What's Your New Year's Resolution? Ugh, I Don't Make Them

New Year’s resolutions aren’t my thing. To me, it seems like they are made to be broken so why make them. Now I’ll admit I use to make them. The ones I remember all involved some weight loss goal I failed to reach. So I gave up on resolutions years ago but not my commitment to a healthy lifestyle.

For years I struggled with my weight and body image issues. I was always one of the bigger kids in class since I was so tall. As young as 8 years old, I felt fat. I pretty much outgrew children’s clothes by third grade and could barely fit junior’s clothes by middle school.

Secretly I tried to lose weight. I ordered diet books advertised in the back of fashion magazines. I ordered exercise books from Scholastic Book Club. One time I tried starving myself. That didn’t last long. After about 8 hours, I had a bad headache and felt weak. I told myself that was not the method for me. In college, I would work out sporadically with little success. I was 50 pounds overweight when I graduated.

It turns out living on my own was good for me. I still had crappy eating habits at first – pizza and cereal were staples of my diet – but I wasn’t eating as much. When I started working third shift, the excess weight fell off. Fast forward nine years and I’m at a healthy weight and have an active lifestyle. Organic foods make up the bulk of my diet. I eat junk food in moderation and exercise 200 – 300 minutes a week.

So no resolutions for me – just a continued commitment to living a healthy lifestyle, something we can all commit to.

A Run Today Could Keep that Cold Away

There seems to be a laundry list of benefits of running – weight loss, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, stress relief – I could go on. Another benefit is cold prevention and boy am I thankful for it. When I get a cold, I get a cold. I mean I’m congested, my nose runs like a faucet and I cough my head off. I’m literally miserable for weeks. But ever since I started running two years ago, all that is a distant memory. Even working around sickly people who choose to come to work and spread their germs, I have managed to stay healthy. I attribute it to running and being a bit of a germaphobe – I wash my hands regularly and keep hand sanitizer nearby. I think the fact that I haven’t gotten a cold is pretty funny. I run in the rain. I run in 30 degree weather. I run in windy weather. All the conditions you probably learned to avoid going out in when you were growing up. Yet I’m doing just fine. With that being said, if you’re running, keep running during the winter. It’s good for your health. If you’re not running, why not start now. It’s good for your health.

New Diet Regime

Okay, I think I’m about to embark on something major here, or at least major for me. I’ve been talking about it for months. I’m sure my friends are tired of me by now. I think I’m finally ready to do it. I’m going to become a flexitarian! There I said it.

What finally pushed me over the edge? An article in the October issue of “Runner’s World.” In “Simply Good” Mark Bittman discussed the health benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat and how eating this way is good for runners. He presented his case in a way that made it seem doable. I know it will take some work and I’ll have to get creative with meals so I’m not just eating lettuce all the time but I’m going to give it a try.

Getting to this point was hard for me for some reason. Yes, I try to eat organic about 80 percent of the time and I limit fatty, junk food but I felt like it wasn’t enough. Part of my motivation to do more is my family health history. Heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and glaucoma run in my family. Running and eating better has already helped lower my cholesterol by 20 points. I want to do all I can to prevent the health challenges my father and aunts and uncles struggle with.

So my plan is to start with limiting meat to one meal a day, most likely dinner. I’m three days into the new eating regime and I can’t wait to go grocery shopping so I can buy more foods to support my cause. Now I need your encouragement to keep it up. Please share your recipes and eating tips and when I develop some, I’ll share mine and we’ll embark on this journey together.