Wellness pals, already the third Sunday of the month meaning it’s time for Wellness Weekend 11.2020. Updating my wellness goals and talking about our optional theme, peace. Hope you will link up your wellness update and stop by to cheer on some of the others joining in on this journey toward improved health. Pretty sure in this crazy year of Covid we can all get on board with that!!
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Life at the U.S. Covid Epicenter
Where early this fall I was doing a mini-celebration because life in El Paso was slowly returning to normal, this month are up to our collective eyeballs with Covid fatigue. Take a look at these statistics from 11.13, Friday.
- Today’s positivity rate was 20.50%
- 53% of all hospitalizations are COVID patients. (+3.00%)
- This is the 29th consecutive day over 500 new cases a day
We shut everything down for a week only to have the mayor open everything back up again. No one knows if things are open or closed!! I need a hair cut. Going to see if I can find someone with scissors who can help me out.
With all of that being said, I am going to just give an overall update on my goals. Again this month, it has been very difficult for me to concentrate on improving my physical, mental or emotional health lately when all I want to do is hide under the covers. And then there’s the matter of my parathyroidectomy last week that has further slowed me down.
WELLNESS WEEKEND 11.2020 GOALS UPDATE
PHYSICAL HEALTH – 4.0 (HOLDING STEADY)
- Stretch and work out 4x a week, Weight Watchers to maintain weight – back on WW, hope to lose 5 pounds before Thanksgiving, unable to work out until I get the okay from my doctor. Until then, we are using Leslie Sansone walking videos to motivate us. Check them out, here.
- Get 7200 steps and 3 floors a day – concentrating on getting more steps since I can’t exercise
- Walk in nature for 30 minutes a day, 5x a week – enjoying my walks while listening to books and podcasts
NUTRITIONAL HEALTH – 5.0 (HOLDING STEADY)
- Cook meals at home 4x a week – restaurants are closed except for carry out so I am continuing to cook and splurge a couple times a month on HelloFresh meals
- Eat 1 fruit and 1 veggie every day – continuing to drink our smoothies
- Indulge in alcohol and sweets on weekends – still doing pretty well on this
SPIRITUAL HEALTH – 3.5 (down .5)
- Develop a morning routine M-F – not possible because nothing is routine
- Enjoy quiet time M-F (devotional, writing, reading, moment of silence and prayer) – completed “40 Days Through the Bible,” but now in between devotionals. Waiting to receive my friend Mary’s latest workbook from Amazon, Finding Your Path to Faith, Hope & Healing: A Workbook to Enrich Your Journey.
- Use aroma therapy during my morning routine – nope
MENTAL HEALTH – 4.0 (HOLDING STEADY)
- Get dressed every day (not active wear), wear a dress or skirt to church – still no church. Haven’t had on a dress or skirt in months. Boo hoo!
- Weekly artistic activity; word games, journal – we are mid-way through #25daysofgratitude, the autumn photo challenge I am doing with my friends Deb and Jennifer. I am sharing my daily photo on Instagram but will put together a compilation of photos in a post on the blog, 11.30. Feel free to grab these graphics for your post and jump in here with me!! Deb recently mentioned her streak of 200+ days on Duolingo. I was so impressed and have started doing a little bit of Spanish each night myself.
- Read 3 books a month in order to meet my Goodreads goal (are we friends on Goodreads yet?) – finished The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel with my book club. And we began Nine Women, One Dress by Jane L. Rosen for our November book. Many of the girls sped right through it!! Picked up and enjoyed The Love Story of Missy Carmichael by Beth Morrey. Still SLOWLY reading An American Marriage by Tayari Jones from our public library. Actually, listening to it in the car on CD but since I haven’t gone anywhere in weeks, I haven’t listened either. If you are looking for a great online book club, holler! I’ve got just the one for you.
RELATIONSHIP HEALTH – 4.0 (HOLDING STEADY)
- Unplug at 8:30 pm, implement evening routine – have been doing very well at this because I have not been in the right frame of mind to blog or do much of anything else. Except Duolingo which I do before bed.
