Monthly Goals / September Edition

Wooooo it's September! I'm so excited to be back into the groove of writing monthly goal posts. I really think that writing these posts help me achieve more + reflect on my life more, both because of the accountability and because it forces me to take the time to think about what I really want out of my month.

But as a side note, I'm excited that it's September, becauseeeee September is almost October and October is autumn and I LOVE AUTUMN. I love when it starts to get cool here in Florida (so like 75 degrees) and we get a little bit of a break from the humidity. But as little as it sounds, I really just love fall clothing! I love vests and boots and jeans and sweaters and long sleeves. I'm getting so excited just thinking about autumn! But for now...tis September. So here we goooo.

This month's goals:

BODY / Get up at 7:30 at least six days a week. My schedule this semester is a little haphazard and it's been taking a toll on my sleep cycle. Some days I get up at 7, some days I get up at 10! That just makes me feel a little out of wack for the whole rest of the day. I really just feel infinitely better when I get up early! To make getting up early as easy as possible, I plan to go to bed promptly around 10 o'clock every night and put my phone away from my bed. I also like to use an app called Alarmy that requires me to take a picture of something (like my bathroom sink) before it can be turned off. Then I have to get up!

MIND / Get at least a week ahead of schedule in my apiculture class. So apiculture (beekeeping!) is my one online class this semester and because all of the course material is available immediately, I'd love to take the opportunity to get a little bit ahead of where I need to be so that I can have some wiggle room later on if I need.

MIND / Read every night before bed. I really love to read + I think it's a really effective method for winding my brain down for sleep. Currently I'm reading The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. Follow me on Goodreads to see more!

SOUL / On tough days, make a list of things that I've accomplished. Some days I make a long to do list and by the end of the day, I feel like I have it all left to do the next day. That tends to really get me down and in a funk so on hard days, instead of focusing on the things I didn't get done, I think it'd be helpful to list things that I did get done. For example, today I didn't do a single bit of school work. But...I did get to love on some lonely shelter pups and got a birthday present for a dear friend. That might not sound like much, but it's a happier thought than thinking about all that I didn't do.

WORLD / Start composting. I live in an apartment and don't have any sort of garden, but I still want to find a way to compost my kitchen scraps. Composting is basically like a super efficient way to recycle food waste into a really useful organic material. I've heard there's a community composting area in my town, but I'm not sure quite how to go about joining it. This is my month to figure it out!

What are your goals for September?

Health Goals / #BeBold2016 Link-Up

Hi guys! Sorry I've been so absent lately! It's really turning out to be quite a busy, frantic semester already and I'm a little bit overwhelmed with all my schoolwork. I knew my classes would be harder than ever but two in particular are really kicking my booty. I'm hoping to still post regularly this semester, but in all honesty, blogging is priority number #37 after work and classes and friends and family.

In other news before we get onto the fun stuff, I've finally gotten a pet hedgehog, which I've been wanting to do for months now. Her name is Flora and she is the sweetest little nugget in the world. I'm sure you'll be seeing more of her around here! Also, just because I'm silly, she already has her own instagram, @florathehedgehog.

Isn't she cute? Anyways, on to the link-up for this week. Just a reminder! This link-up is hosted by me (duh), Gina, Catherine, Christina and Kate. We would love if you'd head over and visit all the blogs--say hi! I know I've discovered a couple new blogs this week that I'll definitely be reading for awhile...maybe you will too! Let's review what the #BeBold2016 link-up is all about!

What are we writing about?

In the past weeks, we all wrote our own posts about our word or focus for the year and shared them here on your hosts' blogs. Then, we applied our focus to setting blogging goals. This week, we'll be applying the focus to our health goals. And then finally, next week on January 29th, we're chatting about personal goals. By that time, I guarantee you'll be super ready to put those goals into action for February and the rest of this year!

What do I do?

If you are a blogger, you can write your own post responding to the prompt for each week. Starting the Friday of each week, you can add your own post in the link up (the third one is below!). If you are not a blogger, we'd still love to hear from you! Leave your responses down in the comments.

No matter if you're a blogger or not, we'd love for you to take some time and check out some of the other awesome bloggers joining in this project (especially the hosts!). Leave a comment, send a tweet (use #BeBold2016!), or just take some time to check out some new blogs. You might find a new favorite!

My health + wellness goals for 2016:

It's really easy, when considering goals and health together, to immediately think about exercise routines + weight loss. And that kind of thing will make an appearance to some extent, but health is so much more than that. Real, holistic wellness comes from the mind and the body both being at their best + I want to reflect that in my goals.

MENTAL HEALTH GOALS:

/ Choose to speak positively about myself. Whether it's my body or my productivity or my performance in something, it's so easy for me to get swept up in a quicksand of self-destruction and unkind talk to myself. 

/ Continue to be a voice for mental health concerns on my campus.

/ Try to do one activity every day that relaxes me and makes me feel happy. Lately, this has been spending time with Flora! But it also can be coloring or reading or going for a walk.

