Tag Archives: 2016

Recapping My 2016 (or Almost Doing All That I Wanted To)

Posted on December 30, 2016 | Comments Off on Recapping My 2016 (or Almost Doing All That I Wanted To)

I can’t believe that it’s the end of the year! It’s so true that the year flies by and that it seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was writing what my goals were going to be for 2016. My year didn’t totally go the way I expected (both in good and bad ways), but I’m happy to say that I almost got all the goals I set for the year accomplished.

My first goal for 2016 was to do 180 workouts at Orangetheory. Sadly, this one wasn’t a goal that I accomplished. I will have one more workout for the year tomorrow, and that will bring my total for the year to 177 workouts. I know that 177 workouts for the year is still impressive and better than I did last year, but I really wanted to reach my goal. I had some setbacks that I wasn’t expecting, so that contributed to missing some of the workouts that I thoughts I’d be able to do. It’s not the end of the world that I didn’t hit this goal, and I’m trying to remember that the quality of the workouts that I did this year were so much better than last year.

I was lifting heavier weights than I ever have before. My form on the bodyweight exercises is significantly better. And most importantly I started to run this year! I never thought that was going to happen for me this year and I’m so happy that my coaches pushed me to do it. I still have so much progress to do on my running, but the amount of progress that I’ve had this year already has been incredible!

And that leads me to my next goal I had for 2016 which was to have a PR on my 5K. And because of my running, my most recent 5K was an amazing PR for me! Even with all the running training I had been doing, I had no clue that I could do that fast of a race! I accomplished so many goals I had for my 5K timing with that one race and now I have to figure out what new goals I have for 2017 for my races. My next race should be before my liver surgery and the second one will be after. And I have no clue how the surgery will affect my training so I need to be cautious with the goals I set.

The next goal I set for 2016 was regarding money. I wanted to budget better, reduce my debt, and possibly start saving money. While things haven’t been as great as they could have been with money, I think I’ve been doing a lot better than I have before. My budgeting is going better and part of that budgeting is budgeting money each month to go into saving money for big things like when I have to do car repairs or my new computer. I’ve also brought my debt down this year. And even though it isn’t as low as I hoped it would be, getting it down is tough so any reduction is an accomplishment.

I also set a goal to travel more and go on more adventures with my friends. I really didn’t do a ton of traveling this year, but the trips I did take were really fun. I didn’t get to do the trip with my sister-in-law like we had planned, but we are working on a trip idea for 2017 so at least trip planning happened this year. But I totally did do more adventures this year with my friends. I’ve been going to shows quite a bit and those still make me so happy. I got to go back to Magic Castle and had so much fun with my friends being silly there. And of course I had a ton of outings to Disneyland and Universal Studios.

The one goal that I didn’t really even get close to doing is being in another acting class this year. I debated doing the next level of improv at UCB, but I decided against it for a couple of reasons. I looked into a few other acting classes and I’ve found a couple that do interest me, but there was an issue with scheduling. And with knowing that I have surgery coming up in the spring, I’m very hesitant to try to get a class planned for the new year. I know I need to get back into a class, and I’m a bit upset with myself that I didn’t do any action with this during 2016. But I’m ok with not doing it because I didn’t want to waste money on a class I didn’t really care to do.

And my final goal for 2016 was to be in recovery or on my way into recovery from my eating disorder. I’m not in recovery at all, but I’m working toward it and the steps I’ve made this year have been significant. I think I’ve made more progress this year than I have in the past few years combined. I’m working on recovery every day which is something that I haven’t done before. I’ve had fewer binge episodes a week than before and the binges I have had were not as severe as they were in the past. I still have a lot of work to do, but it’s getting there.

Considering all the craziness of my life this past year, I’m pretty happy with how my goals went for the year. I know that things could have been better, but they also could have been so much worse. And I know that 2017 is just going to be even better!

My goals post for 2017 will be next week (along with the post with my word for 2017). I hope you all have an amazing New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day! Please be responsible and call for a cab/Uber/Lyft if you are out drinking so you get home safely. And here’s to all of us having an incredible start to 2017!

