An intro from Cyn

I recently found this blog and asked to join. I haven't quite caught up on all the posts yet, but this looks like just the thing I need to keep my motivation going. I am a 38-year-old associate professor at a small college (just got tenure last year), and after being at this institution for four years, I now have my first year with no new preps. I'm hoping that no new preps will mean more time to work on changing my lifestyle. So, here's the summary of my health habits:

Exercise. I was completely inactive until grad school, when I started running to help manage stress. I was an avid runner until a knee injury got in the way. I've run off and on since then, and I also do yoga every once in a while. Over the past few years, the number of days per week I've exercised has slowly dropped, until I suddenly realized one day that I had become sedentary.

Diet. My husband is vegetarian, so the only time I eat meat is when we go out to eat. I'm also lactose intolerant, so I avoid things cow milk-related. My husband and I get home at around 7:30 every night, and we don't enjoy cooking. Our diet mainly consists of spaghetti, black bean burgers, and bean burritos. Not a lot of green vegetables in there. I have a habit of not eating lunch and then eating everything in sight when I get home. I also visit the coffee shop for banana bread and scones, and you know how enormous those coffee shop portions are . . . I'm a mindless eater, and I definitely use food to manage stress.

Goals. I'm 5'2" and weigh 130 pounds. That's not the heaviest I've been, but I have a lot of smaller clothes in my closet that I'd like to wear. The big thing for me is getting enough balance in my life to have a healthy lifestyle. My goals are to do cardiovascular exercise 5 days a week, yoga twice a week, and weight training twice a week. I want to eat a larger variety of vegetables, eat lunch regularly, and eat mindfully. Losing 15 pounds would help me get back into those skirts that are taking up space in my closet.

My other goal that is related to all of this is to make progress on my new hobby, which is singing. I'd like to get together with other musicians and maybe even perform somewhere. Doing something outside of my career is pretty foreign to me right now, but it's time for me to expand my life a bit.

I don't do new year's resolutions, but instead do new semester's resolutions (does anyone else do this?). This semester, I've gotten up an hour earlier than usual each day to walk/run on the treadmill. On days when I have early classes (7:45, which is ridiculous), I get up early and do 15 minutes of yoga before having a cup of coffee. I'm slowly working my way back into running. I have a treadmill in my basement and watch TV shows I get from Netflix while I run. I haven't gotten back into weight training yet because it's much harder for me to get motivated to do that. On the diet front, I just ordered a cool bento box lunch set with funky dividers and sauce bottles, which I hope will encourage me to pack a decent lunch. Most importantly, I'm doing the best I can to be productive during the day so that I can go home at a reasonable hour and get some sleep. This has involved changing some assignments in my courses and saying no to a few things (tenure has made me feel much more at ease with this). I still find myself doing a lot of work on the weekends.

Thanks for letting me post, and thanks to all of you who have shared your stories and tips!