New Year: New ME
PIN IT!
It’s a big year for me friends, and I don’t have ANY time to feel sorry for myself or loaf around. I have places to go, people to see and big things to accomplish! Honestly, though, I always start off each year with this same level of enthusiasm, then without fail, it starts to fizzle out by around the third week of January. Come March and I’ve completely gone off track and forgotten what my resolutions were. So instead of vowing the same resolutions over and taking the same approach to a new year, I’ve decided to do something a little different. Instead of a resolution, I’m going to set up three solid goals that are realistic and attainable. This is one year I can’t afford to get lazy or apathetic!
- Focus more on health and not weight. This goal is more broad, but it’s something I face everyday and really need to grasp. As much as I know about health and nutrition, I sometimes forget that being skinny doesn’t necessarily equate to being healthy. Not even broaching the topic of eating disorders here, but I sometimes forget that very important fact. Below are two photos of me at my thinnest, one when I was a freshman in college and the second my senior year. I weighed about the same in both. But what’s SERIOUSLY different is how I viewed myself at each integral time of my life. Sure, in the photo on the left [freshman year] I looked great, but was I healthy? Of course not! I was barely eating and binge drinking every weekend. I didn’t eat enough because I desperately associated being thin with being happy. And guess what? Even at my absolutely lowest, I never felt good enough or good about me. Whereas in the second photo, I weighed the same but I felt GREAT. I was working out regularly, eating healthy meals and had a very positive body image. I honestly felt as good as I looked. Even though I want to lose weight and be thin now, that’s no longer the most important thing to me. I need to take charge of my health and eat better, work out harder, drink less and sleep more. I just want to be healthy and feel good, which I now realize is no longer associated with three numbers on the bathroom scale.
How you look shouldn’t matter as much as how you feel! [I do miss that tan though!]
- Run a race! As I’ve mentioned before, one of my goals in life is to conquer a marathon. Yes, I said conquer. I’m not a runner. I’ve never been a runner. I used to swim and play soccer, and I can kick box my way through a crowded metro [It crosses my mind EVERY day…] but I can’t hit my foot to the pavement without anxiety and an asthma attack. [Weird thing is I don’t even have asthma]. There’s something so daunting about running outside. But, one of my goals this year is to run a race. I know I’m nowhere near marathon ready, so I’m thinking more along the lines of an 8k. I’ve run a 5k and it was tough, so why not add a few extra KM’s to that this year?
Elliot ran in the St. Patrick’s Day 8k last year and ROCKED it! I hope to join him this year!
- Get A’s in my master’s prerequisite classes. This is a VERY specific goal and a very important one too. I’ve always been a writer. In school, English was my strongest subject. I never outright failed any math or science, but I didn’t score the straight A’s like I did in my writing and literary courses. So deciding to choose a career that is situated almost all in hard sciences is not only a giant leap of faith, but terrifying. But I know what I want to do and what I’m passionate about and I’m tired of letting the ‘unknown’ keep me from accomplishing my dreams. I plan to enroll to a masters program in Fall 2012, which gives me a year and a half to complete all of my prerequisite courses. I don’t want to just complete them this time, I want to ace them. All of them. It’s going to be incredibly hard [organic biochemistry? Um, is that a different language?] but I’m ready to do it. Wish me luck, I will need it!
The one thing standing in my way to becoming a registered dietitian is SCIENCE.
What are your goals this year?
Claire
Tags:2011, accomplish, advocacy project, goals, happiness, setting goals, specific goals
