Habitual Creatures

Well hello!  It's been too long since I've talked to you!

Just a quick recap of my weekend home: I hung with my best friend Elizabeth since she's been on vacation forever and she just left for college (FRESHMAN YEAR!!) yesterday.  We went garage sale-ing and had a blast!  I bought The Biggest Loser cookbook for ONE BUCK!!  It was marked two, but I got it down to one!

Sunday we had a lake baptism at out pastor's house.  It was so cool!  I've never seen people baptized in a lake, just our church baptismal.  So it was really neat.  It was especially awesome because on girl that got baptized just accepted Christ as her Savior at camp this year.  And I got to be the one to lead her to the Lord.  It was just a blessing to see her grow and desire to follow God's commands for a christian!

Her mom and dad also were baptized and this is her under the water.  Don't worry, she was only down there for a second.

I had to have a picture with her afterwards.  I was like a proud parent!  It brought tears to my eyes. :)

On Monday morning I had a lovely visit with the dentist were he put my real crown on my back right molar.  I'm glad it's over with, but unfortunately I have to do it again come Christmas vacation.  Oh joy.

And now I'm back in Willmar.  This weekend I really thought a lot about habits.  Humans are habitual creatures.  When I lived at home and was alone for a day I would literally do nothing.  I mean, I did what I had to do, but nothing extra.  I experienced that this weekend.  I felt so lazy by the end of the day.

Being lazy has recently become one of my biggest pet peeves.  I just know that there is something productive I could have done that would have given me a sense of accomplishment come evening.

I've become painfully aware of my plateau in my weight loss journey.  Yes, I consciously took a break during camp because I needed to.  But since then, I've just been waiting to form new habits.  Well, obviously, one cannot form new habits over night and they don't magically appear.  You have to decide what they need to be and work towards them.

I'm so happy I've committed to running this 5k so I have a training schedule and I can see what I've been doing and what my progress has been.  I've also decided to start really carefully monitoring what I take in and put out.  So I found a great app for my phone called Calorie Counter.  Check it out and see if it will work for you.  It has a bar code scanner which is so much faster than manually searching for your food.  Plus it's very specific since it know's the brand you are eating.  I think this is going to be a great tool for me!

I also found a better running app that works for me.  It's called RunKeeper.  It saves all my runs and shows me a real time map so if I get lost, I can always find my way home again!

Now, with that being said, I've decided to form some new habits in my life before I start my job at the Y and before school starts.  I started it off by getting up and eating a little breakfast and running my mile and a half.

Peanut butter on toast was great fuel for my run.  Carbs to run off and a little protein to build some leg muscles!

An early lunch was two scrambled eggs topped with Colby cheese on three slices of turkey bacon on toast was very tasty and satisfying.

And afternoon snack of greek yogurt was so good!  I was a little nervous about it being pineapple flavored, but it was so good!

I biked to the store in the afternoon so I could get some spaghetti sauce for my leftover supper and I saw this in the what I call, "EAT ME NOW!" bin.  It was marked $0.99 and the expiration date was mid September.  I thought I'd just try it out to see if I'd ever want to get it again.  Keep reading for my verdict!

I got Roast Garlic Full Circle marinara sauce.  I almost went with Newman's Own because they send all their profit to charity and the products have good quality, but I compared labels and this was much healthier.  And it very delicious on my leftover spaghetti.

So my supper was kind of miss-matched, with the juice and my drink, but it was a great meal.  I'd have to say the drink was interesting.  I didn't much care for the flavor the farther I down I drank.  I'm not going to buy it again, but everyone has different taste so go out and try it!

In the evening I helped out my cousin in a day care carnival.  I recruited my high school friend Kim to help me out.  We ran the fishing booth.  The child would let down the line with a hat tied to the end and would "fish" for a prize.  We had prized specifically picked out for each child.  It was fun to see their faces light up when they got something princess themed and they love princesses!

It was also a good time to resist temptations.  They had hotdogs, chips, popcorn, cotton candy and Kool Aid.  I wasn't really hungry for anything (especially the hotdogs!  Processed mystery meat on processed buns, no thank you!) but I was really craving some chips.  I haven't had good old greasy potato chips in a while.  But I resisted with the help of Kim.  Thanks!

Well I'm off to bed after a victorious day of new habit forming-ness.  What bad habits do you want to kick?  What new ones do you want to form?!  Let me know so I can encourage and help you out!

P.S.  I start orientation at the Y tomorrow!  So pumped!!