Healthy November Challenge

Whenever conversations drift to losing weight, saving money or any healthy habit, all hope is lost if it's around the holidays.  And it is true that from about October 15th to January 1st, there are a lot of delicious distractions and (can be) expensive traditions.  What I find in my life, though, is that there is always a good reason not to stick to the budget or continue my healthiest regime.  Every season, every semester, every holiday, every age brings something that makes it harder to treat my family with kind words and self-restraint or practice mercy and forgiveness especially when they don't deserve it.  Finding the right(write) balance to me looks like balancing out the excess, the busyness and the peer pressure with a premeditated plan of healthy choices I can make no matter what else I'm not able to completely control.  I can always control me.

So, the Healthy November Challenge is born.  Mr. Butler and I have selected a short list of things that we are prepared to commit to either until Thanksgiving or for the month of November.  Things like praying together twice a day and enforcing a stricter bedtime for ourselves.  We have a few food related ones, but not enforceable on Thanksgiving. ;)  This list is posted on our fridge, signed by us with the expressed reward of a dinner at Vast, a fancy shmancy restaurant at the top of Devon Tower here in Oklahoma City.  We've never been (for obvious reasons), but it's so hard thinking of rewards that aren't food based or money based.  So of course we chose both!

Honestly, though, one day - even one meal - does not ruin a healthy habit.  It comes down to that one day followed by the next and the next until you have no healthy habit, but an unhealthy habit with an occasional good choice.  That's what keeps you from a goal or success.  Thanksgiving or any holiday is one day.  Choosing to let plans for that one day or multiple parties determine whether you'll make wise choices is completely in your hands.

Finally, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to healthy success is feeling alone.  When every meal you eat around other people is flooded with poor options or no one in your circle of people thinks about how much things cost, life can get pretty discouraging.  Doing whatever is convenient then ultimately rules the day.  NEWSFLASH: The convenient thing is RARELY the wise thing.  So, why don't you join us in this challenge this month?  Let's encourage each other and be better off by December rather than regretting most of November!  Share your commitments, experiences or rewards with me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #healthynovember or in the comment section.  If there is enough participation, we'll do a couple of fun giveaways later this month!

Don't use the busyness of this month - or any month - as an excuse to make unhealthy choices!