I guess if my new year’s resolution had been to blog more often, or at least regularly, I’d be failing miserably. Thankfully I didn’t set myself up for such failure!

I blame the post-holiday lull. It’s not that I have nothing to say, just no motivation to get online and say it. But here we are enjoying our second cottage weekend in a row and I finally have gone through out Boston trip photos, so I figure I ought to post those (coming soon). And as for new year’s resolutions, I have a few. The one that is proving to be most successful is my resolution to lead a more active, healthy lifestyle — namely, to make regular exercise a proper routine in my daily life.

Now to be completely honest, I’ve made this a resolution every year for years, just like millions of others, and every other year I’ve totally failed, despite many attempts. I joined a gym about three years ago and went off and on for a few months here, a few months there, but never really constantly. Life got busy and I just couldn’t get there. The membership was cheap so I didn’t feel much of an impact on my wallet by not going.

This summer I got on a scale for the first time in ages (I was purposely avoiding the brutally honest truth about my weight) and was shocked and dismayed by what I saw. I got to brooding again about how to get myself into some kind of exercise routine. While I’m sure I could start some strict calorie-counting, ultimately I feel I eat a relatively healthy diet, and that my slowly creeping weight gain had much more to do with my extremely sedentary lifestyle wherein I sat at a computer all day, and then mostly parked myself on the sofa at nights. That had to change.

My most successful stretch at the gym had been a period of about 4 months wherein I was working up towards running on the treadmill, and I went about 3 times a week. For me, if the exercise is mindless and I can be distracted by watching TV, it is perfect. Some people hate the monotony of the treadmill — find it too boring — but if I can do something like watch TV while I’m on it, I can walk for an hour and not notice. I’d debated with Chris for years about buying a treadmill but we knew the basement ceiling was too low to accommodate one, and I couldn’t imagine where else to put it. But then I got to thinking about rearranging our office, and Chris agreed that we could probably squeeze one in there if we moved some things around. So last October we bought a beast of a treadmill, and I’ve been working out on it several times a week since then, mostly walking, and aiming to make it a daily affair whenever possible. My workouts are about 30-45 minutes long — the average amount of time it takes to watch a TV show.

In the last month or so I’ve started working in short bursts of jogging, so now I’m up to about 4-5 stints of jogging for about 2-3 minutes each with walking in between, and it feels great. My plan for the new year was to investigate the yoga studio next to my office, and consider going there weekly as well, and if that worked out, I’d cancel the gym membership, since their yoga class was the only hold-out for me in keeping the membership, and their classes were not convenient, and required traveling by car. I’ve now been to two yoga classes — classes that have totally kicked my ass — and I’m enjoying it thoroughly! The class is at 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, and I can’t really excuse that as inconvenient since I hardly even need a jacket to walk there. Yesterday, I canceled the gym membership once and for all.

And you know what? I’ve lost about 10 to 12 lbs according to the scale, depending on what time of day I weigh myself, and I’m down a pant size from 16 to 14. My bra has come in a hook-width. In fact, I’m even very close to being down a fraction of cup size. I think I feel the weight loss more than I see it on the scale, but it is freakin’ awesome. Photos of myself from the holidays don’t make me cringe. So now I have even more motivation to keep going. Chris and I have even started going bowling once a week, which is a total blast (this week I bowled a turkey for goodness sake! That means three strikes in a row for those not in the know). I sleep better, my digestion is better, and my general mood is greatly improved. I’m well on my way to being a smaller, stronger, fitter version of myself. And this makes me incredibly happy.

So happy new year y’all — here’s to a healthy one where all your resolutions come true!