I absolutely, positively, without hesitation, refuse to make another New Year’s resolution to lose weight.
Every New Year comes and goes, and any resolutions I’ve made fly out the window within a few days. It doesn’t matter whether the decision has to do with what to eat, what not to eat, or when to eat; I can’t stick with it.
I’ve tried diets, protein shakes, purging, counting calories, and many other things I’m ashamed to admit. And each time, I may lose a few pounds, but they always find their way back home – to my belly, hips, and thighs.
I’d love to weigh less, especially when I see all the thin models and actress
es on TV who set the unrealistic bar for the rest of us. I once asked my husband if he wanted me to lose weight, hoping that would give me the incentive I needed. His response was no help: “I like you the size you are, and if you were thin, I wouldn’t have married you. But go ahead and lose weight if you want, as long as you don’t lose anything in your . . .” and he then told me what parts of my body were his favorites.
Well, I know from experience that when I lose a few pounds, they don’t just go away from the parts I want thinner. The loss is evenly spread out over my entire body,
including the parts Bryan wanted me to keep.
My doctor wasn’t any help either. She told me I didn’t need to lose weight for my health.
though I was overweight, I was basically healthy, and all my numbers were within the acceptable limits. Thanks a lot, Doc!
The final blow came when I was changing my healthcare provider last month. As I was returning to a previous company, they said I’d have the same Patient ID Number, so I looked through old papers and found a statement from a doctor visit several years ago. Ironically, my weight at the time was exactly what I weighed that morning, and the same as I weighed 20 years earlier when I met and married my husband. All those diets hadn’t made an ounce of difference.
This year, instead of wasting time and effort on my body size and fantasizing about dessert and potato chips, I set a different goal. A writer is expected to write every day, but let’s be realistic. That’s not gonna happen. Instead, I have determined to sit at my laptop at least five days a week until I’ve written 500 words, basically two pages double-spaced. At that rate, I could complete a book every few months and throw in a few blog posts and magazine articles.
I’ve already fallen behind and we’re only three weeks into 2016. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t try. Every day is an opportunity to rise up to my self-imposed expectations. And just because I failed yesterday doesn’t mean I should give up today. And neither should you!
What will we resolve to do – or stop doing – this year? We can write down our goal and tape it to the bathroom mirror so we can read it first thing every morning. And we can wake up each day and determine to follow our dreams and live our resolutions for as long as we can. Then, when we fail, let’s try again tomorrow.
We can make it a better year, one day at a time, and make ourselves better too. I’m game. How about you?
Have a happier and a better new year.
