Ongoing linky parties: Motivation Monday and Fabulously Frugal Thursdays.
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Today, Mary of Cherry Blossom Love and myself are swapping blogs as part of A Grande Life’s New Year’s Blog Swap.
I am so excited to be participating in A Grande Life’s New Year Blog Swap and have the opportunity to share one of my 2013 goals with you! I guess it would be a good idea to introduce myself first. My name is Mary and I am a wife to the most amazing man in the whole world and new mother to my 6 month old beautiful baby boy, Parker. I decided to become a SAHM but spend my days running our home, blogging, and crafting. I write for our family blog, Cherry Blossom Love, as well as my craft blog, My Crafting Attic. I also just started an internship with DIY Weddings Magazine where I contribute DIY projects to their magazine and weekly inspiration boards on their website. Needless to say, I still keep very busy!
Creating new year resolutions and goals has always been very important to me. Prior to having a blog, they always ended up being written on pieces of paper that usually got lost at some point in the year. I am so excited to be diving into my second year as a “blogger” because I feel more accountable to achieve and accomplish my resolutions since other people have actually seen them. You can see more about my 2013 resolutions here.
Health is my top priority this year so setting specific and attainable goals was very important to me. I had my son this past June and have been struggling to not only get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but back into my healthy weight range. I talked about how I plan to reach my weight loss goals last Tuesday in my 130′s by 30 post. Actively counting calories and working out will help with weight loss but I also want to focus more on what I am putting in my mouth.
The first, is to stop my addiction to Diet Coke. Let me tell ya, it has been (for the last 6 days) and will be the hardest thing for me to overcome since I have been sucking bottles of this cold goodness down since I was in high school. I have also been watching my weight on and off again since high school. Yes, I am the one at the drive through that orders large fries and a Diet Coke in the same breath. I don’t know how I did it but I stopped drinking in the second I found out I was pregnant and didn’t have a drop for nine whole months.
Diet Coke was always my treat that helped curb sweets and snacking on junk, or so I thought. Rob (aka the hubs) sent me this article in November and it really got me thinking about what I have been doing to my body for the last 10 years. There was always those rumors that artificial sweetener was bad for you but I had just never found something concrete enough in my mind to give it up. This article however, really spoke to me and for some reason convinced me enough to give Diet Coke up for good. Of course, I gave myself to the new year to mentally prepare. While it maybe hard at first, this is a good thing. I will replace my daily jumbo Diet Cokes with water. Occasionally I will indulge in a regular Coke (or Pepsi, *gasp*).
The other article that Rob sent to me that I have taken to heart is one Fox News published on December 8th titled ~ 7 Foods You Should Never Eat. I found this article to be very surprising and alarming at the same time and strong>strongly recommend you read the article for yourself. This was a great platform for Rob and I to talk about how we wanted to change our grocery shopping habits. We decided that the list and explanations made sense and have since stopped eating; canned tomatoes, microwave popcorn, non-organic potatoes and non-organic apples. The article also warns against corn-fed beef and farmed salmon that we plan to stay away from. We also started drinking organic milk when I got pregnant so that was also something on the list we had already changed. Popcorn and canned tomatoes come up almost daily in our meals and snacks so we had to quickly find alternatives. We decided to purchase an air popper and actually like it better. In the long run, it is also cheaper! We also started buying fresh tomatoes and use our food chopper.
I know that there are lists and lists out there of foods to be careful of. My thought is one step at a time and although I can’t cut everything out, a few changes here and there will help!
Well that is a wrap for today. Thanks for letting me visit and share one of my 2013 goals! Don’t forget to stop on by Cherry Blossom Love to check out Barb’s post.
Check out A Grande Life for more blog swaps and HAPPY READING!
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