I’m taking a new approach to fitness. I’m trying to move for an hour a day, doing weight training and Pilates a few times a week and eating 3 balanced healthy meals a day, plus two treats a week.

Ok. So maybe it’s not “new” to the rest of the world, but it is new to me. Throughout my life I’ve figuratively run the gauntlet with food and exercise. In middle school I ate a lot of convenience food and drank only sweetened tea and soft drinks. Then in tenth grade I cut off soda and dropped ten pounds. By senior year I ate very little carbohydrates and, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I was consistently going on 1,000 calories a day or less. By the time I was a sophomore in college I was restricting calories, binging on Wednesday nights, running 10 miles on Thursday mornings and fainting in biology labs that afternoon. The next year and a half I was moving between stages of bulimia and binge-eating disorder, it’s only been in the past few months that I’ve been able to finally say I’m in control of my relations with food.

Because I’ve had such an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise I decided I needed to relearn how to eat and exercise. My mind has been so full of quick fixes and conflicting information that I can’t tell hype from help.

Thus, I’m taking a new approach to fitness.

I decided that since my track record hasn’t been the best in regards to doing things the healthy way it would be a good idea to call in some reinforcements. First of all, I bought a subscription to Fitness magazine. I’ve always liked this magazine, I appreciate its focus is more on health, nutrition and exercise than other women’s magazine’s boring articles about beauty, fashion, and hair. I use the magazine as a source of motivation, a source of tips and challenges in both diet and exercise areas and also a good way to learn about the newest research in these areas.

However, I do know that no matter how motivated I get upon the arrival of those glossy pages of health advice, I never stick with the exercise program. So in an effort to make myself stick with a routine I decided to contact the Wilkes-Barre YMCA about scheduling a consultation with a personal trainer and a nutritionist. I found the email address of the Wellness director on the YMCA webpage and contacted her about scheduling a session.

So far, I haven’t heard of a definite answer, though hopefully I’ll be able to meet with her soon and I’ll be able to provide the details of my experience. Until then, I’m just concentrating on staying away from the doughnuts my coworkers keep bringing to work.