Planned Positivity

photo stolen from dailyhive.com  I'm throwing myself my very own personal party today, even though I'm the gym version of hungover today. My back's a little sore but it was so worth it.  Why, you ask?  I got a new personal record on my deadlift yesterday!!! GO ME!  It's not terribly impressive to anyone but me, weighing in at 190 pounds. But it's mine! I know for myself that I could have done more, but my trainer cut me off. I knew she was going to do that so it's not a thing. But I know I could have gone bigger- that's enough for me. I'll get it next time. I understand her logic, that I shouldn't go to failure. Going to failure is a recipe for injury. Fair enough. I do wonder how much I had left in the tank. No matter. I'm still riding a bit of an ego high: look what I did! I'm aware that no one on the planet gives a damn about my deadlift. No matter. I care, and even sore and tired I'm ten feet tall and bulletproof.  What am I going to

 Have you seen the artistic miracles that people are passing off as Bullet Journals these days?                stolen from bulletjournal.com                                   wonderful work by boho berry  ...and then there's mine: There's no art here. It's barely legible. But it's mine and it does what I need it to do. It keeps me on track with the things I need and/or want to do, and it gets things out of my brain so I can focus on useful stuff like writing this here blog post. Anyone who tries to tell you a planning or journaling system needs to be pretty, fancy and complicated is misguided at best. My BuJo looks nothing like any of the masterpieces on the internet. It's a dollar store notebook that's more than a little bit dog eared and highlighter has bled through the pages in places and I probably don't use it nearly enough but it works. That's the important part. It works for me.  I love putting that little X beside tasks when they're done. Ser

 I did a thing just now. A silly, silly thing. A scary thing.  I signed up for the CrossFit Open. It's an annual competition that is the top of the funnel leading to the CrossFit Games. Professional athletes compete in the Open. I've been doing CrossFit for maybe three months. I'm very much not a professional athlete.  What in hell was I thinking? I don't like having my picture taken, let alone posting videos of myself doing what I forecast will be an endless series of no-reps where millions of seriously fit people can see them. Am I discovering a new, more masochistic side of myself?  Nah. I'm going to have some fun. I'm not going to win. Heck, I figure the only people I might beat are ones whose friends signed them up as a joke. You know, the ones who won't show up at all.  But I'll show up, and struggle and probably fail at a lot of the workouts. I haven't got any equipment and no one has any idea what the Covid-specific "we know you're t

 Today, I'm going to share an unorthodox weight loss plan.  A mostly unintentional weight loss plan, to be exact. It depends largely on a human trait we all share and most of us try to hide.  Laziness.  If you ask around, what you find is that the average person who has gained unwanted weight will tell you the same story as everyone else: they ate junk food. Prepackaged, processed junk. Why? Because it was easy and it was there. Not because they really liked it. Just because it was there.  How to avoid this trap?  Well, duh. Cooking! From scratch.  Consider the humble pizza. Takeout or grocery store pizza is much the same- acquire box, heat, eat. No challenges there.  A pizza from scratch? That's a horse of a different stripe: make the dough, chop the veggies, make the sauce, bake the whole thing.  Now there's a a barrier to entry, no?  Is that pizza really worth all that effort? I don't know about you, but a salad is suddenly sounding a good alternative.  How about gen

 And here we all are. The third week of January, and most of us have fallen off the resolutions bandwagon. I certainly did. What happened? Well, a lot of people made resolutions they didn't want to make. They made resolutions based on what everyone else seemed to be doing- public declarations of the intention to lose weight, get out of debt, be more mindful. Those make wonderful, inspiring Instagram posts.  But what if you happen to like chips in front of the TV more than you like the gym? Guess what's going to come out on top? What if you like your daily six dollar latter more than having a credit card balance of zero? Again, you'll find yourself with a latte in hand making a minimum payment on your card. It's basic human nature.  Quit fighting yourself. If exercise is one of the levels of Hell for you and the thought of going to a gym makes you want to curl up in a ball and hide, DON'T GO.         Really. Don't. Forcing yourself to do things you really hate is

Look. It's a bright day, sun streaming through the window in our office. (And the plants are doing pretty darn good considering it's December!) It's been a productive day so far. No disasters or even small dramas. Everything is in the wins column.  Yay!  Right. Fuck off.  Yeah, that's what I said. That's the mood I'm in. Another fantastic no-reason-for-this-crap mood swing! Here's a good idea: write a post for a blog called Planned Positivity while you feel like a negative creep. Actually, that's a bloody great idea. Know why? BECAUSE DAYS LIKE TODAY ARE WHAT IT'S ABOUT.  I don't have a magical system that allows people to avoid bad days. I have a system that gets you through them with a minimum of trauma and fuss. For instance, left to my own devices I would be eating a bag of Doritos and a can of Monster for lunch. But instead I'm having chick pea curry which has the benefits of actual nutritional value and not feeling ill afterwards. How d