September Review & October Goals

I feel like we’re into Autumn proper now. 1st October and it’s grey, cold and wet 🙁 Let’s hope we have a few more warm days before winter kicks in!

September has been pretty good all in all, and pretty busy. It was back to school for our family in more ways than one this term! Daisy started in Year 2, which she has confirmed is harder work than year 1! She has started recorder lessons (the horror) and is enjoying being back at dance on a Saturday morning.

Poppy left nursery and started school for the first time. A child starting school is always an emotional time, but when your youngest starts, it really does feel like the end of an era and the start of the next phase. She seems to have adjusted ok, the first couple of weeks were half days which was a really juggle on my part. She was a bit clingy (ok, a lot clingy) in the mornings, but came out smiling. Things have got quite a lot easier now she’s full time and in breakfast club – it’s a bit less chaotic and she goes in with Daisy which helps. In fact, she was supposed to be going home with Nanny yesterday and took herself off to after school club instead!

I started year 2 of my Nutritional Therapy diploma. No exams this year, but that means more assignments instead. The latter part of the year also counts towards our final grade – no pressure there then! I’ve enjoyed the summer off, but am ready to get back to it now. The first assignment has already been started!

It wasn’t all work, work, work of course, Paul and I enjoyed some nice meals out, we celebrated some family birthdays and we’ve had some beautiful hot weather which has been glorious. My goals for the month were:

Successfully complete first month of 100 day real food challenge
Lose some of the weight I’ve put on over the summer (4lbs)
Get back into planning meals
Finish my finance sort out and implement my new budget (see meal planning above)

Overall I’ve been pretty successful. I had one minor transgression on the challenge when I ate white baguette at a work event (it was in the middle of the forest, so no real opportunity to get anything else). Other than that, I’ve been 100% focussed so that’s 29 of 100 days ticked off. Eating unprocessed has helped with goal number 2 as well, I lost just over 4lbs in total this month.

I’ve been very good about planning meals. Up until now, I’ve been doing a big online shop about once every 10 days or so. That’s fine, but actually I end up making quite a lot of top up shops in between, which really bumps up the total spend. I’ve decided that I will do a weekly shop instead – although that might mean I don’t get free delivery (it’s £1 instead). I might look at delivery pass options instead, as I think that would be cheaper. That means I can do a smaller weekly shop, be more focussed (I don’t throw much food away, but a lot can change in 10 days which means there can be some waste) and hopefully top up less.

That also relates to the budget goal. We’ve now done a new budget which is more aligned to future goals. I’ve switched my current account and credit card for better deals, and have set up standing orders to new accounts to better manage the various pots. I also got a new, cheaper mobile phone deal, and sold a few things on Ebay, so feeling good about that.

It wasn’t particularly a goal, but we decided to put the house on the market, so quite a lot of tidying has taken place!

October promises to be another busy month, culminating in half term and few days off. I’ll probably need it by then, we have a big project kicking off at work imminently and my boss and colleague are both on holiday this month. I’d also like to really finish my first assignment – although it’s not due until later in November, there’s another on due December and it would be good to get ahead so that I don’t have it all hanging over me in the run up to Christmas!

Health wise, it’s month two of the challenge, so more of the same on that front. Now I’m back into a normal routine with school and etc., my fitness routine has been more back on track. I handed in my notice at the gym as I just wasn’t making use of it. My run of yoga courses has also come to an end. Whilst I did enjoy it, I found ashtanga a little repetitive (particularly the seated sequence) and I’m not sure yoga is really for me. I did used to enjoy body balance which is a combination of yoga, tai chi and pilates to music, so I might try and find a PAYG class. Most excitingly, I’m going to start dance classes! I’ve always loved dancing and did ballet for many years as an adult, but haven’t had the opportunity in recent years. Daisy’s dance teacher runs various adult classes, so I am starting street dance next Tuesday which I’m really looking forward to.

Being more specific around goals seemed to help during September, so goals for October are: