What is it all about?

Pick-up the Pace: Lifestyle 2009 is about me and changing the things that I have an influence on in my personal life: weight, exercise, health, eating habits, and spending.

Here are my goals as of January 1, 2009:

1. No new clothes for one year (the exception is underclothes). I'm sure to save a couple hundred right here. Though I don't do any big shopping for myself, I do like the sales and can succumb pretty quick to a discount at Christopher & Banks. My husband will enjoy needling me on this one. Let's see who has the last laugh....cuz I plan to take the money, just not the clothes! Haha!

2. I gotta lose weight. There are no if, ands, or buts about it. I let myself go this past couple of months and I need to take care of myself. My goal is realistic...20 lbs. I can do it!

3. Exercise daily. I have a treadmill that I was using every day but then I got busy and couldn't seem to reorganize my daily life to fit it in. I HAVE to. I also have to go back to lifting because once you stop, those muscles get flabby. Ewwww! I also have DDR and my kids and I love it. That 's a quick calorie burner and it's fun! And hard. It is hard. But fun.

4. 8 hours of shut-eye. Faithfully. Now I know as a mom and all that jazz that there is going to be the occasional late night. But I've gotten really bad about sleep habits and I realized the other night when I couldn't fall asleep til after 4am that I really needed to work on this. Plus, getting enough sleep helps you lose weight. BONUS!

5. Eating right. This is something I've been working on already. But I do occasionally go ballistic and hit the snacks big time. My challenge is portion control which is really the crux of any weight loss strategy. I crave pasta, chicken, a good steak, veggies. Some of those things isn't too bad...like the veggies. But when it's all of it, that's a BIG problem.

6. My health. This is a combination of many of these goals but I also need to keep up with preventative care. I'm bad about keeping my doctor appointments, or even making them. I've also let the kids check-ups slip too often. So I'm gonna 'Do better'.

7. This is the trickiest but probably most important goal. I'm gonna teach my kids to implement kindness, compassion and respect in their daily lives. How? I'm not sure yet but I'm open to suggestions. My kids can be mean, nasty and just down-right rude. I want to change that while I can. Now, don't get me wrong, I've taught my kids these principles since they were babies but somewhere things got off track. Maybe the public schools, their friends, or maybe we as parents just haven't been diligent and very good examples. Hmmm. We're gonna work on that.

Stay tuned. I hope to make some major changes-little by little!