Planning

I am. Planning for a big change. Huge!!!

Sometimes, when I need to change something, I need to do it one small step at a time. And that's good. There are times when that approach works very well. One example is my effort to become more organized. I'm working on daily organization by going through the mail and throwing the junk away before it gets in the house. Small step, huge progress. I'm also slowly working on developing a place for everything and the habit of putting everything in it's place every night. Small step, huge progress. And these things are working. They are slowly becoming habits and that's what I want. But there are other times when huge, drastic, sweeping changes are necessary. I am currently planning for one of those.

I've mentioned before that I'm joining 24 hour fitness on June 1 - actually June 2, since I will probably have consumed excessive alcohol on June 1 (end of the year party!!!!). I was also planning on altering my eating by tracking everything and eating clean - I really want to lose 20 lbs!!!!! Then the other morning I realized (for the 10th time) that I really don't like coffee anymore. I used to love coffee. I loved the smell of it, the taste of it, everything. I even loved eating coffee beans. Yum. But for the past few years I have not been as thrilled about it as I used to. So I thought, if I don't really like it why am I drinking it? Because I'm addicted. I know what will happened if I go without coffee and I don't want that. So I decided that June 2nd would be a great time to kick coffee too. It will take 2-3 days for the headache and crappy feeling to go away and summer school doesn't start until June 7th. Perfect!!! I'm kicking coffee. Then I thought, well, if I'm going to kick coffee why don't I go off sugar too. Get all that nastiness out of my system all at once. Then I thought, wait, why don't I do an elimination diet. Get all the chemicals and processed crap as well as coffee, sugar, wheat, etc. out of my system. Go for a clean sweep. There are things that I eat that bother me. They cause gas and bloating and sometimes incredible lower abdominal pain. I don't know exactly what it is that causes this because I eat too much stuff that can cause this. So if I go on an elimination diet for a month and then slowly start adding these things back in, I can figure out what exactly is bothering me. Doing this while upping my exercise and having the time to put into the effort should result in significant health benefits. What a fabulous idea. So that's what I'm going to do. On June 2nd my entire life with change. My workouts, my eating, my working, everything. I have 2 weeks to plan and I'm rather looking forward to it. I think this is exactly what I need to really shake things up and get things rolling.

Sometimes you have to make small incremental changes for things to be effective, other times you just have to hold your breath and dive in headfirst. Here goes......