Cleaning my house. In sprints. With Cookies.

This week, I stumbled upon a tumblr account that really appealed to my "Not Martha" style blog... only with an exorbitant amount of cursing.  :( It's called "Unfilth Your Habitat".  I'll boil it down for you:

1. You have a job, a family, roommates, homework, pets, and/or some other reason why traditional "Housekeeping" information seems outdated/ impractical/ stupid.
2. Your house/apartment/room is getting embarrassingly bad.
3. Stop whining, and spend 20 minutes intensely cleaning something, and then give yourself a 10 minute break. (To watch tv, or read, or surf the internet. I make cookies to reward myself for all my hard work!)
4. Vinegar and Mr. Clean's Magic Erasers are the most amazing cleaners on the planet.

So, taking this advice to heart... Here's what has happened in my house in the last 2 days! This 20 minute intense cleaning... with a 10 minute reward... I have to say - it's becoming addictive. Domestic Diva is cleaning this place!  Taking the before and after pictures are AMAZING motivation too!

The Bathroom Scale

I did something crazy.  I hid my bathroom scale under the bed.  Its been about a month and I think it was the best decision I could have made.  Lemme 'splain.

This year I decided to get healthy. After fad diets, diet pills, low carb, cheating on low carb, and then poorly following pretty much every diet on the planet, I started running.  And then doing some free weights. (I can do a pushup! A real one!)  And although my calories have been reasonable and I lost a percent of body fat, the scale did not move for 6 months.  Well actually, it did. It went up.

I know I know. "Muscle weighs more than fat." "Calorie deficit is how you lose weight" "Make better snack choices" "Don't eat after 5pm" "Eat breakfast". I. KNOW.

But it was still so discouraging. I couldn't be happy for the progress I had made. And then my friend somewhat offhandedly said, "You know I didn't even grow up with a bathroom scale. Not that I never had body image issues, but they were with the mirror, not that number."

Can I just tell you what a relief that has been for me? I still catch myself doing the mirror evaluation and I'm still keeping an eye on calories ... but that magical scale number has been out of my life for 4 weeks now!

I'm not dumb. I know when my workout hasn't happened in a week or that I ate a chocolate chip cookie (or 3... with ice cream...) today.  But I'm so sick of that number on the scale being an all consuming force in my life.  I have plenty of other things to worry about.

And I want to be healthy diva in body and mind.