NEW YEAR, NEW YOU!

January 2026

Happy New Year!!! You know that cliché “New Year, new you”. I feel like every year many of us decide this. Almost every year when I was much younger, the “New Year, new you” was almost inevitably “this is the year that I will lose weight!! AND keep it off for good!!” I had always started strong, but then by March, something happens and I lose that momentum. Then I would restart around my birthday (after I’ve eaten cake) and my birthday wish was almost always “I wish to finally lose the weight”. I would start again pretty strong and then by Christmas (or even by December) I would lose that momentum again! I would start over and over again (if I hadn’t given up for a year or so altogether).

I did finally break this dieting cycle when I started in 2020, but I hadn’t known it at the time. This was a rough time for me. I realized that I needed a divorce. Things were not right. I was at the highest weight (I definitely stopped weighing myself at 168 pounds – which is a lot on a 5 foot tall frame, but I knew I must have gained more, because my clothes still got tighter and I had to “suck it in” to fit the size 14’s and Larges). Covid lockdowns also began. There was no gym opened (not that I had a membership anyway). I was miserable overall.

My child though did still have Phys Ed class even though school was virtual. There was some attempt through the education system to teach about the new MyPlate and the kids were asked to do exercise videos from YouTube. I kind of thought that ‘at least they tried a little’, because growing up, I did not remember much of nutrition taught at school. Phys Ed was sporty games that suited only some individuals. Health class for a marking period didn’t cover nutrition. I didn’t grow up in a household where nutrition and exercise were prioritized either. I really just didn’t know how things were supposed to be, but the only thing that was apparent was that I had more fat percentage than most of the other kids. I didn’t eat much, especially in front of others to the point that another kid asked how I got so fat since I didn’t seem to eat much. I do remember entering college and trying out the gym. I loved this one leg press machine and focused on it. But when I got married, the gym membership was dropped. I gained more weight. Then when I decided I wanted to have a child, I had troubles conceiving and the doctor suggested for me to try the South Beach Diet. It did work, I lost about 12 pounds and I got pregnant. That was when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, early in the pregnancy. I was told it was a warning sign I might get diabetes later in life but that it usually went away after you gave birth. I had to take an insulin shot in the leg every night during pregnancy. Some time after I gave birth, I was told I have elevated or pre-diabetes. It was the same level as what it was when I was pregnant. The diabetes just never left like how they said it would.

Fast forward to 2018. I went to a normal doctor’s appointment and was told my blood pressure was 198/98. My doctor wanted me to go to the emergency room. I bargained with him and he sent medication to my pharmacy for me to pick up and take right away and then another in the morning to help with the blood pressure. I also asked him what I can do to make this better. He told me that I needed to move and that I needed to eat a healthier diet and lose some weight. I asked him to be more specific. He told me start off small. Walk for a little. Increase the walking time as much as I can. I asked about diet. He told me he thinks I should eat meat and vegetables primarily and then add on small amounts of other things. Honestly, I didn’t know how to cook and how much and of what.

2020 me still did not know how to cook, but started to use a calorie tracker app, started walking and hiking on nicer days and followed 20 minute – 30 minute exercise videos on YouTube with my kid. I was losing some weight. Then when I separated, I moved in with my parents and they are retired and enjoyed hiking most days. I went on a lot of hikes and I lost a lot of weight. I lost about 50 pounds in total. I hadn’t changed my diet so much, but just ate smaller portions. I was able to wean myself off the blood pressure medication though because my blood pressure was now more normal. I did still have prediabetes though.

2023 me had joined a costly fitness coaching program. They are all costly because it’s a semi personalized experience. Booking a nutritionist and a trainer separately would have been even much more costly. I was down to a size 4 to 6, but I didn’t feel healthy or fit. The real missing piece was nutrition. I did not know how to cook, so I ate pre-packaged foods and takeouts primarily. With this group is where I learned what nutrition truly meant. It did not mean just reading the labels on the back of the box. Nutrition meant eating whole foods. They had lists of foods for you to pick from that were considered whole. They wanted you to meal prep and every day in a week you would eat the same meals and it would switch weekly. These were not foods I grew up eating regularly, but ones I would try and learn to like or love or at least try and say I didn’t love them.

In December 2024 I experienced a very unexpected death of a family member. I didn’t cope well and drank more than I should and could not get to the gym, could not do exercise even from home and no longer even attempted to meal prep what-so-ever. I just was not present. I did try to eat what I thought was maintenance at first. Then by April 2025, my then company moved me to an office space 50 miles away and I gained “a bad commute”. By May, I decided I needed to move. I moved in July to an apartment with a similar commute as I had previously. I sold my old house by September (I had gained back some of the weight I lost from not tracking, and not exercising at all from December 2024 – September 2025). In September, during lunch I started going back to my old gym (a gym where you can go to any location) and walking up and down the stairs to my job on the 10th floor (I could feel that just doing this was helping because my pants were feeling a little looser). In early October, I joined a new gym in my new area. It was a flat monthly fee and you could take as many classes as you’d like (I discovered that I love spin, yoga and Pilates). At the same time, I decided to remember all of the nutrition advice that I had learned and I weaned off takeouts and wanted to learn to make just simple foods. (I still have things to learn) Later in October, this last company laid me off. I spent a lot of new found time going to yoga, spin and Pilates classes once a day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes I took a day off. When I went to my new doctor for bloodwork in November, I discovered that after decades, my A1C was down to normal and that I was no longer pre-diabetic! So in other words, I really needed much more daily exercise and much better nutrition to get to healthy levels. I just never knew what it really took and now I know. I learned a lot of lessons in 2025: alcohol is a bad coping mechanism and is a lot of empty calories and not making time to do any exercise and sliding back into eating all takeouts means you are going to start gaining the weight back. Fitness is a lifelong journey and if you go off course, it is up to you to find a path back and no fitness coach or nutritionist is there to make you accountable. You are accountable for you. You have to love yourself enough to spend the time to care about your body, because no one else will.

So here in early 2026, the timing is right to say “New Year, new you”! The new me wants to educate and help others, because chances are if I never “got it” before, then maybe others also don’t know. It took a lot of trial and error and I researched a lot too. I want to know the mechanics of how it all works, so I am going to take certified fitness training and nutrition mastery courses in addition to my previous independent searches on these topics plus my own trial and error on myself. I had always felt that the people who need it the most are probably the least able to afford a personal nutritionist and trainer, so my passion project is to figure out a way to educate more people about fitness and to make it more affordable to most.