As the school year begins…Healthy Plan Lists

Friday was a teacher workday at my school, and the nice thing was, several people came up to me and told me how great I looked. It’s so nice when people notice my weight loss, especially those who didn’t know I was doing anything. It really validates all the hard work and effort I’ve put into this.

For the first time in years, I’m looking forward to taking my school picture. I’m excited to see the difference between last year’s picture, which was so horrid that I made my yearbook students take a different picture of me for the yearbook, and this year’s. I feel this way about pictures in general. While not every picture I take shows me at my best angles, most of them are bearable, which is so different from the past, when I had to manipulate the way I posed so that my fat wouldn’t show up as much. As if.

One thing I’m slightly worried about is the hectic nature of my school day mornings. Even though I was working over the summer, my schedule was flexible enough that if I happened to oversleep, I could still make sure I had time to whip up my shakes and other meal replacements. Now that school is about to begin, and I HAVE to be at school by a certain time, I have to make sure I have enough time to do all of my morning tasks before I leave for school at 7:30.

The bedtime/morning plan:

• Go to bed earlier than normal. Usually I stay up until at least 11pm and then start my “getting ready for bed routine” of brushing teeth, washing face, moisturizing, etc. And of course I can’t go straight to bed – I usually read for at least half an hour. (All of this is in a “perfect world” scenario. 9 times out of 10 I fall asleep on the couch and wake up at 2am, hit the bed, and oversleep). To avoid this, I’m going to start my “getting ready for bed” routine at 10pm, which means that I will miss those great shows that are on at that time, but hey, that’s what TiVo is for, right?
• Set up the coffee maker at night. For someone as addicted to coffee as me, this should be a no-brainer, but I never do this. I try to wake up and grind the beans and make the coffee, but on the mornings that I oversleep (which is most mornings), I barely have time to hit Starbucks on my way into school. By setting this up in my “getting ready for bed” routine, I’ll ensure that I don’t spend so much money on Starbucks, and save it for Fridays, when I like to treat myself. (The Friday Starbucks run is my way of celebrating the upcoming weekend).
• Plan what I’m going to wear the night before. I know I’m not alone in this, but when I wake up and put on an outfit, I usually go through 3 or 4 “changes” before I settle on something that I like. Lots of time is wasted in this process. Now that I’ve lost weight and all of my clothes fit (or are roomy), this shouldn’t be as much of an issue. I’m going to start laying out what I want to wear the night before, saving myself time in the morning.
• Setting an extra alarm. My clock radio is right near my bed, and I swear that half the time it doesn’t even go off. Of course it does, but I’m in such a stupor in the morning that I hit snooze or turn it off, and don’t wake up until the last possible minute, causing me to fly around the house to get ready. Not a good feeling. Now that I have my iPhone, I’ve gotten into the habit of setting an alarm on that, and because I leave it in the other room, I have to physically get out of bed to turn it off. This gets me up and moving, which is great.
• Taking a shower the night before. I’ve never been great at this, but since I don’t wash my hair every day, it makes sense that some nights I should take my shower before bed so that this is one less thing to do in the morning. I’m not sure if I’ll stick to this one, but I want to try it out and see how it goes.

Another part of this new school year plan is adjusting my working out routine. Last year I tried to go in the mornings on my “A” days, since I had a 1st period prep, and didn’t have to be at school until 10am. This year my prep was moved to 6th period, which is in the middle of the day. It’s good because I’ll actually use my prep to grade papers (in theory), but it means I can’t workout in the mornings anymore.

The new workout plan:

• On days when I don’t have my prep, I’ll leave school at 4pm, come home to change into workout clothes, and ride my bike. At least until the time change, and then I’ll head to the gym.
• On days when I do have the prep, I’ll leave school at 3pm, go home to change into workout clothes, and go to the gym around 4pm. I want to try to incorporate more weight training on these afternoons.
• At least once a week, I want to go to Bikram yoga with BFF, so on those nights, I won’t workout. She and I haven’t settled on a certain day of the week, so this will change, which is actually good, I think. That way my body won’t get into too much of a routine.
• On the weekends, I want to ride my bike, swim, play tennis, and/or go to the gym. This will obviously depend on my mood, the weather, etc.

Since I’m only going to be cooking dinner (my “lean and green meal” for Medifast), this makes food preparation a lot easier. I love to cook, but the main obstacle I have is not having the ingredients for the meal already in the house.

The cooking/grocery shopping plan:

• To combat this, I’m going to go to the grocery store on the weekends, most likely on Sunday, and get enough food for the week. I usually have a protein of some sort in the freezer, but the veggies will need to be purchased frequently. I can also make mid-week stops at the grocery store on my way home from work if I need to supplement what I purchased on the weekend.
• I definitely don’t want to waste food because it goes bad before I can cook it, so I’ll see how often I need to go to the store for the veggies and adjust the schedule accordingly.

Just writing these lists out helps me feel a lot more prepared for the school year ahead. The hard part will be building the routine, but I hope that once I start on it and see how well it’s working, I’ll want to continue it. All of this planning and organizing my life is going to help me continue down this path of a more healthy me. I’ll check in after this week to let you know how I’ve been doing.