- Date night with PC 2x a month (bucket list activities) – autumn bucket list update coming later this week
- Me time, develop friendships, take a class or do something for myself – enter Jennifer Chamberlain and her online winter wonderland painting class. So much fun!!
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PREVENTATIVE HEALTH MAINTENANCE – 2.0 (down .5)
- Improved skin care, routine facials – nope…well, I am washing my face at least.
- Weekly dry brushing – nope
- Regular manicures – and nope
FINANCIAL HEALTH – 3.0 (HOLDING STEADY)
- Continue saving each month
- Save for birthdays and Christmas
- Keep spending under control
Before I bid you adios, let’s take a quick look at our optional prompt for the month…
Peace
I wish I had something profound to share here but I don’t. We are hanging in and hanging on, hoping that somehow the new year will bring peace to our country. Peace and restored health. In the meantime, we are watching very little national news and just enough local news to know what restrictions are in place, and what our Covid case numbers are.
YOUR TURN
How are you doing? Has this second wave of Covid hit your community with a vengeance, too? How are you staying mentally and physically and emotionally well?
If you have a wellness related post, please link it up with us so we can cheer you on.
Thank you for stopping by. Enjoy a restful Sunday.
Hugs and kisses,
With the best intentions in the world, sometimes life steps in and stops us from our plans. Let’s hope that having had the op on your thyroid you will start to feel better.
Those covid numbers are worrying to read, I think the whole world is experiencing the second wave now, which I guess was inevitable once things started opening up again, but hard to go back to more restrictions when you’ve tasted a little bit of normality.
I guess at least if nothing is open, there’s more chance of achieving your savings targets (so long as you step away from online shopping 😉 )
Pleased to see you are a Duolingo person too! I am trying so hard to keep doing a lesson a day to keep that unbroken streak – I just finished a section on the verb To Be and I found that one the hardest so far for some reason but it’s over now.
Keep resting and recovering from your surgery!
Tried to find you on Duolingo but don’t think I did. Would nice to be friends on there to cheer each other along.
Unfortunately, I have made an easy transition from shopping in brick and mortar stores to shopping in their online alternatives. So my savings account isn’t really flourishing and growing like it could be.
Feeling really good this weekend so I think the surgery was a success and my recovery is almost complete.
I am doing so bad with logging my points on WW! I am holding steady on my weight though so I’m trying not to stress too much; I’m hoping once I can really exercise again I can knock those last few pounds off. I have heard rumors of another shut down here and I guess sometime at the very beginning of the month restaurants were told to enforce a 9 o’clock curfew (though we hadn’t heard of that). It’s so hard to keep track of these ever changing rumors and living on a tri-state border makes it even harder!
Bravo for keeping your weight steady. I have gained about 8 pounds from where I feel my best. Need to get busy. Now that our surgeries are behind us, exercising will come and we can get back to our lifetime goars.
I think you are doing very well in unusual times. I found stepping away from the local COVID numbers and simply focusing on what I could do was very helpful. Keep trying different things!
Well, I have progressed from looking at the numbers every single day to looking at them 4-5 times a week!! Ha!! Not much better but a step in the right direction. I have enjoyed your almost daily posts about life coping and living through this pandemic. I need to focus on what I can control and stop worrying so about things I can’t!
Thank you, Leslie, for joining me on this Wellness Weekend. I think you’re doing very well with your goals, especially during this covid-19 pandemic and you had surgery. Take it easy until you fully recover from your surgery. Have a great week ahead! #WW2020
So glad I went ahead with the surgery. Now I can jump into 2021 feeling like a million bucks! Surely, surely this virus will be cleared out of here by then.
COVID is rearing its ugly head again here in PA too. My son, who works at a restaurant, just found out he is once again laid-off as the restaurant is closing again except for take-out. Ugh!
I need to get back on Duolingo. I was doing Spanish, then Portuguese last year, when we planned a trip to Portugal last apring. Of course, the trip was canceled and I just haven’t had the motivation to get back to my Portuguese lessons. I think I need to pick it up again. Maybe this spring, after the vaccine, travel will open up again.
