Today, in the interest of getting ahead of things and avoiding the inevitable guilt that ensues when I spend time during the week on marketing my studio (don't worry - I'm trying to get over it), I spent the better part of the day making much needed updates to the site , preparing some files for an upcoming call for entries, and getting my monthly e-mail newsletter ready to go out on Tuesday.
The day was positive on several levels; for one, I was up and out of the house to meet a friend for breakfast at 9:30 (a triumph for Sunday - I'm usually not up until somewhere around noon!), after which I went to Advance Auto Parts to top off my car's various fluids, dropped off some plastic shopping bags at the local Shaw's for recycling, and picked up a few things I needed at the store. By noon, I was back in the studio and getting to work. I even managed to get in a 40 minute walk, 40 minutes of yoga, and a quick dinner at Charlie's Kitchen in Harvard Square.
What I'm learning from all this is two things: a) I really do get a lot more done when I wake up early (imagine what would have happened if I had gotten up at 6 - I would have been done even sooner!) and b) I'm much more productive overall if I have at least a few hours a day where I'm not interrupted.
So, starting tomorrow, I wake up at 6, start my day with yoga, breakfast and a shower, and I don't check my e-mail or answer the phone until 11am.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Friday, November 17, 2006
A terrific day
Today has been great. I didn't get up as early as I would have liked, but I got a lot done today in terms of finishing up jobs for my clients, I ate very well, and I exercised twice — once for half an hour on the elliptical (I do find that daytime television is essential to the enjoyment of using the elliptical, particularly those judge shows and/or Springer—yes, Springer), and once just now, when I did 50 minutes of yoga. I feel amazing.
I'm coming to realize a few things about my time management skills (or lack thereof): I would get much more done if I started my day earlier. By this, I actually mean much earlier — Jeff Fisher mentioned in my HOW Forum post on the same subject that he starts his day at 5:30 AM and takes a nap at 4pm. That way he can get all his work done in the morning with no distractions, and he is finished by about noon and can move on to administrative and marketing stuff. I'm pondering this for my own daily routine—although I would probably have to alter it a bit. What I realized today is that I really need to do yoga earlier—if I could feel this amazing every morning, then I would get a lot more done, and if I had a few hours of really productive time first thing in the morning before clients started e-mailing me, I think I'd be a lot more productive on the whole, and I'd be able to feel like I've finished work early enough—not to mention I'd be able to get in all my various daily distractions (exercise, making meals, cleaning up, reading books, etc.). This, of course, also lends itself to much less stress in my life, because I actually feel like I'm getting everything done and I'm still doing what I need to take care of myself.
So, I'm going to give it a try starting next week. This means some major changes—primarily making it a point to get to bed by 10 on "school nights"—but I think I can make it work. If I could wake up at 6am to watch the Flying Nun and DangerMouse when I was a kid, I can certainly get up at 5:30 to get a more productive start to my day.
I'm coming to realize a few things about my time management skills (or lack thereof): I would get much more done if I started my day earlier. By this, I actually mean much earlier — Jeff Fisher mentioned in my HOW Forum post on the same subject that he starts his day at 5:30 AM and takes a nap at 4pm. That way he can get all his work done in the morning with no distractions, and he is finished by about noon and can move on to administrative and marketing stuff. I'm pondering this for my own daily routine—although I would probably have to alter it a bit. What I realized today is that I really need to do yoga earlier—if I could feel this amazing every morning, then I would get a lot more done, and if I had a few hours of really productive time first thing in the morning before clients started e-mailing me, I think I'd be a lot more productive on the whole, and I'd be able to feel like I've finished work early enough—not to mention I'd be able to get in all my various daily distractions (exercise, making meals, cleaning up, reading books, etc.). This, of course, also lends itself to much less stress in my life, because I actually feel like I'm getting everything done and I'm still doing what I need to take care of myself.
So, I'm going to give it a try starting next week. This means some major changes—primarily making it a point to get to bed by 10 on "school nights"—but I think I can make it work. If I could wake up at 6am to watch the Flying Nun and DangerMouse when I was a kid, I can certainly get up at 5:30 to get a more productive start to my day.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
The Exercise Challenge
About a month ago, I made a challenge myself: start working out every day. My workouts would be a combination of my typical exercise: yoga, pilates, and walking to places near me (I'm very lucky to have quite a few popular neighborhoods within a 20-minute walk from me, which means I end up spending a lot of time walking to the store, to meet friends, or to get the T. I would track the workouts on the whiteboard calendar in my kitchen, and at the end of every week, if I had exercised every day, I would give myself $5 that I could spend on DVDs (I do love my movies).
After 30 days, I can proudly say that I have a total of $15 in my DVD fund. I did have one bad week, where I missed 2 workouts because of a particularly upsetting situation with a client; however, for the most part, I was a very good girl.
This month, the challenge continues. Yesterday was a bit of an off day (the only exercise I got was a walk to Porter Square and back, which was about 40 minutes of very moderate walking), but Monday and Tuesday were very good days, and tonight I plan on doing yoga before bed, as well as somet time on my elliptical during the Office.
The next step? Getting my diet in line. The last week or so has been pretty good, although yesterday (yes, again) was a bit of an off day as far as dinner went - Nachos and an eggplant burger at Christopher's in Porter. oh. my. goodness. SO good. Today I'm back to relatively normal eating. More on that later.
After 30 days, I can proudly say that I have a total of $15 in my DVD fund. I did have one bad week, where I missed 2 workouts because of a particularly upsetting situation with a client; however, for the most part, I was a very good girl.
This month, the challenge continues. Yesterday was a bit of an off day (the only exercise I got was a walk to Porter Square and back, which was about 40 minutes of very moderate walking), but Monday and Tuesday were very good days, and tonight I plan on doing yoga before bed, as well as somet time on my elliptical during the Office.
The next step? Getting my diet in line. The last week or so has been pretty good, although yesterday (yes, again) was a bit of an off day as far as dinner went - Nachos and an eggplant burger at Christopher's in Porter. oh. my. goodness. SO good. Today I'm back to relatively normal eating. More on that later.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Losing Weight Step 1: Love Yourself As You Are.
According to a recent newsletter by Dr. Christiana Northrup, author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom,, the first step to lasting weight loss and changing your relationship with food is to love yourself exactly as you are. With that in mind, during the trip to Target I mentioned in last night's entry, I decided that my first order of business was to buy a few clothing items that would be comfortable and look great on me at the size I am now, instead of my normal habit of keeping my closet full of clothes that are my old size and telling myself I'll "get back down to that weight someday." I purposely kept the selections to a minimum and bought really nice items - a dark red button-down shirt, a brown cashmere sweater, a new bra and two gorgeous pairs of dress pants.
Last night, I made it a point to dress up with full makeup (not a remotely normal occurence for me), and I wore my new red shirt to a party at a friend's house, along with a skirt and high-heeled boots. And, much to my delight, I got several compliments on the outfit from several of the party-goers, which motivated me to go on an hourlong speed-walk with my boyfriend Nick after we got home last night. I also took time out this evening for another 45-minute walk, which will likely be followed up by a half hour of yoga later on.
The next step: examining my relationship with food and fine-tuning my eating habits.
Last night, I made it a point to dress up with full makeup (not a remotely normal occurence for me), and I wore my new red shirt to a party at a friend's house, along with a skirt and high-heeled boots. And, much to my delight, I got several compliments on the outfit from several of the party-goers, which motivated me to go on an hourlong speed-walk with my boyfriend Nick after we got home last night. I also took time out this evening for another 45-minute walk, which will likely be followed up by a half hour of yoga later on.
The next step: examining my relationship with food and fine-tuning my eating habits.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Day One: Back to Size 16
My name is Dani Nordin, and I turned 30 last July. I was born and raised in Providence, RI, and now live in Somerville, MA, where I moved almost two years ago. In my life, I've been an actress, a performance poet, a karaoke diva, an administrative assistant with a special gift for Access databases, a social and environmental activist, and a graphic designer. At the moment, I am the principal of a small but growing design studio called the zen kitchen, where I help businesses, individuals and non-profits expand their reach through eco-friendly graphic design and standards-based web design (two of my passions). I do yoga almost every day, have just started learning Tai Chi, and am an expert at making healthy vegetarian food taste so good you forget that it's good for you.
By many people's standards, I have a pretty good life. By my own standards, most of the time, I have a pretty good life. But one thing has bothered me since I was eight years old, and it's about time I came out about it: my weight.
Food, aside from being one of my passions, has always been the way I deal with stress. It's one of my few truly self-destructive tendencies; I get stressed out, all of a sudden I'm grabbing a bag of Cheetos at the grocery store and eating half of it on my way home, or stopping at some fast-food joint or another and deciding it's "okay this one time" if I have an entire order of Nachos Bell Grande (no meat, thank you very much). While normally I eat pretty healthy (other than a few particularly indulgent dishes I throw into the mix once a month or so), an extended period of stress is guaranteed to throw any health-conscious tendencies out the window.
