Personal Development Virtual Book Club

I hope that you can join us as we read and discuss The Magic by Rhonda Byrne! Please send me a message or leave a comment below if you're interested!

Book Club

I’ve been thinking about starting another online book club session—is anyone interested in joining me?

We would meet online once per week. Those who participated in the past know that we definitely make exceptions if it doesn’t work for someone’s schedule—we can work around whatever is best for the group. The weekly reading will be something manageable—so no crazy amounts of reading to do! This is just for fun.

I’m open to any suggestions for books to read. They don’t have to be about weight loss or health. I’m actually going to start reading Bossypants by Tina Fey, so that’s an option if anyone is interested in reading that.

I’d like to have at least two other participants. We can determine our meeting place later, but in the past we have used Google Hangouts—I’m also open to Facebook Messenger.
If you’re interested in joining me, please leave a comment below!

Book Review: What You Can When You Can: Healthy Living on Your Terms #wycwyc

 

What You Can When You Can should be the healthy living bible; its concepts should be thoughtfully approached and applied to daily living for best results.

Many of us in the weight loss world tend to overthink matters when it comes to formulating a plan for our weight loss. How many times have you thought:

If I just eliminate (insert food group here), the weight will come right off. I will never eat (insert food group here) ever again!

I will buy (insert product here) and I will lose the weight in (insert number) days. After that, I will be able to eat however I want to again.

If I exercise for (insert insanely unrealistic number) hours per day, the weight will melt off. I will do this for the rest of my life and never miss a workout.

We are in a constant search for the secret to weight loss. There has to be a plan, a pill, a cleanse, a workout, something that will help us lose the weight. We cling to the most complicated of methods thinking this is the time that it will stick. Until it doesn’t and we’re left defeated having lost a great sum of money but not much weight—we may have even gained weight.

That’s the way the current weight loss and healthy living world work. So many of us are caught up in a cycle of starting an unrealistic weight loss plan with good intentions, giving up, and starting again on Monday. What You Can When You Can teaches that it doesn’t have to be that way, and it’s actually very uncomplicated.

The most influential message that I received from this book is towards the very beginning, in chapter 2:

“Perfect is never coming. You will never be perfect. Your life will never be perfect…So what’s the point of wasting time, energy, money, sweat, and tears on something that will never happen—on an unachievable ideal?”

It’s hard to accept, but it’s the truth. And so, since we can’t be perfect, we can do what we can when we can and that is always enough. This means that the journey does not stop and end at various curves and hills in the road, but we keep on going whether we are creeping along at the pace of a turtle or we are running as fast as a cheetah. And guess what? We will probably find ourselves moving at both paces along this journey.

What You Can When You Can offers common sense tips on how to live a healthy life--from matters of the mind, food, exercise, home, and relationships, this book offers sound advice on each topic.

The concept is simply about doing what you can when you can. Instead of driving to the library, walk there. Park farther away from the store, maybe even blocks away so you can walk. If you can only fit in 10 minutes of activity at a time, do that instead of just giving up and doing nothing at all. Choose the apple instead of the chips. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, etc.

Doing what you can when you can also means that you can enjoy life, enjoy an occasional treat, choose to skip a workout to spend time with your family, etc. It means approaching healthy living in a realistic and maintainable way.

I actually wycwyc’d reading this book. I read a little bit each week until I had finally completed it. Three of us met each week at the A Journey to Thin Book Club on Google Hangouts and chatted about the book and how it applied to our goals and lives. We all three really enjoyed this book.

I highly recommend this book. It’s also special because it’s written by two healthy living bloggers, Carla Birnberg and Roni Noone.

You can find the book on Amazon (affiliate link):

What You Can When You Can: Healthy Living on Your Terms

I’m still here

Hello everyone!

It has been beautifully sunny outside but very windy and cold. I’m missing those warm days and being outside.

I have had kind of a rough week, but it’s starting to look up. I had a lot of anxiety on Sunday and of course that left me drained and for some reason I just couldn’t shake it. I felt exhausted and depressed Monday and Tuesday and I slept a lot—when baby took her naps, I napped too. Wednesday, I felt better in the morning but got tired very quickly by the afternoon and had to take a nap. I’m feeling a bit more energy today—so I’m hopeful I’ll feel like myself again soon.

Needless to say, when you nap all day you don’t get very many steps. But rest is what my body needs, so I’m listening and it really does help. It has meant not bingeing on chocolate instead, not getting super irritable and cranky, and less anxiety. They say there will be relapses to this PPD, so maybe that’s what has happened.

I am on track with my Weight Watchers points which makes me very happy. Tomorrow is weigh in day, so I’m anxious to see what the scale says! Either way, I am feeling smaller.

Baby girl caught a cold, so she hasn’t been feeling very well. It doesn’t stop her though—she’s still her energetic and playful self, but she just gets fussy pretty quickly. Not to mention, she’s starting to walk! This morning she took quite a few steps in a row…oh boy!

