that I continue to make progress in the right direction.

★ jenna