Health & Fitness

I Stuck To My New Years Resolutions

I Stuck To My New Years Resolutions

In December of 2015, at the end of Christmas festivities, my aunt had this serious heart to heart with the family whilst we were all assembled there around the glowing Christmas tree. We've had a lot of family members die or end up in the hospital in recent years due to poor health choices, and she wanted to start our entire family on a journey towards health. This truth telling could not have come at a better time for me, because I was a good 70 lbs overweight at the time. And it wasn't just me...just about everyone was in some kind of bad shape.

So that night, I sat down and wrote down my resolutions...of course number one was to lose weight, but in tandem with that was to give up my terrible addiction to McDonald's, drinking soda, not getting enough sleep, and not exercising. All of these things had held me back. I mean looking over my bank statements, I realized, much to my horror, that eating at McDonald's like twice a week on average for that entire year had me handing that damned clown about $425 of my hard earned money. I could have bought plane tickets with that money, but instead I used it to get fat.

I Stuck To My New Years Resolutions

I looked at the resolutions list and I was already thinking in my head, yeah right. Every year, like half the people, I write down...will lose weight, and nothing happens, but before the year was out, I had a doctors appointment and my numbers came back alarmingly bad. I got one of those talks from my doctor where she said, you aren't quite barking at deaths door, but you are walking down the path to meet him.

On December 31, 2015, as we enjoyed our family tradition of a big Chinese food dinner before we rang in the New Year, my fortune cookie said: "you should eat more fruits and vegetables for a long happy life." Now granted, I'm sure these fortune cookies were purposefully chosen, but it seemed like fate. Like the universe, my doctor, my aunt, everyone was telling me, it's now or never.

I Stuck To My New Years Resolutions

I was all in on January 1st going cold turkey with everything and starting an exercise and healthy diet program. I told myself, just make it to the end of January 2016 and you can say, at least you did a month. With that thought in mind, that I would soon quit, I started working out 6 days a week. I started prepping all my lunches and cooking homemade freezer style meals so I wouldn't have to worry about cooking when I was busy during the week. I drank so much freaking water, it was crazy, and I started to see some results and most importantly, I started to feel differently. At first that different feeling was anger, and headaches from the lack of soda which lasted a good two and a half weeks, but soon that changed to just feeling all around good.

Amazingly for me, the exercise wasn't hard to do at all. It's like once I got over the first week of moaning and groaning, I was in it to win it. I did Zumba, walked, jogged, weight work, beginner ballet, tried/failed at Crossfit, hiked, did step, you name it. I liked seeing improvements. I was no longer totally winded doing simple things and I was just in shock when I managed to jog my first full mile one day.

I Stuck To My New Years Resolutions

I'd like to say I have made it a whole year without soda, but I did crack on exactly four occasions, and it wasn't like I didn't know what I was doing. I was just going to have those sodas and I did, but going from drinking about 250 sodas in a year to four in the entire year...yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say I did pretty freakin' well considering. I did however, stick faithfully to everything else. Unless I lose my total mind in these last two days, I have not been to a McDonalds for an entire year. I have worked my butt off in and out of the gym, and my health markers improved so much since my last visit in December. My resting pulse, the number I most came to enjoy finding out, went from 91bpm to 69bpm meaning my little heart isn't having to work so hard just to keep me alive while at rest. My blood sugar, cholesterol and BP also dropped. As far as my weight, I didn't reach my goal to do all 70lbs, but I did manage to lose 54lbs and counting, and couldn't be happier because for me, it was much more about being physically healthy than seeing myself be some type of supermodel on a runway.

I Stuck To My New Years Resolutions

I say all this to say, I'd like to encourage everyone else out there, no matter what your personal goals are, to not ever get in a place where you believe that even if you've failed 10 other times before, you can't be successful in 2017. I'm proof. I doubted my own self. I was my biggest detractor, and yet here I am having accomplished what I said to myself was impossible to do and that I would just fail at it. I could have quit and gone back to my terrible ways, but I did keep my eyes on the prize and kept wanting to do better because the alternative was I'd be that same sorry person in December 2016 that I was in December 2015 where I felt bad and knew I'd caused my own problems, but instead of fix them, I would have just complained and done nothing and gone back to being sad and pathetic the way I felt in my mind. Fight hard against your inner voice telling you, you're going to fail or anyone else doing the same. We all have it in ourselves to be our own champions and fight for the changes in our lives we want to see. Good luck with your 2017 resolutions!

I Stuck To My New Years Resolutions
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