Making Changes

I was hesitant to make this post since I know the healthy eating blog world doesn't always embrace weight loss since we are all supposed to be happy with ourselves as we are right now. But in all honesty, I am not completely happy right now. And if I'm going to have a blog, I might as well be honest. Plus, I have no readers right now, so there is no one to judge me. This is like my own personal journal, but I will use it to keep myself accountable.


I am not fat and I am not overweight. I am, however, out of shape. I  would like to tone up, lose some fat, and maybe a couple pounds. But more than the weight, I want to have energy, I want to be happy with the shape of my body, and I want to be strong and toned. So starting today, I am committing to making changes in my life.

To start off, I will exercise at least 5 days a week, even if only for 15 minutes. I will cut all junk food out of my life for a while, and focus on eating healthy. I need to stay away from white flours and sugars, and I need to say no when people in my life want me to eat unhealthy food with them.

This is my starting point:

The picture isn't great, I know. I'll try to take real "before" pictures soon and post them with all my stats, so I can use them to track my progress. But you can see from this shot that I'm fairly slim and curvy, but much too untoned and wobbly and basically lacking any real muscle. I hope to change this over the next few weeks and months. If anyone is reading, I would love support, encouragement, motivation, and advice.

August Goals

Alright, so I've been a bad blogger and haven't updated in forever. But hey, it's my blog right?

So without anymore apologies....

My August Goals:

1. Drink more water every single day

2. Eat healthy at least 5 full days a week

3. Work out at least 5 days a week

4. Keep all my clothes and papers organized

5. Work out a monthly budget

I'll let you know how it goes

Snapshots

Well, life has been pretty crazy recently. Crazy seems to be my new status quo, actually. So rather than do any full recaps, I'll just show you a few snapshots of what has been happening in my life lately.

 This is a tasty veggie/tofu stir fry with rice and a peanut butter protein ball with chocolate chips for dessert (I used a variation of different blog recipes i've seen for peanut butter protein bars. Mine contained peanut butter, honey, vanilla protein powder, and chocolate chips).

This is from a barbeque my friends and I had. I was in charge of lighting the fire. It took me a ridiculously long time, so I can probably cross arsonist off my list of career possibilities.

This is the salad we made for the same barbeque. I stopped using my camera after this point and didn't capture all the rest of the food. But there was tons, including my delicious foil packets of veggies and couscous seasoned with lemon, cilantro, salt and pepper. Seriously, try it. Just add everything into a foil packet with enough water to cook the couscous. Seal it tight and throw it on the grill. Trust me.

These here are pictures of a giant hole that formed in our front yard after a ridiculous rainstorm. I'm not sure how it happened, but I'm hoping we don't get any sink holes that swallow the house. This was a really big hole, and it took us a while to fill it back up with stones and dirt. Sadly, it happened right inside our little garden that surrounds our well. We get all our water from the well so we are really hoping no more weird holes appear.

Please let me know if you have any idea what would cause something like this.

This was my tasty breakfast of a baked apply topped with cinnamon, nutmeg, greek yogurt, and honey. I know it sounds like a winter breakfast, but it was exactly what I was craving.

I'll try to be at least slightly more consistent with my blogging, but my crazy life has to come first. I'm already interviewing for summer jobs for next summer, which seems crazy to me. It is hard to think so far in advance, especially when I have so much going on in the here and now. I hope you are all enjoying your summers though.

Employed-ish

Well, I found employment, sorta. I started an internship at a District Attorney's office last week. It is unpaid, but I'm really enjoying the work. They assigned me to one of the Special Victims attorneys (think Law and Order SVU), which is something I think I would really enjoy doing with my life, or at least for a decade or two.

I've been doing pretty well with going to the gym and eating healthy. I've been busy and broke, but my summer has been pretty enjoyable so far. I have plans to go to the beach with friends on Friday, so it will finally really feel like summer has started.

I feel a little displaced without a job right now, but I'm still looking and staying hopeful. I have a couple leads on volunteer opportunities that sound amazing. Plus, I've been keeping busy with planning a public interest law conference for next year, doing chores and errands, cooking, gardening, and spending time with my best girl, Apricot.

Sometimes I think that I like her more than she likes me. Then she tries to stick her tongue in my mouth and I realize that I was wrong.

I've also had time to hit up the gym, which is great since I was worried I wouldn't be able to put my summer membership to use when I was working those crazy hours. I am sadly out of shape and can barely run for 20 minutes, but I have plans to fix that by the end of summer. 

I'm off to be productive. Enjoy your tuesdays!

Quitting

After only 2 weeks, I quit my job at a law firm for the summer. I debated whether to post this online, but I don't mind people knowing what happened.

 I had been told I would be paid, which I assumed would be at least minimum wage. It turned out they wanted to pay me less than $2 an hour. I explained that I have rent and bill payments over the summer, but they said they couldn't pay me more than that, even though they were billing my time out to clients.  I told them I understood, but could I possibly work only 8 hours a day instead of the 10 to 12 hours they were having me stay, or work fewer days per week? Again, I was told no. So I quit.

I feel I made the right decision, since what they were doing was not only illegal, but really taking advantage of me. These were not people I wanted to work with for any period of time.

So right now I am jobless and searching for both a paying job and some public interest law internship. I've realized that public interest is what I really want to do anyway.

Have you ever quit a job? Do you think it was the right decision?

Snapshots

Rather than do a full recap of my past few days, I'll show you a few quick pictures of how I've been spending my time.

 My pretty (but neglected) garden

I've been busy in the yard, pulling all those weirds out of the flower gardens and planting some vegetables in the other gardens. Some of the seeds have started sprouting, and I'm already looking forward to having fresh produce from our garden. I'll have to keep a lookout though, because we have lots of critters in our yard, including an obese woodchuck who enjoys munching on everything we plant. 

A wildflower

I've also been going on walks and bike rides, trying to enjoy the sunny weather and the beauty of nature as much as possible. My summer job starts tomorrow and I'll be working a ton of hours, so I'll have less opportunity to enjoy the beautiful sunshine.

My love

I've also spent some quality time with my puppy love, Apricot. She is the sweetest little dog on the face of the earth. She enjoys napping for 20 hours, then running around in a hyper fit for the other 4 hours. Excuse her dirty face, I had just taken her out to play before this photo.

I've also been enjoying wearing casual clothing. I'm pretty sure my job will involve wearing suits every day, so I've been enjoying my comfort and freedom in jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers. These are my new everyday sneakers I got from RueLaLa on sale for really cheap and I think they are adorable.

And finally, I've been enjoying the farmer's market. Since the farmer's market is on thursday mornings/early afternoons, I won't be able to make it again this summer. So I really enjoyed walking around all the stalls and selecting the freshest produce and the best little homemade treats. These are two mini pies I bought because thy just looked too adorable and tasty to pass up. They also sold mini loaves of bread too and I picked up a mini zucchini bread that was demolished in one second flat.

My vacation portion of summer has come to an end, but it was fun while it lasted. I'm excited and a tiny bit terrified to start my job tomorrow. 

How do you like to spend your free time?