I'm Ba-aack!

I know, I know... it's been far too long since I have blogged. But to be quite honest, I haven't really had anything blog-worthy to blog about since I left Ukraine. Life is just not very adventurous for me these days. Especially when I'm not living in some far-away European city and traveling all over the place while I'm at it. And when the whole point of my blog was to document my travels and life as a "gypsy," it feels funny to keep using it. I apologize to all the many (ha ha ha... ha ha) followers I have for being such a stranger to my own blog. 


Today though, I have a reason to blog. I mean, yeah, I could blog about how fall in Arizona is flipping amazing (the days are still warm - Averi and I laid by the pool yesterday [yes, it's ok to be jealous] - but the nights are cool enough to wear a jacket and it smells like fall... could it get any better??) or how I have a (sexy) new(ish) car that doesn't give me stomach ulcers at the thought of it. But nay, today I am going to blog about a little healthy competition that I am participating in that is giving me a reason to eat a little healthier and develop better habits. One of which encourages daily journal writing or blogging. So we can thank what we call "The Challenge" for my reappearance to the bloggersphere. 


Let me preface this for all of you who are about to give me a hard time and freak out that I am on a "diet" by saying - this IS NOT a diet. It is a challenge where healthy/better habits are encouraged. So there. 


Anyway, it goes as follows: There are 10 "habits" per day that you can do for a point each for a total of 30 days. However, if you don't do something you aren't penalized, you just don't get the point for that habit for that day. The goal is to have 70 points at the end of each week when you log in your points to the group. There are about 35 other people participating and we are held somewhat accountable to each other so it makes it fun and a little competitive (maybe more than a little competitive for some of us...). Anyway, the ten habits include things like drinking at least 48 ounces of water per day (a lot harder than I thought it would be... clearly I'm not drinking enough!), eating two servings of fruits and two servings of vegetables per day, not eating sweets (sob sob sob...), writing in your journal (or blogging), reading 15 minutes of uplifting material, and achieving a personal goal, among a few others. You are allowed one "cheat" per habit per week for a free point, which can I just say was a genius rule to include in the challenge.


I'd like to take this time to admit that I thought I was going to die the first couple of days. Ok, who am I kidding? I still think I might die and we are on day five. I love love love my sweets and I could hardly wait until Friday (my strategically placed "cheat" day for my sweets) so that I could tear into my chocolate stash in my drawer at work. You know you have a problem when.... 


However, I think this is the perfect challenge for me. Like I mentioned before, I'm kind of competitive when it comes to things like this and it goes without saying that I could use having a few more healthy habits in my life. If anything (even if I lose, heaven forbid), it has shown me what I am doing too much and what I'm not doing enough in my life. It has become very clear to me that in most areas of my diet/life, I'm not as up to par as I thought I was. So, come death from lack of chocolate or drowning in my own bloated water overdose, this should be an interesting (to say the least) 30 days. I'll do my best to keep you all posted on my progress. If anything to let you know if I won the money or not. Oh, did I not mention that? Yeah, that's kind of a big incentive for me to keep strong while shunning candy bars and oatmeal cream pies.


Anyway, no promises on the keeping you posted part though. I'm pretty sure I mentioned four or more months ago that I still had posts I wanted to post about Ukraine. I'm still totally going to do it.