Have solid, tangible, quantifiable goals.

This past weekend has to have been one of the most beautiful that I have seen in quite some time! The leaves were gorgeous, the air was brisk, the sun warm, the sky crystal clear. I was just a giddy grinning fool all weekend!

Saturday was one of my best friends' wedding. Just stunning! Autumn theme, so we wore truffle brown gowns and carried bouquets of yellow, orange, red flowers and real fallen maple leaves. After the ceremony and all the pictures were taken, the bridal party and groomsmen all went back to our own seperate reception room while all the rest of the guests were enjoying their cocktail hour. The selection of food we were offered made me think about how we are contstantly defending our beliefs.
In this case, what one believes is healthful to eat. But this applies to lots of things. Anyone ever say you were crazy for working out 3 times a week or going grocery shopping every other day?

Sometimes it's very tough to stick to your guns. With mozzarella sticks, fried ravioli, sesame chicken bits, meatballs and spanikopita looking at you it can be difficult. What seems to be MORE difficult to me is having others eating the hors d'ouevres! It's a social cue that eating now is appropriate and for some reason it's easy to feel that if you don't take part it will be misconstrued as rude. Why?! Gotta love cultural and social cues that are embedded in our brains right?

I think that is why it's extremely important to have a real reason for the way you choose to eat, or a real goal in mind. It is easier to avoid the fried ravioli if you know them as health saboteurs that will make you feel sick (too much frying for me, makes me feel ill)then as something that you need to avoid because they'll make you fat. We can all dispell the latter argument easily, "ONE fried ravioli never hurt anyone."

So if your exercise goal is "to lose weight" you need to sharpen that up. How much weight? Think realistically and take muscle gains into account. If your goal is "to eat clean for one month" as a diet jump start then that's a quantifiable goal. That approach would make it easier to avoid that mozzarella stick!

Does this make sense? If you're not really sure what I'm getting at just write me a quick email and let me know what your goal is. I'll give you examples of how to sharpen it up so they can be really achievable! It'd be nice to check those off your to-do list huh?