A Healthy 2019

Happy 2019! Alright, here we go… in an effort to blog more this year, let’s start with this. SO many people make New Year’s resolutions to be healthier in the coming year. There’s always talk of how active gyms are at the beginning of the year, then it gradually starts to die down when everyone breaks their resolutions and goes back to their old habits. So, I actually didn’t really set any official New Year’s resolutions this year. I have a few goals, but they are more or less things that have been goals for a while. I do have a lot of hope for what’s to come this year, including in obtaining those goals. But I don’t think I’d consider them resolutions, especially with the connotations that come with that. Resolutions always seem to inevitably get broken!

Looking back on last year, I actually don’t feel too bad about my accomplishments in this area, honestly. I’m not sure of the specific timeframe, but somewhere along the line, something just started to kick in. My motivation improved, I was able to eat somewhat healthier and be more active, and I actually lost around 20+ pounds last year. I definitely hit and maintained that loss of 20 pounds, even going into the new year through the holidays. I was struggling some towards the end of the year with about 2 to 3 pounds that I kept losing and then gaining, and the holidays definitely didn’t help with that. But now here we are at the beginning of 2019 and I’m still down officially over 20 pounds, so I don’t feel too bad about it.

What did I do differently? Well, honestly, it’s not so much “differently” as it is more consistently. I do try to eat healthy. I have for a while. I’m just never able to maintain before some kind of binge of unhealthy eating happens. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really sit down and eat whole cartons of ice cream or anything, really. But every now and then I just want to order pizza or have a candy bar or something. Those things tend to set me back and then it just all comes crashing down somehow, and any loss of weight has never seemed to gain much traction. Somehow in 2018 that seemed to change slightly, and I was more motivated to stay on track and keep eating healthier.

Then there’s that whole workout thing. I have NEVER liked working out. I still kind of don’t, really. But there’s a few things that happened in 2018. And here’s where the story starts to get good. I did actually start walking some about mid-year. The problem was that this meant I had to get up early enough that it wasn’t insanely humid outside, since it is Florida, after all. I eventually kind of lost some motivation for that. Then a friend of mine got really into working out in the gym, and I visited her and went with her once. That was somewhat motivating. Then I started paying more attention to the activity rings on my Apple Watch. I started sharing with a couple of good friends that pay attention to theirs too. Suddenly, those rings started getting closed more often and my goals on them even moved up. I even made a pact with one of my sharing buddies that we would close all of our rings every day in December. And guess what… we did it! I’m so super proud of us. Here’s my month of December for my activity along with the “Perfect Month” award that we both won. This is pretty awesome to me considering how much I’ve always hated working out and how few times I’d really managed to close all the rings on a regular basis before October of this year.

So what changed to help me get those rings closed and get more activity in? I think another part of it was that as much as I hate working out, most days I can usually find it in me to do SOME kind of activity. I may not feel like getting up early enough to walk. Other days I may not feel like walking around the neighborhood or down the street. Other days I may not feel like popping in a workout video and doing cardio or strength training. But I can usually (not always) find it in me to do ONE of those activities. I switch it up a lot between walking, cardio workouts, strength workouts, stretching and ab workouts (I have videos for all of these). And some days even just playing Beat Saber on the Playstation VR for a while is enough to at least get 30 minutes of activity in. But as long as that green ring (that’s the one for exercise minutes!) gets closed, I consider the day a success. And even then, on those days I don’t want to do anything at all, I see the people I share with doing stuff. Yesterday I was considering taking a break since I’d made it through my whole “perfect month” successfully. Then I got notifications that my friends had both gone for 3-mile runs! Come on… Oh well, it was enough to get me off the couch and I closed that green ring yet again. Addiction is real, folks. Those damn rings.

Anyway, so that’s where I’m at now. I’ve seen enough success with those 20 pounds gone that I weigh myself every day to try to keep on track. I know that doesn’t work for everyone, but when I have a day or two where I’ve gained more than I like (well, really, anything is more than I like!), it helps motivate me to not eat as much or to eat better the next day. And I know I definitely don’t want to see that scale go back up again for sure. So what’s my plan with all this for 2019? To just keep doing what I’m doing, only maybe a little bit harder. I’d like to see that scale go down even more than 20 pounds this year. Wish me luck!