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Posted in Acting, Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Saving, Tough Stuff

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How My Goal Setting Is Going (or A Spark Planner Update)

Posted on February 2, 2016 | 1 comment

I’ve officially been using my Spark Planner for a full month now and I have to say that I’m loving what I’m getting done with it! While I still use my phone/computer for my scheduling (things overlap and change too often to handwrite everything), I’m using the goal setting sections of the Spark Planner and finding my own ways to customize it to work for me the best that I can. So I figured that a month in would be a great time to do an update!

First of all, I’m still using the weekly calendar feature for blog scheduling. Since the weekly planner has 3 sections for each weekday (morning/noon/night), I use the morning section to write what I want to write about here for that day. It’s so helpful for my Monday posts about Orangetheory because now I write down what I did for each workout after I get home so I don’t forget about the workout (I hope that you’ve noticed that change on here!). It also helps me see where I’m missing an idea or where I have too many posts scheduled for that week so I need to move something to the next week. I’m hoping to make Finding My Inner Bombshell bigger and better this year and planning out my posts will be a big part of that!

For the beginning of January, I didn’t really do much else with the weekly planning section. I sometimes put a to-do list in the noon section so I had it there to check off, but that’s not a daily thing. Then, about a week ago I saw something about making gratitude lists each day to help stay in a positive mindset. So I decided to put a list of at least 5 things I’m grateful for in the night section of the weekly planner now. I’m loving this routine but I need to create an alarm for my phone to remind me to do this in the evening (sometimes I get in bed and realize I forgot to do it, so I have to get up and write them out quickly). I’ve actually made my gratitude lists my 29 day challenge for February!

Speaking of the monthly challenge, I’m so excited to share that I was very successful in my 31 day challenge for January! I decided to challenge myself to do 100% accurate food tracking for the month and I did it! This may be the first time that I did 100% tracking for an entire month and I know that I will be able to keep it up now. The big change I found while doing this challenge is that I’m not loving My Fitness Pal as much as I have in the past.

While I have loved seeing the exact numbers for my calories and knowing I’m under my calorie goal, that also created anxiety when I was over my calorie goal. So I stopped tracking on days where I was going over or when I had a binge. I didn’t want to see what I had done and the number of calories I ate. And that was creating avoidance for me. So I’ve been using Recovery Record now and I love it! There are no numbers on the tracker. You just write what you wrote and how you feel. That’s all. And there are meal reminders so even though I don’t always remember to eat lunch, I at least have the alert that I should eat then.

I’m also loving the monthly/weekly goal setting pages. I don’t hit all my goals at the time, but it gives me something to work toward and each day I look at what the goals are so I can make sure that I’m on track to check off as many of them as I can. It also has made me think more about what goals I want to track and what is really important to me. I never thought that maybe I had some bad goals in mind, but I’m now reconsidering some of them (don’t worry, I’m happy with my 2016 goals I announced on here).

I’m still not sure what I want to do with the monthly calendar or if there is something I want to do regularly with the noon section of the weekly planning pages, but the beauty of this planner is that there isn’t something that I feel has to be there. It’s freeform and I can do what I want. I’m thinking about some ideas with meal planning or maybe workout tracking. I’ve been seeing some awesome inspiration on the Spark Planner instagram page. I know I’ll think of something soon and then that will be what I keep up for whatever time remains in the year.

No matter what else I do with my Spark Planner, I can’t believe how much this planner has influenced and changed my life in the first month. I’m so excited to see how amazing it helps to make my year and how much I’ll be able to get done.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fitness, Food, Fun Stuff, Health

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My Spark Planner (or Being A Little Low-Tech This Year)

Posted on January 8, 2016 | 2 comments

I’m pretty big with using technology to make my life easier. I love having my calendar sync between any devices I use and I can color code it as much as I want. It’s pretty helpful when I have a lot of overlapping events in my life. I would possibly be lost without my phone calendar and the alerts it gives me (especially the 24 hour alerts before a Southwest flight so I can check in).

But toward the end of the year, a bunch of friends were posting about their new paper planners for 2016. Because of my changing schedule (and the overlapping issues), I don’t really see myself using a paper planner. It would be too messy for me to feel ok using it. But as I started to look into the planners that some of my friends were getting, I was intrigued by the other things that the planners offered.

So many planners now are designed to be more than just a schedule. They can be goal focused and I loved that idea! I looked around at various planners, and the one that seemed best for my life was the Spark Planner. So I put an order in and got it just before the new year! I’ve been using it for a little more than a week, and I wanted to share with you all about how much I’m loving it (and no, they didn’t pay me to say this)!

