My Best Life Summer - Part One

I always hear Oprah referring to “Your Best Life.” I have decided this summer to focus on living my best life. In the next few weeks, I will outline some of the changes I am making.

The most important change for me personally is losing weight. I am nearing 40, and I now have three small children depending on me and my husband. I want to lose weight not because I will look better (although that will certainly be a nice perk), but because I want to stay healthy. By the time my littlest one graduates from high school, I will be close to 60. (That seems crazy to even think about!) I want to be healthy.

It is also important because my own father died of cancer at 38. I know personally how that loss can affect a child, and I would like to do all I can to prevent my children from suffering that same loss.

To this end, I have taken two important steps. First, I have signed up for Weight Watchers online. I chose the online format because I don’t really have time to go to a meeting with a 1 month old and a 19 month old. Also, it is cheaper in the online format--$5 per week. I also read about E-Mealz and signed up for a three month subscription. I used the code “Dave” and received $2.50 off, so it ended up costing me roughly $1 a week. I signed up for the points plan to coincide with following Weight Watchers. I have tried it for a week now, and I really love it. The plan takes all of the thinking out of meal preparation.

My first goal is to lose the remainder of the baby weight. I have 13 more pounds to go to accomplish this goal.

I’ll continue to update my weight loss successes and also to share more changes I would like to make to achieve my best life.

Personal Goals for 2010

I am not big on New Year’s resolutions. In my experience, they seem to be broken by January 31st. However, the new year does offer a good time to look back and reflect on the areas of my life that still need improvement.

I believe 2010 will be a year of great change for our family. We will soon be welcoming our third child (in April), I will probably be quitting my job to finally become a stay at home mom, and God willing, my husband will finally graduate after nine long years in graduate school. We are excited about these changes, but I also want to implement some changes to make our lives run more smoothly during these times full of major life changes.

Write EVERYTHING I have to do down in a daily planner and consult it frequently. I am a list person, but when I went back to work in August and was suffering from morning sickness, I found myself too busy or sick to make any lists. As a result, I forgot many things and quite a few balls were dropped.

Clip coupons EVERY week. I was very good about keeping up my coupon box and realizing quite a few savings from them until I went back to work. I am just now weeding through the coupons I have stacked up since August. I wish I was the type of person who could just label the coupon stack with a date, but I like to have them clipped so I can take the box to the store and use it if I find any good unadvertised goals.

Give my husband enough time to work on his dissertation. Unfortunately, when my job gets busy, his work gets pushed aside. I want to make a concerted effort to give him enough time to work on his dissertation so the majority of it can be finished BEFORE the baby comes in April. Knowing that I will need a c-section and that we also will have an 18 month old who is dependent on us when the new little one comes, he will need to give up a lot of working time to help after the baby is born.

Exercise regularly. I plan to begin exercising for at least 20 minutes 4 to 5 times a week.

Have 20 meals in the freezer before the baby is born.

Take some “me” time by doing something I enjoy such as reading or crafting instead of just plopping down in front of the tv in the evening.

Declutter the house and try to simplify our lives. I feel like we are drowning in "stuff." After Christmas, my husband was trying to put away the kids' clothes, and there was simply no room. My daughter, who is only 14 months old, has 25 outfits!! (Hence the survey I have at the sidebar of my blog.) My son's clothes are also overflowing. We are living in a two bedroom apartment and probably will continue to for at least another 18 months. With three kids, we need to weed out and simplify before the stuff overruns us!

These are some of my personal goals for 2010. Next week I will share some of my business goals. These are all in addition to our regularly monthly goals we have set through the time the baby is born. (See, I told you I was a list person!)