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After a slow start, I cleaned out half of the bathroom cabinets this week and will get the rest cleared next week.  Then we can replace the (leaky) water heater, repipe if/where needed, and paint the room by 2/22!  

It's been harder than I'd expected to clean out even one room -- I have to do it in sections as I get tired after an hour.  But I''m purging as I go -- and that is exhausting!  

Reviewing what I no longer need -- boxes of tampax (I'm past menopause), old prescriptions, empty boxes for items that are long gone -- is a revelation.  And this is just the beginning.  By the end of our 5 month home renovation project, I will be at least 50 pounds lighter in stuff -- and hopefully at least 20 pounds lighter and tighter in body as well!  My healthy eating (Shift #1) is doing quite well and I'm definitely walking more.  

So far so good...

When I first imagined this year-long Shift-athon, my list of monthly Shifts was different than it is turning out in reality.  

I decoded to focus on Shift #1 - Eating Healthy and Exercising More -- after my husband complained about weighing more than he wanted to and suggested we change our diets.  (This is the guy who bought me cheesecake for our 33rd wedding anniversary last week... gotta love him!).  

Shift #2 was not going to be cleaning out my stuff for recycling or reorganizing -- that was going to happen later, once a few easier Shifts were under my belt.  But since we're starting to renovate the inside of our house and have it completed before July 4th, shifting the stuff inside it has become high priority like it or not.  Can't repaint and fix the floors with stuff in the rooms, right?

We set up a plan to go room by room and were going to start with the living room.  That's where most of my books are stored, along with lots of other stuff.  But the living room will now have to wait, at least a week or two, as our old plumbing demanded attention first -- first in the kitchen sink, and then in the bathroom.  

Yesterday the ancient pipes under the kitchen sink were replaced after our new Roto-Rooter guy "broke" them while unplugging a backed up drain that was driving us nuts.  Now we have nice black plastic pipes below the sink and won't have to replace them later when we redo the kitchen and add on a dishwasher.

But yesterday AM I discovered a leak under our 8 year old water heater while getting kitty litter from the cabinet where it's stored.  The KL was all wet, of course, and there was a water stain on the wall behind the water heater.  It seemed to be from a leaky pipe in the wall -- until our new plumber noted that it's from a leak inside the water heater.  So guess what he gets to do next week!  This is good news, however, as we were getting prepared to tear out the tile around the tub on the other side of the water heater cabinet wall, which would make our bathroom renovation more complex and more costly.  We still may replace the pipes behind the tub but don't have to tear walls apart -- yay!

So my clean out is starting in the bathroom, which will take me only an hour or two to pack up or toss.  It's a small bathroom but there are 5 drawers and 2 deep cabinet spaces in the console below the sink.  This will get me started -- then (I hope) there's no stopping as I tackle the living room next!  Stay tuned...

I'm writing this post in hindsight, as my Shift #1 was complete on 1/31/12 and it's already 2/2/12!  But I'm delighted to report that Shift #1 out of my 12 Shifts in 2012 is a success!  Eating Healthy and Exercising is now more of a habit -- although eating healthy ha become firmer in my routine than exercising.  That one may have to get it's own month and be a separate shift.  We'll see.   I am walking more -- have walked several miles in the last 2 weeks, sometimes a mile or more in one day (at the LA Times Travel Expo, for example, or while shopping or doing other errands for sure).

Nonetheless, blogging at least once a week about my progress on my Shift of the month is keeping me focused -- and that's good news.

So to recap, I've cut back on bread and other wheat-based carbohydrates, as well as sugary things in general (bye-bye nightly desserts!).  My doctor suggested I do this and in January I began reading a book from Rodale Press called "Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight" which makes me wonder why anyone eats wheat!  My sugar and wheat cravings have diminished, which is a sign that it's working.  This also makes it easier for me to stay on track with this from now on.  

Not that I'm depriving myself of good eats, however -- I'm just being choosy and eating only the most delicious for special occasions.  My husband gave me a yummy cheesecake slice with chocolate graham cracker crust (the memory of what it looked like still lingers...) for our anniversary dinner last week, and that was worth eating.  But I'm not buying bakery mark-downs at Fresh & Easy or Ralph's anymore, not even those marked "whole grain" or "healthy grains."  I'm also drinking water almost every time I eat out (with a lemon slice where available) which is helping me be more hydrated.

So Shift #1 is complete!  On to Shift 2 for February: cleaning out and organizing my "stuff" to make space and shift my home's Feng Shui energy too!

Two weeks have passed since I last posted -- it's too easy to get out of the habit!  That's true of all habits of course -- it's a constant effort to stay on course and just do it.

But I've been making great progress on my first Shift (of 12 for the year) and am still eating healthy.  My diet is much better since I started focusing on this on January 1st.  I'm writing down everything I eat -- even the pieces of candy (dark chocolate with antioxidants, so they're nutritious, right?...).

Drinking more water has become easier in the last 2 weeks -- I'm only ordering water with lemon at restaurants now and drinking more H2O at home than before.

But adding exercise to my routine has eluded me -- until this morning.  Maybe it's the unusually warm LA weather in January, maybe it's my guilt rising because it's nearly the end of January and I've only been walking from my car to home or stores or banks (tho I park further away so I do get more steps in whenever I can).  

Today, however, I stumbled out of bed, took my thyroid pill (which I began taking recently per my doctor  after my blood tests finally confirmed my thyroid levels are low enough to take seriously -- which added to my anti-exercises inertia), and went outside to get the newspaper.  After vacillating in my mind, going back and forth from yes to no as I wondered if I could finally take a brief \walk before taking the paper inside -- my guilt overcame my laziness andI did it!

I walked 4 blocks which was not as easy as I'd hoped.  My hips ached, my tight leg muscles complained, I huffed and I puffed.  But I survived.

Since one mile on my street is comprised of approx. 10 blocks, this was 4/10 of a mile!   Let's see if I can do it again tomorrow and maybe even add another block (or 2). I know that once I start walking regularly, the stamina builds and the aches dissipate.  If I don't flake out -- which being accountable here makes me avoid -- I'll accomplish my Shift #1 goal -- eating healthy and exercising -- by the end of January!

Onward --

This photo is me at the finish line of the last 5K I walked -- in August 2010:

It's been a week since I wrote about my progress with Shift #1 -- eating healthy and exercising more -- and it's still going pretty well.  This week I've been focusing on DRINKING MORE WATER -- especially when I eat out but also when I'm at home and in my car.  

I'm still avoiding the exercise part of this shift and will work my way up to that in the next 2 weeks.  Next week I am having a brief medical "procedure" so I won't feel like walking until mid-week at the earliest.  But I commit to checking out the new gym I now belong to (which bought my membership from my old gym).  Whether I will get into walking on the treadmill and reading, as I plan to, remains however to be seen.

But I am walking more this week even if it's only from my car to and through stores when I've been doing errands -- I've been deliberately parking farther away from the door than usual just so I can.  In fact, yesterday I walked almost a mile while doing errands -- which counts!

I'm also continuing to eat healthy and generally fresh foods -- though a few protein bars have snuck in when I've been out for the day and my blood sugar's dropped after not eating for nearly 5 hours.  I have had a few pieces of bread -- only at restaurants which have terrific Italian or French bread -- and a few desserts (the tiramisu was included in my dinner! and too delicious to ignore).  But at home I've been very good -- when I get sugar cravings, I've had yogurt or cottage cheese and fruit, and this works great.

So far so good -- now I'm ready for another glass of agua!