Thursday, February 03, 2011

small changes

My life is a work in progress (some days I feel like there has been more progress than others) and I can never quite escape the urge to make changes as the new year rolls in.

In the past I have I not found sweeping changes to be sustainable. Even my list of monthly changes last year didn't last past June. 

However, my pledge to make soup was a huge success and has served me well. In fact, today's lunch was soup (kale, sweet potato and red lentil with home made turkey broth) I made and froze a couple of weeks ago. During a chemo week, when I don't feel much like eating anything, it's a real gift to have something easy to heat up and healthy to eat.

This year, I resolved that it would suit me best to make one new small change every week. And so far, this is working pretty well. I haven't been perfect but the changes are adding up and I do feel like new, healthful habits are being created.

So today, on the eve of the Chinese New Year, it seems fitting to come clean on the blog and go public with my changes. You can all help me stay accountable.

And do let me know if you have made any healthy changes so far in 2011. I realized the other day that I'm far from alone. Over at BlogHer they were talking about taking small steps to get healthy for the entire month of January. How'd I miss that?

Here are my changes so far:

Week 1: Weigh in and record my weight every Monday.

Week 2: Begin doing strength training exercises developed for cancer survivors. I've been doing these on run days and plan to work up to about thirty minutes, three times a week.

Week 3: Drink no more than five alcoholic drinks per week. I've gone over this limit every week so far but not by a lot.

Week 4: Drink more water. My nutrionist recommended drinking as many ounces as half my weight in pounds. This is a lot of water.

Week 5: Meditate every day. Start at five minutes and work my way up to twenty. This is something I have been meaning to do for a while. So far this week, I have meditated twice for ten minutes each time. It's a start.

5 comments:

nancyspoint said...

Laurie, These sound like really great changes to work on. I think I better make such a list myself. January has slipped away and I haven't accomplished much change yet in the area of self improvement. I think I needed this reminder today!

Lauren said...

Those are excellent changes to make. I love that they are all manageable. They also happen to coincide beautifully with the advice given by the Cancer Support Community for being patient active (http://bit.ly/gN9xGV).

In this new year I have also been trying to strength train and drink more water. The water is a tough one for me. I do however follow an excellent blog called Fitness for Survivors which is a great source of motivation and may even help you develop future changes.(http://fitnessforsurvivors.blogspot.com)

Best wishes,
Lauren (www.BeastCanceRegistry.org)

untung budiono said...

nice article...
www.cancerhealingstory.blogspot.com

Lene Andersen said...

hot water with lemon is a great way to up the water intake. And it helps with the GERD.

(Should I stop beating a dead horse with the water and lemon thing now? ;))

I now feel like a complete slacker. Haven't even occurred to me to do something like this, but... Been meaning to incorporate meditation into my routine for months and I think this will be my official kick in the arse to go do it. Thanks for that.

laurie said...

Lene - it's so funny. Today, I drank a lot of water - with lemon! and then I saw your reminder comment. Hope the meditation works for you. Seeing your comment today reminded me that I've been slacking on that front.