Wellness Quest 2014 (1-27-2014)

Well the old clock is ticking on my Wellness Quest! I am down to 193 days until vacations starts! Between work and the Polar Vortex, things have been crazy around here. You know its ridiculously cold when the Siberian Huskies run back inside after potty breaks. I cannot remember the last time I had to wear so many layers. I have a long chocolate brown down coat which makes me feel like a giant chocolate polar bear. But I don’t feel the cold so much.  I still remember the days when I would hardly even wear a real coat in the winter, usually a good fleece jacket was enough. Not so much this winter. I like cold weather and snow, but this is too much even for me.

So my progress on the Wellness Quest has me doing the Happy Dance. I have officially kicked the Diet Coke habit! It has been 14 days since my last Diet Coke!!!!!!!! I still have not completely kicked the caffeine habit, but I am down to a small unsweetened iced tea maybe every three or four days.  Not too shabby. Now my next target is to cut down on carbs and sugar.  Having an autoimmune disease, it does help to eliminate gluten, but I have to do it all in baby steps.  I’m calling the no more diet coke thing a major win! And just a tiny bit of caffeine in the tea is way better than before too. I need more protein and veggies and a LOT less carbs and sugar.  But there is more fun stuff in the near future that will be interfering with all these great plans…..Fat Tuesday and paczkis. SIGH. It’s only once a year. :o(  I gotta have a pazcki. If you are not familiar with what a paczki is, please let me enlighten you. It is a Polish version of a jelly donut, but so much better. One of my co-workers brings fresh paczkis for Fat Tuesday from an incredible bakery that does it oh so right.  I’m already dreaming about what flavors we will have this year. Yummy. So after I recover from my fried dough coma, I will get back on track as usual.  I have also started attempting to plank. Dunno what I was thinking, but it should help me in the long run. Gotta start somewhere with the strength training.

  SIGH. So after the paczkis, back on the wagon I go.  Just gotta be bad once in a while. As long as it doesn’t happen often, why not? Hopefully when the weather improves a bit, we can get back to walking with the doggies. We all could use the exercise.  This Saturday is Groundhog Day, let’s see what the little bugger has to say about all this lovely weather we have been having here in the midwest.  I need to get quite a bit stronger if I want to enjoy that vacation of ours, so I will be working on getting more physical activity into my day wherever I can get it. So many plans still to accomplish, but I feel like I am making progress.  Progress, not perfection is the theme for this Wellness Quest, after all, it will be a lifestyle change that should carry over into the rest of my life to improve my overall well being.

So if anyone has any pointers on how to kick the caffeine habit, or how to get more movement into a busy day, feel free to share. I’ll check in next week with how things are progressing.

xoxo

Kate