Like I said, my plan for my planner was not to be a scheduling tool. That’s not something that I would want to use it for, but if you wanted to do that, there are plenty of ways to plan in it. But I’m going to focus on what I use my planner for.

First of all, I love that it’s a plain planner! If I want to decorate it, I can. But I love that it’s not super cutesy or obvious.

Spark Planner

Mine lives on my desk and it goes nicely with all the other things I have as desk accessories and looks professional if I did have it in my bag and took it out to use in public.

There are planner pages for each week. They are broken down by morning, noon, and night but you can use it for anything you want. They aren’t broken down by hour (I would hate it if it was) so things can be much more freeform. I’m currently using the weekly pages to do my blog planning because I’ve been blog planning on post-its in the past and that’s not efficient. This way, I can not only plan my posts each day, I can take notes on what I want to write about (which is very helpful in my workout recaps).

Blog Planning

I have decided what to do with the other blocks of time, but I might use them for just random notes or I might think of something later that fits perfectly. But that’s why I love the freeform of the planner pages!

The main focus on my Spark Planner for me is the goal setting pages. They have so many goal pages and I’m loving them all!

2016 Themes

I used the 2016 goal setting pages to help me plan my goals for the year as well as my word of the year. I haven’t started filling in the achievements page yet, but I’m excited to document all the great things I accomplish this year! I’m really using this section as a companion to the goal setting that I do on here, and I like having it written down so I don’t have to search my blog to see the specifics of goals I’ve set for the year.

Monthly Goals

The next thing I’m loving are the monthly challenges! My current challenge for this month is to accurately track my food every day. I’m still toying with which app I want to track my food with, but this is a great way to be accountable even if I’m working on my challenge in two different places. There is also a monthly goals page, and I’m using that as a breakdown for what I need to do this month to be on track for my year goal.

Weekly Goals

Finally, there are weekly goal pages. I’ve been using these for goals that aren’t necessarily specific to my monthly/annual goals. I’ve been using them as more of a weekly to-do list. I’ve got things on it like to book flights for upcoming trips, do things related to the blog, or appointments that I need to set. At the bottom of the weekly goal pages, there is a section to reflect back at the end of the week. You are supposed to review all of your goals and celebrate what you were able to get done.

Besides all the goal setting stuff, there are also prompts to help you reflect on goals and ideas that you want to work on. And there is a lot of free space to doodle, make lists, or do anything you want.

I’m sure that some people use the Spark Planner in a much more regulated way, but I’m so happy with the freeform and lack of time constraints that I’m finding in my planner. I know that over the year I will find new ways that this planner will help me in my life, but for now I’m loving how it is helping me work toward each of my goals.

If you want to get your own Spark Planner (and I highly recommend you do if you want to work on goals this year), you can pre-order the ones that will be released in March. And if you want to get a free PDF of the Spark Planner, if you share the website on social media and then email them a screenshot, they will send you the PDF!

Whether or not you chose to buy a Spark Planner, I think that having a planner that helps you work toward your goals is such a wonderful gift to have. And I know that I will be more successful in my goals this year because of all the tracking I’m doing!

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff, Shopping

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My Word Of 2016 (or I’m Going To Be Strong)

Posted on January 5, 2016 | 3 comments

I did my first word of the year last year, and I’ve decided to continue the tradition of that this year. I started thinking about what I wanted my word for 2016 to be at the beginning of December and it was tough to figure out what I wanted it to be.

I loved that my word last year was “bold” because it could mean lots of different things in different parts of my life. I wanted another word that was more on the positive side (I think that’s what everyone wants their word to be like) and I wanted it to match and enhance my word from last year.

I spent a lot of time brainstorming and scribbling out ideas. There were a lot of words that seemed good, but for some reason or another they just didn’t feel right to me. Or they might have been awesome, but I could only see myself using the word as a focus on one part of my life. But after a lot of thought, this is what I’ve come up with for my word for 2016.

Strong

I think “strong” is a perfect word for this year. It does go as a nice companion word to “bold” in my mind. And it can have a couple of different meanings for lots of different things that I have in my life.

In my acting career, I want to be stronger in my auditions and meetings. I want to make strong choices and show that I can be a strong actor. This is very similar to being bold, but I think I like strong better because you can be meek but strong at the same time. Sometimes, I need to be a meek performer in the audition room, and I can still feel like I’m honoring the word “strong” while doing that. It doesn’t feel like an act that I’m trying to put on (like bold felt at some random times). This just feels much more natural and achievable to me.

