Happy Sunday! I hope you are having a great weekend. We have been enjoying time with friends, relaxing and just goofing off. It has definitely been a great way to spend the weekend since this month has been so hectic for both of us. We both believe that reducing stress and enjoying life are just as important as eating healthy and staying active. Don’t forget that getting adequate rest is also part of the health equation as is having good relationships. J
Day 2 – Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 – Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 – Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 – Looked at Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 – Practiced Conscious Eating
Day 7 – Hara Hachi Bu
Day 8 – Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 – Acknowledgments
Day 10 – No Excuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Is it True?
Day 12 – Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 – Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 - Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 - What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 – Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 – Food as a Budget
Day 18 – Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 – Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 – Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 – Face Your Fears
Day 22 – Give Up the Diet Mentality
Day 23 – The Meaning and/or Purpose of Food
Day 24 – Trigger Foods/Situations/People
Day 25 – Words Have Meaning
Day 26 – Lose All-Or-Nothing Thinking
Day 27 - Decide to live as if ……
Day 28 – Two-Bite Test
Items you will need to
create your vision board:
·
Poster board, which I found at our local Rite Aid
(drug store). Alternately you can use a
cork board which will allow you to change the images regularly and this is what I prefer.
·
A big stack of different magazines you are willing
to cut up. You can get old magazines from libraries, hair salons, dentist
offices, or your doctor’s office.
Another resource is online photographs.
I like to use Google Images.
·
Glue,
rubber cement or a glue stick. Alternately if you are using a cork board you
will need pins.
Before you begin your vision board:
The most important thing to remember when creating a vision
board is the goal, your vision. The images on the board need to represent the
image you are trying to create. Before
you start gathering images go back to the vision you created in the exercises
on day 27. Reread your responses to the
questions on day 27. Get a vivid mental
image of how your life will be different when you embody this goal. Now it is time to create your vision board.
The Steps to Create a
Vision Board:
1. Go through your magazines and cut out images that represent the
actions you need to take to reach your goal.
With your clear desire in mind, search for images which portray your
vision. Go through magazines and pull
out pictures, words or phrases that seem to fit your goal. Make a big pile of
images, phrases and words.
2. Sort the images by category.
My categories were: health, family, happiness and love but yours could
be completely different.
3. Go through the images and begin to lay your favorites on the
board. Selection the images which best represent your goal and the leave the
remainder for another board. As you
place the pictures on the board you may find yourself grouping them like love
in one corner, health in the center, etc. or you may want the images to go all
over the place. As you start to lay out the images you may decide that you want
to create a vision book or journal and that is fine too. Alternately you may want to do both a board
and a journal.
4. Glue everything onto the board. Add any of the phrases that you
cut out. Alternately if you can’t find
the phrases you need you can print them out instead.
5. Some people like to include pictures of themselves on their boards. If you have a picture of yourself where you
are happy or where life matched your current goal either of those pictures
would be fantastic to include on your board.
6. Hang your vision board in a place where you will see it
often. I put mine in my family room
since that is where I spend most of my time.
Make a Vision Journal
Another option is to
use these same principles in a blank journal or an artist’s sketch book. By
using a book you can keep an on-going vision journal. This is helpful if you
are trying to make a lot of changes in your life.
Things to remember when creating your vision board:
1.
Choose
images that represent what you want to feel, be, or accomplish.
2.
Allow
yourself the freedom to select any image or phrase that feel right to you.
3.
Look
online for examples of vision boards for ideas.
4.
Once
it's finished set it up somewhere that you will see it daily. You may want to photograph it or scan it and
use it a screen saver or save the picture on your phone.
5.
Start
taking meaningful actions towards your goals daily based on the exercise we did
on the 25th and 27th of January. The board itself isn’t what creates change it
is taking action.
6.
You
can create additional vision boards about more specific goals if your desire.
1.
Newsletters
– Saturday we were out of the house as much as we were home. This meant the
newsletters didn’t get worked on.
2.
Body Bugg
– I continue to wear my bugg and I have gotten back into using it the way I had
intended when I purchased it. Go
me! J
3.
Date with
Dan – Dan and I had a quasi lunch date with Louis as our chaperone. ;-)
4.
Measuring calorie dense food – I am
making progress adding nuts and seeds to our food. I was proud of myself for
asking for nuts on our lunch salad when we were out with Louis.
5.
Working
on my business – My schedule got in the way of working on the business
today. Saturday it seemed more important to relax. Once January is over and I
have more free time I will jump on this again.
I remember that I promised you the link to my second website on February
10th and I really, really don’t want to miss that deadline. *eek*
Nothing like self imposed pressure. ;-)
Random Thoughts:
Acknowledgements:
·
Since I had eaten lightly for breakfast and
lunch I was hungry before dinner. The
old me would have grabbed something easy like a handful of nuts or maybe some
dinner leftover for a snack. However yesterday I opted to have a healthy snack
that was nutrition packed and it felt good knowing that I consistently make
good decisions now. Who said people at
my age aren’t capable of change? ;-)
·
Saturday night I broke out of my comfort zone
and spent an hour working on an electronic vision board so that I could tell
you about it. In the end I wasn’t crazy
about it, didn’t like the image selection and preferred to go back to the
old-fashioned paper and scissors route. However at least I tried, and now I
know what I like from experience.
·
Dan and I were talking about lunch and we both
commented about how healthy it was from a nutrition perspective. We had beans
(fiber and protein), leafy greens, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, kale and nuts on
our salad so we were better able to absorb the fat soluble vitamins. We washed
our lunch down with green tea. It really
is impressive how healthy you can eat when you are out if you want to. Years ago I would not have thought this was
possible but I hope you see that it is since we ate all this at a typical
American restaurant where most of the dishes contain meat, cheese or butter.
