I have mentioned before my system of setting a goal of making one change a week towards a healthy lifestyle and eating real food. I have told about our changes to give up sugary cereal, to eat food made with 5 ingredients of less, and to have a green salad with dinner every night.
Since we are getting back on the band wagon of taking care of ourselves we are going to be reinstating all the goals that we had previously accomplished as a family as well as setting some new ones.
Last week felt very easy because it was exercise with you child week, and I found that very motivating. When I put playing and being active with my kids in the front of my mind it was much easier to do. And it felt very easy to say, "we already made this healthy choices, we are going to make them again". There was little resistance to the changes because it was just us getting back to the way of doing things we had already been living.
This week has been a little more difficult because I have had to add new goals and changes to our lives. The kids have been faced with enough big change and so I chose goals for myself. I love swimming and so I have chosen to get up early in the morning and go swim some laps. Loftly goals like this feel like they are made when you are absolutely bonkers; when the alarm goes off at 5:15am and I look over from my pillow at my swimsuit I think... "are you insane"? But I said I was going to do this for myself and so I do. The very hardest part, at least for me, is pulling myself out of the warm bed. Once I do that, the rest is auto-pilot. We all know the hardest part is that very first step.
Getting started can be hard, no wait, it IS hard. But if you stick with it, you only have to start once.
What changes have you been wanting to make in your family? What changes have been wanting to make for yourself? Decide on just one of them, write it down on a post-it note and put it on your fridge; then do it. You have already made the hard decision to change, now you just have to do it. We can do it together. I will think of you at 5:15am when my alarm goes and remember that you are doing hard things too.
