2011

I am getting married this year!!!

Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way...

Hello 2011, where did you come from? 2010 flew by so fast. I say that every year but this year it really flew by. When we got engaged in the summer of 2009 so many people told us that our engagement would go by very quickly and I remember thinking "yeah, right." It's amazing how right they were. I was going to do a re-cap of 2010, but I didn't really blog enough during the year. Instead, I think I'll post my resolutions for 2011. Maybe putting them out there will help me stick to them??

1. Focus on my health. This has always been a resolution of mine and it's gotten me in trouble before. I am not overweight but I am at the top of my healthy weight range and I'd like to be more in the middle...so part of this goal is to lose between 10 and 15 pounds. I struggled with an eating disorder for several years during high school and college and even though I no longer severely restrict my calorie intake or throw up everything I do eat, it's really difficult for me to "go on a diet." When I was hospitalized in 2006 I gained a lot of weight and I have not been able to lose it in a healthy way since then. Part of the reason is due to the eating disorder... I have several problems with my digestive system as a result of all the purging. Erosions in my esophagus and stomach make it really difficult to eat certain foods. I have gastroparesis - my stomach muscles don't work to push food out the way they should, so food sits in my stomach a lot longer than it's supposed to. I've also developed lactose intolerance and soy intolerance. And obviously there are still the emotional reasons to deal with - restricting my food intake is really difficult because it's very easy for me to go back to counting every single calorie, which leads to restricting them even more, which leads to behaviors that I worked so hard to avoid. I can't just see food as something that I consume to give me energy, it is so much more than that to me. It symbolizes every failure, every mistake, every wrong decision. It is something to control. In all reality, it controls me and that it why I have to work so hard to be aware of my behaviors when I "diet." My goal for 2011 is to make healthy choices, to see food as something to fuel my beautiful life, to respect my body, to move my body, to cook more dinners at home, and to continue to work on keeping those dangerous ED behaviors at bay.

2. Be more open minded. I am very stubborn. I see things in black and white - either something is good or it is bad. There's no middle ground. I really want to try to see the gray in life. There have been so many times where someone says something and I have an immediate reaction without really thinking about the situation. I want to learn to see things from other perspectives.

3. Keep my house cleaner. My lack of organization around the house drives John up a wall. I leave dirty clothes in a pile in the bathroom or bedroom when I should just throw them in the laundry basket. I leave mail and wedding papers all over the dining room. Empty glasses on the coffee table. Pieces of paper and wrappers on the sofa. Clean laundry sits in the basket it was folded in. It drives him crazy - me, not so much. I'm not sure if I am just absentminded or lazy, but I want to try to keep things neater for him. I think it will be easier when we own a house and everything has it's own place but for now we have to make do with what we've got.

4. Blog more. I slacked on blogging this year. Big time. My goal is 10 posts each month, except for May since we'll be away for almost 2 weeks. I don't care what I write about, I just want to chronicle my life. This year is a huge year for us and I really want to remember the little things.