Scattered

Definitions of scattered on the Web:

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  occurring or distributed over widely spaced and irregular intervals in time or space; "scattered showers"; "scattered villages"

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  confused: lacking orderly continuity; "a confused set of instructions"; "a confused dream about the end of the world"; "disconnected fragments of a story"; "scattered thoughts"

That would be me..... I have a tendency to get distracted by different things and not follow through on others.  I always joke that I have adult ADD, but I'm beginning to think I'm not joking as much as I thought.  I've been like this most of my life,  I have years of unfinished projects in the studio to attest to that.  But I have also learned how to deal with it over the years.  If it's something I want badly enough I will stay focused and follow through. But, no matter how badly I may want it, if it's  long term project it's hard for me......very hard..... So one of the tricks I've developed over the years is to break it into little pieces.  Not look at the whole picture, just focus on one section.  The house we're buying is a perfect example.  We have run into so many problems and roadblocks along the way and every time I thought about all the issues I got depressed and sad and just wanted to give up.  But if I took it one piece at a time not only did we get through it but there is only one more item to work out and hopefully that is in the process of being worked out.  So that's one of my tricks, focus on one piece of the puzzle at a time. 

It dawned on me yesterday that this is the missing piece of my journey towards health and fitness.  I backslid some and for some reason started looking at the big picture.  I have to get my eating in line, I have to exercise, I need to workout at least an hour a day and eat below XXXX calories and not eat sweets and stay away from lots of bread....and....and....and......   Can you see why nothing got done and I just wanted to crawl into a box of cookies and eat myself into oblivion??  Then I stumbled across this blog.  Which led me to this blog.  And that led to this blog.  Then I stumbled to this blog.  And even found this blog.  What I found on most of these blogs is some fabulous food ideas.  I saw some recipes and meals that had my mouth watering.  And they were healthy and mostly easy to make.  This got me to thinking.

What if instead of trying to eat healthy and cut calories and exercise intensely and teach and go to graduate school and do the things for the house and (eventually) move and try to control everything and anything.... What if I took it one step at a time?  What if I focused more on my eating and let the other stuff fall where it may for now?  What if I put some intense energy into getting my food back on track and not worrying about the exercise?  What if??

Those thoughts were immediately followed by "but hubby does the cooking so I don't really have any control over the food."   Hmmm.....he cooks dinner since that's the only meal we have together.  For breakfast, lunch, and snacks I eat what I want.  So what if I took control of those three things.  Hubby knows that I prefer to eat meat and veggies at dinner.  He knows I don't like fried or really greasy.  And I can tell him again.  But for the rest of the day I can eat what I want and I want to make that healthy.  So I got some meal ideas off those blogs and made a shopping list for later today.  Then I thought,"you know, I do this.  I'll go shopping, buy all this stuff, then forget what I was going to make with it and it will either sit there or go bad."  So that started me to thinking how can I not let that happened again and I came up with one of my most favorite tools.  A Plan!!!

I sat this morning and created this meal planner in Excel. This allows me to plan my breakfasts, lunches, and snacks for the entire work week.  There is even a grocery list at the bottom so I know what to buy.  This way I won't buy this stuff then forgot what it's for.  I will have my meal plan and every evening I will get the next days meals ready.  No thinking or trying to figure out what I'm going to have for breakfast or lunch.  No ending up buying some crap that I really don't want. I am so proud of myself.  I know that once I can get one part of the puzzle under control the other pieces will start to fall into place too.  So this is a great way to start.  For the next week my meals are planned. Now, all I have to do is go shopping.