I have the option to get knee injections and physical therapy but I am still on the fence with that. My reason, well….the pain will only go away for about 6 months. What is the use in that? Will that buy me time to lose the weight? Who knows but I am not going to give up. I started my health and fitness journey on January 16th and as of January 29 I am down two pounds. I measured myself today and I have lost up to 1.5 inches in certain areas of my body. I keep telling myself that if I continue to work at it without hurting myself the weight will be off of me by the end of the year. Have I had moments where I wanted to try a “lose weight fast” gimmick? Yes…I was talking to a friend of mine today about the NV weight-loss system. Then I decided that I do not need to take an appetite suppressant especially since my eating was not a big issue, it was the lack of exercise.

I did not want to set myself up by saying I wanted to lose 40 pounds by a certain date. I do realize that slow and steady wins the race and that I have to go through a bit of pain to gain the end results of being 40 pounds lighter.

What helps more is that my family wants to get involved. It is quite difficult to get healthy when the others in your home are still eating the junk food that you are trying to avoid. We also bought a juicer so we have started to buy more fruits and veggies to eat as well as juice. My daughter is starting to want healthy snacks such as fruits and while she refuses to give up bagel bites or taquitos, I do not mind buying those for her because those are foods/snacks that I do not crave. My boyfriend has also made the move to take lunch to work with him daily and he stopped drinking Coca-Cola (we almost had to stage an intervention…lol).

Another thing that is helping me is work. My team is a part of a 10-week program called Active for Life, as a team we decided that we will take a 15 min break together and walk around our building twice. It’s actually gotten to a point where I look forward to it because we get fresh air, Sun and it helps me to refocus. I also take long walks about four days a week. Last week I started out with a 30 minute walk on my treadmill 4 times last week. This week I walked at 60 mins on my treadmill on Tuesday,Wednesday and on Thursday my daughter and I walked for an hour with our dogs. I have burned tons of calories and it has proven to me that I do not have to power walk or run to burn calories to lose weight. You see, I was upset that I could not do vigorous exercise such as Zumba, Tae Bo, or anything like that because of my knee osteoarthritis. I can get the same results with low impact exercise.

My next goal is to start incorporating weight training to start toning my upper body. I usually feel self-conscious at the gym and although I have a membership, I barely go to the gym. My plan is to just take things one step at a time and start going to the gym twice a week to work my upper body, then gradually move to three times a week and include attending a water aerobics class. Every two weeks I will Vlog about my progress on YouTube and if time permits I was thinking of doing a daily blog about what I ate and how I felt throughout each day. So far things have been fun and I really want to continue my “journey to jazzness”.

I am way overdue for completing this exercise. To be honest I did not know what to say about myself. I tried writing my eulogy four different times and it just did not come out right. I decided that this is not the exercise for me. I have enjoyed most of the exercises in this challenge but not this one. Sorry to disappoint.

For this exercise I am supposed to develop a side hustle that will generate more money on the side. Every so often I may sell unwanted items on eBay to make a few dollars but nothing very serious. Basically this will be a short blog post because a side hustle is not what I intend to do now. I do not have the time or the want to start a side hustle. I am a full-time student at the University that I work for and I also work full-time, have 3 dogs and a family to care for. Education is my current side hustle with the result creating my main hustle of a career in counseling.

During this challenge I have thought about how I want to take care of myself better. I even uploaded a video on my YouTube Channel discussing how I wanted to be  more positive 2012. Below is my self-care plan that I hope to start this month.

1. Go to bed earlier or change to a later work shift

2. Walk 20-30 minutes a day or go to the gym for 30 mins a day

3. Read for pleasure

4. Focus on school more

5. Restrict my YouTube time

6. Write my thoughts in my journal

7. Read a Bible verse daily

8. Start therapy again

This will be a work in progress. I know that I will not be doing these things immediately but gradually I will be doing these things to take care of myself.

The exercise for today is to take yourself out on a date after evaluating the 100 things that make you happy. The main goal is to find an activity and do it ALONE! This exercise is not going to be easy because I do not have the time or opportunity to go on a date with myself. So here is my plan for a “date” with myself and hopefully one day while driving home from work I can execute this plan.

I hope that tomorrow I can stop by the Gym on my way home from work. I will work out for 30 minutes and then go sit in the Sauna for 15 minutes. Once I finish with my time at the gym, I will come home and shower. Then I will run a hot bath and soak in it for about 30 minutes while reading a book. My date with myself will be over after my bath. I really enjoy soaking in the tub while reading, it helps me to relax and  I end up sleeping better when its time to go to bed. This does not sound like much but it is a lot for me that I plan to enjoy this week.

For this exercise,I had to think of and list 100 things that make me happy. I had a hard time thinking about 100 things that I love but I got through it. Here are 100 things that I love in no particular order of importance.

