It's Not Therapy!

Shocking I know!   Food and shopping fix NOTHING.   If anything, they prove to be good ways to set yourself back in your goals but they never propel you forward.   A cheeseburger has no more magical feel better qualities than a piece of chicken and the 75th pair of shoes in your closet will not erase a shitty day.  Trust me on this one.  I have tried them both.  Over and over.  And they do not work.  However, they have brought things I do want to a standstill.

It kind of goes like this - I'm in the third state in three years and this one sucks the most.  Not that SC isn't a close second but the cost of living and distance from the people/places that I care about shoves this one to the front of the line.  I'm a northeast girl and have no nomadic dreams.  I don't need to be wandering around the country - I'd be perfectly content in the same place for decades.  As long as that place was somewhere along the 95 corridor between DC and Boston with a few exceptions.

But back to food, shopping and goals.  My goals are pretty simple.   I looked/felt better at 30 than 20 and plan on being better at 40 than 30.   I want to be able to retire at 50.   (That used to be 40 but thanks to the stock/housing/job market over the last decade 22 months just isn't practical.)  So what can I do about this?  It's not that complicated.  But it starts with food and shopping not being used as therapy.


Goal 1 - Looking better at 40 than 30

Good-bye cheeseburger, hello chicken.  Pretty self explanatory there.   It just has to happen.  My diet has tightened up the last two weeks and in some ways it is actually a relief to not worry about food anymore.  Eat the right meal at the right time and move on.  My workouts stepped up after a 3.5 month period of laziness and inconsistency when I started CrossFit and I am now hitting the gym hard again as well.  Mentally I am not all the way back in the game yet but I'm almost there.  Some days it is just harder than others to haul my ass to the gym in the first place.  Once I get a few sets into my workout I get into what I'm doing and kill it.

Leaning out (which the diet change is already causing) will help me look forward to the workouts more as I can see the mass I have put on over the last two years.  There is a lot there, I just haven't seen it yet.

Goal 2 - Ability to retire at 50

This goal is a little more complicated.  There are a lot more things out of my control - the stock/housing/job markets combined this whole moving over and over again nightmare.   I need to focus on the one thing I can control - where my cash goes.  This can tie in to Goal 1 as chicken at home is always cheaper than what I will eat out.   That is simple enough.

But then I see beautiful things like these YSL sandals:

I want them.  BAD.  Like bad enough to pay for shipping twice because the hippie commune state I live in won't allow real python to be shipped here.  The are fabulous and would look amazing on my feet.

Can I buy them?  Sure.  Will it do anything to help me retire in 11.75 years?  Hell no.  I need to drop that $800 into my destroyed forever home fund (thanks housing market!) not on hot ass sandals.  I sadly must leave them at Bergdorf and wear the sandals I just don't love anymore.  Yea, they are hot and all but they are NOT python which would look bad ass against my bronze tan.  But they also are here, paid for and I need to worry more about my forever home than strutting in my newest acquisition.  No more retail therapy.

I'm not gonna lie - this one is going to be a lot more difficult to adapt to than what I have to do to achieve Goal 1.   Changes in my body are quick and the visible rewards are there.   Like new stuff.   My forever home seems impossibly out of reach with no instant gratification at all.  I'm still thinking of some short term rewards for sticking with this goal - other than cheeseburgers or shoes.  Not only aren't they therapy, they aren't rewards.  Sucks doesn't it?