HAPPY NEW YEARS

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years. I know I did. But, now it's time to look forward to 2009 with much excitement and joy.

While I have many goals for this new year my main one is to lose weight and exercise more. You know, get healthy!

There are so many diets out there and to be honest I think they all work. At least while you are on them. But, I don't want a diet. I don't want something I'm not going to "go off" of. I want to retrain myself to eat correctly and move more.

The only way one can lose weight or even maintain is to burn off more calories then you eat. So, I'm going to just keep track of calories. No diet plan to follow. Just watch everything that I put into my mouth and write it down to track it. That way, nothing is off limits. As long as you track it and count the calories.

Of course doing this means one could eat nothing but candy bars all day. I guess you could still lose weight doing that but you sure wouldn't be healthy.

So with the counting calories I'm going to be making sure I get the right amounts of protein and fruits and veggies. I'll post my plan for you tomorrow.

I also found out my health insurance will pay for me to join a gym. YEAH! I never knew they did that. I'm going to take advantage of that and go to Bally's. It's right down the street from me so I have no excuses to go.

My brother had a major stroke last May and he is still fighting every day to recover from it. He goes to physical therapy three times a week now and hates every minute of it. It's hard. It's painful and he gets tired. But he goes! He has never missed a meeting.

When I don't want to go to the gym I'm going to go in his honor. I'm going to look up to him, my hero, and go. I will be thankful that I'm able to walk in to the gym and work out. I will just think of how hard it is for my brother and if he can do it and not give up I won't either.

Now on to the "rules" of A BETTER ME.

Anyone can join. You can post on your blog whenever you like about how you are doing. Write about your exercise, post recipes, share your joy when you reach a goal or anything you want to talk about.

On Tues I would love if you would email me at jk51958@yahoo.com and let me know how much you lost. You do not have to tell me what you weigh. Then on Wed I will post what our group weight loss is. We can see how we are all doing and by showing our weight loss as a group even a tiny little weight loss that one person may have had will add up to be tons of weight lost.

We can all cheer each other on, learn tips and ideas, try new things and just have fun.

I thought it would be a good idea to link up everyone who is going to be in the A BETTER ME GROUP so I've added Mr. Linky. Just add your name to the list and then everyone can come visit you at your blog to say hi.

It would be great if everyone would post something about what their goal is. Is it to lose weight, learn to eat better, exercise more or what?

THINKING AHEAD TO JANUARY 2009

I've been thinking about starting on a diet. However, I know I would only be fooling myself if I thought now was a good time to start.

I'm tired of my clothes not fitting and not wanting to buy any bigger sizes. I'm tired of my knees, feet and back hurting. I'm tired of taking medicine every day for high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

So, I'm making my plans to start a diet, not only to lose weight but to get healthy. Come January 2009 I'm going to take hold of my own destiny and do something about the way I look and feel.

They say it's better to go on a diet with someone you know. That way when you start to get down and ready to toss the towel in you can help each other stay on your plan. Strength lies in numbers.

That brings me to the reason I'm posting about this today. I was wondering if anyone else would like to join me. We can all post about tips, tricks and ideas. We can share recipes, losses and even hardships. We can all cheer each other on. We can pick each other up when we need it and set goals to reach together.

I am going to post every Wed. I know that is a strange day but I figure it's in the middle of the week and would be a good time. We can discuss weigh ins, mini goals, success stories and hardships.

No one has to post your weight, unless you want to. You don't even have to say how much or if you loss. This is a program to use as much and how you want. There won't be any set "diet" you have to follow. You can do what I'm going to do or do what you like.

I will share my plan with you. However, since I'm a vegetarian I doubt if most of you will want to follow what I do.

I will set weekly goals for exercise, drinking water, eating properly. Again, you can choose to follow what I do or follow your own plan.

I just ask that if you do want to do this as a group that we all remain up beat and positive. Please remember that everyone has different goals and their way may not be what you choose to do. If you disagree with what someone is doing please do not put anyone down. We are here to help each other not hurt any one.

So what do you say? Do I have any takers who wish to sign up? I will officially be starting this on 1/5/09 but will not post about it until 1/7/09 as that will be the first Wed.

Let me know if you are interested and if so, do you want to give our group a name?