Preventive medicine is a beautiful thing, as is an overly-cautious OB/GYN. Yes, gentle reader, after submitting to a hysteroscopy and D&C, my lady parts are free of gynecological cancer.

And now for the hard part: During the two weeks between the procedure and learning the results, yours truly did some serious soul searching and made a few vows along the way. Here are some of them:

1. Drastically reduce my consumption of saturated fats (Read: cut [out] the cheese)

2. Bump up the veggie intake

3. Only consume organic, humanely-raised, antibiotic and hormone-free chicken or beef (Note: this was more the result of squirming through the film, “Food, Inc.”)

4. Reduce stress by renewing my yoga practice

5. Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, six days a week

You’ll be pleased to know I’ve passionately embraced vows 1 through 4. It’s 5 that I just can’t seem to consummate.

Once upon a time–12 years ago to be precise–I was rockin’ a hard body on the beaches of Southern California, Miami and Brazil. Those toned thighs and tight abs did not come easy. I was working out four days a week with a personal trainer, and the other three days I was logging some major mileage on the treadmill.

And then I met the Hot, Hot Husband.

Before you accuse me of blaming someone else for my sloth, hear me out. The very weekend we had our first date, I ran 12 miles in a marathon training program, much to the chagrin of my doctor, who had advised me to stop running as I was beginning to develop lower back pain. That weekend marked the demise of my inner marathoner.

But that wasn’t all. Prior to life with the Hot, Hot Husband, I was a salad-for-dinner kind of gal, and while my fridge was always stocked with cheese, I probably indulged once every couple of days. All this changed once the Hot, Hot Husband and I began dating, moved in together and married. Weekdays, we would have a pre-dinner wine and cheese hour where we caught up on the day’s events and wound down from our respective long  and tedious workdays. Weekends found us at one of hundreds of fabulous local restaurants, indulging in cheese plates, Grand Marnier souffles, truffle risotto, bottles of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and obscene amounts of butter.

To be clear, I am not complaining. I wouldn’t trade my life with the Hot, Hot Husband for anything in the world. Well, maybe a wild night with David Beckham, but even that’s questionable as I hear he’s not exactly a scintillating conversationalist. All that aside, I take full responsibility for the dramatic shift in my eating habits.

To cut to the chase, over the course of the next 12 years I gave up running, took it up again as a stress reliever while working at a shitty job, overdid it (the job was supremely shitty, trust me), and ended up with plantar fasciitis. So for the past two years, I have sporadically stop-started various exercise routines, and my weight gain was turbo-charged in the past six months thanks to perimenopause.

Where that leaves me, dear reader, is writing this blog entry as a public declaration that today, May 12, 2010, marks the first day of my commitment to get a minimum of 30 minutes a day of exercise, six days a week.

So I hate to write and run, but I really do have to run. To the gym.