Three for Three

WRITING—last Friday was a writer’s day for me. It started as soon as I got back from dropping off my son at school. Since I work nights my Friday is the first day of the weekend. I had a whole long list of things to do. I made a decision to forgo the list and just write for as long as I could without interruption. I was surprised at how well this worked for me. I completed the rewrites from last Friday, edited the pages from my critique group, and produced several more pages of my own work. I am looking forward to working like this again.

DIET—there was no progress on this front. I am still struggling with which meal to eat as dinner and which to eat as lunch. I make my family the evening meal at 11:30 in the morning and put it away for them to heat up later. I want to eat that meal myself while it is still hot. This works some days and not on some others. The problem is that some days I don’t cook until just before I leave for work and eating a big meat just before driving is not good for your digestion. And then if I take it to work to eat then I feel heavy and slow at work. I have tried several variations of what to eat but have not hit on the solution. Call it a work in progress.

EXERCISE—of course there was no improvement this week. Saturday morning after my writer’s group meeting I stood at the same number as I did last week. In a surfing session on the internet I found this site. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/1-mile-walk/atcexz6c

I was intrigued by the line that said you could walk a mile at home. I do not have long stretches of empty spaces in my house. I don’t believe many people do. I followed the link and started the video. I was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of the steps and loved how you could do it all in such a small space. The best part of the whole thing is that I could do it in my bare feet. As I said before I am very flatfooted and have a hard time exercising in any kind of shoes. I recently read an article about barefoot runners doing marathons. I wondered if that would work for me. I have done this twice before now and was happy with the results. I just have to be careful of slippery surfaces.

Welcome to Wednesday

Welcome to Wednesday, sometimes called Hump Day. It is the day for overcoming hurdles or making it past the middle of something. I have a lot of the same feelings about this day only mine extent into the half empty part of the hump. By Wednesday I’m thinking over all the things that didn’t get done this week and all the missed opportunities to write or even participate in life outside my own little world. So Thursday and Friday are my power days. I work hard to catch up and then on Saturdays and Sundays I start over.

WRITING: I spent a lot of time this weekend working on research for the novel I am working on. I love doing research. If given the chance to make a living doing research I would probably jump for it. Since that is not going to happen I have to stop myself at some point and get to the business of the actual writing. For the book I am working on now I am pretty much finished with the research. Maybe a little more down the line will be needed. So I should be writing right now. Working on the next pages for chapter one. The goal, finish chapter one by next Friday (4000). I want to finish 10,000 by the end of the month.

DIET: Still working on making small changes. This week we moved to 100 percent whole wheat bread to go with the whole wheat pasta. Non-fat yogurt and non-fat milk will be added at the grocery store trip this week. Still working on the adding of more fruit and veggies’. The bread, yogurt, milk will be easy. For me the fruit and veggies’ will be the hardest.

EXERCISE: Keeping to the schedule this week so far. I have these wonderful workout tapes I bought many years ago that were from a popular workout show in the 90’s. The reason why they are so good is because when they made the recordings of the 30 minute show they took out the commercials and so each segment is only 20 minutes long and there are three segments on each tape. I bought seven tapes. I can watch a new one each time for months. I can do this and I did yesterday morning. I will workout again tomorrow. Next week I will do the tape three days and stick with that schedule for awhile. Each day in between I am doing stretches and sit-up. I’ve lost 1 pound since Saturday. Still better than nothing.

Split Three Ways

Welcome to my blog!

I have posted before about doing the NaNoWriMo but then felt I had nothing else to write about. I kept hearing to write whatever you want to. That helped a lot (not) and got me no closer to a true idea. Until now. So here is what I want to write about. My writing, my struggles with dieting and my never ending love hate relationship with exercising. So join me, gripe with me and sympathize with me.

WRITING—Last nights meeting of my Friday Night Write group felt like the most productive meeting we have had. A week ago we marked the six month anniversary of our blog and a little over a year as a writing group. We have experienced a lot of ups and downs in that short time. Each of us writes with different styles and talents. I would call the last six months our breaking in period. We have learned more on the craft of writing and at the same time discovered our critique partners’ individual style. This has been a learning process all the way around. I see this as a very promising progression. I am currently writing straight romance, but who knows, one day I may want to write romantic suspense or delve into the world of literary fiction. I believe our combined talents bring out a broader WHAT IF to each of our stories.

Our current goal was to bring at least two pages to the table. With that done we will turn towards our next goal. Our ultimate goal is to complete our entire novel before the end of the year.

Check out our blog for our weekly rundown of how we are progressing.

DIET—I’ve lost only half a pound this week. Not the goal I wanted but a good end to the week. I am a serial weigher. I know the consensus is to only weigh your self once a week for a true picture of your weight loss but I have been weighing myself every morning for many years. It is a hard habit to break. I do use Saturday morning as my weekly mark. This is the morning after our meeting and depending on what we eat and how much coffee I drink this is my starting point for the rest of the week. I drink a little less coffee these days but I just can’t give it up on Friday nights.

EXERCISE—I did not stick to the workout schedule this week. I only did the stretches and sit-ups twice. No walking. I’m not a big fan of walking because of my flat feet. Yeah I know that’s not a good excuse. My goal this week is to work out to my tapes twice and do the stretches and sit-ups three times.

I’ll be back on Wednesday.