It's New Years Eve and I'm sitting at work for my final four hours of work for the year 2012. New Years is the perfect time to sit and look back at your life. It's the time to ponder where you are, where you've been and where you want to go. It's an opportunity that we actually have each and every day, but the new glow of a fresh year sparks the fire within most of us. I think New Years Resolutions are great. I set one back in the beginning of January 2006. It was January 5th and I vowed that I would change. That blog post changed my life. I DID change. And I loved the change however I slipped. In the more recent years I've had detailed and grandiose plans for change. I was a flamboyant failure the years I made grandiose goals.
So I started thinking about this years goals. And I came to the conclusion that yes, sometimes New Years resolutions are reached, but many times these goals turn into failures in our lives. I don't want failures. I do not want to set myself up to fail...and I will not. So i am not setting any New Years resolutions. Nope. Not gonna do it! Could I let it pass without something in the works? No, definitely not!
So my plan. I joined a virtual trip across the States. I'm starting in Yorktown, VA. Every time I do activity I will enter it into the site and it will tell me how far I've walked total. It will even apparently show me a picture of where I am in the trip. How cool is that? I do not have any goals to make it to a certain point by a certain day. It is simply going to be a cool way to track my progress. I am going to cheat a bit. I plan on counting exercise as 1 mile walked for every 20 minutes of exercise. So an hour of zumba will be 3 miles. :-) I found a free app for a pedometer on my cell phone. I have numerous pedometers at my house, but they are usually sitting in a basket on my bathroom counter, not doing me any good when I actually take a walk. Ooops. I ALWAYS have my cell phone with me. Just search in the app store for BIDMC Pedometer. I have done preliminary tests and it seems to work pretty well. There are also apps such as mapmyride/walk and cyclemeter out there that work perfectly using your gps. (I am excited about the pedometer though because some places I walk doesn't get good cell reception so GPS doesn't work!)
So I've asked two friends via email to join me on this walk because yes; you can have virtual walking partners! If you would like to be a virtual walking buddy visit the website exercise.lbl.gov, sign up and then find me. You can find me one of two ways. My id number is 72446 but you can find me under my name, which is MaryFran and my last name is simply an S (in case you need it, birthday is 12-10-1972) walk with me. No goals in mind (it will ask for goals but I'm not worried about them) just friends helping each other exercise...virtually.
If I'm exercising, I know that I tend to eat more healthy foods and in better quantities. If I am exercising AND eating better the weight will fall off on it's own. There is absolutely no need to set goals. The weight will come off in it's own time. I'm good with that!!!
Happy New Year!!!