A Tiny Bit Better Than Yesterday

The other day I was listening to the radio and heard this interview with Chantel Hobbs --- you can listen to the interview here and see her website here.   She is a fitness expert and motivational speaker with a Christian perspective.  While I found some of her comments about diet and exercise very intriguing (I’ll get to that in a minute) – I found one comment she made to start a huge brain spark in me.  “We need to get to the place where we decide that every single day we can live a little bit better than we did yesterday”.  WOW!!   That applies to just about everything in life around here. 

In terms of fitness and healthy eating --- I’ll just borrow from Chantel.  Its all about balance --- fast one meal a week --- splurge one meal a week.  Balance --- but overall, make a daily decision that today will be a tiny bit better than yesterday.  Eat a tiny bit more vegetables today.  Eat a tiny bit less junk food today than yesterday.  Walk or run a tiny bit further today.  Move a tiny bit more.  That’s all, just be a tiny bit better today than yesterday. 

Yesterday is already on the books.  There is nothing you or I can do that will change yesterday.  And tomorrow is too overwhelming.  Nevermind forever – that’s way too overwhelming.  Just manage today – let today be one tiny bit better than yesterday was. 

Can you imagine how much life will be in one year if every day gets a tiny bit better than the day before it???  Can you imagine how much fitter our bodies could be? How much smaller our clothing might be?? How much better our doctor’s checkup will be??

So as we move through this spring together, I want to look at Chantel Hobbs’ idea and apply it to some different areas of life.  Want to come with me??

Spicing Up Water

Okay, so I'm back and I'm working both blogs now. And I'm back to really working the cheap chic lifestyle --- and I'm back to losing the 10 pounds that have crept back up on me ----
So, obviously, one of the first steps I'm taking is to replace a significant amount of my beverage consumption with clear tea or water. Frankly, that gets a little bit boring really quickly. So, here's my plan:
1. Plain old clean, fresh water. But I'll spice it up a little. I'm thinking of adding

• a lemon wheel -- I think these look so much prettier than just a wedge of lemon. If I cut a slice of a lemon early in the day and let it float around in my water bottle, that should look appetizing, fresh and refreshing.

• mint leaves --- I'm growing mint again -- this time in the AeroGarden -- so its easy to clip a few sprigs and float them in the water bottle. I love the fresh taste of mint, so this should be a delight.
• cucumber -- I'm thinking that I'll cut this as a spear rather than as rounds. We'll see how that looks and feels. I just want a really different feeling with each change of what I'm doing with the water. The whole idea here is to make this interesting and appetizing.

• strawberry slices --- Or maybe a whole strawberry partially sliced and fanned out?? I'm not sure that this won't get yucky after a few hours in the water. We'll see.

2. Seltzer -- I love the fizzy stuff!! And it comes in so many flavors. One of my favorites is the Polar Seltzer Vanilla flavor. Its a bit like drinking unsweetened creme soda --- all of the pleasure of creme soda without the sicky-sweet taste. It won't need a thing added to it to be delightful. Its tricky to find (ShopRite had it for a while, I'll check back there) which is why I stopped drinking it so much. It just was too difficult to find and keep handy. It only came in the 1 liter bottles (I prefer the cans for taking to work) and most stores didn't stock it at all.

3. Unsweetened Iced Tea -- this should be an easy one. There are so many excellent flavors of tea out there. Fortunately, last year I splurged on an iced tea maker from Target. It has a lovely glass pitcher and it makes excellent tea. We've become fussy at my house, so we start with bottled water now. Believe it or not, it really makes a huge difference!

So, I'm off to begin some heavy drinking ---- join me??