#GetYourAssMovingApril

I've admittedly been MIA the last few weeks. I have no excuse - my life has just been hard. It took about all the mental energy I had to keep humming "Just Keep Swimming" from Finding Nemo.

Somehow, it worked. I'm still swimming and I didn't sink, but there were definitely a few close calls:

• I've been very homesick - to the point of tears and crying on public transit frequently. No good. 
• My mom is having major surgery again, and I'm 1300 miles away. Anxiety level = 5.
• Leo (which is all I will call him until further notice) is going through a lot of life changes, and it's so hard for me to hear the pain he's going through. I still don't know how I haven't flown back to DSM to just sit with him for a day.
• Library school is sort of kicking my rear but, I'm getting As. Somehow.
• I've also had to make some decisions about my program: go full-time or part-time, public or academic, certificate or general studies. These were all questions that swelled my brain and made me cry eleventy-hundred times. 
• I've been thisclose to booking a flight back to Iowa and moving home. Only reason I haven't is because I'm just too stubborn to quit and I came here to do this goddamn program, so I'm going to do it come hell or high water.

Anyways, but this blog is about fitness and weight loss...so back to that subject and how it relates to what I was just saying...

In the last few years, when I've become stressed/anxious/crazy I've turned to exercise as a release, but the last two weeks I fell into my old habit of emotional eating.

It isn't good. I've gained. My pants are tight (and not in a ironic-hipster way). And I just don't feel good.

I started to think about why I was acting this way and I realized that part of it was because I was allowing myself to use the craziness of the last few weeks as an excuse to not care of myself. Then I tried to make myself get back on board (that was when I wrote my last blog post). But, guess what? I didn't. Nope. I think I stuck at it for about a day.

So, next I started thinking about why I was having issues staying in control. Well, one is that I feel like my life is completely out of control, so I don't have the energy to reel my fitness and eating in as well. And, with Mercury in retrograde, my ability to communicate how I feel has been dampened (yes, I believe in such things), so writing blog posts has been a struggle (this post has literally taken me three days to compose).

I started to problem solve and turned to Twitter...I knew I needed some kind of accountability and thought I could spare the energy to write up short posts if people would be interested. I posted the query to see what people thought...and Micah came to the call.

So, #GetYourAssMovingApril was born. At last count there were something like a dozen participants, but it's open to anyone. All a participant must do is post their activity for the day and the #GetYourAssMovingApril hash-tag. Some are also posting their weights and food intake. I'll be posting my WW points each day, but leaving my weigh-ins out since I write about them on here.

Anyways, who wants to join the challenge? All you need is a Twitter account (and, in 2012, if you don't have Twitter you are behind) and some exercise shoes. If you join, follow me @JaclynneJaciJax.

My new weigh-in day is Monday, so I'll post my weight tomorrow. I started #GetYourAssMovingApril a few days early, so I hope it shows on the scale tomorrow, we shall see.