Best Life Challenge

I am not going to call this a New Year's resolution post, because I usually associate resolution with short lived, trite statements ... at least for me. So this year I am doing Oprah and Bob Greene's Best Life Challenge .

http://www.thebestlife.com/ms/mvchallenge/index.html

I don't like the word "diet" either because I think it is a lot like the word "resolution" where I am just setting myself up for failure.

I like this program because I feel it encourages a well rounded improvement in your whole life and not just in weight or eating. The below link talks about emotional eating which I totally do. I love this "Circle of Life" article because it talks about that, but I believe the article can be applied to help any aspect of your life and not just eating. http://www.thebestlife.com/ms/mvchallenge/art_circle_of_life.html

I did the exercise of writing down the things that I can improve on, I made a cool wheel chart in excel (the formatting wouldn't transfer to blogger) and the text consisted of this:

• CALLING/SPIRITUALITY -


• FAMILY +


• WORK -


• ORGANIZATION -


• FRIENDSHIP +


• FINANCE -


• HEALTH +


• EATING -

The Goal is to write down the areas of your life and then rate how each of them are going with either a positive sign or a negative sign. Then write down one thing you can do each day to improve. These are very small, quantifiable things that are easy to measure. I assigned each area a day of the week and will work on my goal from that category every day. I am not going to divulge all of the specifics on this post-partly because I don't want to bore you to death and also because I don't want this post to be 10 pages long. But I decided to write about it so that I would be accountable for my goals and so I can track my progress. I am going to lose 12 lbs total, exercise on a consistent basis, cut down on emotional eating, improve my organizational skills, and not give up.

Taking a quote from the website: "if you're patient and take small steps everyday, the results can be amazing. If you can consistently do at least one thing daily to change a negative into a positive, I promise that powerful change will occur in your life after one year. If you can do three things daily, you won't recognize your former life."

This will be my mantra for the year. Although, I will take Dan's advice and have an expiration date on each goal, so that each goal stays fresh and I can keep pushing myself.

John Candland is my inspiration(check out his blog-this is Dan's friend from Seattle). If he can lose the weight he did and keep it off, I believe I can lose weight too. I've always blamed my weight for my insecurities and blamed my insecurities for not achieving my goals-or setting any for that matter-so I hope that this life plan will aid me on my journey to becoming the person I've always wanted to be. I know it will be a long process and that no "diet" can change me immediately or quickly. I do believe that it will give me a good kick start though.

The contract is signed http://www.thebestlife.com/ms/mvchallenge/contract.asp and I will keep you updated.

Love, Kyla