Happy New Year – Stepping into 2024

Happy New Year!

I think I have been making New Year’s Resolutions for over 30 years. On New Year’s Day, I would write down everything I hoped to do, from finding a guy, to cruising through Europe, to buying a house, to publishing my stories, to losing 100 lbs.  At the end of the year, I would look back at the list and see if I had managed to do anything on my list. If I was lucky, I got one thing. In fact, 30 years later, I have finally done everything on the list… except lose 100 lbs.

About 10 years ago, I started making lists very differently. I started making lists exclusively of things I wanted to change about myself, new habits I wanted to develop. And I would pin it on the wall somewhere that I thought I’d be forced to look at, hoping that this would provide some motivation. Every year, the list was very similar, and nothing on the list would have happened. Especially losing weight.

Well, I am very proud to say that I *refuse* to make losing weight a New Year’s Resolution. In fact, I was reading an article recently about a woman who said that she had told her therapist that she was going on a diet and her therapist said: “Oh great! How much weight do you plan to gain this time?”  Because if you diet and stop, you tend to put back all the weight PLUS FIVE POUNDS.

So, I’m not going to try to lose weight in 2024.

On the other hand, I am going to try to walk more.  And that, along with getting out of debt, is my only goal for 2024. Right now, I am very proud of myself if I manage 1000 steps a day. I live in an extremely small house. I work from home. My computer/office is a small table next to my bed. I can roll over in my bed and be at my desk in 7 seconds. I’ve timed it. No steps involved.

I googled “healthy steps”. 10,000 steps per day is healthy. Uh oh. I am amazed when I do 5,000 steps by walking through two airports. In fact, I am convinced that my Fitbit is wrong, and I’m getting in more than 5,000 steps when I walk through two airports, but in general, I don’t see 10,000 steps per day in my life. But! I can walk my dog.

I saw a joke about walking a dog. Walking a dog can make a quarter mile walk take 30 minutes instead of the 6 minutes it takes on a treadmill. He pulls. He stops. He sniffs. He leaves a mark. He sees a cat. He sees a squirrel. Sit – there’s another dog coming. Yup, 30 minutes. I get more exercise going without him… maybe I should take two walks. One for him, and one for me. But my baby is overweight, too. Gotta walk the dog.

I checked my trusty AI on the contrast between body positivity and medical obesity. According to the AI, you can be positive about your curves and maintain a healthy lifestyle at the same time. For example, I have, to be truthful, an extremely large derriere. Got it from my mother. I also have “thunder thighs”, which I have had since high school. Mom always said that pants should drape over the derriere, but I have generally found that if I don’t wear jeans, pants ride up my crotch, so I wear jeans and they cling quite tightly. I have gotten used to it, and I’m quite comfortable with it.

My gut, on the other hand, I am not so fond of, so I wear loose tunic-length tops with patterns. Frankly, I think I look pretty good! But body positivity should not be an excuse for unhealthy choices. And I have oh so many reasons to lose this weight. Arthritic knees, high blood pressure, diabetes… isn’t that enough. However, someone pointed out to me that Lizzo is a big woman who is also quite athletic and healthy, able to dance and sing on stage for 90 minutes during a performance. And she’s vegan. She recently lost 50 lbs., so she’s now a little bit smaller than I am, but still medically obese. I read what she did to lose that weight. Aerobics 3 times a week, weight training 4 times a week, yoga to relieve stress, lots of salads and smoothies, keto gummies. Doing all that, she lost 50 lbs. in 3 months. Doctors say that’s too fast, and it should take 6 months to a year to lose 50 lbs. Sorry, Lizzo. I’m just not that determined to lose 50 lbs.

Well, if I’m not going to lose 50 lbs., what am I going to do to get healthy in 2024. Walk the dog. And maybe some chair aerobics. Maybe some dancing. But mainly walking. 1000 steps per day. And when I manage to do 1000 steps every day for a week, I will treat myself to some new clothes. Not tied to weight loss, just to steps. I like that.

I’m so glad we had this conversation. Happy New Year!