Three years ago I finally cut the crap and set a real New Year’s resolution:
Do what you’re too afraid to say out loud.
In 2015, I realized I kept tacking on trite goals of weight loss and clean eating habits instead of focusing on what I needed to improve. I get it, a new year gives motivation to restart or erase bad habits, but why did I keep seeing the earth’s move around the sun as a clean slate for my body mass? A new year is a continuation of life’s progress, a building block, a stepping stone to the rest of your life. Why would I tether each step forward with a bitchy list of restrictions?
Here’s a look at my resolutions through the years:
2009: Cut out soda
2010: No more processed foods
2011: Eat red meat once a month
2012: No more white carbs
2013: Throw away the scale, but also cut out carbs, sugar and food in general
2014: SQUATS
2015: Food is not the enemy
I’m not saying weight loss isn’t a valid goal for a new year, but I am questioning why it matters. For me, the years of body-centered resolutions became my own way of putting off what I was too afraid to go after:
I can’t be a writer right now, but I can refuse this ham sandwich and eat kale.
I read an article years ago that said, “If you want to be a runner, start telling people you are a runner.” Sure, that seems like a simple enough concept now, but at the time – the line came packaged with its own group of white doves and a dramatic omniscient melody. That shit registered in my head. Was this guy saying I could just say what I wanted to do?
Voicing my dream aloud provided some weird power (aka peer pressure, motivation, public humiliation) to actually fight for it, but more than anything – it let me see that the dream was real. That somewhere, behind all the list of things I thought might make me
skinny
pretty
powerful
wanted
There was a real ambition waiting.
Southern Wild 