Life Altering Year: A quick review

I was looking at my posts and it's been almost an entire year since I last made a post! Holy cow! To fill you in on the last year...because I've decided to make this blog about more than just the nail art I do but ALL the things I do and am into.



I've had to move away from the nails and the nail art because of family responsibilities. I haven't completely stopped doing nail art, I just no longer have the time to spend hours doing different designs and taking quality pictures to post.  I've never gone into it before but we live with my in-laws on their family avocado farm and my husband and his brother run a palm tree nursery. The downturn of the economy has meant that my husband has had to spent less time in the nursery and more time at a 'day job'. With his parents getting older and his father's declining health, we've had to take on the bulk of the work that needs to be done. Most of the 'farm' work is stuff that I'm not capable of helping my husband with but I can and have been helping him in the nursery. There's only so many hours of daylight in a day and I like to think I'm not the kind of wife that can stand idly by while the work piles up if there's something I can do to help.

I don't make New Year's resolutions, I make New Year's Goals. Last year  I decided my goal for the year was to get more fit. I started out simple enough, walking a mile or two at a local park three times a week. One of my friends got a membership to Planet Fitness and she could take me along as a guest. I enjoyed that a lot. She was less consistent about working out and my husband decided that membership was more than affordable and I went ahead and joined myself. I started out doing 20 or 30 minutes on the recumbent bike and then added in the Planet Fitness Express Workout.

My oldest daughter gave birth to her second child 4 weeks prematurely last march...both her and my grandson came through in good health.  He's so cute and adorable!! In the closing weeks of May,  my mother's health took a turn for the worst and I flew out to Oklahoma to be with her at the end. She's been dying by inches for several years now so I was as prepared as one possibly can be. Being with her at the end and knowing my being there made a difference for her,  it made a difference for me too. She asked me to do some nail art for her and it was probably the single most import nail art I've ever done or ever will do. I wasn't able to take pictures of the nail art because unfortunately, the only camera I had was the one on my cell phone and no cell phones in the ICU. By the time she was transferred to the hospice unit, taking pictures of her nail art was the last thing on my mind.  I did replicate the design as a memorial to her and posted it to instagram. I went away for the summer to spend time with my kids and while I was away, I became quite the workout warrior.

I came home from my summer visit with my children living in Boston to celebrate my first anniversary with my husband. We spent our special day at the same state park he took me for our first date. It was a great day! Even after being together all these years, he was still able to impress me like it was our first date. We canoed through the mangroves and went snorkeling on the beach and came home for a nice romantic dinner at home.

The passing of my mother really affected me and I started to pay more attention to my health. I tried eating better..ok actually eating more than once a day. Decided to start paying attention to my weight because it was getting up there and I'm working out like a mad woman and seeing no results. I have thyroid problems and those were out of control and I was very unhappy with how that was being handled by my doctor. I changed insurance and then changed doctors.  I was also very concerned about my blood sugar and seriously worried I had developed type 2 diabetes.

While I was waiting for appts and all these insurance changes to take affect, I went ahead and decided to go on a formal diet plan. I joined Nutrisystem. I had an ex boyfriend who lost over 100 lbs using that and I had tried the food before and knew it was pretty good stuff. Also, I knew that if the new dr found that I had developed type 2 diabetes then it they had a plan for that and I could quickly and easily transition to their diabetic plan and get it all under control without wasting the money I put down to begin with. I was being proactive.  Ultimately, I found that I was NOT diabetic but pre-diabetic and the cure for that was just losing weight and I was already well on my way! He also found that all the working out had kicked up the metabolism but I needed a med increase for my body to keep up with that so I could actually lose the weight.

I had 90 lbs to lose when I joined Nutrisystem and now I'm down almost 38 lbs in three months. I'm still quite the workout warrior and have exceeded the fitness goals I set for myself last New Year's. I feel pretty strongly about the Nutrisystem eating plan, I refuse to call it a diet because that implies that I'm somehow depriving myself of food and I'm genuinely NOT doing any such thing. In fact, they've upped how much food I need to eat daily because I'm so physically active. I can barely keep up with the amount of food I need to eat in a day, opposite of deprived and "diet". I've decided that this year I'm going to take up running and that is just going super slow. I need to lose at least another 25 lbs before I can seriously do that. The excess weight is just too much for my old legs to handle. I've been doing the Couch to 5k program but instead of running, just speed walking the jogging intervals. My plan is to just keep going through the 9 week training program over and over until I can do it!

I guess this blog will now become about balancing all the many things I have going on in my life. I still love nail art, still sometimes can find the time to do it. I also love fashion and beauty in general and of course, health and my weight loss journey.  Going forward, this blog will be more well rounded and about more than just my love of nail art.

We shall see where life's twists and turns take me and I'll go merrily blogging all the way! I'll try to keep future blog posts from being as all over the place as this one is and stick to one subject per post, but I felt the need to catch you up on a VERY busy and life altering year.