2009 Goals-Health

This picture was taken in Las Vegas, NV when the twins were 3 months old. 02/1994. It has nothing to do with the subject of my post. I just wanted to share.

I can't stand New Year's Resolutions.

Partly because I always fail. I hate failing. Not the kind of failing that makes one learn from their mistakes, but the over and over again failing that makes one feel like a complete failure.

I've bought into the whole New Year's thing for many years. When I was young my constant resolution was to "Get better grades in school." Unfortunately, I was one of the many right brained children stuck behind a desk in a left brain educational system. The odds were stacked against me. We moved to Utah and I figured I'd get a fresh start. The kids wouldn't know me...know of my past, that is. (Because when your a child you think that everyone can see the pain, see right through you.) The teachers wouldn't have it out for me and maybe I'd do better. For awhile I did, but then I lost interest again. I hated reading texts over and over again, still feeling lost. I would read the tiniest paragraph and wonder what I had just read. It was extremely frustrating. When I'm frustrated I tend to give up. It's a bad coping skill, I know. I didn't have great teachers who could spot the child with the Right Brain thinking or possibly even the ones suffering from a learning disability. I was a fluent verbal reader. I was always called on in class to read aloud, but ask me what I just read and I would stutter and shrug in embarassment. When art projects didn't turn out perfect I would trash them or just not hand them in. I felt like I had to study harder than anyone else around me (my perception) and I still got C's, D's and F's. I actually dropped out of high school my senior year because I was told I wouldn't graduate with my class. I only needed a few credits to graduate and I was devastated. Shortly after that I met my husband and the failure that was school didn't matter anymore. In August of 1997, when my third son was only 5 months old, I went back to school and finished my credits which gave me my High School Diploma. I worked extra hard to finish by November...just three months later. I wanted to make my dad proud. He had died on November 6, 1996 and I wanted to graduate by his 1 year anniversary. I did it! I actually completed something! I succeeded!! We drove down to Emery, UT (where he is buried) because I needed to show him that I did it. That he need not worry about me because I did value my education. I placed the graduation letter in a ziploc bag and attached it to a card holder that was stuck in the frozen ground next to his headstone.

Mostly, I dislike New Year's Resolutions because I think it's a big farse and it irritates me that the weight loss market seems to be the biggest receipient of our societies misguided attempts to make us all look like airbrushed photographs of too thin "models". After I started packing on the pounds when my twin boys were still infants, my new resolution was to get to my goal weight. This became my resolution year after year. Not to "Eat better" or "Walk 4 days a week", nope, nothing that simple. I wanted the end product....not the means to get there. When I was having babies and nursing them into toddlerhood, I really didn't care much. I lost most of the pregnancy weight, but not all of it. I'd keep those few extra pounds and sometime during the first year of their life I would pack on another ten pounds. I never fluctuated up and down in my weight...it would stabilize and then go up a little. It would repeat the process baby after baby. Without getting too much into my weight, I'll just say that in 2005, after my first born twin had heart surgery for an extremely late diagnosed "Double Aortic Arch", I became extremely ill. The doctors did not know what was wrong with me. One diagnoses was "Idiopathic Erythema Nodosum", another was "Rheumatic Fever" and finally....the real reason I became sick, "Sarcoidosis". I'll explain more about that another time. I was already at my highest weight at that point and the high doses of Prednisone I was taking for almost 4 months didn't help matters. Over the past three years I've joined Weight Watchers and quit. I did find some success while on WW (I lost 45 lbs), but life happens and I quit going. Needless to say, I've packed on at least half of what I lost. I'm not happy about it and honestly, I'm completely embarassed that I've let myself go..again.

So, with all that said, I have made a few life goals for 2009.

* Make better food choices and eat less of the higher fat choices.
* Begin walking at least 2 days a week. By Spring I will be walking 4 days a week. Maybe by Summer I could even be jogging.
* Don't measure my success on my actual weight, but by the small changes I make in my daily life.
* Don't make a goal weight, just get healthier!
* Eat less meat. Try new meatless recipes. Maybe even try tofu? BLECH!!!!!!

As far as having a healthier lifestyle, those are my goals. That's what I'm going to do for now and I think that's plenty. I have other goals that represent other parts of my semi-organized life. I'll be posting about them within the next couple days.