The Howell Blessings

Jumping back in with a beautiful group of writers over at Lisa Jo Bakers , for Five Minute Friday.  Today's word is Choose. GO: Life is full of choices. When we wake up in the morning we can choose to be in a good mood or a bad one, regardless of how we felt upon rising.  We can choose to love our spouse in spite of their faults or we can choose to harbor resentment towards them for not being meeting our expectations. I am currently choosing to do a 21 day detox diet, even though I could just as easily choose to stop at anytime and grab a handful of peanut M&M's, but I made a choice to do what I feel like is best for me in the long run.   We all need to make a decision on what we choose to do with and in our lives.  Some are short term choices, like my detox, and others are long term choices, like who we marry. The most important choice we can make is where we spend eternity. With any choice we need to decide what is best and stick with it.  It's easy to change

Mon Feb 24 Water: 64 oz Weight: 132.6 - loss of 1.3 lbs  Total so far 2.8  Breakfast: Protein Smoothie Lunch: Protein Smoothie Dinner: Left-over Bean and Nut patty with lime vinaigrette dressing and cucumbers, Mixed greens salad No snack Exercise: 4x4 Bursting -15 minutes Notes: No cramping last night!  I'm hoping it is just all in the water control. I slept well last night too. Today I awoke ready to start exercising. I used an exercise DVD I own from JJ Virgin where you intermingle 1 minute of aerobic exercise between pushing, pulling and core muscle work outs. I followed that up with about 10 minutes of yoga. I believe I waited to long to eat supper tonight and was very hungry. After I ate, I found myself wanting to snack, but realized that I wasn't hungry for food in my tummy, but food in my mouth. Tomorrow I will have this lentil loaf to just heat up as soon as it's time to eat supper, so hopefully that helps with the craving to eat.  If you alread

Days 1 & 2 of my detox journey. Here I go. As scary as this is, this is the ugly truth. I'm about to share with you what I try to hide from everyone.  In four years I've gained seven pounds, and almost all of it has gone straight to my stomach. I am 53 years old, wear a comfortable size 6 and sometimes 4. I am post menopausal (thanks to chemo) and, according to a popular weight loss program, I am at a perfectly good weight. Really?  Does this look perfectly good to you? I can camouflage my pudge most of the time, but let me tell you, this is NOT attractive.  Nor is this easy to show you.  Normally I go to great lengths to avoid letting people, especially my husband, see my body flaws. Tonight I asked him to not only look at my flaws, but to make sure they show well in these pictures. ( He's a very good amateur photographer) . He, of course, didn't hesitate when I asked him to photograph me in such an unpleasant light, bless him. Usually I

Hi! I'm glad to see that folks have been stopping by in my absence  My apologizes as it's been awhile since I posted last.  It's been longer still since I really felt like posting anything.  Let me try to explain. A LOT has been going on in the past year and a half that has been life changing.  Some good, some... not so good, and some quite frankly, that have left me with more questions than answers.  I've even wondered if I had anything to share on this blog that anyone would even care about, or if I should even take the time to blog. (Just getting real here).  The good news is (for me) that I've been contemplating things and getting back to the basics in a lot of areas. From asking "what is it really all about?" to decluttering just about everything. I am trying to simplify my life, my surroundings, and the way I eat. Some of the decisions that I have started to ask myself are simple and easy to answer, and some on the other hand will take commitme