There was a point in my life that I weighed myself every day. That’s right. Every. Single. Day. I was definitely obsessed, if not on the edge of disordered. Truthfully, I was driving myself a little crazy.

Until one day, I just stopped.

I decided that it wasn’t healthy for my mind to be so wrapped up in the numbers. So the morning visit to the scale ceased. I was mindful of my food but no longer tracked every morsel I consumed. I continued to work out. And I was content.

2013 brought many good things my way, including more half marathons, shorter races and workouts with my trainer at the gym. However, I injured myself in September and that put a damper on what I was able to do physically. My miles shrank but my food intake continued as though they hadn’t.

(You see where this is going, don’t you?)

I weighed myself the other day for the first time since the summer. I wasn’t all together surprised by the number but I will admit that I wasn’t happy with it either. That’s not to say that I’m not happy with myself, because I am. I’m at a good place, a much different place than I was when I was the girl weighing herself daily.  Generally speaking, I’m pretty awesome.

But I would like to work hard to get back down, weight wise.

At my leanest, I was at 144. This was in 2012, when I was tracking everything – my weight, my food, my workouts – everything.

By the end of last summer, I was at 152 – I tracked my workouts, but that was basically it.

And now, here I am, at 156. I knew I was gaining weight. I could tell by the way my clothes were fitting mostly. I think that I tend to have a bit of body dysmorphia so no matter when I look in the mirror, I always see the same thing – whether I’m 10 pounds lighter or 20 pounds heavier. That doesn’t help matters.

What I do know is this: I need to make a change.

Rather than focusing on the numbers (since that hasn’t really worked well for my psyche in the past), I’m going to try to present things to myself in more than/less than fashion. For example…

More water and less bazillion (slight exaggeration)  calorie drinks

More homecooked, less takeout. More veggies, less cookies. Smaller meals throughout the day and smarter choices.

I’m going to leave the numbers bit of things in the trusty hands(?) of my Fitbit One and myfitnesspal.

Treadmill outranks couch (that’s “my” spot that everyone steals – and I’m going to let them steal it.) And outside will outrank treadmill when it’s not 3 degrees.

And I plan to continue my exercising. I don’t think that I’ll feasibly be able to add things like hot yoga back into my schedule but I would like to hit the 10,000 step goal set by the Fitbit each day. (Okay, fine, maybe focusing a little bit on numbers isn’t the worst thing in the world.)

No excuses, no whining. I’m ready to get this done. I can and I will!

What sort of challenges or goals are you looking forward to tackling in 2014?