Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I can't believe it's 2013. Time flies!

We just got home from a trip to NY to visit my in-laws, and i'm ready to start a fresh new year. I have big plans for myself, my family, our home, our budget, and this blog. I thought long and hard about resolutions that would relate to the plans I hope to achieve, and I decided that the best way to tackle them is one month at a time.

(I absolutely love the Happiness Project by Gretchen Wilson, so I've based my plan very loosely on her book.)

Each month I will have one over-arching goal that I set for myself. I'll have several smaller goals or tasks that will help me reach that goal each month. I will check in here once a week to keep myself on track and help myself reach my goals.

January's goal is to get healthy. I know losing weight is a common New Years resolution, and it's kind of cliche, but it's also very important and very necessary. I had amazing weight loss success in 2012 and felt very healthy and proud of myself, only to gain most of it back during the last 3 months of the year. I need to get back on track!

To help myself get healthier I need to:
~Drink more water (at least 8 glasses a day)
~Log all my food intake into My Fitness Pal
~ Exercise most days of the week
~Go to bed by 11 each night
~Get up at 6am so I can have a cup of coffee before my family wakes up. (My days are less stressful and more calm when this happens.)
~Eat one healthy snack in the middle of the day and one at night. (Not a whole meal's worth at each snack time, like I've been doing lately.)

I'll be posting the success of my first week next Tuesday! (As for today, I've logged all my food and done 30 minutes of cardio. Not bad for the first day.)

I hope you all had a healthy, happy and fun New Years Eve (we stayed at my Mother-in-Laws and watched the ball drop in our jammies, which is my preferred way to celebrate!) and please feel free to share your plans for the new year with me.

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Project 10: Another Pound Gone!

I've lost another pound, which makes a total of 5 since I started Project 10. I owe it all to My Fitness Pal. Recording my food, knowing other people can see what I ate, and seeing what other people are eating is helping me eat less. I love the app! (And website. I do a lot of it on the computer, not just my phone).

However. I've noticed that i'm still going slightly over my calorie allotment for each day. I'm also slowly eating more junk each day. I'm rationalizing the junk by saying "Well, as long as I stay close to my calorie goal, it's ok." But to compensate for the junk, i'm eating less fruit, veggies, lean mean and whole grains. Which is not what I wanted when I started this project. Yes, I wanted to lose weight and i'm accomplishing that goal. But I also wanted to eat healthy so that I would feel better, have more energy, and be a positive role model for my children.

So what I need to do now is find a balance. Figure out a way to incorporate more healthy foods, stay within my calorie goal range for each day, drink more water (another healthy habit that has slipped lately) and cut out some of the junk. I think that I can do it! I mean, I don't need to split a donut with Stephanie every time we hit Dunkin!

On the plus side, i'm snacking SO MUCH LESS than I ever have before. This is a huge success for me. Yay!

I would love to hear how some of you incorporate "treats" into your daily menu without going overboard. And feel free to share your successes. We can celebrate together. :)

As always, thank you to Stephanie from Stephanie's Mommy Brain for putting this project together. If you're a blogger and have a health or fitness post, feel free to link up below! I make a point to read every post that is linked and do my best to comment on them.

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