2012

Another new year ahead of us, with seen and unseen challenges, joys, triumphs, sorrows and on and on. You probably already know about my view on New Year's Resolutions, so I won't go into that. But, this is what I am going to do as a "not-a-new-year's-resolution." In December I went on a high protein diet. I HATED every minute of it, and it reflected in my angry disposition. Protein shakes, eggs galore, and meat, meat, meat. I'm not, nor do I espouse veganism, but I'd be much more likely to go vegan than eat that much meat and eggs again. I did learn some things from it, and I actually lost half a pant size in 2 weeks, but as soon as I stopped the diet, I gained it all back in 5 days. I've also been working with a personal trainer for 4 months or so. My main goal was to have less joint pain with a secondary goal of weight loss. Hooray for accomplishing my primary goal! The diet was supposed to help with the secondary. I decided I would have to do some kind of diet after the holidays, but hadn't figured it out yet. (I did consider going back to the high-protein diet, but I don't think my family or my system could take it.) I have finally come up with a diet that I am actually excited about! (so far) That is HUGE! Anyway, it's a "no white" diet: no white flour, no white sugar, no white rice, and less salt (no salt isn't practical and can have bad consequences). I can totally do this! I already try to avoid white flour, and I'm a "no salt added" kind of girl already. The biggest one is going to be the white sugar. I looove sweet stuff! And I don't like brown rice, so that's not gonna be awesome, but not terrible either. Hopefully this will help me be healthier AND lose weight. It should cut way down on sweets and hopefully make room for more veggies. (I might even break out my juicer this summer... it just feels like a summer thing to me) It doesn't feel too restrictive because I CAN have sweets, I just have to be more creative about it. I started yesterday and I'm still excited. (We had curry and rice - I haven't bought brown rice yet, so I had mine over a sweet potato - very good!) Now I just need to find out where I can buy whole-wheat pastry flour!

Oh yeah - I guess I should set a goal date or something? I usually just go til I'm done, but maybe a specific goal would be good to try out (open to change, of course.) So let's say I'll do it for 30 days-ish. Til we go to Houston at the end of Jan/beginning of Feb. Then I'll re-evaluate. Wish me luck! and if you have any great recipes or websites or other helpful hints, feel free to share them!