A Resolution Against Resolutions

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions.

Oh, I used to make all kinds of resolutions every year. I would spend several hours on New Year's Eve making up my list of goals for the year. Then, I'd stick the list in a drawer and conveniently forget everything on it.

This year, I've made a resolution to make no resolutions. Because ultimately, a resolution has nothing to do with action.

Instead of resolutions, I am taking action and making the changes now.

For example, with leftover baby weight (plus the extra weight I was carrying before I got pregnant) causing some really painful sciatica, I've made a commitment to get myself healthy, so I can feel more comfortable in my body.

The actions I'm taking:

• I actually joined Weight Watchers with a friend from work, and the accountability seems to be helping me.
• I signed up for a weekly yoga class through the local park district.
• Typical for me, I am reading multiple books to help me change my attitude. Currently, "French Women Don't Get Fat" (the audiobook version) is entertaining me during my commute to work. Also typical for me, I'm not taking every bit of advice (leek soup for 48 hours? no thanks!), but am adopting the pieces that work for me. Slow change is alright.
• An hour-long walk with the dog every evening.
• Cleaning the house, or scrapbooking, or (eventually) gardening when I'm bored, instead of turning on mind-numbing television and eating mind-numbing foods.
• Spending time cooking and taking my time eating my meals.

These are all seemingly physical changes, but here's what that means in the bigger picture...

It's about changing my mindset, because a lack of attention to the physical has a tendency to spiral inward and create a lack of attention to the mental, the emotional and the spiritual aspects of our lives.

Oh, I can overanalyze to my heart's content. I can sit in my comfy chair and think about all the changes I need to make. But actually taking action has been a problem for me in the past.

And the main problem for me is lack of attention. Eating things that I don't really like, usually junk, and usually because I am too busy, hurried or hungry to stop and think about what I'm doing. Sitting around bored instead of getting up and moving.

So I find myself with junk chocolate: a Reese's peanut butter cup, a Snickers...whatever. Or with junk fast food: fried food, potato chips and so on. Or with junk television. Or junk reading.

And the thing is, that stuff isn't really all that appealing to me. So it's time to stop and think: What do I really like?

Good dark chocolate, red wine, hand-crafted cheese, home-cooked stews chock-full of veggies, lovingly baked breads, a fresh apple, blueberries in oatmeal. A comfortable and clean house with candles lit and music playing. A beautifully constructed photo album to thumb through. Carefully considered and thoughtfully written books and articles.

Thoughtfulness. Attention. Grace. Gratitude. Activity.

These are things we've lost as Americans.

Take food as just one example.

We want convenience, but in creating a vast landscape of convenient-food outlets, we've given up something far more important, which is the ability to nourish ourselves and care about what we put into our bodies.

How many people have an inkling of where their food is coming from? How many people even remember that the burger with bacon they ate for lunch was produced by actual living animals? That the bun comes from plants grown in a field somewhere?

With each meal, even with each bite, it is important to remember, with gratitude, where that meal came from.

And in remembering where it came from, we get back to eating more mindfully, which eventually leads us to make wiser choices, selecting those foods that not only offer the most nourishment, but also those that are the most satisfying, physically, but also ethically, mentally, spiritually.

And by the way, I've lost nearly 4 pounds so far. But that's really only the side benefit. More importantly, the sciatica is starting to subside. And the dog is in bliss from our nightly one-hour walk.