TJ Hirst

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

I Need A Nap! That’s the feeling I had when I sat down multiple times to write about my challenge this week to observe the people who intersect my life, be aware of them and consider their influence.

To be very honest, all that observing, considering and interacting with people outside my circle of friends, families and acquaintances plus continuing to observe, consider, interact and care for those within my own circle burst my emotional limits.

I discovered that there is a reason we have limited circles—we need social and emotional limits. For one who is naturally empathetic, which I am, this was the wrong challenge. I didn’t need to add an additional load of concern to my plate for those whose lives are not already intertwined with mine.

So there it is. And now I will nap.

What about you? Do you need a challenge to look outside yourself or do you do that already?

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

I am reading The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom for the July Reading Challenge. The main character, Eddie, learns from the first person he meets in heaven, the Blue Man, that all the people he will meet in heaven will teach him “that there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from a wind. . . The human spirit knows deep down that all lives intersect.”

His words fill me with curiosity about the people outside my circle of friends, families and associates with whom my life might intersect—clerks in stores I frequent, the regulars who exercise at the same time as I do, the parents of students in my children’s grade at school who attend the same concerts and school functions. Sometimes these strangers’ faces seem even more familiar to me than relatives who live across the country.

The Blue Man tells Eddie that “the only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.” I do feel less alone when I think not only about the people who intersect my life but how those intersections impact me. Even more, my vision becomes less self-centered. So, this week I will . . .

Observe the people who intersect my life, be aware of them and consider their influence.

Do you want to try it with me?

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

My goal and purpose in offering monthly reading challenges is to stretch my brain to read and think beyond the usual. That has included reading more or reading with someone else. Thus far, I have not recommended a specific book to read but left the challenge open to personal interpretation. For the last three months I have participated in the Bodacious Bloggity Book Club at Marathon Bird, where we discussed one book each month.

Reading brings me to a place of understanding and when I get there I want to share that same place with someone else. So this month I propose a specific reading challenge that can accomplish this goal with thought-provoking content but still fit into the lazy days of summer:

Read The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom in July.

Alboum, the author of Tuesdays With Morrie, writes this clever story of a man’s death and discovery in heaven of how lives intersect with each other. I’m enjoying it already.

Do you want to Try It With Me? I will write my thoughts and review on July 29th and invite you to join the discussion with your own comments on that post or by writing a post of your own and linking to mine. Come back on Tuesdays between now and then for related challenges.

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

Today is the day to report progress and results for the June Reading Challenge and the other Try It With Me Tuesday Challenges for the month. They included:

Read food labels this month to be more aware of servings size and nutritional value.

Write down everything you eat for one week.

Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables per day for one week.

Did you try them with me? If so, leave a comment below about the one(s) you tried and tell me how it changed your eating habits. If you would like to write a post on your own website about what you did, you can include your link in the comments or send it to me, and I will publish it for you.

Read food labels this month to be more aware of serving size and nutritional value.

This part of the challenge educated me. I was in denial about how much and what I actually eat. My awareness prompted me to seek out new foods and foods I used to eat but gave up to accommodate family eating plans. Keeping an eye on nutrition facts also changed what I ate when eating out. During the week that I was on vacation I discovered smaller a la carte items like wraps with veggies to replace “the meal” or “basket” options on the menu. Ironically, reading toward better eating showed me that the foods I need most are those that are not pre-packaged with easy labels but whole foods that don’t come in a box.

Write down everything I eat for one week.

Keeping a food journal for one week and then recording my servings of fruits and vegetables the following week steered me toward proper serving sizes and amounts. Recording held me accountable to myself. I also identified the patterns of why I eat. For instance, the weekend days of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday needed a whole note page to themselves, rather than just the half pages for Monday-Thursday.

I must be a social eater. Peer influence, especially in a family, to change what you eat is tough. However, my children decided to modify our butter usage and change to Smart Balance. And I let everyone know that I am eating for me, now, and not for them. Consequently the important change I have made is to eat when I am hungry.

Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables per day for one week.

I needed this “requirement” on myself to eat better foods, not just cut out junk foods, as the last challenge of the month. It was the one that most changed what I eat. It was easier because my children used the worksheets I printed from Dole’s website and tried this challenge with me.

We drastically changed what we ate, especially by choosing fruits and vegetables for our snacks over crackers or packaged snacks.

Thanks to a comment from my friend Alison about V8 Fusion, I started drinking V8 juice again, which I love, but stopped buying because no one drank it but me. My current afternoon snack is now a serving of V8 juice, which is an easy way to get 2 servings of vegetables.

Well, my goals this month have been mostly to receive a healthy education and motivation to eat better than ever. In the past I have reduced my food intake but never started with a shift in lifestyle thinking. That’s what I needed after fifteen years of shopping and cooking for the needs of a family. This has been about changing my meal-planning and shopping and cooking habits as much as anything. Fortunately, I do feel the support of my children and my husband and that’s going to make the biggest difference for me in long-term success.

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

I am busy reading and writing toward better eating habits, even while I am away visiting at my parent’s family farm. How are you doing on the June Reading Challenge to be more aware of what and how much you eat?

Now that I recognize and record what I am eating, I need a little push to change what I eat. At lunch I read the serving size for baby carrots and realized I would need to eat 10 carrots. While that would only equal 40 calories, in my mind that was a lot of chewing. I put five on my plate. So, now, I introduce the third challenge in my healthy eating plan for June:

Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables per day for one week.

This challenge is inspired by my children’s participation in the Dole 5 A Day Live show in Mrs. Vanvickle’s 3rd-grade class at Lowell Elementary School. Each of my three children starred in this eat your fruits and vegetables skit as Bobby Banana, a salad sister or an announcer. The catchy songs (we even sing them together at home) and presentation motivate me every time I see it to really try to eat my five fruits and vegetables.

You can listen to the Salad Sisters singing from the salad factory here.

Eating 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day provides a variety of health benefits. Fruits and vegetable are rich in vitamin C, vitamin A, fiber and other nutrients and contain hundreds of phytochemicals. Along with physical activity and maintaining a healthy weight, eating 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day promotes good health and reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.
Dole 5 A Day Facts

The Dole Food Company is a founding member of the National “5 A Day for Better Health Program” and its 5 A Day website has some great printable resources for families, including a 5 A Day Challenge Chart, which I am going to use to track my progress.

Do you want to Try It With Me?

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.