New year's resolutions.

Hey beautifuls and happy holidays!

I'm sorry I missed you guys last week.  We ended up having a last-minute family day together to celebrate Christmas Eve...  I find that sometimes you just need to get away from it all and reload!

With that being said, Happy New Year's Eve!!  Let me just preface this post with the fact that I am known to be a bit of a fuddy-duddy about this holiday.  I love watching the ball drop as much as the next girl but what I don't love is the ridiculous New Year's resolutions everyone feels obligated to make, and I'll tell you why.

The tradition of making these resolutions is based in using an obvious time-marker as a moment to consciously put our best foot forward for the coming year.  Nice, right? Right.

But what I often see as a result of this is my friends and family making resolutions based on the inherent feeling that they need to change something about themselves, that they somehow aren't enough the way they are at this very moment and they need to make an effort now so that they can reach that ever-transient "enough" in the future. 

As far as the women in my life are concerned, most often these resolutions revolve around the physical changes we want to make to our bodies in order to be thinner or hotter or whatever, and that really gets me.  Most of you guys know what I preach by now: you are beautiful and amazing and wonderful exactly the way you are, and you certainly don't need to change anything to be worthy of all the love and happiness in the world.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for self-improvement, but that improvement should be based on what's going to genuinely make you happier and healthier, not what will be more acceptable to your friends or what will lure in the hottest guys or what will make you more attractive to our society.

Take it from someone who has made this mistake one too many times:

I used to spend each New Year's Eve stuffing my face with the idea that come January 1st, my resolution to "finally lose the weight for good" would take effect and this time it would really stick.  The first time I made that resolution was in 4th grade. Each year was the same pattern: I would stick with a diet/exercise plan for a few weeks, gradually get bored and be back to my usual ways without much to show for it.

However, when I made the same resolution at the beginning of 2010, the second half of my freshman year at college, it really stuck.  I stopped eating almost entirely, subsisting on the one cup of miso soup I would allow myself each day.  I started skipping classes to go to Bikram hot yoga, a welcome relief as I was freezing all the time.  I stopped going out with my friends so they wouldn't see how strained my relationships had become; instead, I would go to the gym and spend 3 hours on the StairMaster, watching myself in the mirror and calling myself fat, telling myself that this was the punishment for a lifetime of overeating.  And, not surprisingly, I lost 20 pounds.  And it felt amazing and I could wear whatever I wanted and everyone told me how great I looked and all my guy friends were suddenly interested in me.

But what they couldn't see was that it wasn't actually amazing, that underneath that new, thin front, I was suffering.  I was hungry and cold and sad and scared and even though I had this amazing new body, I didn't have the soul to fill it up anymore.

It took me years to recover from that New Year's resolution.   Since then, I have discovered that the best resolutions you can make are those that will feed your mind, body and soul as one.  I know it sounds a little earth-child of me, but really, if you're going to spend a whole year focusing on some major goal, shouldn't it be one that is going to add joy and happiness to your life instead of one that will force you to give up the things you love?

Now keep in mind, I'm all for self-improvement.  I'm constantly looking for little tweaks to make my life a happier and overall healthier one.  But in the same vein, realize that many of the body-based New Year's resolutions we make don't actually make us healthier or happier.  Often they just make us miserable!

So how about this New Year, we try something different?  Instead of making that same stale resolution to lose five pounds or tone your butt or whatever it is you freak out about, how about you focus instead on what will lead to not only a healthier body but a happier one?

Instead of resolving to "exercise more," make time for active recreation that makes you happy and that you can look forward to.   There's no need to hit the gym when you can go for a hike, walk your dog on the beach, kayak at the lake, take a salsa class with that sexy man in your life, or even play tag with your nieces and nephews!  Forget that "eat less" resolution, but work on nourishing your body by learning how to cook healthy, homemade meals, hitting the local farmer's market as a weekly date night or kicking some of those processed foods to the curb.

See what I mean?  Resolutions can be at once a lot more fun and a lot more beneficial to your body and your soul if you take the time to consider what will make you genuinely happier and healthier not just for 2014 but for the rest of your life.

With that, I am off to enjoy tonight's obligatory glass of champagne and some homemade tamales (guilt-free!) before we embark on another beautiful year of growth and self-discovery. Happy new year and I'll see you in 2014.

That's the slice!

Sonja