I like having “strong” as a focus word for my workouts for some pretty obvious reasons. I’m trying to focus on getting stronger versus losing weight. I feel like losing weight is such a weird journey and has so many ups and downs (literally). But focusing on getting stronger is much more linear for me. I know when I’m able to use heavier weights for different things and I know when my rowing is at a higher wattage. And I can use that as a focus word for my speed training on the treadmill too. Being strong has become a priority for me in my life, and having it as a focus word for the year is perfect.

“Strong” is a good word for my hopes of getting into recovery with my eating disorder too. I need to be strong to win the battle. I need to be strong in my efforts to track my food, track my feelings, and track my episodes. It’s easy to not track things when the day isn’t going so great, but I need to be stronger than that and track things anyway. I’ve found a new app that I’m using together with My Fitness Pal that is helping. When you track food, you don’t have to see the calories. All you put down is what you ate and you track other things like feelings and other thoughts as well. I’m not switching to that app totally yet because I do still like tracking calories on My Fitness Pal, but I’m open to the idea in the future of not having calories as a focus at all.

I’m really looking forward to making 2016 my strongest year yet in so many parts of my life. I’m really feeling good about the progress I’ve been making lately and I hope that I’m able to maintain what I’ve been doing and just keep moving forward. I’ve got my word up as the background of my computer so I’m reminded of it every day. And I’m looking forward to sharing with you in a year about how my year of being strong went.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff, Health

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Working Out Into The New Year (or The End of My 2015 Workouts And Beginning of My 2016 Workouts)

Posted on January 4, 2016 | 2 comments

I had a busy week of workouts this past week! I had my 2015 workout goal to reach by Thursday and I had to get 3 workouts in to complete that. And of course, I wanted to start off 2016 with a workout so I had 4 workouts for the week.

Even though I thought I had gotten over my shin splints the week before, they decided to come back this week. I started out on the treadmill on my Sunday workout and within a few minutes I was hurting. So I decided to jump off the treadmill and jump onto the bike for the rest of the cardio. I don’t know what I’ve been doing that caused the shin splints (being lazy on Christmas probably didn’t help), but I’m working on making sure that I do what I can to keep them from coming back again.

So since I’m worried about the shin splints returning for a long period of time, I also did the bike on Monday. It’s not my favorite cardio machine and I never feel like I’m working as tough as I can on the treadmill, but the bike is fine for when I need it. I try to get the resistance up higher each time I’m on the bike, but it’s never going to be the same as getting the speed and incline up on the treadmill. But I keep reminding myself that doing light cardio on the bike is better than doing no cardio at all.

Because I didn’t want to do too many workouts in a row and I knew I’d be working out on Thursday and Friday, I took Wednesday off. I worked on stretching and other things to help the shin splints on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I was feeling much better for my Thursday workout.

Fortunately, Thursday was a 3G class, so there was less treadmill time than usual. It was a good transition to go back onto the treadmill and the only pain I felt was my hip pain (it’s sad that having hip pain is my normal, but it is). I’m still very cautious about my inclines on the treadmill, but just being back on there makes me feel so much better and more like my usual self. I’m glad that the day was a shorter treadmill day because it was a great way to get back onto the treadmill. And of course, I was smiling because I made it to my workout goal for the year!

Last 2015 Workout

After going out for New Years Eve, I was back at Orangetheory in the morning for my first workout of 2016! It’s wasn’t too early, but it was still tough getting my butt in gear in the morning.

This class was also a 3G class so the treadmill was about 20 minutes of the workout, rowing another 20 minutes, and weights 20 minutes. This class really went the full 60 minutes (we actually went a bit over) and it was really tough. We were constantly moving and the time spent rotating between blocks was very limited. My heart rate stayed high for most of the class and I really felt it afterward.

But I did managed to be ok on the treadmill again. And not only was I ok, for the all-out portions of the block I chose to increase my speed instead of my incline and was able to get up to 3.8 miles per hour. It wasn’t easy going faster, but I really do want to focus on my speed training this year so upping the speed during the all-outs instead of the incline may be a more regular thing for me.

