As we start winding down the first month of the year, I thought it a good time to take a look at goals, and the difference between the ones we achieve versus those that escape us.  One perennial goal of mine has been to lose weight, eat healthy and stick to an exercise routine.  Now if you were to look at me you would think…poor thing, she failed on that front… but,  not so.

In a lot of ways, goals are what you make of them.  Your viewpoint has almost as much to do with it as actual results.  Did I trim down to a svelte micro-size last year, never eat junk food and passionately workout all the time.  Hell, no.  But on January 1st of this year, I weighed less than I did the year before and felt healthier overall.  I could have made the choice to feel unsuccessful, since I had not attained an ideal goal, or I could celebrate the success I had achieved and restart, building upon the progress I’d already made.

It seems to me that people are far better at being hard on themselves, than treating themselves with a bit of kindness and feeling pride in their achievements.  No matter what your focus may be, whether you have health and weight loss goals, basketball goals, blogging goals, organizational or financial goals… pretty much anything.  Celebrating what you have done right, puts you in the right mindset to stay on a path to progress, rather than allowing negativity to pull you down.

Give yourself a little reward for partial successes, and look at them as stepping stones, instead of failed attempts.  Life in general is seldom an all or nothing experience.  90% of life exists in gray areas, rather than black and white.  It is your choice where you land on that spectrum.

Most of us remember learning in school that Vitamin D comes from the sun.  That isn’t quite how it works, the sun activates our bodies to create the vitamin, it doesn’t actually supply it, but the connection is certainly accurate.  There are other sources for the vitamin, but sunshine is an excellent source, which those of us in most parts of the country, don’t get a whole lot of during the cold winter months.  Other sources are egg yolks, fatty fish, liver, mushrooms, yeast, and fortified foods, but even those who eat these foods semi-regularly can be deficient in Vitamin D  With most of us avoiding heavy sun exposure, due to it’s aging effects and skin cancer effects, supplements are more needed than ever before.

The huge amount of vitamin options can be overwhelming.

I had a general understanding that Vitamin D was somehow paired with calcium, as important for bone health, but that was about all I knew of the benefits of this important vitamin, until I looked into it further for this post.  Turns out it not only helps strengthen bones and provides protection from osteoporosis, but adequate levels can also help regulate high blood pressure.  Recent research also indicates that sufficient Vitamin D levels are connected with lower cancer and autoimmune disease risk.  Sounds pretty important to me.

I also found out that Vitamin D deficiency is common not only in those who get very little sun exposure, but also among the elderly, obese and babies who are exclusively breast fed.  Those with certain digestive problems, such as Crohn’s disease are also prone to deficiency.

After doing my research, I went to Walmart, to pick up some of this supplement.  There were plenty of options, but I ended out selecting a 1000 mg. dosage from Nature Made.  Each vitamin provides 250% of the daily recommended dosage, even though it was one of the lower dosages available, I thought it would be sufficient.  At just $3.97, that is just over a dollar a month, for piece of mind.

Check out my Google + picture story of the shop here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/100455156656642801134/albums/5677942352156545009

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias.  All opinions presented here are my own.