budget – Betsy Schow

Budgeting Time

If you read this blog regularly, you are familiar with the concept of the calorie budget. I have recently learned that other things need to exist on a budget… aside from my credit cards.

Time is a tough thing to learn to budget, and there is no way to borrow it. You can’t take out a line and pay it back later. There are only 24 hours in a day. How you divide that time is your budget. If you allocate too much time to a goal, and not enough for sleep, everything suffers. On the other side, if you don’t allocate enough time to your goal, like marathon training or fitness, reaching that goal will be next to impossible to read.

It’s a fine line of finessing. One I don’t have quite figured out yet. I’m done with marathon training, so I have that chunk free. I finished certifying as a yoga instructor. But now I am working on the rewrites of a third book, a young adult fractured Oz fairy tale, and it is eating all my time. If word count is any indication, it’s getting fat.

The point is, I am making a choice. By budgeting my time sitting and writing, that means less time to hit the gym. Less time reading to my kids. No time to do housework. If I was attempting to write a book and run a marathon and have the perfect house… guess how many of those goals I would actually achieve. A poor time budget often leads to quitting a project in the middle. Finish it. Put in the time and effort necessary to get it done.

Choose your goals wisely, then budget your time with equal care.

No Crap Challenge

I’m down to goal weight again. But I still feel like crap. In talking to my friend, she implied it’s probably because of the crap food I use to fuel my body. You are what you eat and all that.

So on Monday, I invented the No Crap Challenge. It’s 30 days with no fried foods. No refined sugar. And no enriched white flour.

As of today I am 4 days crap clean. Suprisingly, I am less hungry than I’ve been in weeks. The cravings have subsided mostly. Amazingly, I even resisted the cinnamon roll my friends shoved under my nose. (They are my kryptonite)

I’ll keep you updated. Just to be clear, my calorie budget hasn’t changed. I’m not trying to lose any more weight. Just fuel my machine like a high end Ferrari instead of a POS Pinto.

The Game of Life

Back in the day, I used to love playing “Life”. I even own the Pirates of the Caribbean edition. But the game isn’t so fun when you’re playing it for keeps. The “Real Life” where stock markets can crash and send the value of the house card you picked into the toilet. And whose little plastic kids from the game scream, whine, and throw temper tantrums.

Oddly, my real life is echoing the game a bit. Only the stakes are higher than just a bad spin. Remember the go to college card so you can get a higher paying job? Well, my husband lost his job in February. We decided that it was in the best interest of the family and future jobs to send him back to school to get a degree. He should be done in another 10 months. So until then, we are living on our savings and a sandal budget (we passed the shoestring point).

As I watch the saving deplete, I can’t help but wonder, did we make the right choice? I think so, and time will tell. But I still feel I am moving around the board waiting for one of those bad opportunity cards to smack me with a penalty.

Have you ever had to gamble a bit with your future, and did it pay off? How did you know you were doing the right thing?

Fitness Tip: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

You work out, you’re eating better. But the scale isn’t budging. A lot of times, it could be because you have a liar in your midst. The fitness equipment.

Often times the elliptical, treadmill, or cycle can overestimate the calories burned by 30-50%! Well, if you use that number to calculate you net calories, you might be blowing your budget without meaning too. Example: You are trying to budget for 1500 calories. If your elliptical says you burned 1000, then that means you have earned the additional 1000 calories. So you eat a total of 2500 calories for the day. And you are gaining weight. Because in reality you only burned 500 calories. And if this pattern keeps up everyday, the 500 calories over budget per day would make you gain one lb per week.

Fitness equipment is notorious for lying to make you feel good and get back to the gym. Here is a link that I like to use to calculate how many calories I’m REALLY burning.
http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-fitness-calorie-counter

So if the scale is stuck, maybe you need to block out the info panel on the treadmill and recalculate your budget.

Fighting Fido

When you eat, do you have dog-like tendencies? Here’s what I mean

Is this you?

Or maybe this one over the last buffalo wing?

Maybe this one hits home.. staring longingly and begging for a taste of the food you can’t have.

Yeah, I’m right there with you. I had this epiphany yesterday when I found myself giving my three year old puppy dog eyes, hoping she’d share just a bite of her cookie. She didn’t.