Meanwhile, she loves to unroll the toilet paper when I’m not looking. Someday she will learn to cover her tracks. Ha!

Never mind the torn up carpet, we had some issues with our old wash machine and had to tear it out and we’re planning on putting in new flooring—hubby just hasn’t had a chance to get to it! It looks horrible right now. Eek.

Did you see my post about the first online book club meeting? Be sure to let me know if you want to join! You will know you’re good to go when I add you to the Google Hangout. I’ve had a couple of Google+ adds, but I’m not sure if that means you want to join the book club or not, so please send me a message if you do!

Have a great day!

A New FitBit PR, Daily Recap, & Online Book Club Info.

Oh my goodness, I am so tired! It’s for a good reason though. I am participating in a Fitbit challenge with a couple of ladies. It will run for 5 weeks and the winner will get $20. That’s fun motivation!

Because of this, I actually reached a new Fitbit PR yesterday:

Now let me tell you, this was not easily obtained. I felt like I was working out all day! I took a 1 mile treadmill walk during baby’s first nap.

I went for a short 20 minute walk outside while pushing the stroller but it was too windy to keep going.

During baby’s last nap, I walked 2 miles on the treadmill, upping my pace in the second mile.

After that, I got a horrible headache of which I still have now! Oofta. I drank a lot of water yesterday and everything so I think maybe I just overdid it. But it’s good for me.

I was super hungry in the afternoon, so I tried a new-to-me Quest bar—Coconut Cashew (4 Points+). It was pretty good. I am going to grab more Quest bars next time I’m at the store—it’s not a bad deal for the points value and there’s 20g of protein.

Other than walking constantly, yesterday was a pretty low key day. I did some laundry, got a new book from Amazon that a friend who has had depression recommended, baked a peach cobbler, the usual baby activities, and talked to my sister a bit. Hubby was exhausted when he got home and so we just hung out in the living room for the evening and played with baby.

Speaking of “baby”, I think we’ve got a toddler on our hands now so I will have to come up with a special “blog” name for her. She is growing up so much—it’s incredible. She’s usually a super happy little baby—except when she is tired or hungry.

If anyone is interested in the online book club I mentioned starting, the book we are going to read is What You Can When You Can: Healthy Living on Your Terms by Carla Birnberg and Roni Noone. You probably know these bloggers!

The book is shipping out now—so go ahead and order it if you’re interested. It’s also available for Kindle on Amazon. For some reason, I won’t get mine until Saturday—I must not have selected Prime shipping. Once I can take a look at the book, I will let you know the details on where & when we’ll meet online and how many pages/chapters to read each week. Sound good?

So that’s all I have for now! I have fallen behind on my HAWMC challenge, but I hope to get back to that too! I have learned that with a baby, you have to pick your “battles”. If I am going to work out all day, I won’t have time for extra writing, etc. lol…but that’s ok! I’ll get it done.

Have a great Tuesday!

This post contains affiliate links. If you click on my links and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission that keeps A Journey to Thin running.

Loving my fitbit, Online Book Club, and Twitter Chat

I had a great day yesterday and I am off to a good start. I’m glad that I made the spur of the moment decision to rejoin Weight Watchers. I ate within my points, ate good healthy food, drank lots of water, and moved a lot.

The fitbit (affiliate link) is definitely inspiring me to MOVE more. I added my long-time weight loss buddy as a friend and it is fun to compete for the most steps—she’s winning, BTW, but not for long!

Yesterday I went for a nice long walk while pushing the stroller. At first I was tired, but then I hit my groove and decided I would walk a 5K. But then the sky started to look stormy and it got windy so I decided I better head home. I did walk almost 2 miles though.

In the evening, I wasn’t quite at my 10,000 step goal so I recruited hubby to go on a walk. We just went for a short 20 minute walk, but it helped me reach my goal!

I am proud of my steps for yesterday:

I am not going to step on the scale until Friday, which will be my weigh in day. It’s easy to get discouraged when the weight doesn’t come off as quickly as I think it should. This will take time and probably a lot of it. I have a LONG way to go, but I have to start somewhere.

I have a couple of questions for you…

Would you be interested in a Twitter chat where we could discuss out weight loss journeys, share interesting articles, talk about our triumphs and struggles, share recipes, and just chat? I’d like to start one up but I want to know if anyone would join me? It’s not much fun talking to myself! ha Let me know what days/times work best for you.

Also, I’d like to start an online book club and I have the first book in mind because I think it would be great motivation and will have a great message for those of us in this weight loss and fitness journey. I still need to get reading more and this would be the perfect motivation for it. We would set small goals for reading because I know a lot of us don’t have a ton of time. Would anyone be interested in that?

I will be posting my #HAWMC post later on today. Have a good day!