The New Year has always been the time of the year that most people evaluate their goals from the previous year. I find it absurd that in January or in some cases the first Monday after New Year's Day; grown people put their so-called resolutions into action. The two common resolutions are, exercise more and lose weight.

This requires willpower, but not any more than the average person. It all comes down to respecting your body and making the right choices to be healthy as well as happy. Five years ago I was a very unhealthy obese woman. Carrying weight was killing me. Not just my physical health but also my mental and emotional health.

It wasn’t New Year’s Day that I started my life change. It took me a while to put my mind right with what was going to be the new me. I began to read the popular weight loss programs and even though I have probably tried at least one of them in my lifetime. I wanted to take the pieces that worked for me and create my program. Understanding my eating habits, stress eating, bored eating, and also my go-to excessive eating of bread, pasta, and sweets. . Learning that my body craves carbs and stores them. So eliminating carbs was the challenge that put my mind and body on the right track.

Most people look at themselves and see failure, give up easily and keep doing the same pattern of excessive yoyo dieting and negativity of hating what they look like. I am not telling you that a plus-size woman is a failure, by all means, any size woman is a beautiful woman. However, if you don’t see that woman in the mirror as beautiful, then do something about it. Hold your lovely body in esteem and praise those curves.

It isn’t the physical change that is the most important to me these days, it is the mental and emotional change that keeps me on the treadmill and staying on target with my eating habits. The endorphins alone are a bonus most people never feel or understand. It's a natural high and gives me joy and purpose.

Don’t worry if you fall off the wagon now and then, the main goal is to get back up and keep moving. Listen to your body as well as your heart and mind. Write down the areas that make you sad, the foods you know are not best for you. Find the part of you that wants to change and feed her. Feed her knowledge and inspiration. Don’t look for reasons outside of your own personal wellness. It's easy to say I am getting healthy for my family and then after you don't the guilt feels even worse because not only did you let yourself down, you let them down.

I had to live and learn, make the mistakes and take the rewards with the failure privately and I became my motivational coach. Cheering myself onto each hurdle and beyond. Don’t set yourself up for failure this year. Make the choices for your health and happiness and I hope I see you on the hiking trails soon.

In closing I wrote this poem that keeps me on track, I hope it inspires you as well:

New Year New Me

She turned herself away

From that year

Grateful for the lessons

Never allowing

Them to define her

Her soul was strong

Her heart in check

Fault and blame

Shielded from her mind

Her belief steadfast

She is the diamond

Of her future

Allowing the past to squeeze

The jewel from her

Brightly guiding her

To silken threads

Of new beginnings