Be It Resolved...

Ah, that time of year again. Promises to be made, promises to be...unmade.

Last year I had quite a bit of success with my New Year's Resolutions. I think the difference from previous years was that I got very specific with what I wanted to do and, of course, I didn't try to do them all at once. I can't remember the entire list, but I think the only thing I didn't accomplish was to finish (translation: start and finish) my home remodeling. Never fear, it will go on the list again this year, but I'll have to ponder it a bit so that I can include specific goals and timelines.

Another thing I learned over the past year was that the list of goals doesn't have to be set on January 1. It's merely a starting place. As goals are achieved, new ones can be added. Just to keep life interesting and mobile.

So, without any fanfare or drama, here are my identified goals for 2008:

1. 1000 minutes of cardio in January
2. Participate in a 5k on April 19th (how much time I spend walking and/or running will be determined by my aging body)
3. Reduce the number of times each week I eat in restaurants by preparing at least 3 meals per week at home.
4. Reduce clutter by moving two things out for every one new thing I bring into my house
5. Start at least one remodeling project (kitchen!kitchen!) by March 31st
6. Complete last remodeling project by October 31st
7. Write 300 words per day, every day (blog entries not included)

That's all I have for now. I'm not including my weekly goals because I'm already doing them consistently. I'll continue listing them in the sidebar for motivation. :)

Fun goals:

1. Go to San Francisco for a week
2. Treat myself to a facial and/or a massage every 6-8 weeks
3. Buy a bicycle. And a helmet
4. Read all the books on my TBR (To Be Read) shelf of my bookcase
5. Take a class in something I've never studied before (even if it's just a workshop)
6. Try one new recipe every month (see above goal re: kitchen remodel)
7. Finish Christmas shopping in November.

That should do for now. Some of these are MustDo, others are ShouldDo, but there's no really good reason I can't accomplish all of them.

Wish me luck!

Other People's Words 12-30-07

One of my favorite quotations is a Japanese proverb: Fall down seven times, get up eight.

Here are some others I like:

People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas. ~Author Unknown

The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books - how not to eat what you've just learned how to cook. ~Andy Rooney

Food is like sex: when you abstain, even the worst stuff begins to look good. ~Beth McCollister

When I buy cookies I eat just four and throw the rest away. But first I spray them with Raid so I won't dig them out of the garbage later. Be careful, though, because that Raid really doesn't taste that bad. ~Janette Barber

To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality. ~ Naomi Wolf

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. ~Mark Twain

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools. ~Spanish proverb

The Second Step

Okay, so now we have the mindset that we're going to eat to be healthy and exercise to be fit. We also know that, at some point in time, the pounds and inches will follow these lifestyle changes. Meanwhile, we're focused on building stronger muscles and healthier bodies while we consider exactly what it is about our current habits and customs that we want to change.

No, don't run! We don't have to do it all at once! Read my banner; we're going to make small, gradual changes to get to where we want to be. If you've worked in a manufacturing or corporate environment, you might recognize this concept as similar to Kaizen, a problem-solving methodology that enables companies to make small, incremental, sustainable changes over time. That's what we're doing here--kaizening ourselves. Over time, we're changing out things that don't work well for us for the things that do. And we want these changes to last, to become everyday things.

Part of Kaizen calls for brainstorming, or listing solutions to a problem. We can apply that here by listing all the things we can do to improve our fitness habits. Even though we're not going to do them all today, it will be nice to have them written down. In making our lists, we should focus on specifics: "Walk for 20 minutes per day, three days per week" or "Drink 8 glasses of water every day", as opposed to "Exercise more" or "Drink lots of water." Why? Because those changes are measurable. You'll know for certain that you're achieving the goal.

When you have your list assembled (keeping in mind that will evolve and grow over time as you think of new changes to make), choose one thing--two, at most--to focus on for your first step. Maybe you'll want to begin by exercising, or perhaps you'll just want to replace soft drinks with non-caloric beverages. It doesn't matter where you start, just that you start. Period.

Personal notes: You'll see my current list in the sidebar. The items listed there, under My Weekly Fitness Goals, are my lifestyle changes to date. You'll notice that it's a very short list. I'm not done yet. Remember, I'm tippy-toeing. :) My next change focus will be, I think, drinking 8 glasses of water per day. Ugh. Wish me luck. :)

The First Step, and It's a Big One

Until 2004 I had never known a single other woman who dieted and exercised to be healthy, rather than to be thin. Everyone I knew wanted to be single-digit sized, flat-stomached, but with curvy hips and breasts. In other words, we were all trying to be Barbie. I'm not sure why, since we all know Barbie is plastic.

