I do not embrace wellness like I should. Which is ironic, since I practically live near the center for all things Wellness…Boulder, Colorado.

Wellness is more than dieting and exercising. It’s a state of being. With an abundance of local resources at my disposal, and plenty of sources of inspiration, I’m going to try and embrace that state of being little by little.

First up — reasonable eating. Not huge overwhelming diet. Simply — reasonable.

And to match that, I’m going to incorporate  movement. Not crazy cardio madness. Simply — movement.

First, I got rid of things from my entertainment center, as you may have seen in a previous post.

Then cleaned out my closet and found about 25 things.

And then I hit the jackpot in my bathroom, where I was easily able to find over 60 things to toss out. I have one of those two drawer plastic bins in one of my bathroom cabinets, you know, to keep things “organized.” Turns out, it was more like a prison for lotions, hair products, and tons of other crap that I never ever use, and are way past their expiration date, if they have one.

The life of a girl. I love the old Sonic Care. It looks so old compared to the one I use today.

So I was able to donate two bags of stuff to the ARC and throw out third.

It’s not much, but it’s a small dent. I think I might try to do this again a couple of months from now.

If you played along, how did you do?

This is exactly the kind of advice I need right now since I am still stalled on getting rid of 100 things. Here’s a short video she has related to the book:

So I’ll definitely be checking this out. I only wish it came on the Kindle since I’m trying to have less stuff! Oh well.

The key, in my opinion, to actually obtaining my goals is to not just give up when my diet is blown a little bit, or when I skip a work out or whatever else I’m making progress with. I think it’s my nature to be like “Well I already blew that, time to just go back to the way things were”. So today, I am getting back on the horse or whatever the analogy is for continuing my health regiment despite my minor fails. It will be hard now that I’ve had a taste of the easy life .

So I wake up this morning, feeling hungover from the Olympic Opening Ceremony and late night chatting with some friends. I stumble out of bed, get dressed and cleaned up, and I come down stairs to assess the damage. It looks way worse in the daylight. Which is sort of a sad statement in it’s own right. I haven’t seem my home in the daylight since last Sunday.

I am so tempted to get into my big chair and ignore it all, but I know that just won’t cut it and I’ll be miserable. So I did what I tend to do when this happens. I turned it over to HGTV to be inspired!

HGTV on Saturday mornings is all about home improvement, which is perfect for me. I need to see other people up and active to make their homes a better place to live in (or sell as the case may be for some programs). So I subject myself (such a terrible thing, ) to watching as much HGTV as I can on Saturdays to get me going. Everyone in my house is the better for it!

Now I could write a whole other post about the other kind of therapy I get from HGTV, but I’ll just say that watching all those episodes of House Hunters and Property Virgins, makes me get serious about my financial situation so I can one day buy my own place too.

Thanks HGTV!

I know that, so why don’t I do that?

Well so far my decluttering efforts have been focused not on those easy spots but on hard stuff.

For example, I thought that I could make some money from some of my scrapbooking supplies. I pulled together some pretty awesome Creative Memories stuff that sells very well on eBay. I went as far to take pictures and write descriptions. But then I couldn’t pull the trigger. These things in particular are retired 12×12 pages and retired 12×12 albums.

Well, I chickened out at the last minute because it didn’t feel right. And I’m actually kind of glad I did. My desire to make money from my stuff was outweighing my ability to think logically about what I should get rid of. So I held back and thought about what exactly I was doing. The white 12×12 pages can still be used with all of my old 12×12 paper. And I almost sold the 12×12 coverset that I have been saving to put my already made, just need journaling, Ireland pages. That was a close one!

What I did realize is that I will never use 12×12 black pages. They just aren’t my thing and are left over from when I was a consultant. So after some much thoughtful consideration, that is what I put on eBay.

So maybe I’m starting with the big stuff, and I need to focus on just the trash around my house. Build my way up to the stuff to donate, and then the stuff to sell…if I want to.

I decided that yes, this project would be great, and that by doing it  I couldn’t make myself feel bad if I took a day off, or two, or three. The changes that I’m making through this process are supposed to stick and I believe that they will, but I can’t always be working toward my goals. I’ve got to have a break, and this weekend I did just that.

