One year of good health.

First of all, can I just say that I heart the gym? Not when I'm actually there. Not when I'm red-faced and sweating on the elliptical, convinced I won't make it through the last five minutes of my workout. Not when I'm on the stationary bike because the gym is tiny and all the good machines are taken. Not when I'm forcing my way through that last set of shoulder presses.

But after. When my arms are sore in that good way that tells me my workouts are actually having an effect. When I decide to forgo a snack because it is in the forefront of my mind how hard-earned every calorie is. When those endorphins kick in and I feel energetic all day. When I lose five pounds in one week (granted, some of it was water weight, but still). When I have an excuse to go shopping because I've gone down another size. When I see a number on the scale that I haven't seen in years. When it pushes me off that plateau I've been struggling with for months.

Then, I heart the gym. So very much.

So, a bunch of you requested my recipes on Friday. I don't really want to put them all in blog posts, because that would get really long, but two of them that I found elsewhere--the Thai coconut chicken and the modified beef stroganoff. FYI, I make modifications to both of those recipes to make them healthier. For the coconut chicken, I use light coconut milk, which has about a third the fat and calories as regular coconut milk. It's not as creamy, but Torsten and I both find that the dish is pretty much as good regardless. And for the beef noodles, I use whole wheat pasta, low-fat sour cream, light butter, and low-sodium V8. I know, I'm not exactly an advocate for all-natural, unprocessed food over here, but I am an advocate for reducing calories and fat when it's possible to do so without making the food taste bad.

Also, I'm going to try to set up a little recipes section of this site at some point in the next couple of weeks that includes a bunch of recipes that we like, whether or not they're in our current rotation. But that will take a bit of time, so it will probably have to be a weekend project.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the whole healthy living thing a lot recently, because, as you can probably tell from the beginning of this post, I have been trying to ramp up my efforts in order to kick this plateau once and for all. I mean, it isn't a complete plateau, because I have still been losing weight. But it's been a very gentle slope, and that has been tough for me to come to terms with because for so long I was losing weight so fast and seemingly without effort.

In fact, it was so effortless that going to the gym regularly did not actually seem to be affecting my weight loss rate. I remember talking about that back in August, when I was doing the Couch to 5K. And even though I was good about the C25K, eventually I got frustrated, and I changed jobs, which meant that my schedule changed, and also I wasn't seeing the impact on the scale, so that wasn't helping to motivate me, and so I stopped. And I haven't really been going to the gym regularly since then, with the exception of a short-lived, overly optimistic attempt at regular early-morning visits.

But as I mentioned last week, I've modified my gym goal to be much more feasible. I want to go at least two times a week, preferably more. If I have time, I go. If I don't have time, I don't go, and I don't beat myself up about it. I just go again the next time I can. I went four times last week, and that was because I had a Friday off, and a relaxed weekend, and time after work. I recognize that not every week will be that way, and I have decided to be okay with that.

Also, over the weekend I sent an email to a reader who was asking about Weight Watchers, and it got me thinking about all the other things that have helped me get off the plateau over the last couple of weeks. First of all, though, I feel the need to offer a disclaimer in order not to jinx myself: Weight Watchers has been going very well recently, and it feels like the plateau is gone, but it has only been a couple of weeks. So perhaps I'm just living in a fantasy world at the moment, and someday soon reality will come crashing down and I'll plateau again. But here's hoping not. And here's what I'm doing to avoid it, other than the gym thing.

First, I am tracking points diligently. For those of you who have done WW before, you know that after awhile you start to know (or be able to approximate) the points values of most things in your head, and it's hard to be bothered to add them all to the tracker when you already know what you're doing. Unfortunately, that's also how you end up having a bunch of snacks that are only two points each, but that add up to 10 points (otherwise known as a full meal) really fast without you realizing it. So, I am being more careful to add every single thing I eat to the tracker, and it's helping me be really aware of how much I consume.

Second, as I've mentioned before, I started a diet journal. It is so, so helpful for me to have a place to vent, to talk about my goals, to write down tips I want to remember, to talk about what I've done wrong and how I can correct it, to just spew without worrying about an audience or how other people will perceive my situation. It is a really good outlet.

Third, and most importantly (I think), I've changed my focus to the here and now. Instead of feeling depressed because I've lost so much weight already and yet I have so much more to lose, I've decided that right now I'm only going to focus on the month of June. When I was thinking very big-picture, it felt like the whole process was going to take so much time that one day didn't really matter. So I set myself a small goal--I want to lose eight to ten pounds this month. When I think of it that way, I find myself really focusing on the impact of the food choices I make every single day. It's really helping me keep on track. Right now I am well on my way to meeting my goal for June, and once June is over, then and only then will I worry about July.

Also, there are two things that are happening right now that are helping, but not through any effort on my part. The first is that I am finally on the correct dose of Synthroid, which I think is helping at least a little bit. I actually knew before my endocrinologist confirmed that this was the correct dose, because my body was giving me signals that I hadn't been getting before. I have to say as well that I love how in touch I feel with my own body--I never recognized any symptoms of a thyroid problem when I had one, but now that it's been regulated, I feel better and I can tell. And that's a great way to feel.

The second is that it's June again. It's been a year (almost--I officially signed up on June 19) since I started Weight Watchers. A lot has changed since then--about 70 pounds, for one thing, and also my understanding of my own health, my view of food and exercise, my priorities, my medication. All factors coming together to help me improve my health. But also I really think that it's just easier for me to stay on track in the summer. I don't really know why--it could be the different schedule, all the fruits and vegetables in season, the sun, or a total coincidence--but I struggled with Weight Watchers in the winter months after great success during the summer, and now that it's summer again, I'm doing well. And I hope to keep it that way.

I can't believe it's already been a year. I'm proud of how far I've come already, and I'm clear about where I want to go from here, health-wise. Here's hoping that I can really make it all happen.