New Year’s Resolutions

The start of a new year is an opportunity to have a clean slate and start fresh. It is also an opportunity to set resolutions of what you want to accomplish or change in your life for the new year. Things like losing weight, exercise more and save money tend to top people’s list, including mine in years past.

In January of 2009, my new year’s resolution was to lose weight for my wedding. At that point I had topped the scale higher than I had ever been and I was considered obese by BMI (body mass index) standards. Now we’ve all heard the stats on new year’s resolutions:

“only 8% of people keep new year’s resolutions”

So in hopes of not becoming a statistic, I needed a plan to accomplish my goal of losing weight. There are a few steps I took for my initial weight loss:

1. Counted calories consistently.  I determined how many calories I should be eating to lose weight (1 lb = 3,500 calories) through online caloric needs calculators. I settled on 1,500 calories per day because my body at a healthy weight needs just over 2,000 calories and it seemed like a nice round number 🙂
2. Worked out consistently. I got a gym membership and started working out 5x per week. By “working out” I mean walking at like 3.5 mph on the treadmill (while dripping sweat since I was in horrible shape) and doing some weight machines (i.e. the ones I could figure out without working with a trainer).
3. Had the true desire to lose weight. I REALLY wanted to lose weight for my wedding and it showed in my determination.

I can’t stress enough how important #3 is for a resolution, or any goal for that matter, to be successful. You need to have the desire to do it. Without that, there is nothing driving your energy to it so it will fizzle.

Now I realize none of this is not rocket science. Nor is it a fancy pill, only eating broccoli on Tuesdays, do 100 jumping jacks then 75 burpees (who wants to do that?) kind of diet and exercise plan. I also realize there is a lot of research out there about how calories don’t matter, and I agree to a point, but I also know that how much you eat matters. Calories is a way to regulate that (granted not the only way). And technically with my weight loss plan I used, I could have just ate donuts each day. If you ate only donuts all day for 1,500 calories (it’d be about 5 donuts assuming you like frosted donuts with sprinkles like I do), you would probably be hungry and maybe have a stomach ache from too much sugar. However, if you ate eggs w/veggies and toast for breakfast, mushroom barley soup and an orange for lunch, shrimp stir fry for dinner, greek yogurt and pistachios for snacks (totally what I ate today) you will be much more satisfied and less likely to snap at your spouse when they ask you how your day was. Basically there is more to it than just calories, but that was my starting point.

Fast forward now 10 years and I am not counting calories every day but I do bring it back when I want to lose a few extra pounds I may have gained over the holiday 😉 My resolutions 10 years later are a bit different too:

1. Eat vegetarian for 4 lunch and/or dinner meals per week (with the goal of losing leftover baby weight and reducing my environmental impact)
2. Build a consistent daily meditation and yoga practice (for fitness and mindfulness)

I am off to a strong start on vegetarian cooking so far this year as I’ve made mushroom barley soup and sweet potato chickpea spinach coconut curry for meals this week already (more to come on meal planning in a future post). And I am 3 days strong on a daily yoga and meditation practice 🙂

We will see if I can keep it up and be the 8% who keep their resolutions!

What are your new year’s resolutions?