Saturday:
Our food on Saturday was a little different because we were
out part of the day. Knowing that we were meeting Louis for lunch I
intentionally made us both less for breakfast.
Dan started his morning with half a serving of wild blueberry and goji
berry oatmeal with raw sunflower, pumpkin and hempseeds.
Breakfast for me was one of the quinoa, oat and blueberry
breakfast bars that I am working on. The
flavor and nutrition is good but I need to work on the texture. I am sure I will get it right eventually. Perfection takes time, and lots of recipe
tweaking particularly when it comes to healthy baking.
Lunch was courtesy of Ian.
Dan started with a bowl of Ian’s new healthy soup and I had a cup. The soup is white bean, sweet potato and kale
with a broth that I am fairly sure has white miso. Louis ordered a cup too and we all enjoyed
it. I need to remember to ask Ian if the
base was veg stock plus white miso so I can make something similar for you.
Next Dan and I split one of the special sandwiches which
Ian makes us to order. This one included hummus, spicy chickpeas, roasted artichokes,
fresh arugula, crispy green beans, and roasted tomato. It came with roasted
rosemary sweet potatoes on the side. I
don’t have to tell you that it was delicious do I?
We also shared a salad of mixed baby greens, roasted portabellas,
sun-dried tomatoes and toasted almonds that was dressed with a little
balsamic. I am always surprised how easy
it is for us to get vegan food when we are out.
Since Dan and I shared lunch around 5pm I was getting
hungry but I didn’t want dinner that early. I knew that I had some of the
spinach and artichokes soup in the refrigerator that I decided to use for salad
dressing. I made myself a small salad of baby arugula, the leftover soup, pine
nuts, sun-dried tomato bits and no-salt seasoning. This was just enough to give my stomach
something to work on but not too many calories. Not to mention it was
nutritious and delicious so I was happy all the way around.
Dinner was a simple meal of quinoa that was topped with
grilled veggies that were tossed in sherry vinegar and topped with the leftover
spinach and artichoke soup (which is a great dressing BTW), hulled hempseeds
(for omega 3s) sun-dried tomato bits and no-salt seasoning.
Happy thoughts:
Have you
gotten into the habit of writing your happy thoughts? I find it helpful to remind myself how often
things go well and that I shouldn’t take these things for granted. As always there are so many things to be
thankful for that I almost don’t know where to start. Here are my happy
thoughts:
·
We were greeted at the restaurant with two hugs
from Aimee when we walked in the door.
We had no idea she was so worried about the trip to the hospital earlier
this month. We tried to make certain
that she knew not to worry in the future and just to call or text. Are you starting to see why we always say
that we would adopt her in a minute? She is such a sweet girl and we are very
lucky to have her in our lives.
·
It was
great to see Louis for lunch and have a chance to catch up. We did a lot of talking, some of it important
but most of it just little things friends talk about it. We have known Louis so long that he is
practically a member of the family, only the type of family that you want to
have (if you know what I mean). ;-)
·
I noticed Saturday evening at 5:56pm we still
had an orange horizon. The days are getting longer every day! *woo hoo*
It is going to be spring before we know it. *happy dance*
·
We had a very laid back Saturday and both took
time to relax and enjoy each other’s company. Like always Dan and I spent a lot
of time talking. I am always a little
surprised that we never run out of things to talk about given how long we have
been together.
Sunday was
fairly laid-back and that was a good thing. Both Dan and I needed time to relax
and recharge. January has been a heck of
a month with the trip to the hospital at the beginning. It is very nice to be getting back to a more
normal routine that is for sure.
Sunday
morning I spent some time finishing this post and putting together a new vision
board to show you. That is the one that you saw many pictures of today. This one was all about food, health and
life. The next board I will be doing is
on exercise since there wasn’t room for that on this board. If you would like to see that one let me know
and I will share it with you when it is finished.
We had
planned to see Lauren for lunch but the city was doing some work that required
shutting off the water Sunday morning and that meant the restaurant wasn’t going
to be open for lunch, and even opening for dinner was iffy at best. I had sent Lauren an email as soon as we got
back from lunch on Saturday to let her know what was going on and fortunately
she saw the email before lunch so we changed our plans to dinner instead. This was great because it meant that I had
time to get this post finished before going out which translated into being
more relaxed.
I hope that
you had a wonderful weekend and are ready to start your week relaxed and
refreshed. Talk with you again tomorrow.
J
Wow, I love you vision board. What a great idea!
ReplyDeleteThanks Lysa! :-)
DeleteAlicia,
ReplyDeleteLovely post on vision board. I couldn't agree with you more: it is so easy to eat unhealthy.
BTW, I especially liked it because it even had a picture of a cyclist :)
Hope all is well.
Take care.
Chandra
Good Morning Chandra,
DeleteThanks, I am glad you enjoyed it and appreciate you letting me know.
It is too easy to eat unhealthy in this country. Dan and I talk about that all the time. I am not sure how we got so messed as a nation. Hopefully there are enough of us who are focused on healthy eating that we are starting to make an impact on those around us. I just heard last night that we made an impression on one of the nurses at Hopkins earlier this month. *woo hoo* :-)
I love Lance, he is such a wonderful role model for anyone who is battling cancer. He is definitely a cancer thriver. :-) I hope the weather is allowing you to ride as much as you want to. It is still far too cold here to be riding. But I am looking forward to spring so that I can get my bike out of winter storage.
have a great week,
Ali