Getting Healthy

So, like most people, one of my New Year's resolutions is to get healthy. I've been a slacker lately, especially since my knee surgery. The holidays were especially brutal, I don't think I've ever eaten as much in a two week period as I did this past Christmas break! Combine all of those holiday calories with NO activity and...yep, my jeans are a little snug!

I'm not one who "believes" in dieting, you know, the counting of calories and such. I never weigh myself and I gauge my fitness on how well my clothes fit. I've always been active, though, and didn't have to worry about it much. There was one time, in my college days when I was playing an insane amount of volleyball and living in sweats or other elastic waist-ed items of clothing, that my weight dropped a significant amount without me realizing it. I was shocked, as I was preparing for a backpacking trip, to step on the scales (with my fully loaded backpack) and weigh less than my previously known weigh-in sans backpack.

I also had significant weight loss in the early stages of my Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction (CFIDS) diagnosis. This was mostly due to the fact that when faced with the choice of food or sleep, I always chose sleep. I was still working full-time and trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with me and, again, I never weighed myself but my clothes were hanging off of me and I looked like a skeleton. I think I was a size 4 at that point.

Suffice it to say that I am no longer a size 4. Not that I'd ever want to be that size again as I don't think that was a healthy size for me either.

My goal for 2011 is to get healthy. I want to make conscious food and exercise choices that affect my overall well-being. I'm going to start with cutting back on food portion sizes and implementing daily exercise and see how it goes. I'll re-evaluate in a couple of months and see if I need to step it up and actually do the calorie counting thing. I have a good friend who did Weight Watcher's last year, not that she had tons of weight to lose but she wanted to eat healthier and exercise more, and she looks amazing!

And so...as my first step towards a more healthy lifestyle, I enjoyed only ONE piece of this scrumptious butter braid treat for breakfast, instead of inhaling half of it! Gotta start somewhere, right?