So, apparently I decided to take a blogging break. Quite a long one, in fact. This place needs a major overhaul, but I just don’t have it in me at the moment. Still, as it’s the last day of the year, I thought I’d take a look back over the last twelve months, and a look ahead to 2012…
Somehow I went and lost about 35 pounds this year. Part of that is due, of course, to us finally committing to a plant-based, whole foods diet. Most of it, I suppose. And yet the change is much more profound than that. I didn’t just change my diet. I changed my SELF. I changed the way I see myself, the way I see those around me, the way I see the world.
For the first time I can remember, I’m not hoping/planning/dreaming about losing weight in the new year. I’m in the healthy range for my height. I suspect I’ll lose a bit more and my weight will eventually settle toward the lower end of the spectrum, but I’m in no rush to make the number on the scale bend to my will. It will settle where it will, with no struggle on my part.
It is all different now. It’s not a constant struggle, a constant need to reign myself in, follow a plan, redirect my feelings… it’s all different now. It’s as simple as breathing, as living.
I have no resolutions for 2012. I do have a bit of a bucket list, however. Some of it is fitness-related, but most of it is just about traveling well through this one life I have, accomplishing things I’ve wanted to do for years, and being unapologetically myself (to borrow a phrase from the inimitable MizFit). In no specific order:
- finish the Zero to 1650 swimming program. (I only have about a week and a half to go, but I’ve been out of the pool nearly two weeks now due to a nasty head cold. I will own this!)
- start weight training again.
- keep a flower garden alive.
- volunteer at the boys’ school.
- go back to Paris.
- travel to Keukenhof to see the tulips.
- read 50 books this year, half of them in French.
- do something active, outdoors, every weekend (weather permitting) with the boys.
- teach the boys to swim.
- submit the paperwork to become Belgian citizens.
- go to the symphony, the opera, the theatre.
- complain less, accept more.
