One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

 What is it about new habits — so hard to form and so easy to break?  They say it takes 28 days to get a new habit to stick but nobody says anything about how quickly that new habit can become obsolete — a hot minute?

Yeah.

Remember my cute little pink journal I mentioned awhile back?  I have been using it as an anxiety journal, to help keep me on track, if you will, to help eliminate or at least control my raging anxiety.  It was working great.

Until it wasn’t…..

A glitch in my routine — something threw me off — and it all became history.  I think I became over confident.

Since then my anxiety has been raging.  

So, this morning I uncovered the journal from underneath the pile of my husbands books that seem to have become a permanent part of our coffee table.

I am not happy about this pile of apparently necessary reading material.  We have a difference of opinion — I think flat surfaces are meant to be just that, flat surfaces.  The Hubs seems to think they are for stacking things.  Anyway, every time I walk past this pile of books they get knocked over making it even worse.  I digress. But, see, it is things like that that make me anxious.

I dug out the journal and started again — I even had to look up what I was doing and how I was doing it.

This is what today looks like —

I had been using MyFitnessPal to try to control the eating and it is great but, writing it down in my own hand seems to make a bigger impact on me.  I know my sugar intake is part of my anxiety issue so that is my first thing to tackle.  

One thing I am learning about myself is that I am a visual learner — I think I already knew that — but in trying to journal and keep tabs on things it is very apparent to me that do much better if I write it down and refer back to it rather than just put it into my phone/iPad/computer and never look at it again.

So, I have devised a new planner in a mini binder to start on January 1.  I will show more later but I did purchase a ready made calendar to go along with some other useful pages to do, pretty much, what I do in the journal.  I am hoping to figure out about meal planning as well because I am miserable stinky at that!

So, here I am, starting over again, AGAIN! I feel pretty bummed that I am never going to get my weight under control and that I am always going to be swimming in anxiety but I am not giving up yet!  

On today’s list are two things that I am hoping to accomplish —- muffin making and dragging out my cross stitch.

I have been trying to get back to the cross stitch for several weeks now.  I even brought my stuff down here to my chair but here it sits.  I am just not motivated and yet I know that once I put in that first stitch I will be back on board — it is that first stitch.

And after reading Granny Marigold’s post about baking, I am inspired.  I did make some muffins for the grand girl yesterday (she was under the weather so she was with me for the day — I loved it).  The final product was ok but not wonderful so I am going to make them from scratch today — wonderful product “scratch” — you can do so much with it!

So, after I made my anxiety journal entry for this morning I felt infinitely better.  I felt back in control.  My day has an outline, a purpose.  It is amazing the power that pen and paper hold.  

Have a wonderful Saturday! I will be checking off my “to-do” list.