Over the years, one sure thing I’ve learned about New Year’s resolutions is that you should never tell anyone what you promised yourself in a fit of self-improvement zeal. This will eliminate the guilt when you realize you’re not going to manage to live up to all those lofty promises. We know from experience that guilt won’t make us stick to them anyway, so why make ourselves that much more miserable? You should have promised yourself that you’d TRY to lose weight, stop smoking, go to the gym more often, keep your desk more organized, write to your favorite aunt more often, or whatever fault you decided to eliminate. Promising to simply try gives you an out when you are weak, and it won’t keep you from starting over the next day. Thinking we have failed tends to make us so discouraged that we give up altogether, so keep your options open for a fresh start.
That diet resolution seems to be the most difficult one to stick to, probably because we can’t give up eating altogether – we need nourishment and can never get entirely away from temptations. Comfort foods and desserts are usually our biggest sacrifices and it’s not a good idea to attempt to cut them out entirely. You can start by making a few rules that you may actually be able to keep. Cut that pie into eight slices rather than the usual six and serve yourself on a smaller plate. Visual aspects are a larger part of our enjoyment of food than most of us realize. Drink a full eight ounce glass of water before each meal. Most of us don’t drink enough water anyway, and it will help you feel full with less food at mealtime. Eat your vegetables and proteins first so there isn’t as much room for those treacherous starches, fats and sugars. Limit desserts to one per day instead of after every meal. Something sweet does help to turn off the appetite at the end of a meal, but you can eat half that cupcake at lunch and save the rest for dinner later. Or settle for a mint or fruit-flavored Life Saver.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people make resolutions and then turn around and try to find ways to cheat without having a guilty conscious. I’m talking about those self-justified “exceptions” as in; Holidays and Sundays are “free”, so I can eat/smoke/forgo exercise, etc. with no guilt. Calories don’t count if you eat standing up, or when a guest at someone else’s house. There are no calories in Girl Scout cookies or those candy bars sold by the Little League. I’ve known people who buy diet salad dressings and then stir in a big glob of real mayonnaise and generous amounts of blue cheese or add a handful of buttery croutons or greasy bacon crumbles.
At four foot and eleven inches, my mother was never very much overweight, but every pound added visibly to her tiny frame. The doctor had told her that grapefruit would help her lose some weight, so she faithfully ate a grapefruit every day. Not in place of higher calorie fruits, but in addition to them. For some reason, she believed that the grapefruit caused a weight loss, not that it was meant simply to replace more fattening foods. But then, my mother was a sister to Aunt Opal who believed that when told to eat “dry bread” (bread without butter) she put the toaster on the dining room table so she could dry out her bread before she slathered it with butter as usual.
One thing you should never do is to reward yourself “in kind” when you’ve managed to stick to your resolve. Don’t reward yourself with a chocolate sundae when you’ve lost five pounds. Buy yourself a new scarf or necktie instead. You made it through a whole day without a cigarette, so don’t spoil it by treating yourself to “just one puff” to prove to yourself that you can resist the temptation. Go for a walk or to a movie — someplace where you can’t smoke or aren’t in the habit of indulging.
Never forget that virtue is its own reward, and sticking to those resolutions will repay you in more ways than you imagine. Write to that favorite aunt as promised, you’ll no doubt benefit from her replies which are bound to include bits of family history you were unaware of. And if you’re faithful to your self-imposed exercise regimen, you’ll live longer and enjoy life more. It’ll be worth it.