It’s not really any secret that most people highlight weight loss when they’re putting together their New Years resolutions each year. What can I say – I’m not much better … I seemed to be doing ok last year, but still only managed to lose about 25 of the excess 60 pounds that I had to shed, and so here we are again this year, poised to give it another go.
The funny thing is, as cliche as it may be to say keep citing diet & exercise on my resolutions year after year, I’m trying to frame it in a positive manner and take advantage of all of the exercise enthusiasm that seems to be in the air here in the first couple of weeks of January before the masses realize yet again that losing weight is really hard and just sitting on the couch watching American Idol is a much easier way to wind down at the end of the day than doing time religiously every night on the treadmill!
One thing that I’ve been trying to teach myself over the last couple of years is really the importance of focusing on the positive. No, I may not have technically met very many of the goals that I set out for myself last year, including that one about losing it all right before Christmas that in hindsight was really just kind of silly, but I did manage to drop 25 pounds off of that target, which is still better than how I started the year back on January 1, 2011.
I stopped drinking diet soda entirely, something that for the better part of a decade I would’ve thought was completely impossible.
I finally admitted to myself that I can’t in good conscience continue to eat potato chips like I always have and actually expect to lose weight.
And frankly, from the looks of these blog posts, I’ve just been a lot more conscious about all of these things that together make up my weight loss efforts, both the ones that have failed as well as those that succeeded.
So while I may not necessarily be quite where I want to be just yet, I also can’t exactly look back on 2011 and write it off as a failure, either. I did a lot of growing last year, and finally in the good way for a change!, so as I mentioned a few days ago when I first talked about my 2012 New Years Resolutions, I think my real goal just needs to be to continue working towards that goal that I already started last year. And though I do need to both push myself harder and in different ways this year, I think it only makes sense to ride this collective enthusiasm that everyone seems to have for resolutions for the next couple of weeks and see how far it will take me…
Happy New Year, everyone – now let’s go lose some weight together! 😀