I need to better control my food behavior. I am not an animal, licking the plate clean or fighting for the last scrap of food. I’m in control. I decide what I will eat and what I won’t. And if I’ve budgeted correctly, then there is no need to feel guilty. But swiping those last few fries off the kids plate… adds up real quick.

So stop fighting with Fido over the leftovers. Make your choices wisely and let the dog get the crumbs under the table.

Snack Smart: Salads are not always low calorie

Are you trying to lose weight? So you automatically pick the salad off the menu? Sadly, salad does not always equal low calorie or healthy.

Most commercial salads have cheese, croutons, some have breaded chicken or bacon, maybe guacamole. None of these things are bad per se. But they certainly hike up the calorie count. The worst offender is the dressing! You can easily use 300+ calories just on 2 tablespoons of dressing. Ugh that’s a bag of M&Ms.

So make your own fresh and yummy salad. Here’s mine: fresh diced tomatoes, cucumber slices, fresh lettuce. Tossed with balsamic vinegar straight from the cooking bottle. Not the vinaigrette dressing. Yum and under 150 calories.

Fitness Tip: Make a schedule

Most of us don’t have a manual labor intensive job. That means that if we don’t set a piece of our day aside, the exercise often doesn’t get done.

Case in point. Last night I thought that it would be nice to run or walk a few miles today. If I got up early enough before school I would fit it in. I didn’t set my alarm. Do you think I rolled over naturally at 6 ready to move. Uh no.

Now it’s the end of the day. It’s hot. And there’s no one to watch my kids. All this adds to a day that I won’t fit it in unless I shift some stuff around.

It would have been so much easier if I had planned for it in the first place. Look at your calander, set aside an hour and pencil it in. Just like any other appointment. Then keep it. Because your health is everybody as important as lunch with your mother.

Snack Smart: Just a taste

How many times have I been looking forward all day to the brownie that I’ve budgeted for. Five seconds later, its over. The brownie is gone, and I want it back. Temptation is to grab another brownie, but I’m better than that. Most of the time. 🙂 This is what I’ve started to do instead.

I break my treat into four pieces to enjoy throughout the day. Think about it. When you inhale a treat, your tastebuds are really just tasting that first bite. So why not have that first bite… all day. Stick to that one brownie or cookie, but make it last for a while. You trick your tastebuds into thinking you’ve had more than you’ve actually had.

Extra tip for you mommies. Make sure you do not leave your partially eaten treat out for small children to find. They seem to think its fair game.

Portion Control Made Easy

Once again, it is time for me to stand up and own my problems. I have an issue with portion control. A portion to me is whatever the heck is on my plate. I still have it drilled into me from when I was a kid and my mom would say, “Eat it all, there are starving kids in China.” Even if I’m not really hungry, I will keep picking at what’s left on the plate.

My solution? Only put on the plate what I can eat. At home, I’ll premake meals in individual portion sizes in disposable tupperwares. That way I can just grab one, reheat it, then eat the whole thing. And then I know I didn’t eat too much. If I’m eating out, I’ll get a to go box at the same time my food comes. Then I look at the plate and figure out what my portion should truly be. Then dump the rest in the doggy bag. Voila, I can now eat everything on my plate.

What about treats? Because no matter what diet you are on, everyone needs treats. Whenever I open a box or bag of cookies, I will go through and separate them into individual ziploc baggies with two cookies each. That usually equals 150 calories. Perfect for what I have allocated in my budget for treats that day. So now when I want something, I just grab a baggie and I don’t have to worry about my will power and looking down and finding half the box of vanilla wafers gone.

Give premeasuring a try. It’s alittle time consuming and OCD but well worth the effort.

Potpourri: Muffin FAIL

I was running out the door one morning and starving. I didn’t have time for my cottage cheese, and I was out of yogurt. So I thought I would just grab one of my husbands muffins from Costco. Couldn’t be too bad right? I mean it’s a muffin for heaven’s sake. I figured 400 calories tops. When I checked later that day to add to my calorie total I was floored. 695!!!!

So not fair that it take 5 minutes to consume and 70 minutes to run off.