Happy New Year! I don’t know about you, but I’m super-excited for 2012. 2011 was the year of crystal-clear vision, focus and purpose for me both personally and professionally.

I don’t make a list of resolutions, but I set goals and benchmarks instead. One of those is for my health & fitness.

It’s an area of my life that is very important to me. While I love to run, I’m not a competitive athlete. For me, it’s about lifestyle. I love to hike, bike, snow ski, and most anything outdoors.

I know what my drivers license says…(51, but who’s counting?), yet in my head, I’m still in my early to mid-30′s.

To me, being ‘old’ is a state of mind. I don’t know about you, but don’t you want to still be doing the activities you love today in 20 or 30+ years? I know I do! I plan on being the 80 year old still on the ski slopes at Breckenridge!

Real Life Isn’t PhotoShopped

I was thinking about this today as I started my workout for the new year. I don’t subscribe to so-called fitness magazines because real life isn’t photoshopped. Most of the women in today’s fitness magazines are photoshopped models with a few fitness articles sprinkled in-between the pages of the ads, and even the article content leaves much to be desired.

Where are the magazines with the real women who aren’t photoshopped or airbrushed tan?

Where are the women like me, in our late 40′s to early 50′s, who are heading toward a new season in our lives, who want to remain healthy and fit to live a life of adventure and refuse to grow ‘old’ gracefully?

I know those women exist somewhere. If this is you, please let me know!

Finding Clean Eating

One of my goals for 2012 is to be more consistent with my workouts and my clean eating. Last March, I stumbled upon clean eating as I was preparing to fit into the dress I wore to my son’s wedding in June.

(Honestly, finding a classy-looking dress that didn’t look like it was made for my grandmother was quite a challenge, but that’s another blog post!)

What is Clean Eating and Why?

Clean eating is a way of eating that nature intended. You eat the foods that help your body perform at its best. Basically, if it’s in a box, it’s not clean eating. Clean eating is not to be confused with a raw foods diet, though, and clean eating is NOT a diet… it’s a lifestyle.

When you eat clean, you eat more often and you combine foods so that your blood-sugar levels stay stable and you’re not hungry, and it works. (I looked pretty damn good in that dress for my son’s wedding, if I say so myself!)

Why Clean Eating?

I LOVE clean eating mostly because it’s normal food I can buy in the regular supermarket. I don’t have to buy anything I can’t pronounce and it’s food that fits right into our grocery budget.

Many of the recipes can be prepared for the whole family, so I don’t have to worry about cooking separate meals for Emily.

I don’t have to count anything! My life is hectic enough without having to count calories, fat, carbs, etc., etc., etc. Who has time for that? Not me! Clean eating uses portion sizes instead.

My Clean Eating Journal

So, I decided that for 2012, I’m going to keep a journal of my clean eating and workouts right here on this blog. If figure it will hold me accountable to my health goals of 2012 AND maybe by blogging my journey, it will help you, too.

I was doing really great from March until about August. Then, life happened.. we moved in September, business got crazy busy, the holidays just showed up and slowly but surely, I got away from consistent clean eating and my running.

So, here I am. I haven’t decided if I’ll journal every day or just once a week. I don’t have a scale, so I won’t be weighing in. I’m on a journey of a healthy lifestyle (and dropping a size or two) so that I can continue to live my life with passion and purpose and enjoy all of God’s blessings from above.

I’ll be sharing the stumbling blocks as well as my successes, resources, recipes and ideas.

Till next time, I’ll see you then!

Best,

No related posts.