Every year, around this time of year, my traffic shoots up a bit, mostly owing to people starting or restarting fitness, health and diet blogs. Inevitably, one or more of these blogs has an author who somewhere in an entry chastises him or herself for even daring to make a New Year's resolution.

"It never sticks."

"It's probably stupid for me to even think that something will change this time."

You'll excuse me for saying this, but I say BULLSHIT. There is nothing, absolutely, positively whatsoever wrong with deciding that you're going to take another stab at good health. I get so angry at those who dismiss the efforts of those who look at the new year as a medium by which they can see a clearer path to feeling better about themselves.

I think where we tend to mess is up is that we solely focus our efforts on weight-loss. It's a fine goal, but it's not enough of a motivator to keep anyone on the path to good health. If it was, we wouldn't be subjected to yet another holiday season with yet another slogan out of our friends from Weight Watchers.

(Confidential to WW: You are a diet. DIET. Stop trying to pretend that you aren't. There are a lot of pluses to your program but sooner or later, you've got scads of men and women obsessing over POINTS on a daily basis, tearing their hair out trying to make themselves operate on such small amounts of food and, I have news for you, obsessively counting POINTS is no less dieting than counting calories. Suck on it.)

One of the ways in which I've tried to shift my focus is to remember that ultimately what brings me the most joy out of my efforts is feeling better. That feeling gets disseminated in a variety of ways, some of which are certainly vain, but for the most part, it's just walking around in my own body and not feeling achy and sore and bloated and sad and panicked. Eating right, taking my vitamins, getting sleep, exercise ... all of those things accomplish that and make me feel ... well, better. Sure, weight loss has been a by-product of those efforts, but not focusing on the scale has kept me from stalling out and quitting completely.

I'm not perfect, by any means, but I'm much better at this than I was before. And, for the first time in two years, I'm not looking into this new year concentrating on losing weight. I finally reached a place with my weight where I'm comfortable and happy, which allows me to focus on what this year's resolution is for me.

One of the things I learned pretty quickly after being diagnosed with hypothyroidism is that it can much of it can be controlled by my lifestyle choices, namely what I eat and how much I move. In the past month, with all of the holiday craziness, taking care of myself has not been as much of a priority as it should have been, leaving my diet open to a lot more things that have a negative effect on my health. I've been bloated more than I care to recall, so exhausted that I can barely get out of bed and right now I'm saddled up with a horrible migraine, though that's probably due to me getting over a gnarly cold.

So my resolution is to take my health a whole lot more seriously, most specifically my hypothyroid condition. It's not going away, so the best thing I can do is to start treating it like the chronic condition it is, rather than some periodic nuisance that pops up every now and again. If I want to feel healthy, I have to start living healthier as a rule.

This means no refined sugars, processed foods, breads, rice, etc. And I need to go back to no Diet Coke and limiting my caffeine intake to two cups a day. This means no fatty meats and cheeses, and certainly no potatoes. I would love it if there was room for this stuff in my life but there isn't if I want to feel better. I have to start finding alternatives, and it's just going to take some work.

Good luck with your resolutions - here's to hoping that this is the year it'll stick.

Posted by Erin at 06:10 PM | filed under: Random