Good luck recovering from your surgery. I am sending positive thoughts your way!
Your poor son! On again, off again with his job and his income.
If you get on Duolingo again, for Spanish or to brush up on your Portuguese because surely you can take that trip this year, please friend me. mommyhon333
I am feeling really well after my surgery. Had a few days of that chokey feeling but I would say I am almost 95% now!! Thank you!!
Hi, Leslie – You continue to do exceptionally well with your goals, regardless of circumstances around you. This is very inspirational.
Wishing you peace and wellness.
xxoo
Thank you, Donna. I am feeling almost 100% after my surgery. About ready to run again.
I have so many feelings as I read this. Most about Covid. Things are opening up but it’s not going away; actually I don’t think it ever will since there is no way to cure a virus. And really I think we’ll be wearing face masks forever and that makes me sad, I hate them but wear mine regularly.
I certainly thought this would all be over by now but it isn’t. Anywhere.
Boy, I’m a downer and don’t want to be! So I’ll end on a happier note – you have some good and realistic goals set for yourself and you are always inspiring!
xo,
Kellyann
Isn’t this darned virus exhausting? And I am not even sick with it. In all of the TV shows I watched this week, Covid made a ‘guest’ appearance. I really hated that it is being mentioned in our forms of ‘entertainment’ but I did think seeing people being portrayed with the virus made me stop and think how horrible it really is for those who get sick. Made the virus more concrete. I agree, and believe we may wear masks forever. At least in large groups or in big box stores.
Ooh, surgery? Duolingo? El Paso? Ha, how did I not realize that? I spent a little time there over several summers during my high school years (mid-70s) as a childhood friend moved that. I don’t remember that much about it except HOT. My friend and I were still horsey then and we would go riding through the desert and hills, that was fun.
You have a LOT of wellness goals! Wow! I couldn’t do a tenth of those things! More power to you, Leslie!
Bettye
https://fashionschlub.com
Thank you, Bettye. Do you remember what part of El Paso you visited? What high school your friend attended? My dad was stationed here in the late ’40s after the war and then returned to El Paso to visit me when I moved here in the late ’80s. He said nothing had changed. Ha!
I feel like we are approaching being in very bad shape here with covid too. we’re at 15% and 400 new cases in a day. I hope your surgery went well.
My surgery was a success and I am well on the road to recovery. This Covid has been so tiresome. Somehow I feel like if we can just turn the corner and begin a new year, things will start to look better.
We just had a partial shut down here and they closed inside dining. They’re saying on average 1 in 100 people have Covid here now, too! Ugh!! I took my daughter out of in person dance and she’s doing it virtually now (which is kind of sad, because it is competitive dance), because she got exposed twice and it was disrupting her in person school (which is going ok for now). I will be SO glad when things are back to normal! I need to get a better morning routine down, I seem to get up too late and then I’m scrambling.
Carrie
curlycraftymom.com
So tiresome. I think our average is something like 1 in 37 have Covid here. Exhausting. Not sure where I got that number!! But it is bad. We are down to 25% occupancy in restaurants.
Sorry you had to take Autumn out of in person dancing. But I think it was a smart move. Is Nathan still running with the track team?
Thanks for sharing everything! Here in MI we’re taking a “3 week pause”. I really am nervous about how Christmas is going to look this year. Also, I barely wear jeans anymore… I think active wear is just as good. 😉
Hope your 3 week pause is successful in slowing things down. I am worried about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our community is SO family-oriented. And I think that has been to our detriment during the pandemic.
I wish I could only indulge in sweets on the weekends. That is such a great goal! Between my 3 year old and the dog I get so many steps, but I counteract them with sneaking sweets through the day to keep up my energy. It’s a bad habit. This Covid has all of us off our game and routine! It’s tough!
I used to get up in the middle of the night every night and eat a couple of Hershey’s kisses!! That was a calorie-costly habit that I had to break. Not sure why I even started. Probably a reward for having to get up half a dozen times in the night to go to the bathroom!!