Hi Friends!
It’s always fun to quickly look back at my most popular posts! Have you tried any of these? Did you find me through one of these posts? I’d love to know!
Most Popular HH Posts of 2022
- 25 Trader Joe’s Dinner Ideas
- Air Fryer Chicken Tenders – No Breading
- Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Mug Cake
- 2023 Healthy Costco Shopping List & Printable List
- Oat Flour Banana Bread
- Oat Flour Banana Muffins
- One Pan Creamy Trader Joe’s Cauliflower Gnocchi & Sausage Skillet
- Oat Flour Pumpkin Muffins
- Protein Powder Pancakes
- Go-To Wings Dry Rub
- 35+ Healthy Trader Joes Recipes
- Baby Meatloaf Muffins Tins
- Five Ingredient Pasta with Sausage and Spinach
- Healthy Trader Joe’s Meal Plan & Shopping List
- Easy Protein Pancakes
- Egg White Crepes
- Ovulation Effects On Appetite, Training, & Nutrition Tips
- 1 Minute Peanut Butter “Mug” Cake
- 32 Healthy Trader Joe’s Snacks
- Chocolate Chip Banana Oatmeal Muffins
Reflection on Last Year’s Word Of The Year: Growth
(January 2022 selfie – 8 months PP )
Last year, my word of the year was Growth. After being pregnant and then nursing a small baby, I wanted 2022 to be my come-back year. The year I grew in productivity, the year I saw measurable growth in HH, in my clinical skills as a Dietitian, in my workouts, motherhood, whatever, I just wanted to feel more like me.
(Email readers, click through to read more!)
Last year, I said:
I want to see real, measurable growth in Hungry Hobby’s metrics and my capabilities. Since May, when KK was born, I’ve only posted less than ten new recipes. Yet, I feel the itch to get back in the kitchen and create more regularly. So, I’m setting the goal of 100 new HH recipes this year. Not for some arbitrary goal but because I freaking love recipe development, cooking, and photography. I just need to prioritize it.
I’d also like to invest in myself in 2022, both professionally, spiritually, and physically. I want to see growth in my professional capabilities, relationship with God, and physical/athletic abilities. After being pregnant and then having a young baby, I’m starting on the foundation, and the only way is to go is up.”
I’d say it went pretty well until August when I got pregnant with baby #3! Then, my word switched from Growth to Survival. That first trimester is rough ya, know? Actually, all of pregnancy is rough.
But despite that, HH surpassed a pivotal point of hitting over 2 million views for the year! I’ve been eeking around that 1.9 for the last couple of years, so hitting just shy of 2.2 million was fun to see! I also had one of my highest-viewed days ever in November.
For 2022, I set a goal of 100 new recipes. I published 59 NEW recipes last year. So a little over half my goal. And almost every single one of those had a video with it, which is huge for me. And, of course, recipes weren’t the only thing I published.
Professionally, I completed two intense trainings one on hormone health in the pre-menopausal woman and another on autoimmunity and the gut-brain axis. Lots of posts are coming soon about those! I went back to teaching in person, which was great! My students and I worked on a freeze drier project together. We learned together, cooked, and tasted it together. It was so much fun! I had amazing clients this last year, truly amazing, who were nothing short of pleasures to work with.
It’s easy to look back and say I wasn’t as productive or didn’t experience as much “growth” as I wanted, but I don’t think that’s being fair to myself. This was a big year adjusting to life as a mother of 2 as things returned to normal, and I was expected to leave the house with children more often. As kids began to get sick way more often and I had to step in as the flexible parent over and over and over. Oh, and did I mention that we moved in the height of the real estate market right before they raised interest rates? It was worth it, though, we’ve seen more of our friends more often, and I did manage to finally make it to the mom’s group meeting at my church (as it’s basically a block away now) and have since made some new friends.
Overall, lot’s of growth happened last year!
2023 Word of the Year: Appreciate
Heading into 2023, 23 weeks pregnant! –> Mr. Hungry, “show your bump next to the giant snowball we made.”
Typing up a review of last year made me realize how much growth I did experience in every aspect of my life. But until I wrote about it, I didn’t appreciate it. I’ve mentioned before that positivity doesn’t come naturally to me at all. I have to work for it every day and when I let it slip, it goes fast.
So what do I want to do this year? Well, to say that this year intimidates me is an understatement. I don’t think I’ve ever been this intimidated in my whole life. Ever. Not once. With the birth of my two first children, ignorance was bliss, and my confidence was high. People asked me how I was gonna do it, and I would shrug and say IDK, I’ll make it work, and I did. So, I know I’ll do it again, but the blissful ignorance of how hard the third and fourth trimesters actually are is gone. And yes, I understand I’m also a more experienced mom, calmer, etc. But still, blissful ignorance is gone, haha.
One word I thought of was: accept. Accept the mess, accept my appearance, accept my hernia limiting my workouts, accept pregnancy fatigue affecting my work capacity, accept the sick days….. accept it all with grace. But then the word appreciate appeared on a list, and I realized that it was a better version of accept. Appreciate means to accept AND find the beauty behind what you’re accepting. Accepting pregnancy issues is one thing. Appreciating my body is another. Same thing, but with different connotations. And appreciation in every facet of my life is something I will need to rely heavily on this year if I’m going to do more than survive a newborn, a toddler, and a preschooler while attempting to work full-time.
- Appreciate this space that brings me so much joy, even if I can’t spend as much time in it as I would like.
- Appreciate my clients and my students for the opportunity to teach them and walk their journey with them.
- Appreciate my clinical skills and training opportunities, even if it takes me longer to get through the training than I want.
- Appreciate my kids for the age they are right now. They will never be this age again.
- Appreciate my body for what it can do instead of focusing on what I wish I could do or what I did in my last pregnancies.
- Appreciate our new house, despite any of its shortcomings. Every house has them.
- Etc.
I’m not saying that everything has to have a positive spin so that we can’t ever complain because I don’t believe that to be healthy. A good girls’ night out with lots of bitching and complaining and laughing and tequila is good for the soul. But, appreciation for the little and big things in the midst of this really busy stage of our family and career lives is something I’m striving for this year.
Past Words of the Year:
- 2022: Growth
- 2021: Strength
- 2020: Relationships –> Yes, my first word of the year was relationships in 2020, the year of intense pandemic lockdowns.
What are you striving for this year?!?!
Do you pick a word of the year?
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