1. God

2. Being in love

3. My daughter

4. My boyfriend

5. My friends

6. My home

7. My dogs

8. Reading

9. silence (quiet time)

10. Massages

11. Music

12. Life

13. Dancing

14. Smiling

15. Acting silly

16. Making YouTube videos

17. Inspiring people

18. Motivating people

19. Planeteriums

20. The Zoo

21. Aquariums

22. the stars

23. Sunrise and sunsets

24. Elephants

25. Panda Bears

26. Singing

27. Reality TV

28. romantic comedies

29. Hot Baths

30. Sitting in the Sauna

31. long weekends

32. Books

33. Vegetables (broccoli, mushrooms, spinach)

34. shrimp

35. Regular weekends

36. Lipton‘s Mango and peach white tea

37. Documentaries

38. Movies based on true events

39. San Diego

30. Stockton

31. Vineyards

32. Tulips

33. Tilapia

34. My family

35. My mother

36. My brother

37. Sedona

38. Flagstaff

39. Living in Arizona

40. Working for a christian university

41. learning

42. babies

43. puppies

44. camping

45. Natural hair (mine and everyone that has natural hair)

46. sitting around the camp fire

47. nail polish

48. church

49. choirs

50. romantic comedy

51. horror movies

52. The Beach

53. Self reflection

54. Brownies

55. Blogging

56. Gadgets (cellphones, digital cameras, MP3 players)

57. orchids

58. Positive people

59. Hummus and cucumbers

60. road trips

61. autumn leaves

62. christian music

63. stimulating conversation

64. roller skatinng

65. riding my bicycle

66. exercising

67. Zumba!!!!

68. learning something new

69. purple

70. Snuggling/cuddling with my boyfriend

71. Affection

72. Fire places

73. House hunting (looking at model homes)

74. dreaming

75. relaxing

76. Red Lobster

77. YouTube

78. BMW 745Li

79. dresses

80. Sandals

81. Clicking with someone immediately

82. amaretto sours

83. respectful children

84. swimming

85. scented candles

86. jacuzzi’s

87. reminiscing

88. Volvo S80

89. Stanford

90. Zebras

91. Applebee’s

92. Receiving something I ordered in the mail

93. Making others laugh

94. Hybrid’s

95. Moves from the 80′s

96. 90′s music

97. country music

98. reading blogs

99. being a college student

100. trains

Some of the things may seem odd to you but they are the things that I love.

The exercise for day 25 for the 31 day reset is to stop complaining for 24 hours. That can be a feat when we all have something to complain about whether it friends, family, work, school, traffic, etc. I chose to stop complaining for 24 hours starting the evening of Jan 5 to the evening of Jan 6.

When I chose to change my words and thoughts to more positive ones, I noticed that I complain so much! I gripe when my boyfriend does things his way and not mine, I gripe about my teenager, I gripe about how small my house is, I gripe about my job and it is ridiculous. I took the time those 24 hours to really fine the positives in EVERYTHING. Instead of complaining about how lazy my daughter is around the house during that time, I revelled in the fact that loves to work (she works at Baker’s shoes), she completed high school a semester early, she is not using drugs and she has not had any children. I chose to appreciate the fact that my boyfriend is encouraging, always positive, is always home (out in the garage) instead of out in the streets partying and cheating on me. I also chose to relish the fact that I own my home and I can do anything I want to it, I have a nice sized backyard and I can build out more when I have the money so the small size(1200 sq ft) is temporary. I also chose to appreciate that I have a job in this economy instead of whining about things that happen in my job.

Needless to say, I enjoyed this exercise and really opened my mind to the positives and not the negatives that I was whining about.

When it comes to friends, I am very selective. I do not just let anyone into my life. That may sound a little “stuck up” or crazy but I have been crossed many people who I automatically considered friends. Because of this, it is hard for me to make friends. For day 23 of the 31 Day Reset I joined a community to help support my goal of losing weight and getting healthy, that community was MyFitnessPal. My plan was to make a few “friends” on that website and maybe even find a person from that site that lives in my local area that I can have for a workout buddy.

While navigating the site, I noticed that it is not as user-friendly as SparkPeople. There did not seem to be any groups to join, no articles, recipes, or member pages to browse like on SparkPeople. My plan to make a new friend for this challenge is pretty much on hold until I close my account on MyFitnessPal and open a new one on SparkPeople.

The exercise for this day is to find a community to support your goals. Now my goal for my reset project is to improve my health which includes eating better, exercising more, losing weight and getting physical therapy  for my knees. I decided to find a weight loss community to join in order to get support for my goals.I used to be a SparkPeople member but I closed that account about three weeks ago because I felt that I was wasting cyberspace by not using that account (I had been a member since 7/2009).

SparkPeople is a very popular website that is designed to support those that are losing weight, exercise more, and improve their overall health. On that site  there are articles, forums, SparkTeams,SparkRecipes, SparkPages (much like a Facebook page) and so much more. However, I was not 100% sure that I wanted to use that website again and I wanted to try something new and decided to join MyFitnessPal instead.

Wrong move….MyFitnessPal is a very basic site in my opinion when compared to SparkPeople. I have tried the site for a few days and I do not like it at all. I will be closing my account there today and joining SparkPeople again because they have so much more to offer. I know that my goals will be supported on that website. A minor setback but I am sure that be on track in achieving my healthy lifestyle goals.