Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

As far as New Year's Eve celebrations go... this is about as wild as I get... not wild so much... just goofy!  See how good I am at following instructions?  This sticker was on a Chiquita banana I just ate.  Hee, hee!

For some reason, I am looking forward to the new year beginning.  A fresh start.  Each and every year I ponder new year's resolutions.  Lose weight, drink more water... those are my old standards.  This year, I am not setting a goal to lose weight.  Lord knows, I need to lose weight... but this year, I am considering a new approach for me. Instead, I am setting goals to do what I need to do to be more healthy.  Hopefully, in the process of taking these steps to be more healthy, I will lose weight in the long run. 

I am trying to keep it simple. 

• More water.
• More moving. 
• More clean foods. 

I don't drink enough water. Period.  It should be an easy goal to accomplish, yet I struggle.

I don't exercise enough.  I have lots of excuses.  I work long 10 hour days four days a week. After a long day, then cooking dinner and cleaning up the kitchen after work, the last thing I want to do is go to the gym.  I want to shower, put on my jammies, plop myself in my chair, and knit.  I was thinking today... if I spent 1/2 as much time exercising as I do knitting, I'd be prepared to run marathons!  Knitting is very sedentary.  I need to get moving.

Since I do enjoy cooking from scratch so much, I think I do eat a pretty healthy diet. But there are areas where I fall short (white, highly processed carbs... flour tortillas... oh, how I love them!).  I subscribe to a magazine called "Clean Eating" and, in a nutshell, clean eating focuses on eating foods in their most unrefined and unprocessed forms.  If a food item has more than five ingredients in it, like so many processed foods do, then it's best to avoid the item.  A former coworker (a nurse practitioner named Nona G.... a super wonderful lady) gave a talk at work one day about nutrition.  She described this so simply, I feel compelled to share what she said.  She explained it better than I can describe it, but what she said really stuck with me.  Nona had two examples I can recall; an apple and rice.  The more you process the food, the less of the healthful benefits you get. 

Eat an apple with the skin on... full of vitamins and fiber.
Eat applesauce... more additives, less fiber, not as nutritious.
Drink apple juice... highly concentrated, more calories, and vitamins and fiber lost.

Eat brown rice... healthy and unrefined.  The outer layer of the rice is good for you.
Eat white rice... it's processed, you've lost the healthy outer coating.
Eat rice crispy cereal... not a highly nutritious food.

So there you have it... my goals for 2012.  I have also posted my Knitting Goals for 2012 on my knitting blog.  If you are interested in checking that out, click HERE. 

What are your goals for 2012?  Do you have any you'd like to share?