Instead of working toward huge goals, I went into maintenance mode, which is key to make these good habits stick. So while I did plenty of lounging around, I also kept my kitchen clean and I did laundry. I even cleaned out my pajama drawers (while putting away clean pajamas) to add to my give away box. The beautiful thing about this was that it was easy to do. I obviously see the connection between keeping clean and organized all week long and how easy it is to clean up on the weekend. No need for the huge marathon cleaning session.

So yeah, I have no guilt about lounging this weekend. It felt great and was so necessary after a long week!

Confession time though — Of course I didn’t just sit around and watch TV. I’ve always got to have something going on at the same time, so I created a new photography watermark for my pictures, new export settings for LightRoom and new action sets for Photoshop. If I could only really relax, that would be awesome.

It’s a habit I formed in the dorms, when I’d be too lazy to walk down the hall- and by down the hall I mean pretty far down a long hall- to brush my teeth at night. It also didn’t help that freshmen year of college I hit my alcoholic peak of drinking mostly every night. Freshmen year I also gained the freshmen ten. All around, freshmen year was when it all went wrong for me. But, it’s now technically my senior year (I graduated a semester early) – no more excuses.

I’m doing a favor for my poor teeth and doing crest white strips daily. After seven years of smoking and making my teeth yucky it’s the least I can do for them. Quitting smoking is great because it gives you a reason to thoroughly clean out everything- teeth included. I hope that my teeth go less from looking like this:

An exaggeration. not my real teeth. but you get the picture

And more to looking like this:

I have a gap between my two front teeth they will never be this perf.

In honor of good dental hygiene here is an absolute favorite of mine from Yo Gabba Gabba.

I always go through periods of working out and then just quit. It’s quite hard to keep up the routine. I do this often- get really into doing something and then just crash and burn. Part of this project is to actually maintain healthy habits. So, this week I’ve been working out. It’s been really really nice actually. My normal workout regiment is 30 minutes of cardio work, either on a stair-master or an elliptical machine and then some weight work. Of course the highlight of doing this is getting to listen to copious amounts of Lady Gaga. Music is the key to a good work out. I spend a lot of time perfecting my work out play lists. This time around my play list may just be good enough to keep me going to the gym.

Part of my new fitness regiment is to change my diet. I’ve been using this website to track all of the calories I eat a day. It’s like weight watchers but free! First of all, you input all of your info like weight/height/age/activity level and how much weight you want to lose or gain. It tells you exactly how many calories a day you have to eat to obtain said goal. I set my goal at losing two pounds per week, set my activity level at sedentary, and the site said I need to eat only 989 calories a day! Hard! 989 calories are easily spent. For instance, A subway sandwich is 450 calories, plus chips which are usually 120 calories, and a cookie (can’t forget the cookie!) is like 200 calories. That puts you at 770 calories! Not a lot left for the rest of the day. Luckily, you also track whatever you did. Did you know taking a shower burns 60 calories?  The calories you burn are added to your allotment. It actually hasn’t been to hard so far. I can eat basically what I want but I do have to make smart choices. For instance, getting the Baked Lays at Subway as opposed to my n0rmal Sunchips saves me 100 calories. Getting a value sized fry at Burger King saves me 200 calories from getting my normal medium. As with most things in weight loss, it’s about exercising and not going crazy with food. Eating until your full and no more.

Now, obviously, I have a severe obsession with fast food- we’ll save that for a later blog post.

Here’s the idea: create vision boards, however you see fit that represent your ideal life and your ideal world. Your vision boards will activate the law of attraction, as theorized in books and concepts like The Secret.

When I decided to make my own vision boards, I sat and meditated on what I wanted for myself, my surroundings, and our world. It just flowed right out. Then I went through my magazines and cut out images, words, and phrases that matched up with those desires.

I created four boards.

1. Self, body, love
2. Home, lifestyle
3. Wealth, career
4. World, community

And placed them strategically in my kitchen.

The result has been pretty great so far. I don’t have tons of empirical evidence to prove that they work, but I just feel it. The constant visual reminder of my goals and the things that I want somehow pushes me in those four areas. There have been advances in lots of ares such as travel and money, some advances in cooking, and even in my personal relationships and self confidence.

I highly recommend this project. If anything, it’s fun to feel like a kid again and make collages from magazine pictures.

If you already have vision boards, how is it working for you?