When I tell people I’m 135 pounds, they tell me I’m lying.

No, really, they do.  The most common comments I get are things like, “No you’re not - you look so tiny!”, “You don’t need to lose weight or work out,”  or “It’s all boobs – you can’t be more than a hundred and ten pounds.”

As much of an ego boost as that is, those comments don’t change the fact that (a) I’m not a hundred and ten pounds; (b) I’ve climbed to an unhealthy 25.9 BMI (which is pretty accurate for my body); and most importantly, (c) I just can’t stick to a healthy lifestyle.  I can work out with the best of them…for a few weeks.  I can eat salads and nutritious snacks and Lean Cuisine lunches…about half the time.  I can even take vitamins…or at least half the bottle, before the expiration date comes up.  What I can’t do is keep this stuff going.  I can’t find that balance of healthy living and happy living.  I can’t, ahem, have my cake and eat it too.

See the upper arm fat? That’s new. So are the belly pooch and those hips.  (The butt is vintage.)

I’m also getting older, and my body is starting to change.  The way I carry weight, where I gain it and how it affects me are all completely different:

• I used to gain weight all over.  Now it sticks to my belly, hips and arms.
• I get tired a tired and winded a lot more easily than I used to – and that’s after quitting smoking in January.
• After years of bad habits, I’ve gotten used to the foods I put in my body, so it fights me when I try to change them – the cravings are intense.

Though I kind of dig the idea of bigger hips (mine have always been small compared to my bust, so the weight shift makes me feel more “even”) I don’t like the idea of being tired, winded and tied to my cravings for salt and sugar.  I don’t like the idea of being tied to anything.  This is my body, damn it!

My biggest problem with this unhealthy lifestyle isn’t physical, though.  It’s mental.  I know I can be in better shape – when I danced, I was – and I hate that the older I get, the more I hear people using age as an excuse: your metabolism is slower, you have more responsibilities, other things are more important…

…Wait, what?! How did my health become less important than the other things in my life?  That’s just…silly.  (I thought we were supposed to get wiser with age.)

Here’s the thing: getting older doesn’t mean giving up. It just means giving your body the things it needs at twenty-six instead of what it needed at sixteen.  And I know that I can do that.  I just need to be accountable so I will keep doing it.

My goal, by the end of October, is to get fit using habits I can stick with. No temporary calorie restrictions, no fat-blasting workouts that burn you out after a month.  I want cardio, strength training and healthy foods that I can look to for the rest of my life.  I want workouts that make sense whether I’m twenty-six or sixty-two.

And I want to be able to walk up a damned hill without wheezing.