Shredded

At the encouragement of my four year old, I started Jillian Micheal's 30 Day Shred again today. I was already thinking about starting this up again. I actually have quite a list of things I'd like to do on a regular basis. But, my plan was to start things up after the first of the year. I have this personal rule about starting new things on Monday. If things start to fall apart during the week, we start fresh on Monday. If the house is a mess and our chores have gone to pot, we start again on Monday. All potty training endeavors, toddler bed transitions, pacifier weanings and get yourself to sleep trainings have begun on Monday. You get the idea.

I am planning to begin the book "31 Days of Praise" in January. I have read everything up to the actual day to day breakdown, so that I will be able to get to the meat on the first day, which will probably be January 3rd. I am planning on reading a chapter a day from my stack of books. "Don't Make Me Count to 3" is top on the stack. It is hilarious so far and full of biblical truth and real life mothering situations. I can't wait to read the next chapter! I have great plans to order all of the appropriate pictures for C, B, O and CJ's baby books and get them caught up. One per month. I should be able to manage that, right? (insert eye roll here) And I was planning to do the "30 day shred" starting the beginning of January. Something about 30 days of working out and 31 days of praise seemed like a good structure for January.

But I did not discuss the plan with the 4 year old and I couldn't resist Ginger Plowman's book for another day. So, yesterday I started reading a chapter a day and read two chapters. Maybe I actually will finish a book this year! (2011 that is) This morning C asked repeatedly if he could watch the work out girl with me. I changed clothes and put the DVD in. I even brought out some weights for both of us to use. It was really fun to see C trying to do the moves. He got tired right about the same time I did, but he sat down and I grunted through to the end. I must admit that I do not use the weights every time I'm supposed to. And with a one year old crawling onto my back while I am doing cheater push-ups, well, I don't think I did all that I was supposed to do. Then there was that cardio block where I was supposed to be doing jump rope and said one year old stood in front of my holding on to my quads. That's tricky. So, I may not have gotten the full workout that Jillian and The.Biggest Loser hope people will receive, but my arms and legs are burning already and I am really hoping I'll be able to move tomorrow.

On a more cheerful note, I did feel a bit stronger today then I did the last time I started the 30 day shred. I was able to use the weights more and I did every move for at least 3/4 of the time. :) Hopefully I'll be able to stick with it long enough to try out the 2nd and 3rd level workouts and notice more strength in myself.

Some other things to come in the new year, well, I guess they are really things that are going to go in the new year. At least for a month or so. We are going to attempt to fast from movies and dessert. I feel like we have over indulged in both of these over the last month. Movies have been the attention holder while I have worked on gifts for B's birthday and any other thing I wanted to work on without littles underfoot. Desserts have been excessive for probably the last year. In OKC, we just didn't have dessert much. Since moving south, we have dessert ever Thursday after Navigators. Then we've started going to the Chapel on Sunday evenings and we have dessert. Then there's dessert for Albert and me after our Leader's study on Friday night. Never mind the extra Christmas goodies that we should have given away more of, B's birthday cake and the tasty cake that our neighbor gave us for Christmas. Yes, you could go into a sugar coma at our house! My plan is to eat everything, then cut off all desserts at once. Maybe I will at least try to stay dessert free until the next birthday rolls around. That would probably work for my waistline!

All of the plans are really fun and fairly easy for me to come up with. It's the self discipline and perseverance that I really struggle with. I feel like my energy and will power are both strong for about a week, then I'm just tired and and hungry for sugar. I guess the real question with all of this is "What does the Lord want me to do? Not to do?" Hopefully those will be the things I really pursue and stick with!