For some reason, I am equal parts nervous and excited to begin tomorrow.

I am nervous to begin tomorrow because this looks and feels like a new year’s resolution that millions of people make to “get healthy” or “get in shape”. I am fairly nervous that if I am not careful, I will allow myself to think like most people thing. That somewhere in March I will declare that I have done “good enough” and leave it at that. Or that I will let other things get in the way. I am also nervous that my schedule does call for a bit of travel, and that it will be difficult to make healthy choices all of the time. I am nervous that if I don’t see the drastic, jaw-dropping results I experienced about 14 years ago that I will get discouraged (so I have to remind myself that people change and bodies age, so that past performance is no guarantee of future results).

On the other hand, I am excited that I have become this serious about taking control of my health again. This time around, I have much more control over my schedule (my previous job was travelling around 300 days a year). This time around, I have a much better knowledge about foods (I can follow recipes like anyone else can, but I also know how to make substitutions that will still accomplish the goal and taste good). My palette has increased, so I appreciate a wider range of flavours now than I did back then. And I am more consistently exercising now than I have been back then – the challenge will be to get more out of the time spent.

And most importantly, I decided that I can spend 30 minutes a day to write in this blog. I think the process of writing is healthy and helpful, so I can review what was done. I will commit to keeping a food journal everyday (Martin Berkhan in his LeanGains blog made a great point that someone at my stage of the journey needs to be more concerned about a food journal to see how I am fueling myself. That is true even if I am not doing Intermittent Fasting at this point).

So I started last day before  jumped into everything pretty much as you might expect. I crammed everything in that I could before starting on the South Beach Diet:

• The remaining cookies that a friend gave me for Christmas? Nom nom nom.
• The fruitcake that a friend’s mother gave me on New Year’s Eve? Nom nom nom.
• The 330ml of Sprite left in the bottle? Nom nom nom.
• Fried duck in sweet and sour sauce from my favourite Vietnamese restaurant? Nom nom nom.
• The remaining strawberries and half the grapes in the fridge? Nom nom nom.

Nothing like building up a little higher hurdle for yourself to work through. As I write it down, it feels a bit shameful. I am sure that there are bits and pieces I didn’t mention.

But hey, I got in at least a bit of exercise (walking), so everything should be even, right? The answer is no. I have to say, this has motivated me to dive into this head first tomorrow.

Finally, I haven’t decided how often I will post stats or what kind of stats I will post. I need to take a look through all of those different tools and see what kind of info I want to include. Including it here will also help to keep my honest.

Anyway, good luck to me tomorrow! If I can go to school full-time to get my Master’s Degree whilst working full-time, then I can use the same discipline and determination to meet this goal as well. Fingers crossed!