My New Year Goal...To Get Healthy.

So it's March and I'm finally writing about my New Year goal. The goal to be healthy!
I have actually been working on this goal for several months now. I just haven't had time to sit down and write about it. Last year my blog title was "My Selfish Year". I can honestly say, I wasn't selfish last year.  But I did a lot of self reflection, self care, and for the first time in years began to take care of myself.  To sum it up I could say last year was a very unbalanced. I spent one month focusing just on exercise, and realized that you can do way too much! I walked a million steps in a month which averages out to about 30,000 steps a day. It taught me that finding some balance in all the things I want to do is necessary. Where I work there is a big focus on being healthy. I have decided to use their New Year Resolution tips as a guide for my healthy year. They have 8 areas of focus with the idea to not over commit, but to center your life (around an hour a week) on each of the 8 areas.

The first area of focus is food. I hope to learn a lot more about food this year. Especially healthy food. I've already started to change my diet and hope to continue doing this. I love reading food magazines, especially the "Eat This, Not That" magazine.  I have also been reading on how to get away from sugar. So I hope to share little bits of information I learn this year with you. I also hope to share my favorite recipes, and I want to make a cook book of all my favorite recipes to give to my almost grown up children.

The second focus area is Nutrition. It pretty much goes with food. Making sure the food you eat is giving your body the nutrients it needs.  I love the Dr. Oz books and magazines.  So I'll be going through them and getting ideas and changing my diet to be healthy.

Part of nutrition for me is going to be checking out diabetic diets and ways to prevent

getting type 2 diabetes.  My family history is full of  people with type 2 diabetes and 

I want to take action now to prevent this in my future. I have already lived the diabetic life style when I was pregnant with my son 20 years ago. I do not want to relive it again. So I hope to share what I learn about preventing type 2 diabetes with you.

The third area of focus is exercise. I want to work up to doing 30 minutes of exercise a day.

I have a treadmill and love working out on it. I also want to add in stregth training and plan to work out my core muscles. (If you haven't realized it yet I love magazines!) I hope to look through all my magazines, and find good work out ideas. I'll share what I find as the months go on.  

I'm proud to say that in the past few months of changing my diet and exercising more I have lost 5 pounds! I want to lose about 5 more pounds by the end of the year.  

Focus area four is learn something new. I am going to spend time each week reading up on different topics of interest. I'm also looking forward to spending many hours this spring and summer visiting gardens near my home. 

The fifth area of focus is about personal relationships. Commit to a weekly date with your significant other or a friend. This is going to be another pivotal year for my husband and I. We are going to enter the empty nest stage of life. Our son is on a mission in Mexico and our daughter graduates this spring and will leave for college in the fall. I want to explore things to do as an empty nester. I will report back on the adventures we plan to take. Relationships need constant work and I'm ready to begin this new phase.

Mental Health is the sixth area of focus. I'm going to be reading up on mindfulness, trying yoga, and seeing if I can figure out how to meditate.  I'm also going to be taking some time off from violence.  I've decided to see how many things I have to cut from my life to make it violence free. I've noticed there is violence in lots of the things we watch, listen to, and read about in our lives.  I've been thinking about it a lot and thought it would be interesting to see how many of the things I enjoy would need to be cut to have a less violent year.

Personal Growth is focus area seven. I am going to be working on my books, and I have a book in the works right now about bugs. I love to put my photos into books and then give them to friends and family. I hope to continue improving in my photography and learning more about the plants and animals that I take pictures of. 

Service is the last area of focus. I am not someone who has the ability to do large acts of service, but I have been giving and volunteering as much as I can. One thing that I'm trying to do is create some simple reading books for my uncle who is learning to read. I hope when they're finished he will enjoy reading them. I also am trying to put together some nice cards and postcards with my photos that I can send to friends and family to brighten up their day. It's always nice to get something in the mail that isn't a bill.

So here is to a year of Health. What are your New Year goals?

G.G.