A New Year, A New Me

It's that time of year again... new year resolutions!

Before I get started with my goals for this year, lets take a look back how how I did with last year's goal of losing 30 lbs.  Armed with health and lifestyle tips courtesy of "The Four Hour Body" and some motivation I wasn't aware existed within myself; I managed to cross that goal off by July.  The downside (if you could call it that) to meeting my goal with plenty of time, is it made me a bit complacent the rest of the year.  I lost 30 lbs the first half of the year, and only 5 lbs the latter half of the year.  Overall a success, but it could have been an even better success!

That journey to a leaner me not only adjusted my diet, but also expanded my horizons in search of exercise.  Snowboarding, lots of hiking, hot yoga, and even a little bit of running thrown in the mix.  Overall, it was a very fulfilling year!

This year, I'm looking to do a repeat of last year's goal, to lose 30 lbs by year's end.  This will put my body fat percentage right about normal... someplace I haven't been at for a LONG time!  To get there, I'll be continuing on with my new lifestyle, making a few adjustments along the way.  Last year I started out with a pretty strict Slow Carb Diet (as described in "The Four Hour Body"), slowly modifying it to be less and less strict... probably the reason for the slower weight loss in the latter half of the year.  This year, I'll be transitioning that to more of a Primal diet (as described in "The Primal Blueprint").


But, that's not all!  I've also made a resolution to cook something new and/or interesting roughly once a week.  This goal is bound to fail, as I don't want to make it a S.M.A.R.T. Goal.  Circumstances can get in the way, so rather then get down on myself for maybe missing a week, I'd rather just enjoy this culinary journey; and maybe let a few of my friends enjoy it too... some already have :)

The encouragement from friends and family last year certainly helped me to achieve my weight loss goal.  If you would like to help me achieve my goal this year; keep the kind words coming, and make your quality time with your's truly spent doing physical activities instead of happy hour and drinking (although, there's always room some happy hour and alcohol consumption here and there:).