I started using food as an outlet when I was about eight. My parents, never a particularly happy couple, were just starting to near the point of divorce, and for the life of me I didn't know how to deal with it. To make matters worse, I was—shall we say—unpopular as a child, branded "the smart kid" by the time I was in kindergarten, and torn between my desire to constantly be learning and my desire for people to stop making fun of me. I pretended I was okay. I withdrew to the library. I invented new snacks.
By the time I was fifteen, I was a size 18, and somewhere around 215 pounds. That year, about 2 years after my parents finally got divorced and 1 year after I had decided to stay with my father, something in me snapped. I moved in with my mother, gave up meat, and spent the next six months exercising every day and living on beans and rice, omelettes and pasta with tomato sauce (it was what we could afford, and it was what I liked to eat). By the time I returned to school, I had lost 65 pounds and decided to switch high schools so I could pursue my dream of acting. By the time I reached college, I was a size 10, and stayed vegetarian for the next three years.
Since that time, I've had two separate instances where, due to the circumstances of my life, I've found myself back around 215, made major life changes, and gotten back down to somewhere around 170. Right now, after 3+ years of dealing with one seemingly insane life-crisis situation after another, I've found myself back at a size 16, as a recent trip to Target has shown. And now, at 30, I feel like it's time to get this thing under control. It's time to change my relationship with food; to stop seeing it as comfort, or punishment for not doing/being what I should. It's time to get myself healthy again.
Over the next few months, I'll be using this blog to share my journey, not only as someone trying to lose weight, but as someone trying to find wellness in all areas of life—finances, stress, time management, relationship. You might ask why I'd share such incredibly personal information with an Internet full of complete strangers, especially as a business owner; the answer is simple. I know I'm not the only person out there who's ever experienced depression, and I certainly know I'm not the only woman who's ever suffered from a negative self-image as a result of her weight. And if my story can help even one person out there who's dealing with these issues, then I have fulfilled the purpose of this blog.
By many people's standards, I have a pretty good life. By my own standards, most of the time, I have a pretty good life. But one thing has bothered me since I was eight years old, and it's about time I came out about it: my weight.
Food, aside from being one of my passions, has always been the way I deal with stress. It's one of my few truly self-destructive tendencies; I get stressed out, all of a sudden I'm grabbing a bag of Cheetos at the grocery store and eating half of it on my way home, or stopping at some fast-food joint or another and deciding it's "okay this one time" if I have an entire order of Nachos Bell Grande (no meat, thank you very much). While normally I eat pretty healthy (other than a few particularly indulgent dishes I throw into the mix once a month or so), an extended period of stress is guaranteed to throw any health-conscious tendencies out the window.
I started using food as an outlet when I was about eight. My parents, never a particularly happy couple, were just starting to near the point of divorce, and for the life of me I didn't know how to deal with it. To make matters worse, I was—shall we say—unpopular as a child, branded "the smart kid" by the time I was in kindergarten, and torn between my desire to constantly be learning and my desire for people to stop making fun of me. I pretended I was okay. I withdrew to the library. I invented new snacks.
By the time I was fifteen, I was a size 18, and somewhere around 215 pounds. That year, about 2 years after my parents finally got divorced and 1 year after I had decided to stay with my father, something in me snapped. I moved in with my mother, gave up meat, and spent the next six months exercising every day and living on beans and rice, omelettes and pasta with tomato sauce (it was what we could afford, and it was what I liked to eat). By the time I returned to school, I had lost 65 pounds and decided to switch high schools so I could pursue my dream of acting. By the time I reached college, I was a size 10, and stayed vegetarian for the next three years.
Since that time, I've had two separate instances where, due to the circumstances of my life, I've found myself back around 215, made major life changes, and gotten back down to somewhere around 170. Right now, after 3+ years of dealing with one seemingly insane life-crisis situation after another, I've found myself back at a size 16, as a recent trip to Target has shown. And now, at 30, I feel like it's time to get this thing under control. It's time to change my relationship with food; to stop seeing it as comfort, or punishment for not doing/being what I should. It's time to get myself healthy again.
Over the next few months, I'll be using this blog to share my journey, not only as someone trying to lose weight, but as someone trying to find wellness in all areas of life—finances, stress, time management, relationship. You might ask why I'd share such incredibly personal information with an Internet full of complete strangers, especially as a business owner; the answer is simple. I know I'm not the only person out there who's ever experienced depression, and I certainly know I'm not the only woman who's ever suffered from a negative self-image as a result of her weight. And if my story can help even one person out there who's dealing with these issues, then I have fulfilled the purpose of this blog.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
