I've never been good at "New Years Resolutions." Growing up in the Midwest it was too cold to really get any sort of traction on any exercise, and it's too easy to get out of rhythm or try to find some excuse why January 2nd is just as good of a start date as January 1. Well this year I threw all that to the roadside. Either that or for 352 (or so) days of 2010 I found an excuse to push it one more day. I haven't been happy with my weight for a long time. I was happiest with it in the fall of 2009, but then I realized that wasn't all my doing (is that a benefit of cancer?). I was down to 167 and wanting to get to 155-160. Then the anti-nausea drugs increased my appetite to my highest ever in the 190s during treatment. Ever since, I've been hanging anywhere from 175-185. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I'd say we were probably closer to the 185 range. No fun. And the vast majority of it has been hanging on to the love handles (gotta love those Christopherson genes).
"Ok, once we are through these Christmas sweets I'm going to be done with it." I followed that until all of a sudden we got some other gift of chocolate - or maybe it was when I made some candied pears for dessert and we realized it would go great with ice cream. Anyway, I made a decision - why wait until January 1, 2011? Why wait until after Christmas? The reason for Christmas is to celebrate God made flesh, not chocolate made added flesh. Holidays and holiday parties are one of the most pathetic excuses to overindulge. Paired with my desire to eliminate more and more meat from my diet toward becoming a pescatarian or at least dedicating 90% of my diet to being plant based with primarily fish as the meat, I decided that there is no reason to overeat during at the beginning of the Christmas season just because it is in front of me. In fact, pushing myself more toward a plant-based diet helped discourage me from over half of the buffet at the family Christmas party, Sarah's work party, and other events.
I know that I can't do it alone. In fact, Sarah openly admits that she probably doesn't help the cause at all since she has such a sweet tooth (but I remind her that I need something sweet after dinner as well). So I told her that I'm not happy with the way I look and to please help be a pain in my ass so that I do something about it. With the exception of Christmas (and I think there has been one other day) I've been either running or biking every day. One day I didn't do either, but I took Nikki for a longer than normal and faster than normal walk to at least ensure I got at least 60 minutes of decent cardio. Yesterday she reminded me to get out on my rollers before I started doing other projects and so I did for a good hour and rode 20 miles from the donation that I received from her dad for Christmas.
The most frustrating part is not seeing results right away. But they will come. Another great part of it is that yesterday afternoon, and again this morning, when I took Nikki for a walk I felt quicker. So even if the mirror doesn't show things right away, just getting the muscles moving and putting the right energy source into your body can really help. The sedentary life that we are almost encouraged to live through office working just doesn't cut it. Operation trim down will be a great pairing with my riding plans leading up to Austin 2011.
LIVESTRONG
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