May’s always been a big month and an important month — it has always triggered for me — “Summer is Coming!” — June 1, says, “Summer is HERE!” Yeah I know that its technically not until later in the month — but by all measures of the phrase, for me (and our A/C, which we’re been running since late March/Early April) its Summer.

Fall is probably my favorite season, but next is Summer. I love the sun (but not the over-bearing heat). The longer days. The various holidays. The blooming flowers. Now I’m not in school and we don’t have kids yet – so my day to day doesn’t really change — so I’m sure its more nostalgic than anything. Going back to my school days.. summer was the opportunity to take a break before getting ready for the next grade — almost like cleaning the slate.

With that in mind — I thought that I’d bring back my monthly wellness challenges. I quietly did away with them because I failed each one — despite putting “it out there” to help hold myself accountable. I’d come close with a few of them, but never accomplished my goals. That’s not my normal character — so frankly, I found it demotivating.  Well — I thought June was a good time to bring it back — but scale it back. Well that was the original intent — but then after thinking about my wellness goals — I know I have a big goal in front of me because I want to greatly reduce the amount of sugar in my diet.  There are several blogs that I recently started to follow to help inspire me in the kitchen with recipes — that pointed me to a few other sites around cooking and fitness … and that’s where I got my call to action.

First — it took my some time to *really* understand that sugar has addictive properties! DOH! But when I did some more searches and started to looking into it, I am just shocked and dumbfounded. I almost feel silly now that I didn’t have greater awareness. I’ve been reading labels more — and can’t believe all the places that it sneaks into my food. So even when I’m trying to make a “better” choice (backing away from the chocolate, candy, and cookies) I choose something that is laden with sugar. Ugh!

My struggle is going to be finding the time as a busy professional to create and cook more at home — where I know what I am putting into my meas and saying “no” to all the sugary-goodness that finds its way to my desk at work.  Food is EVERYWHERE and while I applaud the fact that we do have healthy options at my office – -they are sadly far less abundant than the unhealthy ones and a bit more expensive.  Its just too easy to pick up the unhealthier stuff — its cheaper, faster, and more readily available.

The more I think about it, the more it sounds like I’m making excuses — so I want to put a plan in place and really take the right steps to reset and make a long term change. I’d love to think that I have the potential to be a great homemaker — but I’m terrible at cooking and doing things in the kitchen – -so this is going to be something new for me to learn AND embrace.Also getting my sig-o on board. We have wildly different bodies, metabolisms, and even, worse, tastes in foods. So its also going to be an adventure in finding things that we both like, both need for our bodies (he could stand to put some weight on and I would like to take some off), and fitting in the time to organize it and make it work. I also think that some planning and advanced prep will help too. I’m inspired and have some awareness — and I think that’s a big piece in trying to start and commit any big change.

 

I actually think its easier at home than it is at work — Aside from what I get for my sig-o for junk food (which isn’t much and mostly stuff that I don’t like)- I don’t keep much in the house. I’m good to turn down the chips and cokes (that he loves) and some of the other sweets at the house — although I’m a sucker for Blue Bell Cookie and Cream Ice Cream.  I going to try to make some incremental changes instead of doing my usual thing of going from guardrail to guardrail.

So my goals for the month of June

  • Say “NO” to all those temptations at work — cut out the obvious food baddies
  • Take my lunch to work; and if one is provided, pass over the junk food and the bread
  • Charge up my fitbit and hit my daily goal 4 out of 7 days each week

I juice and do green smoothies in the AMs, but I’m not all that consistent about it — so I while not making it a formal “goal” I’m going to work on that too — and be very mindful of fruit to veggie ratio to make sure that I have more of the latter.

Any other suggestions that you’d give me as I start this journey — or interesting reads/blogs? I’ll share a list soon of some of the ones that I’m currently following.

Getting my wellness challenge on, yours,