I’m not going to say I’m immune to media, because nobody in America is, but I’ve never really been one for dieting or anything crazy. In high school I once managed to stay on the Special K diet for two weeks before prom (I wanted to fit into my first designer dress that my mother had bought for me, because it was a size 0) and lose the weight I wanted to, but telling me to eat cereal is not a hardship, and the irony was that I lost the weight, but my skin was so pale looking that I ended up not looking good in the dress anyway, so I didn’t wear it.
Anyway. Then college happened, and I gained like 20 pounds and barely exercised and had steadily worsening breathing problems compounded by the wrong medication and bad stomach problems. When I was 21 1/2, I realized I was a pound away from having an officially overweight BMI, and that’s when I decided things had to change. Now, two years later, wellness is like a full-time job that never stops being challenging, but at least it’s now become more or less routine. But it easily gets boring, so I’m always looking for new recipes to make me excited about not eating potato chips, and new exercises and fitness magazines to make sure I’m never too bored to be healthy.
I have to be honest, though, and say that I need a lot of outside stimulation to make me excited about not eating out and not taking 24/7 advantage of my Hulu plus account. Much as I hate how dependent we all are on tiny computers that fit in our pockets, and much as I still have ZERO interest in owning a smartphone, one of the biggest things that helped me on my way was keeping a food and exercise diary on Self.com so that I could keep track of how I was doing. I think most of us can be tempted into doing a lot of things if it allows us to play with buttons and typing. Also, quite frankly, and I know this makes me seem more like a communist than the socialist I am, but I totally support any place of employment that requires some sort of commitment to wellness (and I also support those that require their employees–or highly encourage them–to be involved in volunteer or social justice work), because I think when it comes down to it, we all know that we need outside forces to get us to do anything that’s not X-Box or alcohol. Continue reading
