Back to Blogging, I hope

There's no way to try to catch up on the last few months, so I won't try. Not that there's been a lot to share. The end of 2009 marked the end of our year-long fast from sweets/desserts. To be honest, we did start eating desserts during the last week or so of December...with all the Christmas treats around we decided we'd basically met our goal, only "cheating" during Michael's birthday week while we were in Costa Rica and on my birthday. Below is a sampling of what Michael gave me on my birthday. It took a couple months, and sharing a lot of it with family at Christmas, to go through this pile:



We definitely learned self-control throughout the past year. There were a few times when it was really tough: homemade ice cream and fresh strawberries made by Michael's Uncle Kenny (my absolute FAVORITE dessert) during the summer, amazing chocolate cake while in Germany, weddings, birthdays...you don't realize how much and how often dessert is served until you are sustaining from it. I can definitely say I've weaned my sweet tooth. I drink my lattes with half the flavoring, I can eat a few bites or have much smaller servings of dessert, and, the real test is that we will have candy or some sweet in our apartment now, and it just sits there!! It used to be that if it was in our apartment, or in front of us, we had to eat it. Now they gather dust!

Another benefit of this fast is that we both lost weight. Recently we were looking at pictures from our first year of marriage...let's just say we both have lost a decent amount of weight since then! At that time we were living on the Oregon coast, eating a lot and rarely exercising. Not to mention the weight that most people gain after they get married, eating together and snacking together. Not eating desserts was part of it, but we also became vegetarians in 2009. Between these two eating habits, we ate very healthy overall. I planned our meals diligently, shopped to our grocery list, never buying junk food (this also helps a lot with sticking to a strict budget), and we simply ate healthier.

I noticed that the healthier we ate, the more we wanted to work out too. (P90X helped a lot too!) So, 2010 has begun with me feeling like I'm in the best shape I've been in in years.

Now it's back to being careful about our ice cream cravings!!