End of Year Reset

I am watching a series, of sorts, on YouTube by Morgan Green. She’s doing a 90 day stronger series where she’s trying to be focused on her health and fitness. It’s a weekly vlog and they are longer videos. A couple are over an hour long. In the first video she meal prepped, exercised, tried to resist temptations, and weighed in daily using her Hume body pod scale thing. There are 106 days left as of today, Tuesday September 16 in 2025. We are officially in the BER months of the year. I want a change. I want to change. I am tired of the way things are going. I’ve been tired of the way things are going to be perfectly honest. I want to take the rest of this year and completely and totally reset everything from my health, fitness, nutrition, self care, finances, and cleaning the house and getting into a routine. I don’t want to wait until January 1st when we are in a new year with a new calendar. I can do things now. So let’s talk about all of these things that I want to do. I am going to be using ChatGPT as a “coach” and definitely do weekly check-ins. I’ve actually started it. I’ve been using ChatGPT for a similar thing for my upcoming birthday with weightloss.. I’ve had some setbacks with that. The goal is to be the best version of myself and to find myself or reinvent myself and to establish myself. I want to show up for myself. 

Health. Well that covers a lot of things. There’s physical health, mental health, financial health, spiritual health and probably a few other things. I could be missing something. Physically I want to lose fat and gain muscle. Wyatt and I have been doing fun runs this year and last year and I’ve been doing the virtual runs with Virtual Run Events. I have a ton of unfinished races. Focusing on health ties into self care as well. It’s about taking care of yourself. I want to journal most days of the week and do a bit of a brain dump. 

Fitness. I want to get into a solid routine that I can do no matter what is going on that day. My kids have appointments each week and some weeks there’s more than one appointment. I have a barbell set, dumbbells, kettlebells, and resistance bands at my finger tips. The goal is to weight lift 2 or 3 times a week, do yoga or pilates once or twice a week and use the rowing machine once a week to do a 5K. My step goal has always been 5,000 steps. I want to go on walks. It is starting to cool down and we are having cooler mornings so some mornings I could drop the kids off and eat a quick breakfast and go for a walk that’s at least a mile long. I don’t have any subscriptions to any fitness apps or anything but I have YouTube and my college degree. 

Nutrition. While mom is house sitting or on vacation I have been meal prepping. I’m not prepping in the sense of using containers everyday but in the sense of batch prepping and making 2 or 3 days worth of meat for lunch and dinner. Mom is house sitting until the first few days of October so I have a few weeks left of not having to cook every single day. It’s saving me time on actual cooking and cleaning up. Once mom comes home I can still meal prep for breakfast and lunch. I’m not giving up on things like ice cream or chocolate if I want it. I’m going to eat a smaller portion of it. Completely eliminating it is going to result in a binge that I don’t want to happen. I do want to get better at taking my collagen peptides on a regular basis. I do notice that I feel so much better when I do take it. I took a break from my iron pills after my surgery because of the timing of the antibiotic I was put on. I had to take the antibiotic twice a day and the iron pills once a day but I couldn’t take the iron pills at the same time as the antibiotic because the antibiotic wouldn’t work as well. For the iron pills it’s 2 hours before and 3 hours after eating to take it. It’s easier for me to take it at night. While on the antibiotic I would have to take it 2 hours before or 2 hours after the iron pills. I don’t have the mental capacity to figure out the timing so I temporarily stopped the iron pills. I do feel a little better while taking the iron pills. So there’s that. I do want to incorporate more iron rich foods and foods that aid in iron absorption. 

Self Care. On top of the movement and eating it’s other things like making sure I take a shower and brushing my teeth. Also the brain dump when needed. Also I’m not in the habit of washing my face at the end of the day and that’s something I’ve enjoyed doing as well as face masks. My self care doesn’t have to be fancy or several steps. For me the fewer the steps it has the more likely I will stick with it.

Finances. I don’t want to be all willy nilly with my food stamps like I have been. One of the things that will help with that is sitting down and planning on what we are eating for the week and go to the grocery store and just get what we need. Starting in October I’m getting an extra $17 a month which is nice. I don’t want to use up all of my food stamps at the beginning and then be struggling and stressing towards the end. I am super grateful for food stamps and the ability to feed my kids and myself. I have the power to pick the healthier foods.

