| Kerstin Martin was tired of choosing New Year’s resolutions she wasn’t going to keep anyway. So this year, she chose a word to live by instead.
“My word is do,” she said, “as in, ‘just do it, Kerstin!’ I talk a lot, and I dream a lot. I’m a grade-A procrastinator. But I know I can be a doer.”
In the battle to get fit, Martin has already done some great things; not long after moving to the U.S. from Europe she founded a fitness support group for women in Northampton and started DietMonster.com, a blog following their successes and failures.
She’s since moved on from that group, though it’s still going strong, and admits that she’s still searching for the key that will lead to her best self. But in the meantime, she’s keeping one goal in mind: “to stop dieting, and start living.”
“Ideally, I want to get to a point where I don’t think about my weight anymore,” she says. “I want to eat. But I also want to stop.”
Martin’s stumbling blocks on the road to wellness mirror those of many women. Born in Germany, she’s spent much of her life traveling around the world, and moved to Western Mass. in 2005. Here, she says while trying to make new friends and find new hobbies, she found “food everywhere,” as well as larger portions and fewer opportunities to walk or ride her bike. That led to weight gain, a more sedentary lifestyle, and a lot of soul-searching.
“All diets teach you strategies, but you still need to find what works for you, for life,” she says, noting that sharing her experiences continues to help her stay on track.
Martin still blogs about her struggles, most often at her new site, gipsylife.com. However, now she focuses on improving more than just her weight loss and fitness efforts.
“It’s more about how to fix life, not weight,” she said. “Writing helps me think, but also to be, and do.” |
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