State of the Weight Wednesday: Set Your Intention

Welcome back to State of the Weight Wednesday, a weekly series where we share our successes and setbacks with one another and seek support to meet our goals.

SOTWW is about small, attainable goals that let us live while we seek a healthier life.

Last week was a bit of a challenging week for me when it comes to exercise. I needed to rescue my house from chaos and focused on that instead of going to the gym regularly and tracking my food.

Sometimes, we have to shift our priorities ever so slightly and that’s okay. And it’s not even really shifting priorities so completely so much as it’s doing what we do at the start of every yoga class:

Set the intention for your practice.

At the start of every class, we’re instructed to make a conscious choice to do just one thing.

Maybe it’s to work on my breathing. Maybe it’s to let go of something weighing me down. Maybe it’s to push myself to hold a pose a little longer than I ever have. Maybe it’s to meditate in Child’s Pose instead of listening to my screaming thighs.

Or maybe, and here’s a tip I’ve been trying to share with you guys all week, it’s just to pay attention to my shoulder blades. Yes. My shoulder blades.

I carry so much tension and stress in my neck and shoulders that I actually give myself a headache about once a week. I’m always tight there and it always hurts. During a yoga class I noticed that I hunch my shoulders up toward my ears when I’m stressed, which is causing some of the tightness and increasing the tension.

So this week, if I did nothing else, I made it a point to really focus on rolling my shoulder blades down my back. There’s less tension in my shoulders this week as a result, which is kind of great.

I told Dan last night that I thought I had gained this week so I wasn’t shocked to find out that my weight had gone up this morning. It’s okay. No big deal. I netted a pound and a half gain this morning. A gain which I have already lost thanks to ehhh, intestinal distress. (You’re welcome.)

So, I’m holding steady at 198. Sort of.

I had to set a new intention last week in order to be able to focus more on everything, and I feel good about that choice because it’s still part of living a healthier, more peaceful, less yell-y life, so I’m good overall.

Both getting the house together and losing weight were 31 for 31 goals, and what I’ve learned so far as I’ve ventured into my 30s is that sometimes in order to meet our goals, we have to focus on one goal at a time. That is, after all, the idea behind setting a weekly goal. Multitasking is actually a productivity killer.

Think about it. How many times have you sat down at the computer intent to “knock this out right quick” but there are multiple tabs open in your browser and before you know it, you’ve stumbled upon the greatest treasure trove of GIFs ever in your life but your work remains undone?

We can do anything if we know there’s a time limit on doing it, you know? So, set a limit, and then re-evaluate when the goal is met, or at the end of the time limit.

“I will do ________ for 20 minutes!”

“I will do ________ for 1 week!”

“I will do ________ for a month!”

I think starting in smaller increments works out better in the long run because good habits develop slowly. And bad habits, likely the ones we’re trying to correct, are hard to break. So, small, manageable chunks of time it is.

I think that’s true for everything and not just weight loss and I’m only sort of miffed it took me 31 years to really let this sink in. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know?

The house needed my attention and got it so now I can return to my regularly scheduled gym-going and yoga classes. As soon as I’m able to hold my head up and stay out of the loo.

Weekly Goal: Get to the gym 4 times
Weight Goal: 31 total pounds lost

What are your successes and setbacks from the past week? What goals are you working toward? Link up if you’re blogging your own State of the Weight or leave it in the comments so we can support each other!