January 2021 Check In

 I kept forgetting to write a monthly check in for January, but better late than never, right?

Well, let's see.  There were four full weeks in January.  I was active for 150 minutes + during two of those weeks.  :(

On the plus side, on those two weeks that I didn't quite make 150 minutes, I didn't really slack either.  On one of them I was active for 142 minutes.  That was also a week I had to completely work from home, so I hit 142 minutes without my daily walking commute to and from work!  The other week I was active for 128 minutes plus shovelling; this was another week where I was working from home (although only for three of the 5 work days).  I don't know how long shoveling took this week either, so I may have actually hit the 150 minute mark, but decided not to count it because it also might have only been like 10 or 15 minutes that I was out (and so not enough).

In terms of recipes, I actually made two new ones during the month of January. :)  One was a new salad, the other was a new bean dip with artichokes.

I feel like my mental health has been a bit all over the place this month.  Work has been busy, but not in a good way. There's too much to do and not enough people; everyone's feeling overworked right now.  At this point I'm trying to stay positive, and basically just do what I can without beating myself up for not doing more.  

One really good thing I did this month though was buy myself Karin Dimitrova's Beyond Flexibility and Core Strength programs.  I decided to only focus on Beyond Flexibility right now because I am not and have never been flexible (and I read that people with Diabetes lose flexibility in their joints so it's important to work on this).  I've only done a few weeks of the program so far (and under the "I'm a Complete Beginner" program because I've never really done much flexibility work beyond trying to work on my hip flexibility after discovering I couldn't sit cross-legged at all) so I haven't seen much in the way of improvements yet.  We'll see how things are going by the end of February I guess. :)