My New Years Resolution

I posted this in January of this year in another blog. I am deleting this other blog.

My New Years resolution this year is to climb Mount Katahdin this summer. I know this is crazy. Hell, I'll be happy if I make it half way up but I think that I need to try this. Here are my reasons why.

1) I have always wanted to climb Katahdin. When I was a kid I was in girl scouts and every year my troop would camp at Natarswi just below Katahdin. The whole time we were there I would stare up at the mountain and wonder what the world looked like from the top. I used to be quite a hiker. In middle school I climbed lots of mountains. Great Pond Mountain, Blue Hill Mountain, Bald Mountain, and some mountain near Camden and Rockland that I don't remember the name of. Used to be that I could complete a 5 mile hike in 2 hours.

2) I need a goal. My life has been one goal accomplished after another and now I need a new goal to throw myself into. I went to high school and worked part time. I worked my way through college and graduated cum laude. And now I am working as a teacher at a great school. Those have been my goals for so long now that I no longer know what to do with myself. Now I am setting myself a new goal to work towards.

3) I weigh 180 pounds and am 5 foot 4. This means my bmi is 35.14 roughly. This means I am overweight. I have before tried to get more healthy by setting a goal weight and working out. This has never worked for me. I'm not good about working out as regularly as I should and I am terrible at keeping track of the foods I put into my body. So instead of setting a weight loss goal that really means nothing to me I am setting a goal that is a little more tangible than a number on a scale. This way it is more concentrated on what it really should be about (being healthy and active) and less about weight loss.

 4) I am tired of being out of shape. I walk up the stairs at school and am out of breath. I have spent so much time in a room studying, balancing the checkbook, or doing chores that I have left absolutely no time to take care of myself. That was understandable in the last 5 years because I was working towards a very large goal but now I have accomplished that goal. It is time to take care of me. It is time to take care of the mess that work has created.

5) I care about my health. In the spring of my junior year of college I had H-Pylori. A disgusting and painful stomach thing(bug? virus? illness?). It caused my stomach to hurt all the time. I thought I was tired so I tried to get more sleep. I thought I was hungry so I ate more (about every hour on the hour). I thought that I was stressed from school. Finally, after a month of trying to deal with the pain by eating and trying to relax more I went to see a doctor. They took some blood and found out what it was. They then put me on some very strong antibiotics that made me feel worse for just about the entire 10 days I was on them. There was a lot of damage done though. I gained a lot of weight from overeating and the H-Pylori left my stomach very sensitive. That summer I developed a cyst on one of my ovaries. This presented with pain during sex. I went back to the doctors. They could not figure out what was wrong with me. I was in more and more pain every day. The cyst hurt. My stomach started hurting again from the worry and stress. I saw more and more doctors, specialists. Eventually we figured out I had a cyst and it burst and went away. Then we figured out I had acid reflux and got me the medication I needed to help me deal with it. However, the damage to my body had already been done. When I eat the wrong thing, my stomach hurts. When I get the flu the puking makes the acid reflux unbearable. When I am stressed or upset it feels like my stomach is eating itself from the inside out. I don't want to be sick. I don't want to spend my life in pain or in the doctor's office. I want to be in control of my body not the other way around.

6) My dad has celiacs. Celiacs is a genetic auto-immune disease. Essentially your body has a severe allergic reaction to wheat gluten. I do not have this but in time I could still develop it. I want to use my goal of climbing Katahdin to practice paying attention to what I eat. Right now I suck at this. My diet has for way too long been controlled by my schedule. For too long it has been eat a donut on the way to work at 8. Then the drive-through at McDonalds at 1 after my first job and before my second job starts at 2. Then dinner of whatever is easy at home at 10 pm because I am too tired to move. I have a regular job now. I work 7-3. I get a regular lunch break. I get home by 5. I have time to make a decent meal and to work out. I need to be doing so.

7) In high school I threw my knee cap out of place. I spent a month in a whole leg brace unable to bend my knee. Then I spent another month in painful physical therapy learning how to use the knee again. Unfortunately this type of injury can be recurring and I then threw the knee cap out of place two more times before I graduated. These both went untreated. When I got to college I realized that it hurt to run, to walk up or down hills or stairs, to stand for long periods of times, and when it was cold outside. I went back to physical therapy because my doctor believed I have patellofemoral syndrome. This happens when your knee cap grinds into your other bones and your cartilage when you bend it. It is very painful. The only way to keep it from happening is to make your leg muscles that run over the knee cap strong enough to hold the knee cap in place. When I left physical therapy I was supposed to continue the exercises. I did not. My knee cap has not returned to how it was before but if I keep slacking it could. Part of my goal is to take better care of my legs so that I am not crippled when I am older.

 So I am going to try to keep track of my weight, how many calories I eat, and how much I exercise every day. The idea is that if this is public knowledge then I will have some support to keep me going. Plus it will keep me honest. I know there are a few of you out there who will check this daily or weekly and nag me if I slack. I need that. You have always held me accountable while reminding me that it is ok to take a break. I hope that you will continue to do so. If you want to help me or become healthier yourself then feel free to comment or become a follower. Wish me luck!!