Not really an amazing week, but I'm still working on small goals that will eventually all work together for good--one hopes.
Eating: Although I've not been stellar about planning ahead or tracking, I did make it back to my Weight Watchers meeting last night for the first time in three weeks or so, and I was down half a pound. I was expecting to be up, given that I hadn't been paying that much attention. Which means some healthy habits have truly become just that: habits. Yay for me. Goal for this week: plan and track, plan and track, plan and track. Did I say, plan and track?
Schedule/Priorities: I didn't end up using my sunlight alarm all week because my husband complained about the fact that it woke him up too early the couple of mornings I used it last week. Go figure: He's normally up and out of bed well before me. Apparently we need to communicate better as to what mornings he might want to sleep in. I do really like using that alarm--it's a much more gentle way to wake up. So goal for this week: Try to ascertain ahead of time what days my husband will be up early enough for me to use my alarm. I do still need to work on getting up earlier in the morning.
Exercise: Ahem. But there's hope.
After a few more days of "It's way too cold and snowy to make me want to leave the house to get to the gym," I finally subscribed to a 30-day free trial of Daily Burn on Wednesday. I also decided to subscribe to the month's free trial of their personal coaching system. February is really my most critical time in terms of keeping me motivated, so 30 days works for me. By March things are starting to break up around here--although March is our big ice month, but at least we start seeing some sun here and there it makes me think, "spring is almost here!", and I'm much more likely to find the motivation to get to the gym. But until then...
Daily Burn is a collection of exercise videos of a variety of types (strength, cardio, pilates, yoga, etc), rated for fitness level and exercise experience. You can use your mobile devices or stream them to your TV, so they're very portable--good for those of us who travel. When you sign up on Daily Burn, you fill out a short assessment questionnaire and then it gives you a suggested program of which exercise programs to do on each day. If you follow the program exactly, it'll slowly work you through to increased levels of difficulty which, of course, you can also control yourself. If you're not ready to move on, stay where you are. If you think you can skip ahead, skip ahead. I've only been doing it for a couple of days so I can't fully assess it yet, but I can tell you I'm feeling it!
It has a nutritional component which I'm ignoring as I'm doing Weight Watchers and perfectly comfortable with my knowledge of nutrition; I'm also completely ignoring the supplements section which, in my opinion, is really just them trying to sell stuff. But I do like the way the fitness programs are done so it's okay with me to skip the rest of it.
I've already had a couple of introductory email exchanges with the personal coach I was assigned--Meg. I was impressed in that the second email I got from Meg (after I answered all her general assessment questions in the first email) was relatively personal. I could tell some was copy and paste, but hey, we're just getting started. I'm more skeptical about how useful an email coach will be. It's an extra fee over the top of the monthly cost for Daily Burn so I'd have to be really convinced it was helping to go beyond the free trial. I've had a real-live personal trainer in the past but it's hard to keep up regular meetings with my schedule, so I suppose the one thing an email coach would have going for her is she'd be able to poke at me even when I was traveling. Hmm. We'll see how it goes, anyway.
As a follow-up to last week's reference to desktop and portable humidifiers:
The portable humidifier attached to the top of my water bottle, steaming away.
The good news is, the water bottle humidifier works. The bad news is, it only runs as long as the filter tip that hangs down from the unit can still reach the water level in the bottle, and the water goes down pretty quickly. So I'd say it maybe has 3-4 hours in it, which is only half a night. I suppose half a night is better than none. And I do often (ahem) get up in the middle of the night so I could refill if needed.
The other humidifier, on the other hand, goes all day! I turn it on around 9a and it's still kicking out the steam when I turn it off at 5:30 or 6. Sometimes I'll keep it running longer if I'm working on blogs or whatever. I believe it has an auto shut-off if it runs out of water but I haven't run it long enough yet to find out. And it's fun to decide what mood lighting I might want for any given day--blues and purples have been popular, so far--although I usually just keep the light part turned off. I love that thing!