Enter Morgan, whose friendship turned my thinking about diet and exercise (a.k.a Barbie-itis) into a completely different mindset. Morgan exercises because it makes her feel good (especially when she's riding her bike. Uphill. Into the wind. But not when she's sprawled on the pavement in a busy intersection.) She eats healthy food so that her blood sugar, heart rate, and cholesterol stay in healthy ranges, because she knows that those are the numbers that really matter, not necessarily the ones on the scale. Morgan thinks she would look silly thin, and she's right. She looks fantastic just the size she is, which is low double-digits.

Imagine that. Eating to be healthy, exercising to be fit. Paying more attention to the numbers that reflect blood pressure, HDL, LDL, and heart rate than you do to the numbers on the scale or the tape measure. What an amazing concept!

Okay, maybe it's not so unique. It's obvious that we're all built differently. Even if we all ate the same low cal, low carb, low everything diets, we'd still be shaped differently. That's nature. I could eat nothing but green beans for ten years, and I'd still never have Cindy Crawford's body. Instead, I'd have the bone density of fine porcelain and a host of diseases usually seen only in impoverished nations.

Choosing someone else's weight and body shape as ideal is often what leads us down the road of dietary self-destruction. Choosing to chase a lower blood pressure, or a better heart rate may not lead us to thinness, but it will enable us to become healthier people. And the real kicker is that, usually, those pesky numbers on the scale will drop as we make healthier lifestyle choices. They may not drop as fast, or as far, as we'd like them to, but they do drop. While we wait, we have the assurance that we're taking steps to build stronger, more energetic, healthier selves.

So, in case you were skimming, the main point here is that we'll gain longer term success if we measure that success by considering all the numbers that indicate personal fitness, not just those on the scale or on the size label of our jeans.

Personal note: Six months ago, I took Lotrel 5/10 daily for high blood pressure. My resting heart rate was 92. Five months ago, after I'd lost 20 pounds, my doctor cut the dosage on my medication in half and will likely eliminate it totally next month when I go for a check up. Last month, my resting heart rate was recorded as 60. Coincidentally, I've lost about 60 pounds to date, which is nothing to sneeze at, but those b.p. and heart rate numbers are what make me proudest.

Beginning at the Beginning

Welcome. I've been blogging about my weight loss journey at singlespace.net for a while now, but the focus of that blog was not supposed to be health and fitness. I kind of got carried away. :) This blog is my Christmas gift to myself, an attempt to separate my writing world and my fitness explorations. You, of course, are welcome to be part of one or both worlds.

My story so far:
I've always been fat. Seriously. I went on my first diet at the age of eight months, when the doctor had my mother switch me from regular milk to skim. I keep forgetting to ask my mother if it made any difference.

Throughout my childhood I was what might be politely termed "plump" or "chubby." I was active in sports (softball, volleyball, basketball), so it wasn't a big deal. When I entered my teen years I was a junior size 11. Madison Avenue said that was fat, so I went on a diet. Lost some weight, gained it back along with a few more pounds. The cycle had started.

In my late 20s, I dropped about 40 pounds on Weight Watchers, but I lost my focus and that was the last serious weight I lost. I gained back the 40 and added 30 more over the next 20 years. As the weight piled on, it became more and more difficult to engage in physical activity. Talk about your vicious circle!

It wasn't that I didn't try, because I did. Nothing worked in any lasting way. Discouraged, I went as far as having medical tests run to ensure there wasn't something wrong. Other than a "sluggish" thyroid, the doctor couldn't find anything wrong. So I continued to try one weight loss and/or exercise plan after another, but I failed at all of them. Exercising hurt, and dieting was almost impossible to maintain over any length of time. I was so frustrated that I actually considered trying to gain weight, just so I could have gastric bypass surgery. Pathetic, yes, but the mere thought of subjecting my body to that was a huge wake-up call, one that, when combined with other events, finally got me on the right track.

Over the past eight months, I've lost 60 or so pounds (in flux due to the holidays) and along the way I've learned some valuable lessons. I've tried some things that didn't work, and I've found some others that have been profoundly life changing. It's my plan to share these things with you here, in hopes that they'll help you specifically, or simply serve to get you on to a path to something that works for you!

Coming Soon

Bookmark this page and check back soon for tips, tricks, and tantrums.