/ A few other private goals. :)

PHYSICAL HEALTH GOALS:

/ Start logging my workouts on Fitocracy again. Fitocracy is a fitness app on my phone that lets you record your workouts and "level up" so to speak. It's helpful for me to remember what weights I used to lift + what weights I lift now.

/ Make a plan before I get to the gym. Lately, my problem has been that I get to the gym without a clear plan + then I just sort of amble around and do random things. I never feel like I get a great workout or like I use my time efficiently, except when I have a plan ready before I walk in the doors.

/ Incorporate fitness into my daily routine, outside of "workouts". Whenever I need to take a break from studying, a couple tuck jumps or a set of push-ups is great to rejuvenate + wake up my brain before getting back to work.

/ Take one group fitness class a week. I teach group fitness, but somehow I rarely make it to other instructors' classes anymore. I love group fitness and I want to support my coworkers.

/ Go dairy-free for a certain period of time. I absolutely love pretty much any dairy products. I love milk and cheese and creamy things and ice cream. Calcium is good and all, but I think the amount of dairy I eat may not be making me feel the greatest. I've also heard anecdotal evidence that limiting dairy can help clear up skin. I want to do a little more research on this before I do a dairy fast, but I'm curious if it would help me feel my best!

/ Eat a vegetable at lunch and dinner every day. I know, I know. I should be better about this.

Now it's your turn!

Sleep Savvy: A New Series

Ahh! Still can't believe it's 2016. WOO. I love the new year. 

Anyways....the last few weeks have been lovely. I've been home from school, with my family in Michigan. It's been delightfully lazy and relaxing but I've quickly realized that I have a large problem--I've ruined my sleep cycle. 

Maybe you can sympathize with this. Whether it's due to work or classes or just preference, you probably usually have some sort of a sleep routine (hopefully). Really, it's a healthy habit to have. The more consistently we go to bed and get up at the same time, the more rested and healthy we are overall. 

THE PROBLEM:

But I know that at least for me, winter break can wreak havoc on that carefully constructed routine. During the semester, I got in bed around 10pm, read or watched a little TV, fell asleep between 10:45 and 11:15 most nights and woke up at 7:15am. It really was quite lovely. I rarely felt drowsy at all during my 8am classes and I was perfectly ready to sleep at the same time every night. And best of all, I naturally woke up without an alarm between 7:30 and 8 on Saturday mornings.

Thanks to winter break though, I've been going to bed anywhere between 10pm and 1am and I've been waking up between 8:30 and 11am. 11am. I am not a fan of this. Maybe you're in the same boat + you're ready to get your sleep cycle back on track.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

If you look at my current sleep habits above, I'm getting at least 8 hours a night, sometimes even way more. So in theory, I should be feeling rested and at my peak. But...I'm not. And I started wondering why + did a little research. 

You've probably heard of your "circadian rhythm", which is basically like a clock inside your body that regulates everything inside you that corresponds with your day, which encompasses a lot more than you think. Your circadian rhythm is in charge of how rested you feel, how productive you are, a lot of the hormones your body produces and your brain activity. 

That's a big deal! So when our bodies don't have a consistent sleep schedule off of which to build our circadian rhythm, we get out of whack in a lot of ways. Even if I'm getting eight hours of sleep every night, moving my bedtime around actually ends up affecting my mood and my productivity. 

SO WHAT NOW?

I'll tell you! Over the next few weeks, I'll be taking various sleep strategies--mostly ones you've probably heard before but I'm sure some are new. I'll be focusing on three main areas: getting up with an alarm, falling asleep quickly, and knowing when and how to take quality naps. In the next week, I'll take a look at that first idea--getting up with an alarm. I'll be testing a few different alarm apps and some strategies recommended by sleep experts and reporting my results right here on the blog.

WANT IN?

Join me! I won't be hosting an official link-up (but if you want to join a link-up, check out #BeBold2016!) but you can write your own related post and leave it in the comments or just come read my post. I'll be posting every other Tuesday. Here's the schedule of topics.

January 19: Waking Up (with an alarm clock or otherwise!)

February 2: Falling Asleep

February 16: Taking Naps

How do you maintain a good sleep schedule? Any tricks I need to try?

4 Reasons to Get Up Early

FINALS.

Just the word strikes a little bit of fear in my heart. My fellow college students reading this right now know what's up.

But amid the craziness, I've managed to make one lovely change over the semester or so: I'm getting up early. Not early early, but a comfortable seven o'clock. I'm lucky in that my first class is at 8:30am. I know it's not what most students would prefer but I've gotten in a smooth routine of productive mornings. And there's nothing that makes me satisfied quite like productive mornings.

I'm one of those people who just has to share when good things happen--I want you to feel the early morning goodness too! But in case you're just not convinced why the heck you should get up early, let me explain why I do.

