Happy Anniversary, dailySpark. You've come a long way, baby, since those early posts back in mid-August 2008. I was a newbie to SparkPeople back then, just getting to know the sites and the wonderful employees and members here. Since then, we've all grown--and shrunk together. Without all of you, we never could have grown into the well-respected healthy living blog we are today. We've interviewed everyone from top weight-loss expert Dr. Martin Binks (one of our most popular interviews!) to Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, Hungry Girl Lisa Lillien to fitness gurus Denise Austin and Leslie Sansone. We started with just five bloggers, but we've more than doubled. We have shared guest blog posts from fitness experts Chalene Johnson, the Fit Bottomed Girls, and David Kirsch. Sports nutrition expert Dave Ellis is a huge fan and contributor, and we've welcomed top healthy living bloggers and inspirational members. Those guest bloggers are constantly surprised by the sheer number of comments we get on each blog post--and how positive they are. Thank you for helping to set the dailySpark apart from the rest. While SparkPeople is home to the tracking tools, educational articles, exercise demos, and community that allow each of us to be successful along our healthy living journey, the dailySpark is an outlet that allows the SparkPeople experts to show the human side of weight loss. Each of us is here at SparkPeople not only as an employee but as a person who has struggled with weight, body image, and self-esteem. We've been where you are and where you've been, and some of us are right there alongside you now. Regardless of where we are in our own weight-loss and healthy living journeys, we're always standing on the sidelines cheering you on. Recently, I had a heart-to-heart talk with Tanya, our healthy eating expert. She shared her passion for the underdogs. Like Bruce with his The Slowest Loser series, Tanya felt a kinship with those readers and members whose path from here to there took a slower, meandering one. Having learned to live with thyroid disease, she knows what it's like to do everything right and still not achieve the goals you set for yourself. Instead of giving up, she set new goals, rewrote her rule book, and became an inspiration to countless SparkPeople members. She started a new series, called One Step Closer. Her cardinal rule: Healthy living isn't about being perfect; it's about consistently moving one step closer to your goal, whatever that might be. This year, in addition to the health news, simple recipes, exercise roundups, hot topic posts, and motivational stories, you're going to see more confessions from us--and you. You're going to read about REAL ways that REAL people are making REAL changes in REAL life. Really. (OK, enough with the "real" references!) Our goal during this next year, just as it always has been, is to make you feel the best you can. We want you to know that healthy living isn't about running a marathon. It's about walking down the driveway unassisted, like ~INDYGIRL can now do. It isn't about serving a home-cooked, from-scratch meal seven nights a week. It's about doing it more often than you did before, like MOM5INFL. And it's not about being a size 2, a size 12, or a size whatever. It's about loving your body--no matter what size you are. As always, reach out to me with tips, critiques, story suggestions, or any other feedback. As dailySpark editor, I want to hear from our readers. Let us know what we're doing well, and what you'd like to see more (and less) of. (You can also share your thoughts in the comments below.) But most importantly, keep reading! Oh, and because no milestone at SparkPeople or the dailySpark would be complete without a Goodie, we are hosting several cool giveaways this week. Keep reading every day for a new contest. (We'll be back tonight with the first one!) Thanks for reading! 
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