Changes

This past week, I made a pretty big change in switching jobs.  I am now officially employed by Gallup and it's basically the greatest job ever.  Every single person I've spoken to has greeted me with an enthusiastic and sincere, "Welcome to Gallup!" Everyone has been overwhelmingly kind, inclusive, and welcoming.  People are excited to get to know me and work with me.  A coworker told both Matthew and me that he is really excited to work with me and thinks getting to know me will be really fun.  It's been an overwhelmingly positive experience when my previous job was not always that.

I'm especially excited because on my third day, last Friday, I was invited by a few guys in the NOC (network operations center - my home base) to join their team in a fitness program called 'In the Zone'.  This week, there is a fitness relay that involves each team member doing a particular exercise and then "handing off the baton" to the next person when they're done.  Yesterday I had to walk/run 2 miles for relay #1 and today was to walk/run 3 miles for relay #2.  We haven't gotten to relay #3 yet because the poor anchor of #2 has to do 50 pull ups before we can finish.  Regardless, whenever we do move on to #3, I'm demanding something that doesn't involve my legs.  The walk between my desk and the NOC is a pretty decent trek and I'm averaging walking it 10 or so times a day.  My legs are ready to murder me.

The best part of the fitness thing though, is that I am completely accountable to my group.  If I don't do my part, they can't do theirs.  I've struggled with not really having anyone to be accountable to, so having these guys is awesome.  Plus, there are trainers at Gallup who come up with a fitness and nutrition plan for you as a benefit of employment.  Even better, they are known to really hold you accountable by sending emails (or talking to you in person) as gentle reminders of your goals and plans if they see you, for example, eating something you shouldn't.  Physical Wellbeing is one of the five focus areas of overall Wellbeing and Gallup goes out of their way to make sure you have ways to improve or maintain it.

Quite possibly even more exciting, the change I realized tonight that I've fully made: I have officially moved out of plus sized/women's sized clothing! Depending on where I shop, my size is far from consistent but I have even managed to fit comfortably into a few designer brands.  I skipped weighing myself last weekend after a week when I failed rather miserably at my goals of not up going out to eat, etc., but I have definitely made progress!  I have some shirts I got last summer that were a little snug when I got them.  They got a little tighter over the course of last year, but they've become comfortable enough that I actually wore one to work today.  I'm very excited to keep up with the exercise and have people to continue to hold me accountable so that hopefully I can drop even more weight or a few more sizes before the trip to Austria.

Overall, things are going just peachy for me.  I'm looking forward to the future and seeing where things go from here!