Tag Archives: determination

Character-Building Exercises

Indian Hills Signs – Vince, the Sign Guy

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I whine from time to time that my efforts to lose the lard and get stronger are frustrated.

I’m into a routine now.

I’m eating low carb and monitoring what I’m eating and drinking on MyFitnessPal.com. This is a wonderful site with a free part that allows you to (1) set your goals (2) plan what you’re going to eat and drink ahead of time BEFORE you mess up, and (3) chart your progress with exercising, measurements and weight logs.

Womens Health

In-between posts on the blog to you, I’m doing short sessions of exercises with 3-pound weights, several reps of lots of different moves – some to the beat of music videos of ladies doing ‘drumming exercises’- and then I go back and write another post. This takes the ‘curse’ off of things for me. I have the weights on my computer counter right next to me, so it’s easy to stop, do a session, and then get back to what I was doing. I end up doing 4 to 5 sessions daily.

The Indian Express

I try to get in a session of “old-lady-yoga-stretches” – 30 to 45 minutes – every afternoon. I do NOT fold myself up into a paper airplane shape and sail across the room. I’m concentrating on relaxing, stretching my poor, aching body as far as I can into each position and breathing into it. I’m making progress because I’m stretching farther and able to relax into it better than I could when I started. I’m getting more flexible, looser, and my balance is improving. I can relax – unless Monster Cat decides to jump onto my feet and bite them.

Getty Images – Health

If the weather permits, I try to take at least a couple of walks around our yard daily. At one point, I decided I would walk down and get our mail every day. Doesn’t sound like much, does it.

Well, we live on top of a ridge line in Arkansas. Our driveway is 650+ feet from the house down to the road that runs in front of our property. It is graveled and STEEP. I tried to do this, but almost fell on my head several times trying to walk down, and then, even stopping several times to bend over and try to catch my breath, it felt like Mt. Everest to this old lady. Once was enough.

Now I walk out to our shop, around it, past our old veggie garden area, back to the house, around it, and do the round again. If the weather is nice, I put my gardening gloves on and carry my pruning shears so I can stop and cut something down while I’m out. (The woods are continually trying to recapture the land we took when we built our home 37 years ago now.)

Deviant Art

Finally, just for giggles, my husband helped me get our old Wii Fit to work again after several years. I stopped using it years ago due to my general laziness and it’s predilection for snark when I got on to measure my weight and when I tried to do the activities. I’m ignoring that and talking back to it now. :0)

I whine because even with watching what I eat like a hawk and pushing myself to move the lard daily, I’m having trouble meeting my current interim goal. I just bobble with 2 to 3 pounds over and over rather than actually meeting my goal and being able to set a new one. It’s aggravating, to say the least.

I guess it’s also character-building, because I AM sticking to my eating and exercise plan and I WILL – EVENTUALLY – reach this interim goal of 45 pounds off from my heaviest. Right now the result is 44 pounds down and almost 44 inches less. I. AM. DETERMINED.

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Filed under DIET!, exercise

Striving

The Little Engine That Could

This was a classic book when I was a child. It’s all about striving – trying to reach a goal. The little engine kept striving, all the while saying, “I THINK I can, I THINK I can…” finally reaching the top of the hill due to never giving up and his fierce determination.

I’m ‘thinking I can’ now, on DAY 5 of my new regimen of eating right, raw veggies and a bit of dip for an afternoon snack, a bottle of water, and yoga each afternoon in an effort to lose my lard. I lost a bit yesterday, so that’s encouraging.

I also FEEL a bit better due to the yoga. Some of the positions are getting a bit easier. I’m able to slowly stretch a bit more. Some things will take some time. WHEN I make it to Monday of next week – with my daily yoga practice – I’m planning to add some work with dumbbells to my yoga practice Mon, Wed, and Fri.

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Filed under Attitude, Challenges, Changes, DIET!, empowerment, Encouragement, exercise

Prevailing Against Intimidation

Bored Panda

I am feeling really good right now.

I almost gave up on the idea of getting some of my art work on Amazon Handmade.

The people who write software and instructions for things should HAVE to try to follow those of others in order to get a feel for how intuitive their work is. The people who are writing the directions think their site is easy to navigate, easy to understand. This is certainly not the case with Amazon Handmade. There is also no easy way to actually get to people who can answer questions or help you.

You call and you get people who are nice, but they just send you to Seller Central, where you couldn’t get help before. If you tell them that on another phone call, they tell you that you really need to talk to someone who specializes in the handmade section. (They can’t figure out the solutions, either, so they point fingers in all directions – very politely – and send you on your way.)

What it boils down to is determination. You put the fears that you’re too stupid to do this aside. You decide you WILL figure out how to get around the problem that you have upgraded everything you have and Amazon still doesn’t recognize it. You WILL figure out how to get registered no matter what you have to do. You WILL figure out why they won’t accept the fourth image you’ve sent, even though they accepted the other three with no problem.

Right now I’m concentrating on listing things I can offer without a separate charge for shipping. You guessed it – I can’t find ANYPLACE that allows you to do anything about charging for shipping – only if you want to click a box that says YOU will ship as opposed to having AMAZON ship it. I will list hand-painted glassware if and when I can figure out where and how to list a shipping charge….

Determination – stubbornness – perseverance!

I am figuring this out – one small step at a time.

Linda Lewis Artworks on Amazon Handmade

 

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Filed under Challenges, character-building exercises, learning new things