Sleep. I feel better when I get 8 hours or more of sleep but I don’t get that much sleep very often. I’ve been getting about 5 to 7 hours of sleep every night. I want to get at least 7+ hours of sleep every night. For me to be able to do that I need to get the kids to bed between 8:30 and 9pm and then go to bed myself instead of scrolling on my phone. Another thing that is going to help is emailing my friend from the other side of the country before I get the kids to bed instead of after I put them to bed. When the kids are home, and sometimes when mom is home, it takes so much longer to do anything because of the constant interruptions coming from mainly the kids. Doing things while the kids are in school and/or sleeping helps so much in getting things done sooner. Right now I don’t want to get up earlier than 6am.

I just saw this quote on Facebook on the Virgo–Introvert by nature page. The quote says “Not every woman who takes care of her appearance is seeking attention. Most of us simply enjoy looking our best for ourselves. Because confidence is not about who notices, it is about how we feel when we look in the mirror. Taking care of yourself is self-respect, not a plea for validation.” This is exactly what I am going for. I want to be able to look in the mirror and like what I see and feel comfortable in my skin. 

Cleaning. They say a clean house is mentally beneficial and lowers your stress. The problem I am facing is keeping up with things and not letting things pile up on like the counter or the table. I have 2 kids and they have their stuff as well. So the goal is to do a deep cleaning of all of the rooms, except for mom’s room as she’s on her own with that, and just keep it clean and get on a weekly routine. I’ll take each room a day at a time and I’ll set a timer to work for a certain amount of time. It’ll be easier for me to get the house cleaned while the kids are in school. Today and tomorrow I am going to get the kitchen cleaned up. Tomorrow the kids have an early release from school and a 3pm appointment. 

Bullet Journaling. I would like to sit down between today and tomorrow at the kitchen table and get started on preplanning in my bullet journal. I sometimes take it to the kids therapy appointments and work on it but I want to get some of their appointments scheduled for October and I need at least the calendar as the year at a glance is getting pretty full. I am going to attempt to get all of 2025 in the square Archer and Olive bullet journal but it’s looking like I may not fit all of December in there and nothing for the end of year recap. I’ve stopped adding in the weekly notes section as I wasn’t using them but I don’t know if I stopped adding them in soon enough to have enough space. I may have to get a few sheets of loose leaf paper out and put in the back. For 2026 I have a few options. I have the A5 fixed dotted bullet journals from Michaels and Hobby Lobby. I have 4 from each store. I also have a bigger dotted journal from Hobby Lobby that I was originally going to use as a social media journal but I’m not. The down side to that dotted journal is that I can’t buy another one when the brand is on sale from Hobby Lobby as mine quit selling it and it’s not online. I have the dotted inserts from Hobby Lobby and the 6 ring binder that I’ve used twice already. The upside to that is I can sit down and work on all of the monthly calendars and rearrange the papers. Hobby Lobby has been having the packets of the dotted inserts in stock and every so often they go on sale for 40% off. I am going to print out the 2026 calendars that I found on Jashii Corin’s website. I have one for a Monday start and one for a Sunday start. I use a Sunday start in my monthly calendars and a Monday start for the weekly layouts. I’ve also used the calendars for the year at a glance. I am going to print out some year in pixels sheets for my bullet journal. This year, which I need to update, I am using it for my workouts and I am thinking about doing the same thing for next year. It’s been nice seeing the different workouts that I have done throughout the year. I got the year in pixels from the Notebook Therapy website. It’s free.

Goals. The biggest goal I have is to discover myself. By the end of this year I want to lose as much weight as I safely and realistically can and to get into a solid routine for my health and fitness. I have a fitness bullet journal and I am going to track with that rather than on MyFitnessPal. It’s better for me to sit down, either after every meal or at the end of the day, and write down my exercises and my food and each week, if I haven’t done so already, a to do list.

I am going to fine tune everything and come up with “rules” so to speak on everything that is not outlined in this. I am giving myself 106 days to build healthy habits, get into a solid routine, and show up for myself. I want the last few months of 2025 to be the best months ever. I am turning 40 this month and I want my 40s to be my best decade. I want to make a lot of progress in my 40s with my body and life. I am going to attempt to film and blog as much as I can of this. Every day and night are not going to go perfectly or as scheduled. Like yesterday Elijah had a migraine and he’s home recovering today. He’s still sleeping. One YouTuber is using ChatGPT for his weight loss journey which is where I got the idea to start using ChatGPT. So far I have not had an negative experiences with ChatGPT and it’s been rather helpful.

I am 5’2 and 240.3 pounds. My highest weight is 258.5 pounds from 2020. My goal weight is between 115 pounds and 130 pounds. I am going to see how I feel and look at each weight. I want to look muscular and still feminine. I am almost out of the 240s. I am glad to be out of the 250s. I have lost 18.5 pounds. Next mini goal is to get out of the 240s this week. Then my next mini goal is to get out of the 230s.