New Year, New You?

So I’ve been trying to follow along with my friend SP’s blog Be Well in 12. Basically she’s doing a fitness (or wellness) goal each month for the whole year. For January she challenged everyone to work out 30 minutes a day for 30 days. Yikes! I read that – laughed and then happily ate a left-over Christmas cookie. 30 minutes a day – who was she kidding – I don’t have 30 minutes each day. I have things to do….

Then I thought about it and was like really what do I have to do that I can’t sacrifice almost an hour (total time to get ready, get to the gym and work-out) a day to working out. I do work out on a fairly regular basis. Regular being as I see fit throughout the year but anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour each time. At my best I go five times a week. At my worse I’m struggling to go five times a month. So for January I’ve made it to the gym almost every day (missed three so far including today) but I do plan to lift some weights today (and I did a work-out DVD last night) and on the first I ran in the yard with C. So basically I worked out everyday.

I think its an awesome challenge though. How many times have we done exactly what I did – laughed at the people proclaiming we need to get regular exercise. Yeah…yeah… I’ll get to it, we think. But the thing is what we do to our body affects us down the road and I don’t want to be 65 and over-weight with a list of health problems.

I consider myself someone that is relatively healthy. I don’t drink a lot, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs. I exercise. I try to eat right. I don’t drink soda. I don’t eat a lot of junk (i.e. chips, ice cream, sweets, empty calories). But I don’t diet and I’m not a fanatic about my exercising. I blame this solely on the fact I’m naturally on the thin side. Sure I want to look like Britney Spears circa 2000 with chiseled abs and defined legs and arms but I’m realistic enough to know she has a trainer and a chef that whips her into performance ready shape. Besides if I was going for a stretch but still being realistic I’d rather be like Jennifer Aniston – healthy, toned but not scary fitness buff. Besides which I read once she was 5’4 and 115 pounds so I think that’s doable for me with a little persistence.

The thing is though I truly believe everybody’s body has a happy weight. Crystal Renn talked about it in Hungry. Basically with a little effort this is the weight your body comfortably settles at. This is true for me. I may fluctuate five pounds but ever since puberty I’ve weighed pretty much the same thing. This is regardless of exercise (I don’t say diet since I don’t diet per say – eating healthy but eating what you want is not dieting to me). I'm not using myself as a basis - if I look at family and friend I know some people that fluctuate more but most are pretty much around the same weight constantly. This is both depressing and uplifting for me - uplifting in I don't have to do much work and I'll pretty much weigh what I do now - depressing in that I need to get my ass on the treadmill if I ever want to be 115 (treadmill + starvation = 115 in my mind at this point).

Anyway… back to exercising. So I’m trying to follow SP’s blog. I’m going to try working out more and maybe just maybe I’ll wake up one day looking like Jennifer or Britney but I doubt it.

On the health note though, I was reading a back issue of Prevention (January 2009) and they had a good hint for calorie intake... Because if you’re like me I can never figure out exactly how many I should have - it's always more of a fluid number cheese fries today salad tomorrow. Anyway, they said take your goal weight and multiple it by 10. That number is how many calories you should consume to get to that weight (or maintain your current weight). So for example if you were Jennifer you would take 115 x 10 and you would need 1150 calories a day. I asked my husband who was a fitness major in college and he agreed it sounded about right. This however crushes my dream of having a "realistic" Jennifer body as 1150 calories probably does not include wine and the occasional splurge.

P.S. I did buy a bunch of work out DVDs that I will be reviewing shortly because I can never find good ones that I'm not bored out of my mind in five minutes and thinking if it counts as exercise if I put on work-out clothes and walked downstairs.