+ I get alone time. As an introvert (granted a fairly social one), I loooove spending some quality time with myself. It makes me so happy to read, cross-stitch, doodle or even watch Netflix by myself. However, living with a roommates generally makes this difficult. Especially with our schedules, we find that we're often at home at the same time and even though we don't share bedrooms, there's always the temptation to go out and socialize. Which is great, don't get me wrong--I love my roommates. But sometimes, I just need a little quiet time. By getting up early, I have at least half an hour to work on stuff or get ready before anyone else is up and doing things.

+ I have time to plan out my day. The other day, on a Saturday, I made the mistake of staying in bed until 9:45, which sounds fine, until I realized that I needed an hour to shower and get ready and then 30 minutes to allow to get to campus. And to save you from doing the math, I'll tell you that I was almost late to my 10:40am meeting. When I get up early though, I can easily plan out my morning--and even my whole day! I like to write a list of my classes + to-dos for the day, and then figure out where I can fit tasks in my day. I get so much more done!

+ I feel accomplished. This sound silly, I know. BUT we all know that getting up early is hard. Really hard. But when I get up early, I've already done something awesome. It may just be a simple mind trick, but after getting up early, I feel like the rest of my day will be easy. There's something to be said for doing something challenging first thing every day just to remind yourself who's boss (YOU ARE).

+ I make time to do things that I might not otherwise get around to. I know I don't really, but getting early helps me feel like I have a little more time in the day. When I stay up late, I'm rarely productive. But early in the morning, I'm eager to get stuff done. This means I get to write blog posts, read my Bible, read blogs or listen to music. Other days, these things just don't happen + I'm a little less happy because of it.

Do you get up early? Why or why not?

3 Reminders for When You're Sick

My boyfriend H visited me in Florida this past week and it was so so good to see him. I haven't seen him since August so I was so happy that he came to see me. That being said...he brought a nasty cold with him, which I of course caught from him. Thanks for that, babe. 

And so I'm already on life since I've been spending all my time with H + now I have to deal with being pretty sick. It's not a good place to be, right? I know we've all felt this way before and been in this situation. So here are just a few things that I'm trying to remind myself + that you may need to remind yourself sometime!

A break or a nap might be the most productive thing you can do. I'm the kind of person that will just work and work and work half-heartedly when I feel sick. I feel like I have so much to do that I can't take a break so I just keep working and not really getting anything done. Know the feeling? Sometimes I have to just remind myself that an intentional nap or break can be the thing I need to do before I can really get anything done.

Choose tasks you can still do. If you're sick, maybe let your intense workout slide down to a gentle walk. It's okay! Feel free to postpone what you can and just do what you feel like you're able to do. Pushing too hard will only put a bigger strain on your body and keep you from healing.

Prioritize where you use up your energy. It can be hard to deal with having much less energy than you're used to all of a sudden. Naturally, you're not going to be able to do everything you might have planned, so it's best to consider what tasks need to be done sooner and which tasks can really wait until you're feeling back to your old self.

What else do you tell yourself if you're sick? 

3 Steps I'm Taking to Eat More Mindfully

You know what I'm really, really horrible at? Not eating ice cream five times a day just because I feel like it. 

You too?

That makes me feel better. 

It's really really easy to get in that habit of eating whatever you want, whenever you want, without thinking about the consequences. I've definitely learned the hard way that there are consequences to that kind of thinking (i.e. getting fatter than you want to be), but it's still a really easy trap to fall into, right? So over the last few weeks, I've been trying to eat more intuitively, focusing on what my body really wants at a given moment in time. Here's what I've been working on:

1. I decide what I want to eat before go to get it. 

If I'm bored or want a snack for whatever reason and go to the fridge or the pantry, you know what I eat. I eat everything, that's what. I'll decide that some pretzels sound good...but then after the pretzels I'll realize that what I really wanted was some leftover quesadilla...and then after that (half the time) I'll realize I was just thirsty and needed some water. 

So instead, before I go into the kitchen, I'm trying to think about what I really want at that moment. Is it ice cream? Is it some fruit or crackers? Or really, am I just thirsty? Or maybe I don't really want food at all, I'm just bored. If I really want ice cream, I'll usually have some, but only if I'm sure it's going to satisfy me. Make sense?

2. I think about how the food will make me feel in the future. 

This is actually sort of two-pronged--you have to think about how a food will make you feel mentally and physically, because those are two different feelings when it comes to food. 

Mentally, there are some foods that I've labeled so thoroughly as "bad"foods (whether justifiably or not) that if I eat them, I tend to feel bad about myself and it actually affects my food. And while I probably shouldn't be labeling my foods in that way, it's something to consider. If I'm going to feel upset at myself for eating a food, it's probably just not worth eating. Likewise, physically, there are some foods that I love but aren't worth the nasty feeling they leave in my stomach (I'm looking at you, Panda Express).

3. I'm becoming less afraid of hunger.

Oftentimes, if I know I'm going to be busy for a few hours, I'll eat a big snack, just so that I don't get hungry later. But that's really not how I'm trying to do things. There's nothing wrong with feeling hungry for an hour or two--if anything, it makes it easier to be in touch with how your body is feeling. 

Do you try to eat mindfully? Any tips for me?