Happy New Year!

I'm starting with 2015 since my review of last year's is pretty long!

Continue with emotional and spiritual growth, including journaling and meditation

Complete a running challenge. I have an eye on the Lake Sammamish half in March. It's probably the flattest course in western Washington.

Challenge myself every month. So far I have January: no refined sugar and February: no sugar. Yikes. Kate's doing both with me including the February cleanse so I think I will be more successful. After all, it took her going vegan with me for me to really do it. Every other time I tried I always quit because cheese. Sidenote: in 2014 I went 6 months without cheese. Crazy

Exercise every day. Buy a monthly membership at the group fitness place I've been going to near me and go enough to make it worth the money.

Here were my 2014 Resolutions:

I am going to do a different challenge every month, depending on where I am. I'm starting out by committing to only eat real food for 10 days.

I actually did do some kind of challenge pretty much every month. I didn't always succeed, and actually I usually stopped doing them early for some reason or another. But the point is I tried to challenge myself with something new every month, so I don't really consider it a failure. 

January I did real food, and kept to my grocery budget. 

February I started with the 30 day green smoothie challenge, and ended up purchasing the FreshStart21 Cleanse. I actually completed almost all three weeks of it. I kind of fell completely off the wagon at the end, but I was pretty impressed at how long I went without sugar and chocolate.

March I decided I was going to plan out my meals and snacks and everything, which didn't really happen

April I joined in with the next 30 day smoothie challenge, but I just made my recipes, no theirs.

May was the next cleanse, which I really didn't do great on. I think I stuck to the eating guidelines for about a week, but I was still overeating and eating when I wasn't hungry. I had been doing a clinical trial for the medication, and I had actually been doing really well and feeling great. But I was taken off the trial at the end and right after that ended I went downhill for a while.

In June, Betsy came to visit and I ran a 50k over our break from work. That was my only goal for the month. I had been feel a little lousy for a couple weeks which culminated in me getting strep throat, which meant missing work and paying a big doctor's bill. But I also think that doing and eating nothing for 3 days reset my system, and I was feeling pretty great by the time work started again.

In July I quit using shampoo, conditioner, and soap. I'm actually still doing this today, except when I was traveling. More on that later. I also did pretty well at not eating sugar for ten days a la Fed Up Challenge. I think I only ate trail mix once.

August was another cleanse, but that also didn't last long. Part of the problem was that I ran Hood to Coast, which I guess could be considered a challenge. I brought a bunch of food for myself, but most of it wasn't quite cleanse friendly. I also ate pretty non-vegan at restaurants, because what do you get at IHOP that's vegan. Plus birthdays, which require sugar. It was still a pretty great month.

September proved to be challenging without a challenge. I ate a lot of not-so-good food and gained some weight, which I'm still holding on to. I usually love September after I get over the fact that I have a whole nother year till my birthday, but this one was rough. I started classes at the local college - prerequisites to apply for nursing school.

October I made Jordan do the green smoothie challenge with me. I think we only missed a couple days when I ran out of greens.

November I did okay on the cleanse, I think I made it almost to the end. I also ran every day until the last week of the month when I went home for Thanksgiving and hurt my foot and was really sick. 

In December I started some habits I hope to continue in 2015. I started journaling daily again and meditating every day (I have a book with a different type of meditation for every week). Both of these went on hiatus while I was on Christmas vacation, but I'm starting them again

I am going to stick to a grocery budget of $20-$25 a week. I plan on documenting that on this blog to help me keep track of what I'm spending and eating.

This didn't last long...

Save some money every month. I had a certain amount in mind, but recent unexpected expenses have thrown me off a bit. I'm going to do what I can, because I'm hoping to take a trip to Southeast Asia in the not so distant future.

I actually forgot about this one. Nope, I just spent more money

Make my emotional health a priority. This could change over the course of the year, so part of this is decided what exactly it is I need and making sure it happens. I've started journaling again, and I would like to keep it up as close to every day as I can.

I did make this a priority, and was doing really well until about September. I think moving, while it was exactly what I wanted to do, was hard for me. I like to blame it on one of my roommates who is great at bringing down my mood (I still love her, it's just hard to be around her when she's not in a good mood), but truthfully it's probably a combination of a lot of things.