I turned 39 on July 10, 2015. This birthday was an unusual one for me because I was away from home, helping my best friend move to Florida. It made for a very different, but fun birthday. I didn’t see Son at all on my birthday. I only saw Husband for a few minutes in the morning before I got on a flight to help her unpack her life in Gainesville. It was wonderful to see where she would be living and to get to say hello again so shortly after I had to say goodbye to her.

On the plane ride back home a few days later, I all of a sudden realized “Oh shit! I’m 39 now and I am supposed to finish all these things before I turn 40! I only have a year left! How will it all get done??!!”

I am making some good progress on a lot of my long-term goals. I have definite plans for the marathon and to travel to Paris. My sister and her family and my mother all want to go to Disney World, so we are going to do a big, family trip to Orlando next year. But there are some goals I am very nervous about.

Despite all the running and training for the marathon, I’ve managed to gain weight. And no, it’s not muscle. (Wonderful husband suggested this when I was venting to him. Muscle weighs more than fat, so maybe I’m just gaining lots of muscle from all the running. Lovely, lovely man. I mean seriously. How did I get so lucky to be married to a person who looks at me through rose-colored glasses? But no, it’s not muscle.) I have always struggled with my weight. I was a super skinny kid because I was active but also because I was sick. I had pretty bad childhood asthma and the medicine I took to help control it also made me throw up, pretty much every night. By the time I was 7, I would get up in the middle of the night to throw up and put myself back to bed. When I compare this to how Son is now whenever he’s sick, it’s just different. Throwing up is a dramatic thing for kids. But for me, it was so normal that I didn’t even need my parents help. It wasn’t upsetting. It just happened. So I would do it and go back to sleep and tell my parents in the morning. Anyway, between being very active and throwing up most nights, I woke up ravenous in the mornings. I remember eating 6 pieces of french toast. I could eat 10 slices of pizza. I remember being nervous that just one breakfast at Friendly’s wouldn’t fill me up, so sometimes I ordered two! Or my mother would have the kid’s meal and I would eat the adult meal. This lead me to have a very large appetite. I’m used to needing lots of food to feel full. And despite this huge appetite, I don’t think I was overweight until high school. And even in high school, I was just slightly overweight.

But today, even though I’m active and running lots of miles every week and running around with Son and taking Dog for walks and standing at my standing desk most days at work, I am gaining weight. It’s frustrating and it clearly has to do with my eating habits. When people see me, all I can think is that they must assume I end every day with a bag of chips or pint of ice cream. But that’s so far from the truth.  For about a year, I have eaten mostly plant-based. I have salads and beans and snack on fresh fruit and veggies. I have eaten meat about once a month. The only thing I had regularly that came from animals was eggs. I was led to this life after becoming allergic to dairy, so lots of my favorite childhood favorite (and bad for you) foods were cut completely out of my diet. No more pizza, macaroni and cheese, or ice cream. I started looking at vegan cookbooks more because I knew they would be dairy free and after a bit, I sort of just realized that I hadn’t eaten meat in a while and I decided to stick with it.

However, even though a plant-based way of eating makes me feel healthy and good, I don’t think it’s working for my body. I also have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and through my research, it seems like the diet that works best for it is high protein, low carbs. Eating plant-based is not carb free. I eat healthy carbs like quinoa and brown rice and sprouted grains (how unfair is it that I am gaining weight eating things like sprouted grains???), but I think it still makes the PCOS mad. So I’m at a point where I no longer know what to eat. I went back to eating meat for a few weeks and focused more on low carbs and I gained weight on that too and also just struggled mentally with it (not with eating meat, but just with my emotions. Clearly it was affecting my hormones and it didn’t feel like it was affecting them in a good way).

So now, I am about a year away from turning 40 and staring at this goal to be at 145 lbs. Yikes. That feels so far away right now. But I am seeing my doctor soon and will talk to her about what is best for me moving forward.

The other goals I’m struggling with is my writing goals. I was making good progress on book number 2 before I got derailed with work. Now I’m thinking it may be better to start with editing the first book I wrote. But again, having these goals accomplished by next summer seem unmanageable. I know if I just write 500 words a day for each, I’ll be in good shape. So that is my new goal. To write just a few pages, but to write every day. I keep waiting to have a whole day free to write.

So here I am, less than a year from the end of this 40 Before 40 project and I feel like I have more than half the goals left on my list. I need some motivation. Please feel free to leave me some positive comments or words of motivation!