What was really nice about my New Years Day workout was that a bunch of my friends were in that class with me. My friend Polly used to be in the same class as me at least once a week or so, but her schedule doesn’t really work with that anymore. And my friend Erin is not a regular at Orangetheory (yet), so she went to this class just to join me. And my friend Dani is a regular with me, but it still made me happy to have her in class with me for New Years Day.

First 2016 Workout

I think this was a great way to end my 2015 workouts and start my 2016 workouts. Even though I’m still working through various modifications, I think my persistence is showing off and will help me reach my 2016 workout goal!

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My 2016 Goals (or I’ve Got Some Big Ideas This Year)

Posted on January 1, 2016 | 2 comments

Happy New Year! I hope that you all got to spend New Years Eve last night with people you love and had a great time (and hopefully not feeling it too much today)! As I’ve done the past few years, I’m sharing what my goals are for this year and what I hope to accomplish.

First is my big workout goal. I want to do 180 workouts in 2016. It’s only 5 more workouts this year than I did last year, but I wanted to make the goal not too much of a stretch. I’d love to pass this goal and do closer to 190, but I also know that life can get in the way and I don’t want to stress out about reaching my goal like I did in 2015. I think it’s very doable and I’ll be tracking my workouts using the same app I did last year (it made this very easy for me). So hopefully in a year I’ll be telling you all how I got this done!

My next goal is to have a new PR for my 5K. This one is going to be difficult for me because I’m still dealing with calf pain, but I think that maybe I can do it. Right now, I have 2 5Ks that I’m planning on doing (the same ones as last year) but I might add another one in there. So there aren’t a ton of opportunities to get a PR, but I will have a ton of time on the treadmill at Orangetheory to work on my speed training. I still have an ultimate PR goal for my 5K (15 minute miles) so I can feel comfortable doing a Disney race, but I know that this goal is very possibly a few years away.

Next on the list is a money goal. Or more like money goals (but I’m combining it into one goal). I want to get my debt down farther, budget better, and even maybe start having more savings than just what I’m saving for my taxes (as a 1099 employee, I will probably owe a lot in taxes). This is not an easy goal. Money is tight and while I wouldn’t say that I have a spending problem, it’s hard to not spend like some of my friends do at times. And those friends sometimes make 4 or 5 times what I make. I’ve been using You Need A Budget for a budgeting app and I think I’ve gotten budgeting close to what I want it to be. However, YNAB just launched a new version and it’s a subscription payment model. I can still use the old version and not have to spend money on the app, but I’m also looking into new apps to use because I don’t want to spend $50/year on a budgeting app when that money could go to something better. I do have an amount in mind as far as reducing my debt goes, but that’s something that I’m going to keep to myself for now.

Next is a fun one. I want to travel more and find more ways to spend time with my friends. While I’m ok with saying no to going to parties and things, I like going on adventures and fun outings. So I want to work on figuring out adventures to go on with my friends so that we can have more fun. And for traveling, I’ve got one trip planned for February with my mom and I’m hoping to do a trip with my sister-in-law in March or April. So that’s a step in the right direction.

I’d also like to do another acting class this year. I think it will probably be the next level at UCB, but I’m open to acting classes that fit into my schedule and my budget. While it’s important for me to keep working on my acting skills, I want to be in another class for other reasons. It’s great meeting new actors, it makes me happy because I get an opportunity to act, and I feel like I’m making progress in my career even if I’m not auditioning. So I feel like this is important for me to do and I feel pretty confident that I’ll be able to get this done.

And finally, I want to be either in recovery from my eating disorder or on my way to recovery. I’m starting to look at my eating disorder as something to research and educate myself on instead of an emotional thing. I’ve been doing reading, listening to podcasts, and using apps for my eating disorder over the past week and I’ve already felt a difference. It’s still a battle that I lose sometimes, but I’m feeling much better about how I’m approaching things this time. And hopefully in a year I will be posting that I’m either in recovery or I’m getting very close to recovery. That would be such a wonderful thing I could accomplish in this year and if it happens I know that it will change my life.

So that’s it for my goals for this year! I think that I’ve got some good plans in mind. And while they won’t be easy to get done, they are not completely out of my reach. I’d love to hear some of the goals that you have for the coming year and hopefully we can keep each other on track!

Happy 2016!

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Posted in Acting, Celebrations, Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Saving, Tough Stuff, Travel

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