Health & Fitness Goals for 2013

While I’m not too crazy about the term ”New Year’s resolution,” I am most definitely a lover of goal setting in general. I jot down to-do lists all the time, which in essence are a bunch of short term goals I want to accomplish (even if ”do your laundry” is a rather small one!). For 2013, there are a few goals related to healthy living that I want to work on. I thought I’d share them with you, so here goes:

For around 3 months, I’ve been going to physical therapy to rehab my torn calf. I’m happy to say that it’s been feeling really good lately! The injury had been causing problems in my achilles and foot, but lately I haven’t had pain in those areas. I think that taking it rather easy for a few weeks over the holidays did my body well and gave it some extra time to heal. My first health priority is to continue the stretches and exercises I’ve learned in physical therapy, ice it daily,  and be able to balance challenging my body in my workouts while also paying attention (and listening!) to how it feels to try new exercises and increase the intensity of my sweat sessions.

I’ve been in the same 10-pound weight range since I was probably 14 years old, but 2012 was an interesting year for me body-wise. When my Marine first deployed, it was right after the holidays and I was at my ”high” weight. I started boxing and torching some serious calories in the gym, and I was also being pretty strict with my eats. I worked really hard and lost 10 pounds. Though I loved my more toned body, I wasn’t able to sustain it for long. I gained 2 or 3 pounds while in Thailand with my hubby (You can check out my vacay eats in this post. I maintain that it was worth it!), and post-vacation found myself discouraged about the fact that the deployment was only half-way done. I was still working out a lot and eating healthily, but I was just eating larger portions. No joke, I also found that I was combatting my emotions by baking a lot… and then eating 2 muffins instead of 1 for a treat. Since I gain weight very easily (lucky me!), those pounds came back on. I’ve lost a few of them since then, but here’s my current plan:

My overall goal in life is to be my happiest, best self. I have never been a skinny mini chick, nor do I ever plan to try to be. I really like my curves and want to keep them, but I feel most confident when my body is a bit more toned. I don’t necessarily have a concrete number to lose, since I’m going off of more by how I feel and look than the scale, but my range is probably between losing 5-10 pounds. It’s definitely not a crazy number, but I know it’ll make a big difference to me. For me to lose weight, I don’t really change what I’m doing per se, but I do kick everything up a notch. My workouts get a little more intense, but the main aspect of it is what I’m putting in my mouth. My portions are smaller, my meals are planned out, and I indulge less. As is pretty clear by the title of my blog, I love food, cooking, and eating, and this will certainly not change. My idea is simply to get a more sculpted body through eating super healthy, smaller meals, yet still having ”cheat” days when I can enjoy a few hundred extra calories here and there without feeling guilty – because life is too short to not drink wine or eat dessert sometimes! I’ll be talking about my journey to  “tone it up” on here and keeping you updated with my progress. 🙂

I’ve always wished that I was a runner, but the fact of the matter is, I’m just not. Running doesn’t come naturally to me and it’s one of the few forms of exercise that I really don’t enjoy. I’ve finally accepted and gotten over this (Refer to goal #1: This nagging calf injury is a result of my trying to be a runner!) and am planning on focusing more on cycling this year. I haven’t decided the details of this – not sure if I’ll do a 25-mile event or train for a 100-mile one?! – but I do know that I enjoy biking and want to get more into it in 2013. More on that to come soon once goal #1 is accomplished!

So now I ask you, what are your health goals for 2013?