I am endeavoring, oh so hard, to work on a better me.

Last month, I pledged to not wait for the New Year to work on bettering my physical self, and thus far, I’ve held true to my promise to be a me focused on providing the best life for not only my family, but also for the physical me.

And even though I’m a month into it, I can tell I’ve made progress.

I’ve checked off a few things on that “providing the best life for my family list,” as well as the “get healthy” list.

Along the way, I’ve learned a few life lessons that I feel compelled to share.

First and foremost, I now realize that starting this journey without any real plan of how I was going to accomplish it all probably wasn’t such a great idea.

I didn’t realize just how much thought or preparation it takes to get things together. I didn’t have running shoes, so I had to buy those. I didn’t have one of those thingies that straps your phone (which doubles as an iPod) to your arm in case you fall and break something, so I had to buy one of those, too.

The second thing I learned was that those running shoes are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever owned. I have been missing out on life by not owning a pair. If I could get away with wearing them to work every day I would; however, the steel grey and purple mesh really doesn’t coordinate well with slacks. I really hate that, too.

Another thing I learned is that my eating habits were counter productive. I went to a nutritionist, who told me that my eating schedule was all out of whack. Get this – she said I wasn’t eating enough. Can you believe it? Here I am a lot of pounds overweight, and she said I wasn’t eating enough food.

I paid attention to her advice, added two 100-calorie snacks a day to my menu, and I can tell a difference.

Although not all of her advice was golden. She told me to substitute my normal low-fat yogurt and granola with something called Greek yogurt and granola.

I tried some Tuesday, and that stuff should be called God-awful yogurt. Not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but that white glob of goo was nasty, horrible, vile stuff – even when I cheated and mixed some of my regular stuff with it.

So, the third thing I learned was that 100-calorie snacks are good; Greek yogurt is bad – really bad.

And while the things that I’ve taken away from this experience thus far may seem trivial and unimportant, they’re not. Each is further affirmation that one is never too old or set in their ways to learn new things – and to work on being a better person, inside and out.