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Making a Plan

So I finally started P90X this weekend.  It’s hard, but I will try and stick with it.  (Plyo is hard!  Forget waterboarding, make terrorists do Plyometrics!) It is something different, so I like the change.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I do certain things.  Why I continue certain actions even though it might not make any sense, or even be good for me.  A good example is something that happened when I was cooking.

A few weeks ago, I went and bought a tub of that new cooking cream by Philadelphia.  There was a coupon in the paper for $1.50 off and I decided to try it out. The dish tasted well, but the following morning I had a serious case of acid reflux.  It was bad.  So bad, I had to choke down a cup of the very nasty tasting throat coat by Yogi teas.  It tastes horrible, but it is very effective.

I started thinking – Why did I add the cream?  I remembered thinking that the dish was good before I added the cream.  Yet I went ahead and used it.  But why?  Yes, I wanted to try it out, but I KNEW before I used it that it might be a bad idea.  So why did I go along?  Because that was what the recipe said to do.

I started to think this might be a habit with me.  I do certain things, because I’m just following the directions.  My instincts may say that it is a bad idea, but I just follow like a lemming.  Where does my brain go?  I just have to get better about seeing the big picture.  Not just with food, but everyday things.  What is my life going to look like in 5 years? 10?  I don’t need to have  fully detailed plan, but I do need to be long term.  These last few years, I’ve been kind of drifting and I need to stop.  In less than a month, I will be 34.  Time to have a plan to take me to 40.

Big life questions aside, I still want to enjoy the random funny things that happen.  Sometimes the unexpected is the best life moment.  Like when I went on that money hunt and I found a DVD set of Sex in the City Season 3.  That one left me scratching my head.  I have no idea where it came from, but now it is in my collection of DVDs.

Or last weekend when I went to visit my aunt.  I hadn’t seen her in a month or so and we started talking about movies.  I mentioned that I finally saw The Social Network, which lead her to exclaim, “And did you see the Academy Awards!  I couldn’t believe that was Trent Reznor.  That’s the same guy that was screaming and running around on stage a few years ago at that concert.”  I laughed for a good five minutes.  My aunt is in her late 50’s.  How awesome is it that she knows who Trent Reznor is?

I need a plan, but I want it to be adaptable.  In some ways, I just want things to be on autopilot.  But I guess things like life planning shouldn’t be that way.  I don’t want to add a bad ingredient that ruins the whole dish, just because the plans said so.  If you do that, you just end up making yourself sick.

I think I held the string too tight…

I heard this story once– Buddah was sitting by the side of a river when he heard a fisherman (sometimes it is a violinist instead) speaking to his apprentice. The fisherman said, “If you hold the string too tight, it will break. If you hold it too slack nothing happens.”

I think for the past month I held my string too tight. As I stood on the scale this morning, I couldn’t believe what I saw. I had gained two pounds. My heart sunk. “This is bull@#$%!” I muttered and got ready for work in a huff. I just couldn’t figure out where I went wrong.

In January I indulged, barely worked out, and went all off budget. In February, I was like a Nazi and it still backfired. I had to find a middle ground. So on my lunch break, I sat down and reworked my budget. My plans for a new car will just have to be put off a little longer.

I also decided to change up my workouts. A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a co-worker that I had always wanted to try P90X. She gave me her copy and said I could keep it. I just need to order a chin up bar. This will be a much more intensive program than I am used to, but I need to do something different. I think I have plateaued and P90X’s whole shtick is that plateaus don’t happen when you are on the program. As for the diet, that doesn’t scare me. I’ve been making diet changes for a while and the bad stuff doesn’t tempt me much.

And yet that new chicken sandwich at Wendy’s keeps calling my name. Damn you Wendy’s and your yummy chicken! Damn you!

Ah, let’s hope March goes better.

Other news, I was able to lower my insurance rates for my car. That will save me a few bucks. And eventhough I felt crappy today because of the scale, I still did my workout. As I went to shower off, I decided to use my most expensive soap, a scrub from Sabon and now I smell so good that it just brightened my mood. (Gotta love that vanilla, lavender, and patchouli.)

When the going gets tough, the tough take a spa day!  That’s my little nugget of wisdom for today!  I bet Buddah would agree…